Adieu

This book outsells all others I have written by at least one hundredfold; yet I refuse to be defined by it. Half a century ago on Friday 13th March seems permanently etched onto the nation's psyche, and to some degree the sensational nature of that historic occasion will have obvious and lasting public appeal. It marked, of course, my television debut, and events later that night at Highgate Cemetery.

A more meaningful and pivotal Friday 13th for me would occur three years later in April at Easter. This was my first ascent of Parliament Hill. It was attended by a crowd of hundreds, not unlike the crowd spontaneously triggered by my television transmission on 13 March 1970. I was not expecting such a vast number to assemble all over the hill on Hampstead Heath on Good Friday 1973, but it was nevertheless a pleasing sight. Before a makeshift altar with candles on a bench at the very top, I inaugurated the founding of Ordo Sancti Graal. Tapers, incense and food were handed out. This began a pilgrimage, concentrating on London and its environs over the Easter period, and eventually spreading further afield. A lay order of twelve was instituted from those who attended and followed.

There came a second ascent of Parliament Hill in 1984 which, while attracting a good few people, plus a radio station wanting to cover the occasion live, had also come to the attention of the self-proclaimed (since the age of eleven) atheist Leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone who ordered my arrest due to an obscure piece of legislation that forbade the utterance of religious words after dusk. I was thus arrested at nine minutes before nine o'clock, taken to Hampstead Police Station under police escort, and made to feel comfortable by all concerned. When I prepared to leave without charge some time later, after a cup of tea and a pleasant chat with the Chief Superintendent, the officers all lined up to shake my hand. The date was Friday the 13th of July. It was a full moon.

A third ascent of Parliament Hill occurred on Good Friday 1993 in a heavy downfall of rain and the odd rumble of thunder. We were soaked to the skin in our white robes, but spiritually vibrant. Bemused onlookers caught sight of us, as we made the procession for the final time up the rain-soaked hill, having begun this final pilgrimage in Hertfordshire on foot. My mother had slipped into God's safekeeping months earlier. I decided to depart from London, which I did the following year.

On the forty-first anniversary of a headline on 27 February 1970 that would catapult me into the limelight for an uncomfortably long period of time, I agreed to give my final television interview at home. It was recorded using three cameras for a Canadian production company. The edited film was first broadcast on 1 April 2011. Thereafter it was repeated in many countries throughout the world.

On Friday the 13th of December 2013, a statement containing a plea for privacy was published by me on social media where it was widely viewed, and occasionally paraphrased. I reiterate it with mild adjustment because seven years later some of the time periods would not make sense for 2020.

I find today's world, particularly the cyber-world, all too frenetic and reactive. This jars with my own desire for creative contemplation instead of the tumult I see around me which being a public figure only serves to exacerbate. This reflective approach to everyday existence is at odds with being under public scrutiny, somewhere I have found myself for the past half a century. What most brought me to public attention were the television and radio programmes I regularly appeared on, and also the books and documentary films associated with topics which hold the public imagination in thrall. It is for that reason I have not submitted a book for publication since the beginning of the 21st century. Likewise, I scaled back my broadcasts in the media to a point where I no longer make them. I ceased giving interviews to the print media decades ago and only then in quality magazines. Moreover, it is quite some time since I declared I am no longer prepared to provide interviews on matters relating to Highgate et al. What there was to say has been said many times over. I found myself answering the same questions over and over again; questions which invariably are already answered in my published accounts. One of the problems, I quickly came to realise many years ago, is that interviewers, regardless of the subject, simply do not know the right questions, and the questions are every bit as important as the answers. Another problem in the new century has been one of trust. Seldom have I encountered an interviewer in recent years who keeps his or her word. Consequently, any condition I might have set for providing a contribution was frequently and almost inevitably compromised. Without trust and a sense of honour there is nothing. I cannot interact in that way and would rather stay silent than witness yet another contract broken. I am still having to regularly turn down television and radio interview requests, along with a plethora of other invitations to partake in projects that would maintain a perception of me remaining on the public stage, which, I accept, is exactly what I have been for most of my life. What made me so, however, is very much in the past. The memoir I began to write some time back will not now see the light of day. This is for the best if I wish my privacy to be respected. The concomitants of being a public figure have slowly eroded over the last couple of decades to a point where I stand on the threshold of finally achieving meaningful privacy. Hence, I have now stepped over that threshold and become a private individual. This will not affect my episcopal duties, sacerdotal ministry, art and music etc, but involvement in secular preoccupations and the expression of views on same in the public hemisphere is now at an end.    

†Seán Manchester

Life

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Disambiguation

Friday 13th March 2020, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the largest vampire hunt ever to take place in the British Isles. It occured at Highgate Cemetery on the evening of 13 March 1970, following reports in local and national newspapers, plus a television interview with various witnesses earlier on a programme called Today, Thames Television. I made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00pm requesting the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy an investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded my plea. On the Today programme, 13 March 1970, I warned one particular enthusiast, who had appeared on the same programme as one of several witnesses, to leave things he did not understand alone. Apparently he had received “a horrible fright” a few weeks earlier when he allegedly caught sight of something by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery and immediately wrote to his local newspaper about the experience, concluding with these words: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” (Letters to the Editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970). In the following month he revealed to the media that he had seen something at the north gate that was “evil” and that it “looked like it had been dead for a long time.” I warned that this man’s declared intention without the proper knowledge went “against my explicit wish for his own safety.”

The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, under its title The Ghost Goes On TV, reported: "Cameras from Thames Television visited Highgate Cemetery this week to film a programme ... [Seán] Manchester [said] 'He goes against our explicit wish for his own safety we feel he does not possess sufficient knowledge to exorcise successfully something as powerful as a vampire, and may well fall victim as a result. We issue a similar warning to anyone with likewise intentions'."

The mass vampire hunt on the night itself was not attended by the man in question who spent his time in the Prince of Wales before repairing home to an Archway Road cellar provided by a friend.

The symbolism of Friday the thirteenth had taken on a momentum of its own, and the event itself, recorded comprehensively in my book The Highgate Vampire, was in many ways pivotal; especially as this was my television debut, and the end of any possibility of a private life thereafter. I had valued my privacy a great deal prior, and still did in many ways, but circumstances overtook me, as one television and radio interview, film documentary, public appearance after another crowded in.

The darkness of March 1970 would soon be eclipsed by the light of April 1973 when I ascended a hill on Hampstead Heath in white, along with twelve others, to found Ordo Sancti Graal before a large assembly of public onlookers. Once again, it was Friday the thirteenth, which that year happened to fall on Good Friday. The occasion is covered in detail in my book The Grail Church. This began a pilgrimage which would be marked by further ascents, more hills, and ultimately Glastonbury Tor.

People could be found who still believed in the miraculous and the supernatural back then. The expression of such beliefs all these years later renders me "unhinged." It is no longer fashionable to believe in anything outside of the material universe. It is no longer acceptable to be a spiritual person if that means anything beyond contemplation and prayer. I was, of course, active as an exorcist who cast out demons. Moreover, I was also an operative vampirologist/demonologist.

As well as entering holy orders, I was also an artist, musician, composer, photographer and poet. 

When they asked me when I was very young what I wanted to be when I grew up, I responded: 

"A child."

Hence many of the things I did appealed to a child, eg magician (conjurer), actor (theatre with a London Shakespeare troupe at the age of fifteen, later in my twenties and thirties to feature in art house films), performer (saxophonist and keyboards) in various bands. I was also a photographer. I began as a portraiturist with a London studio and a small staff. I photograph the sky these days.

Pablo Picasso's ambition was to paint as would a child, but he had long since lost his child-like innocence, and painted as a worldly, albeit technically adept, artist who never achieved that ambition.

What lay ahead for me in the wake of that initial Friday the thirteenth in March 1970 would unearth an external supernatural reality, albeit darkness personified. Its bright opposite grew ever close.

"His true teacher was nature, and he devoted himself to his own pursuit of poetry, music and painting. 'I've always been a bit of a bohemian, a bit of a poet, a bit of a wandering minstrel,' he said." (Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Vampires Among Us, page 113, Pocket Books, New York, 1991)

Either the miraculous and the supernatural exist, or they do not.

For those who see nothing, I suppose, there is nothing; or, at least, their vision holds nothing.

For young men will see visions, and old men will have dreams.

Death

The Holy Thorn at Glastonbury before it was vandalised by those who serve darkness.

Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain after the crucifixion two thousand years ago bearing the Holy Grail - the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. He visited Glastonbury and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, just below the Tor, planting a seed for the original thorn tree. Roundheads felled the tree during the English Civil War, when forces led by Oliver Cromwell waged a vicious battle against the Crown.

However, locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding it in secret locations around Glastonbury.

It was then replanted on the hill in 1951. Other cuttings were also grown and placed around the town - including its famous Glastonbury Abbey.

Experts had verified that the tree - known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora - originated from the Middle East.

A sprig of holy thorns was taken from the Thorn tree by Glastonbury's St Johns Church and sent to the Queen.

The 100-year-old tradition would normally see the thorns sit on Her Majesty's dinner table on Christmas Day

Avon and Somerset Police launched an investigation after locals found that vandals had hacked off the branches of the iconic tree. They were dumped next to the trunk which is protected by a metal cage.

Locals wept openly after the desecration had happened at the foot of the tree, on the town's Wearyall Hill opposite its world-famous Tor, as they struggled to contain their emotion.

Katherine Gorbing, curator of Glastonbury Abbey, said: "The mindless vandals who have hacked down this tree have struck at the heart of Christianity. It holds a very special significance all over the world and thousands follow in the footsteps of Joseph Arimathea, coming especially to see it. It is the most significant of all the trees planted here and can be linked back to the origins of Christianity. When I arrived at the Abbey this morning you could look over to the hill and see it was not there. It's a great shock to everyone in Glastonbury - the landscape of the town has changed overnight."

Glastonbury Mayor John Coles rushed to the tree site after he heard the news.

Mr Coles, 66, said: "I'm stood on Wearyall Hill looking at a sad, sad, sight. The tree has been chopped down - someone has taken a saw to it. Some of the main trunk is there but the branches have been sawn away. I am absolutely lost for words - I just do not know why people would want to do this. This tree was visited by thousands of people each year and is one of the most important Christian sites. It is known all over the world."

Deputy Mayor William Knight, 63, added: "This is absolutely mindless. We are all devastated."

The Holy Thorn was cut down and vandalised by those on the Left-hand Path as Christmas approached in 2010. The following Easter an attempt was made to burn what remained. Both attacks were viewed as an anti-Christian act by those investigating the outrage, and also by the wider public.

A third offence was committed ten months ago when Glastonbury's Holy Thorn was "removed by the landowner," according to the town council.

The historic tree of religious significance was "destroyed" last week, in what was thought to be an act of vandalism. Glastonbury Town Council said in a statement on 28 May 2019 that the tree on Wearyall Hill was intentionally removed by the owner of the land. The statement reads: 

"It has been brought to the attention of the town council that the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill was removed by the landowner and a Conservation Society member as it was considered by them to be dangerous."

The removal of the what was left of the Holy Thorn came just days after Glastonbury Town Council refused to support plans to build new homes at Wearyall Hill.

For two thousand years the sacred emblem had symbolised the arrival of Arimathean Joseph and Christianity to England. Its death sadly reflects the death of Christian England, and the almost complete vandalism of Christianity as embers of its remnant struggle to catch fire in a very bleak wind.

There is a full page photograph of the Glastonbury Thorn with the Tor in the background, taken soon after I became Bishop of Glastonbury, on page 33 of The Grail Church: Its Ancient Tradition and Renewed Flowering.

Spirit

A wooden cross cast into the sea near the pier in the annual blessing of the waters in East Dorset.

Father Raphael performed the service on the beach every year from 1990 until his death. I saw him often walking along the sands, sometimes wandering in the shallow sea water, with black robes billowing and flapping incongruously in the hot summer sun or freezing winter wind.

He once told a local newspaper:

"I bless the waters for the harvest and for the safety of everyone who sails or swims in them.

"It is symbolic of Christ's baptism in the River Jordan which was part of his showing to the gentiles."

The Very Rev Arch Priest Father Raphael served as priest at the St Joseph of Arimathea Church at Cemetery Junction for more than fifteen years before his death following a heart operation in 2008.

He was just sixty-five.

Father Raphael was born David Norman in Northamptonshire, educated at Wellingborough public school, and later the Polytechnic of the South Bank in London, where he studied bakery and catering.

In his thirties he made the decision to become a priest and took up theological studies at Southampton University. He became a lay priest in the Anglican Church before joining the Greek Orthodox Church, and later the Celtic Orthodox Church with its strong Glastonbury connection. In that small town many years ago I also made the acquaintance of Father John of the Celtic Orthodox Church. 

Father Raphael was also a trained conjuror and member of the Magic Circle and performed on stage regularly during the 1970s, on one occasion on the same bill as pop group the New Seekers.

We communicated by smiling and a wave as the sea shore's waves lapped as he briskly made his way east or west, as the case might be. Sometimes I would encounter him atop the cliffs. Strolling. Contemplating A smile. A wave. St Joseph of Arimathea important to us both, as was the tradition of the Sacred Cup of the Last Supper brought to these Isles by the First Apostle of Great Britain. I speak of this extensively in my work The Grail Church, which I am confident Father Raphael absorbed.

John of Glastonbury, on the right in the photograph, is John Ives who is a church history scholar and former Anglican priest who moved to Orthodoxy in 1994. This was when I relocated from Hertfordshire to the English south coast where I established the Holy Grail retreat centre. By this time I was already into the third year of my episcopate, having been consecrated in South Hertfordshire on the feast of St Francis of Assisi in 1991. Having already made a friend in John Ives in Glastonbury, who was now a hieromonk supported by the idiorrhythmic monastery, I was delighted to discover him wafting through in my own residential area on the south coast. He moved to Orthodoxy after serving as an Anglican for several years.

"I learned about the Orthodoxy and then became an Anglican priest," he said. "But I left in 1994, mainly because they had started to ordain women. We don't believe we have that authority to make drastic alterations and so made the permanent move to this faith."

The Orthodox congregation (the Community of St Aristobolos), formerly part of the Celtic Orthodox Church worshipping in the Resurrection Chapel in St Peter's churchyard, was received into the Patriarchate of Constantinople (Istanbul) under the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in 2012, and therefore became part of mainstream worldwide Orthodoxy. This above photograph was taken on the Orthodox Good Friday (hence the liturgical violet and veiling of crucifixes). Sadly, the Anglican Church removed Father John due to wanting the chapel for more community based projects which had nothing to do with worship. He has now found a place elsewhere, but I rather liked the churchyard chapel, and deeply regretted the decision of St Peter's church to expel him from it.

Father John nevertheless continues to bless the sea, and I strongly support him with this endeavour.

    

Ordination, sacred priesthood ~~~ † ~~~ Ecclesia Vetusta, Glastonbury.