The Western Gate

Sussex Coils & Loops
Paul Holman
Scarlet Imprint

It is , it were.. that this book arrived, together with The Black Pilgrimage. And all in tune with plans alike to wander outwards from this smoky city on some quest that has no meaning or purpose, perhaps. We are told, not to attach wonder to the byways of synchronicity, just quietly acknowledge and allow the self to be carried by its tide.
It’s a Scarlet Imprint book, well respected, and also, about Sussex, from whence my Surname derived. Indeed as the author thematically summarises, “Sussex Folk seem to ever have had a leaning towards snaky things,” my surname derives from the Wende~ wind, twist, and burna ~ stream/brook. He kens us well.
Halfway through the book, I’m both bewildered by the subject matter and why inside I feel a resonant stirring, discussing the folklore behind the Nucker holes~ portals from whence meres and ponds emerge,. … and perhaps dragons, serpents and big worms lurk.
That Dragon slayers appears in the church windows nearby and the local folk legends and tales are relayed, and the Slayers tomb, unmarked, bides a mystery still.
It is then a book treading the path of folklore, pilgrimage and praxis.
As I read on, it were a read of the peculiar, and also the familiar, in the path of the wyrrd the combination of these drives the curious, curiouser and curiouser. Embracing ambiguity, finding meaning in paradox, or perhaps enjoying the tangled mesh it weaves us. We fare outwards a-while, not asking why, nor seeking satisfaction for we know in eternity there is no holy grail, there is no tangible- This is the End.
Our author guides us through his travels, it’s not the lair of the white worm, sacrifices will not be required and aloof locals in clique taverns are not going to warn him to steer clear. It’s a meander akin to Wainwright guides to fell walking, where in the comfort of our armchair we can pretend to follow the words as if each sentence were a patter of footsteps and we can …imagine. Yes, Imagine!…. that is the book of the familiar and peculiar.
The lakes and tarns and still waters draw us in, our reflection beheld.

Ingredi

The old lake where I grew up (Parsloes Park~Dagenham) , legends say it is full of tangled weeds and bulrushes that ensnare the paddler, dragging them to their doom, indeed many the campfire tale of lost children and the subsequent screaming mothers throwing themselves to save that cherub, only to succumb to its watery grave, and henceforth, her ghost is seen wandering the perimeter at certain times of the years, screaming, and luring the witness to this spectacle into the lake in the pitch of night, to find her poor little drowned angel and the witness is drawn to their inevitable oblivion.
The other lake, more a moat around a cursed house, Valence House, said to be the resting place of cursed Alice, murdered by a lover/exploiter, and she holds aloft the dagger as were drove into her breast, for any brave enough to keep on looking when the still waters break and her ghostly hand emerges like Nimue. …yes, King Arthur had a beautiful enchantress with the Sword of the King of Albion, whilst we in Dagenham had a poor wretch, used and silenced, and a humble stiletto dagger to hand.

Agredi

Paul Holman creates a wonderful shrine to his ‘pilgrimage’ by making a box of 3×3, in each a ‘relic’ or artefact. 3×3 being the square of Saturn, that of Understanding. It is a practice I intend to begin, with each new avenue I wander, i’ll fill that frame with nine objects. Perhaps the central being an easy significator card, the Tarot for instance, and as vi of swords has become prominent in my readings, and being the ‘journey’
it is an obvious starting point..,

but where to go? My Paternal side are all, before London, based in Kent and Sussex, My Maternal side, Essex. As I steep back generations it is to Devon and Cornwall, The Moray Firth and North-West Ireland.
I suppose before I digress,…

The book! Yes, perhaps it is niche, it is in the realms of folk-horror and also something else, something odd. It is a peculiar subject that Scarlet Imprint has taken on given their titles and subjects previous, but it is an… enchanting book.
A concise bibliography will have me rooting out the ol’ Sussex vibe and the Sookland of ancestry.
In the old telling of the Nucker Hole, where something ancient coils beneath dark, unknowable water, I ponder and muse if the legend can be read less as a tale of monsters and more as a quiet allegory of awakening, indeed as all or many tales go subtly and ominously as sexual awakening.
The pool, deep and opaque, suggests a threshold into the unknown self—its depth unfathomed, its surface concealing both fear and transformation. What is “pierced” need not be taken as violence, but as a crossing, a moment of change in which innocence gives way to knowledge. A merging, coupling, or as that ol’ Bible says~ Knowing.
The maiden’s release is not merely rescue but emergence: she steps from mystery into experience, from stillness into becoming.
In this light, the serpent is not only a creature of fear, but a symbol of instinct and latent desire, it is the rising phallus, and the pool itself as the veil, the liminal, the desired—where uncertainty, vulnerability, and awakening meet, and where the self is reshaped into something fuller, more conscious, and undeniably where innocence is forfeit.
But that’s deliberating, suggestive. Symbolic. Digressing.

When you read tales from the Fey, myths, Folklore, something inside stirs, we ditch logic and historians, and even if deluded, immerse ourselves into that fantastical world, Hiraeth, a summer isle. It is both escapism and also a feeling we have lost, that we have arrived where we want to be.
The archetypal mind and the primitive is read through symbols, relayed through dreams. Come home DAvid, to the Winding streams, the liminal tracks, the crooked path.

Header Image;- St George and the Dragon ~ Master AG : 1480-90