The Thing on Hobbly Downs

1784

An excerpt from the Grand Lodge of Freemasons (Lancashire) Biannual Review of All Published and Disseminated Articles Pertaining to our Good and Noble Craft, 1784 ...   

Obtained with special permission from the Preston Historical Society archives ...  

A warning to all fellow Masons,

It has come to the attention of a number of our brethren, that the recent tragedy concerning our worthy R.M.W., deacon Hollister McCullough, has been linked, along with multiple other unhappy events, with the contentious grounds north of Holmshead, colloquially referred to as the "Hobbly Downs". 

As most of us will recollect, this present year's trials so lately and so deeply damaging to our honorable Craft and its standing in society, can have their origins placed some time briefly following the twenty-third of May last year, when in our Christian duty the majority of our kin remembered the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the great apostles of our Crucified Savior. 

It is our assumption that most, if not all, readers of this pamphlet are aware of the recent hostilities between our Lodge and that of the heretical "Qajiik Mission", established last year. For the desired purpose of amalgamation, and thus elucidation, it is the rightful wish of our new R.M.W., Ewan O'Duffel, to make clear the links between all these events and to draw them squarely to the area of "Hobbly Downs" (see to the appended illustration for geographical reference), which it will do well for all brethren to steer clear of until stated otherwise by both the Grand Lodge and the secular authorities.

As confirmed by multiple authenticated sources, directly present and indirectly informed, it is understood that our former friend and worthy chronicler of Masonic wisdom for the initiated, George Micah Qajar (he having reverted to his Hebraic surname following his sojourn to Basra in Turkey, where he converted to Islam), and two individuals from Birk, traversed the moors on the evening of May 26, 1783, with the disreputable notion of intoxicating their minds by inhaling a hybrid species of calluna vulgaris, or "faerie heather", peculiar to the central moorland basin that is Hobbly Downs. It had become (and is regrettably still endemic upon wily youths) a popular pastime to indulge in this disgusting activity which is said to dull the brain its logical inhibitors, and enflame the mind with sights and thoughts and colors "incompatible with the Newtonian spectrum" (quote by Fr. Joseph Manfred of the apostate Arcustian Catholic House, a renowned proponent of the drug; he now preaches to a Mass of one in his dungeon beneath the Mary Magdalene Asylum for Retards and Vagrants in Leeds).   

Upon lighting and inhaling said plant, these three disreputable gentlemen fell into a reverie, (quotes Qajar in his Dreams and Confessions) "not unlike that experienced by Peter, James and John, whereupon our minds were opened, and the Truth descended upon us, incandescent in unspeakable lights and colors, shapes the eye within beholds, but tongue and mouth are ill-equipped to offer utterance". It may be said these three gentlemen, upon so relinquishing their capacity for reason, "spoke in tongues", but only to the sound of nonsense, or else sinful blasphemy no proper gentleman (be he nor not a Mason) should care to honor with remembrance. 

The sole aspect of their plant-induced ecstasy necessary to report (again, strictly for the purposes of information) is that Qajar subsequently reported a supposed vision in which, like the Transfiguration, the resplendent figures of Moses and Elijah revealed themselves as bathed in lucid refulgence. However, according to Qajar, there appeared no likeness or suggestion of Christ, but rather an "Arab-looking gentleman, bedecked in loosely-hanging garb, with tanned but wizened face; whose beard was tethered to a miniature golden square implanted in his collarbone".