Bricks

by Leon Jenner

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

This is the story of a bricklayer. A master of his craft, he keeps its sacred teachings secret. For him a house is the dwelling place of a soul, and a house must be built in the right spirit or the soul inside it will suffer. The building of an arch is a ritual to obtain a right relation with the earth and a connection with the truth. The bricklayer recalls his previous life as a Druid priest. He talks about the creation of the sacred landscape of these islands; how even a simple stick lying on the ground would tell people the direction they needed to go in; how when people stared at the stars, they were staring at their own mind. The reader sees the world through the eyes of this great, magical being at the time of the Roman invasion, and learns how he tricked Julius Caesar and set in train the series of events that would lead to Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March. But as the bricklayer continues, he worries he is losing his ancient, sacred powers. The vision begins to fray at the edges as we learn how he has recently taken violent revenge on yobs who have mocked him. Is he really connected to a once living Druid priest, or is he gradually losing himself in his own fantasies?

Release date: August 4, 2011

Publisher: Coronet

Print pages: 145

Sample

1

Amongst the red dust, standing in a solid yet temporary timber shed, I work, a practitioner of the art of red masonry. My craft, initiated by apprenticeship, is refined by experience and from absorbing the knowledge of my compatriots.

In a circular motion on a perfectly trued York stone, I rub a brick of exquisite fabric. The shed I work in is poorly lit, sacrificing the light to protect my esoteric art. I have risen to become a highly revered being: my knowledge and practice of natural philosophy, art and mathematics incarnate me as Newton and Michelangelo combined.

I am a bricklayer.

In the process of creating a niche, I embody my profession at its zenith.

Drafting the design of the niche and setting out the means to cut and shape every brick, creating an architectural jewel.

But why am I doing this? What are the motivating factors? Is it for the money?

No, there are other ways to make money, far easier ways that require less skill, knowledge and effort. Is it for the kudos? Maybe, but kudos doesn’t have to combine with strained eyesight and choking dust. Is it because I was not given the choice to do anything else? This could also be so, but to reach such a level of perfection requires more than begrudging acceptance of circumstance.

I love the process of rubbing the bricks square, their texture, the crispness of their arrises as I prepare to cut them to shape. Sometimes, whilst doing this, the distant aroma of the kiln fire is released, completing the representation of the elements. Above all, when the work is finished, the excitement is breathtaking:

I have created a monument to my consciousness, made real the abstraction of my mind.

This bricklayer is mortared to the Earth by the bonds of nature. My thoughts were created by the same forces that created and fired the clay. I have raised my art to both purify and embellish this basic human need for a home. With the preparation and the laying of one brick at a time, I play out the sequence of nature’s quanta, creating something complex, important and beautiful. Could this be a ritual representation of the quantum world creating the elements and in turn laying them down to create life?

These lumps of baked mud I shape and lay so lovingly are the product of ice ages, of physics, of the fundamental forces of nature that created our universe, our planet and our higher human consciousness. All of these things, reduced and embodied in the brick.

 



10

You may wonder why we feel grief when we lose someone we love. Well, to explain this and many other conundrums, we must understand that we are here making the best of a bad situation. This does not mean that life has to be miserable. It just means that it requires great effort and a life lived as a prayer. Because you have been made as part of a process towards a remaking of the energy that forms you, understand that there has to be give and take. Your societies were bonded together by a powerful love that exists on many levels, depending on our relationship with people. You will also find yourself needing to help strangers in trouble because of this, and it makes you find common ground with people different from you. But the irony is, in order to bond you together, the feeling must be sufficiently strong. You feel physical pain at the loss of someone, because of the strength of this feeling. This is unavoidable, and is the only way of doing things whilst you are here. People you meet throughout your life will become part of you and you part of them, so you lose something personal with each one’s parting.

You must reverse your view of the heavens also. The power that holds the Earth together and controls it emanates from a tiny black hole in its centre. The material of the Earth is the residual matter left behind by a filtering process. The whole material universe is constructed by black holes of many sizes. This is the source of gravity for each mass. Our universe behaves the same way as the atomic world. Nature simply repeats itself, layer upon layer. This is why people worshipped the ground and its depths. If we look in, if we could stare to the centre of the world, we would see through to the edge of the universe. The energy that is lost from life is drawn to this place.

You see now how you have been made to perceive the opposite of reality. No wonder you find life so confusing. Some of this energy is channelled at certain places. These are the true divine places and exist on land and beneath the sea. Some have even been buried by our cities, but they are never entirely hidden. And so it happened that a force would come and change with a deadly patience our view of the world and the universe. A force so cunning and powerful that it would override our minds throughout many generations, with changing and more powerful phases to its mission.

Two things happened within a period of a dozen years or so. One event was intended to change human consciousness. The other event was an attempt to protect us and retrieve the status quo. Each of these events happened over varying timescales and global places, embodying a form that best suited its needs towards its intended people. But we will concern ourselves with the expanding city-state of Rome. Rome’s success in its mission is plain to see. The fact that I used the phrase ‘status quo’ a few sentences ago is evidence enough. Their version of history and their architecture, an amalgam of ideas they stole, are around us and in us constantly. We glory in their military accomplishments and their efficiency of conquest. We glory in their mimics, such as the megalomaniac dwarf Napoleon, who gained providence with the same help as the others of his needy kind. I wonder how long it will be before people see Hitler in this way? After all, he was of the same ilk. But the Romans were not one dictator or just a greedy city-state; they were a way of being and thinking. The greatest confidence trick in the history of humankind was the great achievement of the Romans. To succeed, it had to capture a source of sacred power from where it could launch itself to the world, in any future form it desired. This was achieved by an inadequate runt of a man.

Do you see, the greater the insecurity in a being, the greater their potential for manipulation? Have you ever wondered why dictators are such loathsome people? It is because they loathe themselves and lust for power. They are also the most progressed of thugs. A thug is the end manifestation of the work of the others. They come in all colours and creeds, from the delinquent to the dictator. They exist to cause distress to the innocent. You may do all you can to deal with them and be free of consequen. . .