Treacle mines
Darwent, south of Swanston, had a railway station, a mill and a treacle mine. There was a great deal of folklore around the treacle mine, as the histories of Darwent in the libraries show. With only mill and the railway station in Darwent, there wasn’t much other history.
The miners could not use pickaxes, because they stuck in the treacle. Instead they used pitchforks, which they twisted round and round to get a nice blob of treacle. Then they had to get the treacle off the pitchfork, by wiping it on their wives’ hair.
The mine shafts had to run horizontally into the hills. If they sloped downwards, the treacle would flow down the shaft and block it. The pit owners, an ungenerous, grasping lot, wanted to slope the shafts upwards so the treacle would flow out without the need for miners, but the miners managed to thwart this by-
All this is too much for Richard, who changes the subject.
We cannot start our business meeting yet, so I chat to the Christian Spiritualist who has rented the downstairs room. He is about sixty, with an old dark suit, a knitted pullover with a shallow v neck showing the knot of a tie. He is a little worried, perhaps, I will go all sceptical on him, but that is not interesting. What does it feel like, for him?
They are Christian spiritualists. They have been meeting here many years, with ordinary hymns. He is Anglican. They have a homily, then a message from Spirit- just like you. (I think it may be the same thing.) They have strange questions. One man wanted to speak to King Henry VIII- well, the spirits come if they wish, not at our choice, and an absolute King might not want to obey the summons of a commoner. Sometimes they get American Indians, who had a strong spiritual tradition. Delicately, I allude to pretence at mediumship. No, not with them, they are Christian Spiritualists- I infer that the National Spiritualists might be untrustworthy. They do healing by laying on of hands.
We don’t mind them, as long as they clean up the ectoplasm behind them, says Richard archly. Gosh, Richard, a joke?
If there is no perfection, it behoves me to seek good wherever I may find it. No, I do not believe they talk to the dead, but I do believe they might have insight or intuition, which manifests itself in this way. I might try their meeting.
Well. How do you think the miners might have foiled the ghastly plot to dig shafts upwards, and put them out of a job?
I have no idea how the story of the treacle miners ends, and I would love you to tell me.
I am a sort of Christian spiritualist, and spiritualists don’t talk to the dead, actually, since the idea is that death hath no dominion. Never has had, and never will have. Which fits in very nicely with eternal life. Why do we not consider that more, in Christian circles? The life everlasting is the energy that changes shape when we “die” and goes home, is all. We are reunited with the only thing that is real, which is love.
XX
I could not think of a way the miners could stop the mine owners drilling the pits sloping upwards either.
Calling it “death” is a very this-world-centric point of view, but then I am of this world.
Or, in the world but not of it….spirit in a body. xx
Here was me thinking it was CS Lewis, and it was Teilhard de Chardin who said, We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I am still not sure, myself.
What’s treacle, Clare?
It is the principal food of the wild haggis, a creature native to Scotland with its left legs considerably longer than its right legs, so that it may run around mountains.
LOL! I’m assuming it can only run around mountains in a clockwise direction?
Unless viewed from below, in the treacle mine, from which perspective it runs anti-clockwise.
Oh yes, that makes sense!
Ahem. Treacle is unrefined sugar – black syrup, it tastes metalic and dark. Yum.
its early, I enjoyed the Treacle Mine, but missed something I think. The Christian Spiritualist, another Treacle Mine? Surely the Bible teaches when we die we are dead until the resurrection (which will be instantaneous because we are asleep, to be honest when I die I don’t want people summoning me, I want to rest
I take an atheist-rationalist line on it. The spiritualist’s intuition perceives unconsciously the living people in front of him, rather than their dead, and when these perceptions filter into consciousness he makes patterns of them. If the pattern he is accustomed to is the voices of the dead, that is what he thinks he hears.
The unconscious has wisdom, and speaking it can be useful, but it may be poetic rather than literal or obvious.
Or, it is the dead wanting to communicate, rather than being summoned. You might want something otherwise once you are dead.
Dear Clare
Your atheist/rationalist line is rather too complicated for my tastes, (which is rather typical of atheist/rationalist arguments).
Some people find that they can hear things, see things and know things that they find themselves repeating, is all. Rather like being on a telephone line. Very many sensitives would far prefer to be left alone to lead ordinary lives, but when a voice tells you that your toast is burning, you would be a fool to ignore it.
There is little point in rationalising that kind of information, as it is not a rational process.
Bless you! xx
I rationalise it so I may believe it. “What value has it?” is not enough for me, unfortunately.