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DARK LIBERATION

AN INTRODUCTION
PHILIP MATTHEWS

The Dark Liberation Cycle

is dedicated to

Marie Hunter
Joseph O’Byrne
and my brother
Robert Matthews

whose support made this

project possible.

© Philip Matthews 2010/2018

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 DARK LIBERATION is a cycle of 20 novels written over a
period of fifty one years, from 1966 to 2017. The fundamental theme of
the cycle – which only became clear as the novels were written – is that
the key to the future of mankind lies within each individual, and not in
some external salvator, be it religious or technological.
While this broad thematic stream runs through the cycle, the
individual novels themselves are intended to stand alone – there is no
requirement to read the works in sequence or even to read any more
than those novels that take a reader’s interest. Obviously, though, some
understanding of the main themes, and of the arrangement of the cycle
in a series of subcycles, will help most readers increase their
appreciation of whichever novels they read. For this reason, it would be
worthwhile reading this short Introduction to the Dark Liberation cycle
and the novels that comprise it.

Initial plan of the whole cycle

With the sudden completion of the trilogy, NOTHING
DARKER THAN THE LIGHT, in late 1983, I was at a loss as to what
to do next. Before I knew it, however, I was sorting out the bundle of
stories I had written from the late sixties up to September 1975, when I
began studying at Trinity College, Dublin. The name of the character
came first – he appeared in some of the stories. I sorted the stories
chronologically and – presto – I had the life of Richard Butler running
from about five years of age up to his mid-thirties in sixteen episodes.
These episodes divided quite easily into four sets of four episodes each,
the sets covering successively Childhood, The Group, The Social, and
The Individual. Placing the Individual last was a peculiar thing to do,
but it was to be the secret motivating power of the entire cycle of
novels.
With only the trilogy written and the material for a fourth novel
to hand, I nonetheless projected the structure of sixteen novels
mirroring in subtle ways the structure of the pending work, soon to be
entitled THE FOURTH MAN.

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The first sixteen novels of DARK LIBERATION can be arrayed in this
way:

First Subcycle: The Mystery of Life

Nothing Darker Than the Light

The White City
The Land of Fire
The Field of Peace

The Blue Record

Second Subcycle: The Mystery of Love

The Kingswood Black Books

The Fourth Man
Lupita
Crow Station
Solomon’s Dream

Third Subcycle: The Lessons of Love

The Prince
Anon
The Testament of Eve
OR

Fourth Subcycle: The Sacred Marriage

The Eagle flies on Friday

Angel of Truth
Restoration
Reflection

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INTRODUCTIONS and SUMMARIES
What follows now is a series of Introductions and Summaries of
the these initial novels and the cycles that they are divided into.

NOTHING DARKER THAN THE LIGHT – Introduction

This was to be a sci-fi fantasy work. I had tried to ‘write a
novel’ (about an old man) and had produced a shapeless mess. So,
liking science fiction very much – the last refuge of the true romantic
(those who understand that human beings are ultimately responsible for
their own lives) – I thought a genre novel of this kind was within my
powers.
THE WHITE CITY is this little genre novel and at first I was
nicely in control and full of confidence. Then the characters began to
take over and set about telling another story, one that I came to realise
would extend beyond the rather comfortable world I was in the process
of creating. I think it is a virtue to let characters go free, but what they
had in mind in 1974 was way beyond my capacities at the time. A
period of preparation was needed – as detailed elsewhere – then off
they went, each coping in his or her own way with the utter destruction
of their world, through THE LAND OF FIRE and THE FIELD OF
PEACE, the remaining novels of the trilogy.
One consolation, at least, of imaginary characters is that they
never leave you. If you read far enough into the whole cycle you will
encounter at least one of the characters from this trilogy – who turns up
just when he is needed to provide a vital service for another of my
characters.

THE WHITE CITY – Introduction

This is the first novel I completed. Woke up one morning in
October 1974, after a walking tour from Stonehenge to Glastonbury –
nonstop rain – seeing Korkungal staring with disbelief at the White
City. The story told itself, very patient with my usual caution. But it
was my care not to exceed my ability that was instrumental in giving
the work its abiding freshness: a simple tale told simply.
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THE WHITE CITY – Summary
An old priest and his aging warrior guard approach an outpost of
a great empire. The priest is bringing bad news to a friend of his youth,
an imperial priest. The news is not welcome and the bearer is
accordingly punished. The old warrior? A tribal hero is no match for the
armoured champions of a city of iron and stone.
Yet a destiny is created here.

(back)

THE LAND OF FIRE – Introduction

Eight years separated the completion of THE WHITE CITY, the
first volume of NOTHING DARKER THAN THE LIGHT, and the
second volume, THE LAND OF FIRE. That time was spent studying at
a university. Would a trilogy of phantasy novels require that amount of
preparation? What if behind the romancing and heroics there appeared
some sombre questions? For instance, what is divinity that human
beings can either believe or not believe in it? Again, if God is dead,
might some human beings not feel the need to replace him in some
tangible way?

Anyway, after the BA and the PhD came THE LAND OF FIRE
and, in a matter of weeks, the final volume, THE FIELD OF PEACE.
Just like that? Just like that. Two years per volume had been planned.
All written in a wonderful steady flow in a couple of months. That's
how it works, believe me.

THE LAND OF FIRE – Summary

As part of a global strategy to outflank its rival, The Empire has
established an outpost to the north of the White City. A small
expedition is mounted to investigate the coastline further up the coast
and map the northern heavens to aid future navigation. It happens that
the Priest-Astronomer charged with the latter task was also instrumental
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in releasing the prophesy of doom that the Brigan priest, Kandrigi, had
tried to keep to himself. It also happens that the Brigan captive who
would serve as a guide to the northern lands is the one rumours say was
succoured and entertained by the virgin goddess, Agnanna, and who
would serve some divine purpose during the coming Last Days.
What should be a routine patrol becomes a world in microcosm
suffering extreme stress as all the traditional values and beliefs are
undermined by mounting panic and replaced by drastic reactions that
threaten to destroy the two ships and their crews.

(back)

THE FIELD OF PEACE – Introduction

As said, THE FIELD OF PEACE came hot on the heels of THE
LAND OF FIRE in late 1983. My fear then was that I might fail to do
justice to the new scenario that opens in THE FIELD OF PEACE and
the transition to a more global perspective. With the exception of some
weakness in chapter two, I should not have worried. The central
characters continued to lead their own existences, to work out their very
individual destinies, as they head towards the final destruction.
I didn't understand the ending for years, thinking that Pol-Chi
had failed – and that my artistic vision had been at fault (I had been at
fault). But if you consider the following novel, THE BLUE RECORD,
as a kind of commentary on NOTHING DARKER THAN THE
LIGHT, then you see that dying might be a whole lot more difficult
than many believe.

THE FIELD OF PEACE – Summary

The Miracle of the North had different effects on different
people. It spurred the aristocratic Priest-Astronomer, Hepteidon, to
conceive a world plan to save mankind. All he needed to do first was to
take over the Empire, then perhaps create a miracle of his own.
Complications, of course, a slave who seems to will his own death just
to make a point, an Imperial concubine who might be demanding the
impossible of him, and a wily Emperor with an agenda of his own.

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 Hepteidon will need his old companions from the Miracle days
to help sort out the mess. Trouble is, the kind of help they bring is not
quite what he is hoping for...

(back)

THE BLUE RECORD – Introduction

To compose a novel about characters existing on the verge of
consciousness only required an enormous amount of consciousness on
my part. Everything in their world as it effects them had to be
accounted for, both the subtle side events and the endlessly repetitive
detail of their machine environment.
Does it work? It will put you to sleep, almost. The repetition
will come to bore you, almost. Then the pathos will seep in as
characters try to attract the attention of the sun, try to understand
themselves in terms of the machines that surround them, try to
communicate with each other.
Does it work? It does.
Welcome to human immortality.

THE BLUE RECORD – Summary

The time has come when man reaches the peaks of achievement
promised by science. All the functions on Earth are now controlled by
the World Machine, which is programmed to maintain the World
Pattern indefinitely. Thus mankind has at last achieved immortality,
kept alive for ever by the World Machine.
This system has survived now for many thousands of years.
Perhaps in order in maintain a residual meaningfulness for human life
in the World Pattern, slots are provided in the various tasks undertaken
by the World Machine for human involvement, when individuals are
revived in order to go through a series of routines from time to time.
One such routine is the periodic war between the North and the
South. Gorj is the Leader of the South and he has performed this ritual
on many occasions over the millennia. But now there has been a slight
accident with a Northern craft and Gorj is instructed to help the pilot of

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the craft who has been injured. It is the first direct contact between
human beings since they became immortal.
The outcome is devastating. Gorj’s behaviour become more and
more erratic. Symer, the World Agent, whose task it is to maintain
order among the human Immortals, in turn becomes disturbed as he
tries to counteract the shocking effects Gorj has on other Immortals. In
time Symer’s conditioning breaks down completely, which permits the
awakening of the one power that mankind cannot completely control,
memory – and its truths. (back)

THE KINGSWOOD BLACK BOOKS – Introduction

THE KINGSWOOD BLACK BOOKS forms the second sub-
cycle and comprise the four novels, THE FOURTH MAN, LUPITA,
CROW STATION and SOLOMON'S DREAM, that provide an account
of the life of Richard Butler. The origins of the tetralogy lie in an initial
unconscious impulse in the 1960s which only came to full conscious in
the early 1980s, after the trilogy, NOTHING DARKER THAN THE
LIGHT, had been completed.
In a very real sense, perhaps owing to the way in which the first
elements of the tetralogy – which now form much of THE FOURTH
MAN – came into being, the biography of Richard Butler is an
unavoidably provisional affair. Little of it has been revised – and that
only for reasons of clarity of sense – and even less has been rewritten.
Each novel had in a way only one chance of being written and we get
only what could be captured on the first attempt.
There is no standard against which Richard Butler can be
measured. He exists in a void, and his whole world therefore exists in a
void. That is the nature of freedom.
The interesting question for me now is this: does the reader get
more than one chance to read the tetralogy?

THE FOURTH MAN – Introduction

This in a way is the first novel. It was not conceived as such but
it was composed in most of its parts before THE WHITE CITY, the
first novel to be written as such. THE FOURTH MAN has roots in
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stories begun in the sixties and composed from then until the early
eighties. A mixture of overweening ambition and fundamental spiritual
timidity would have prevented the realisation of the work before the
NOTHING DARKER THAN THE LIGHT trilogy had been completed.
However, once the novel had been compiled, its four by four
structure was seen to provide the underlying structure for the whole
cycle of novels – as then conceived.
THE FOURTH MAN itself is the first novel of the Richard
Butler tetralogy, THE KINGSWOOD BLACK BOOKS.

THE FOURTH MAN – Summary

The novel is about the sentimental education of an Irish man,
Richard Butler. Given the limited possibilities of the biographical
novel, the experiences of Butler are conveyed by means of sixteen
episodes that concentrate on the key incidents in his life between
childhood and his mid-thirties. These sixteen episodes are arranged in
four sections of four episodes each. The sections are not titled but they
concern, in turn, the family, the group, the social, and the individual, the
final section indicating the meaning of the title of the work: the moral
imperative that we achieve (what can best be called for now)
individuality.
THE FOURTH MAN is an attempt to describe on one hand the
fragmentary nature of modern life, the experience of disconnection and
decentred-ness, yet on the other hand, the intense aura of significance
that accompanies certain key experiences in this alienated life, and how
by reflection on these intense moments some sense can be made of our
lives by tracing the implicit connections between these moments.
A variety of narrative techniques has been used to achieve this
end, ranging from first and third person narration, variable focus on
Butler, rhetorical devices like figuration, reinforcement and
connotation, and a variety of settings in Ireland, England and Europe. It
is hoped that THE FOURTH MAN succeeds in conveying the early life
of Richard Butler in a convincing way, and that it also provides for the
reader an example of how we ought to interpret the moments of
illumination that occur in all our lives. (back)

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LUPITA – Introduction
LUPITA is the second novel of the Richard Butler tetralogy,
THE KINGSWOOD BLACK BOOKS. It came to be written in 1987 at
the end of a long period of intensive creative activity, so that it both
marks the culmination of a significant life-process and the limit of my
understanding at that time. SOLOMON’S DREAM, the final volume of
the series, written four years later, shows by comparison how my
understanding grew in the intervening fallow period.
LUPITA required a great deal of preparation, yet the central
motifs of the reed boat and the sea journey only appeared once the work
itself was under way. Such is the wisdom of the creative power. But it
remains an intimate and affectionate novel, firmly rooted in the ordinary
no matter where the creative urge takes us.

LUPITA – Summary
Jane Blake, 37, suddenly leaves her mother, with whom she has
lived since the death in a car crash of her fiancé thirteen years
previously, to try to make a life of her own before it is too late. This
action sparks a profound crisis, and she finds that, living alone for the
first time, as well as trying to decide what to do with her new freedom,
she must re-examine her life in order to make sense of this freedom,
that is, discover who she really is.
This situation is complicated by the competing claims and
demands of her family. Her mother, embittered by a life of restriction,
might be glad to see the last of a clinging child or might suffer
abandonment by the only person who actually cared for her. Her father,
long separated from the family and living in England, might want to
help his favourite daughter without interference from his wife or he
might want a housekeeper in old age. Her mother’s lover, Jack, might
also want to help his favourite in the family, though this rush of
attention could be misunderstood, or else he wants rid of her in order to
have her mother to himself. Her sister, Helen, with great ambition for
her banker husband, might resent the shifting of the burden of caring for
their mother on to her, but complications in her own marriage might
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just as well tempt her to slip into a relation of dependence, now that her
mother has more time for her. These familial pressures heighten old
resentments and fears and threaten to draw Jane back into a sterile
passivity masked as a capacity to endure suffering, but they also draw
out the vulnerable love and sympathy that arise from relations of blood
and the long-shared fortunes of family life, feelings that give her an
autonomous strength and an integrity that surprises her.

But the most threatening aspect of the crisis is brought to the

fore by the attentions of a young man, Michael, who strives to protect
himself from the ghost of his dead mother by becoming a philosopher,
guarding empty factories at night as a means to developing an ‘open
mind’. Jane avoids these attentions at first, but as circumstances draw
them together she is obliged to relive her previous disastrous relations
with men. Richard, who said he loved her and whom she abandoned
alone in a foreign city, and Terry, who was wealthy enough to marry
yet whom she drove to despair and death. She comes to realise she has a
destructive effect on men, and as Michael’s penchant for intelligent
argument opens his mind to very frightening insights, Jane sees that
men might well have a destructive effect on her in return. At times
Michael certainly seems to consider murder as a solution, though who
he might murder is not clear, yet for her part Jane experiences a growth
in herself, sometimes like a light, other times like a sea, and so holds to
what is vulnerable in her, understanding at the crucial point that love
tells the truth if you let it, which turns out to be the case in the end.
(back)

CROW STATION – Introduction

CROW STATION, the third novel of THE KINGSWOOD
BLACK BOOKS – the Richard Butler tetralogy – was a work that once
started did not stop until six hundred and sixty six pages had been
written. Then the flood of relief was indistinguishable from a flood of
grief. CROW STATION is the biggest of the novels. It contains pages
of pure dialogue and pages of pure philosophy. It would be more
accessible without the philosophy – and you can easily strip it out – but
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it would be a lesser work for that. CROW STATION was a gift, is a
gift, proof of the reality and power of artistic inspiration
If you read it, read all of it. You won’t be sorry.

CROW STATION – Summary

1985 is a cool wet summer. Dan White and his wife, Charlotte,
have a new son, their first. Dan is using the summer vacation to prepare
one of those obscure endowed Memorial Lectures that the older
universities have accrued over the centuries. He is also intrigued by his
discovery that the Cold War is coming to Ireland in a big way, con trails
up and down its east and west coasts indicating the kind of edgy
manoeuvring that could easily slip out of control.
But they are happy, excepting perhaps Charlotte’s tendency to
agonise over her son’s impending loss of innocence. Then Charlotte’s
mother is killed in an apparently senseless motor accident and both their
lives seem suddenly to change, a switch in levels, as it were, rather than
in direction. Charlotte becomes a mother without a mother, a disturbing
situation for her which presses her with the question of what she is,
child or parent. Dan, for his part, remembers the demise of his own
parents, but also acquires a research student with a disturbing take on
gender politics and some unwelcome attention for his Cold War theory.
Then both Dan and Charlotte discover that they do not know how to
mourn, that they cannot comprehend death and its effect on them. So
they counter death and a funeral with a birth and a pre-christening party,
inviting the mourners to celebrate their son’s birth.
Richard Butler returns to Dublin to climb a mountain while
awaiting his publisher’s decision about his latest offering. He is drawn
into the circle of a widow and her boisterous teenage daughters, an
invitation to become a father without the discomfort of fathering. He is
also drawn into the ménage about Dan and Charlotte. And as Richard
ascends his mountain to encounter its resident spirit and answer its very
pertinent question, Charlotte ascends to her bedroom to restore her
mother while Dan finds himself drawn by his research into arcane
thoughts that offer him a kind of salvation too.

(back)
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SOLOMON’S DREAM – Introduction
SOLOMON'S DREAM, as the final volume of a four-novel
cycle relating the life of Richard Butler, marks the culmination of 21
years of artistic endeavour. What has been achieved here, the apotheosis
of a modern hero, was possible only through a curious concatenation of
‘coincidences’ or serendipities. Some of this material had been
gathered, for other reasons, during the 1980’s, while significant sections
had to be worked out on the fly during the writing of SD in the latter
half of 1991.

SOLOMON’S DREAM – Summary

The novel is a love story inspired by a curious feature of the life
of King Solomon, that though granted the power to understand man he
is later condemned for worshipping the god of his wives. The story is
set in the West Country and concerns an Irish writer, Richard Butler,
escaping London and a failed relationship, who becomes involved with
what seems at first a literary coterie but which turns out to be a magic
circle intent upon the salvation of a culture. Knowing that magic
requires a sacrifice of love, Butler tries to protect the likely victim, only
to find himself, through his love for Louise Grainger, the daughter of
the hidden master of the circle, intended as the sacerdos of the
operation. There ensues a struggle between the magicians and Richard
and Louise, pitting the truth of art against the corruptions of will, that
leads the couple to undertake a counter-work of love, an act of
purgation intended to define the only possible basis for the regeneration
of a corrupted world.
The novel is not an indulgent fantasy, characterisation and the
rendering of situations and events are kept within the bounds of
conventional realism. Some sections convey imaginative experiences,
extensively in the latter half of the novel; these are realised without
straining the credulity of the reader (1) by careful preparation of
contexts in the first half of the work and (2) by having Butler narrate the
work as a journal, which permits the use a range of techniques to
juxtapose and overlap different levels of experience. There are,
unavoidably, some rebarbative elements, but an attempt is made to
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redeem these by careful attention to characterisation and motivation,
and by the employment of humour, black and not so dark, and, most of
all, by insight. (back)

THIRD CYCLE – Introduction

It would have been hard to follow Butler's apotheosis in
SOLOMON'S DREAM with anything but irony or bathos if the first
novel of the Third Cycle, THE PRINCE, had not as it were grown up
with SD. The Muse had been kind here – She has a better view of
things, for sure.
In the overall scheme the Third Cycle concerns the social aspect
of life, marriage, family and the like. The third section of THE
FOURTH MAN tells of a prospective social union that never quite gets
there: it is superseded by the ultimately larger issue of the individual. If
we don't know who we are then how can we form a workable society?
Likewise here: there are married folk and there are children, but there
are loads of other people with other concerns.
But the novels of the Third Cycle do have a common concern -
that of relationship. If the second cycle was about one main character,
then this cycle is about the attempts of characters to relate to other
characters. You will see societies destroyed in the attempt, people who
murder in order to reach futilely to another, who have dealings with
strange beings, and who finally must be utterly broken so that some
trace of genuine love might seep out into the world.

THE PRINCE – Introduction.

The Prince was written in early 1992, shortly after the
completion of Solomon's Dream and during a period of intense activity
engendered by the latter. It was originally conceived at much the same
time as Solomon's Dream, in fact some of its strongest imagery was
long associated with the latter and only separated out as SD was being
written. Yet while they both have a spiritual dimension, they are also
quite different in context and tone. The true connection between them
lies in the fact that SD completes the second sub-cycle of four novels
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and The Prince opens the third sub-cycle. They are like the two sides of
a door, each facing in an opposite direction, but joined together at a
level of truth that with a little effort can be comprehended.
The Prince is the shortest novel in the cycle, though given its
concentrated narrative structure you will find that hard to believe. It is
one of the most completely realised of the novels and yet still one of the
most enigmatic.

THE PRINCE – Summary

The novel is about the relations between fathers and sons. It is a
largely metaphorical work, projecting these relations on to an imaginary
landscape in an attempt to display how sons are influenced by their
fathers and what they do under that influence. The story is about a
prince, whose father, an emperor too gentle to rule, is defeated and
driven to suicide by the machinations of a powerful priesthood and a
great city. The emperor’s death leaves his son a fugitive, protected only
by two advisers and a small group of soldiers, and the novel tells of his
reconquest of the Empire and how he goes on to do what his father
could not do. The chief interest in the novel lies less in the outward
events, though they are detailed pretty thoroughly, than in the effect the
struggle has on the prince, his two advisers and his close friend; how
shame can contaminate love, ambition pervert loyalty, and how the
prestige of the father can place a tragic burden on the son.
The novel is narrated by one of the advisers of the Prince, once
his tutor and now his confidant, whose relationship with the Prince is
complicated by the fact that he is also the father of his close friend. The
style of narration is simple, in the form of a long letter to the son of the
Prince’s other adviser, by turns nostalgic or bitter, leavened by the
narrator’s eccentric humour and distinctive philosophy. He is the
perfect narrator, close to the events he recalls, a keen eye for local
colour, subtle enough to discern the shifting tensions around the prince,
qualified to analyse the hidden influences affecting the Prince’s action,
and finally honest enough to see the part he plays in the drama.
Given the scale of the work, there are elements running through
the novel which make it a parable about the contemporary world,

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especially to do with the decline of spirituality and the growth of
illusion. These elements are allowed to speak for themselves; my chief
concern has been to compose a work about a group of characters, and to
this end I have endeavoured to create a varied world for them, at times
whimsical but at times harsh, with the overriding aim of drawing out as
much truth as I could about my main theme.

(back)

ANON – Introduction
This novel was written in Brighton, Sussex, during winter-
spring 1993-4. A strange work – containing some of the most
concentrated writing the author has achieved to date – it was written in
broad daylight at a wide window with a panoramic view of the South
Downs. Not the most likely situation for plumbing the depths of what
can be best called the cosmic aspect of us human beings. Nonetheless
that is how it was done. And when the narrator calls the writer his
amanuensis be sure that he means it.

ANON – Summary
The novel is a retelling of the myth of the Minotaur in the form
of a detective story. Theseus is a corporate investigator on loan to the
local police to find an unusual Midnight Rambler active in a large city
park. Ariadne’s motives for helping him are ambiguous, caught as she
is between her feelings for her half-brother and her reasons for attaching
herself to Theseus. Pasiphaë is involved, too. Her interest in Theseus is
dubious, a compulsion that could well result in the creation of another
monster. Theseus has no choice but to take the assignment, his career
has been put in jeopardy by the publicity surrounding his last job. But
he has talent, and it has been hinted that success this time will put him
in line for significant advancement.
The novel is narrated by Dionysos, once man and now god, as
an updated performance of a perennial drama he is obliged to stage until
his characters get their parts right. He has problems with our language,
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but he presses on as best he can, patiently explaining his more obscure
insights and apologising as need be for what he fears we might see as
the barbarous excesses of his story-telling.
The plot remains as simple as Ovid has it, the reader’s interest is
engaged instead with the question of motivation. Why did Theseus
volunteer? He wouldn’t tell what happened in the Labyrinth and he
dumped Ariadne fairly quickly. But, then, didn’t she fall for him fairly
quickly? What about Pasiphaë, what’s a man compared with a bull?
And most of all, the Minotaur himself – more sinned against, perhaps?
Dionysos gives us the god’s-eye view, though he knows very well that
telling the truth is more difficult than most of us think.

(back)

THE TESTAMENT OF EVE – Introduction

To write The Testament of Eve required a level of release
hitherto unknown to me. Usually, control of a work is maintained at the
technical level – plausibility, expressibility, thresholds of knowledge
and boredom – but here even these controls had to be surrendered to the
requirements of inspiration. The result? A comic masterpiece? Gross
indulgence? A profound revelation? As for me, I still laugh, grin, smile,
chortle, holler in memory. But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Enjoy it – there's goodness in it!

THE TESTAMENT OF EVE – Summary

The novel is a comedy of omissions that revolves around the
little-noted fact that, according to Genesis, Adam was only the second
person to die, and the first to die a natural death. The story opens with
Adam two years abed, his descendents forced to labour in his stead, his
wife to dance attention on him. Eve determines to find a cure for
Adam’s condition, but discovers that the man who might hold the key is
one marked by a knowledge that all fear to know, though all are curious
to learn. This man is Cain, the ruler of the city on the plain.
So Eve sets off to meet him. The result is chaos as two families
encounter one another. Old memories are dredged up, old woes relived,

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but new possibilities are revealed, as nine hundred years of evasion and
amnesia are literally torn away. Most seek new hideouts, some reveal
surprising awareness and even more surprising equanimity. Only Eve,
driven perhaps by the exigencies of a composition she undertakes out of
unsuspected motives, seems aware of deeper memories, deeper truths,
especially of a deeper knowledge hidden in some appalling event in the
beginning, where both a profound loss and an inspiring gift await her
side by side for ever.
As a comedy of omissions there are, as might be expected, some
obscurities, but given the popularity of the Adam and Eve story readers
should be able to supply most of the answers themselves. The comedy
is Aristophanic and so direct, characters graphic but open to
development as the story unfolds, Eve untiring, the ending as happy as
can be in the circumstances, everyone getting at least what they are
capable of accepting.

(back)

=OR= Introduction
=OR= is the twelfth novel in the series. It was completed in late
1998 at the end of a baffling creative process in which the work grew a
sentence at a time over many months. There was of course need for
some editing and rewriting, but not nearly as much as might be
expected in the circumstances.
=OR= marks the culmination of the third cycle of novels, the
cycle dealing with the Social, and looks forward to the fourth cycle,
which will deal with the Individual. These works have yet to be written,
but in =OR= the shadow of the Ego, the true darkness in our human
lives, can be discerned in Ossie Rising and his disciples.

=OR= Summary
=OR= is the logo of Rising Transport Services, but it only
incidentally contains the initials of its late boss, Ossie Rising. Ossie was
a respected businessman and the celebrity philanthropist, who was
known to millions of viewers for the =OR= gold-painted truck that

19
brought much-needed aid to many of the world’s most recent trouble
spots. Ossie disappeared a few years ago after attending a poetry
reading in Brighton, while on stopover en route to Sarajevo.
His wife, Cissy, now has control of the business, and has almost
reached the point where she can cope with the responsibility of
management and the burden of command. It is a lonely task for her,
eased to some extent by a loyal staff and the unfailing support of Totty,
the long-serving accountant and now her chief advisor.
There is a problem. Ossie had a brother, Zed, who surrendered
his share of =OR= to go out into the broad brave world to, well,
discover that he could not cut it with the serious sharks, could not make
the billion, bag the big bird, hold the mile high. Now he’s back with the
company, Transport Manager, older but more hungry now that he
knows what he’s missing. No coincidence that =OR= trucks are
increasingly subject to drug squad investigations in many countries. No
secret that Zed regrets having surrendered his right to his share of the
ownership of a still lucrative business.
This is the position at present. Now it seems that Ossie might
not be dead after all, that he might well be on his way back. Ossie
resurgens might resolve some problems, but he might also create some
new ones. Following the lead here is a delicate matter, a matter both of
uncovering the truth and keeping it at bay. This will be the task of the
Rising offspring, Nubs, fatboy geek with unsavoury habits and
unsavoury friends. Nubs will be the one to worm out secrets and lose
them all again if that is required.
Ossie comes back, alright, looking like something that survived
an autopsy, sounding like something that the sixties left behind, coming
on like something a new millennium could do without. Ossie will
provide the solution to his dear wife’s problem.
Ossie will provide the solution to everyone’s problem, that is if
anyone can work out what the problem is.

(back)

20
FOURTH CYCLE – Introduction
At this stage, it is only possible to speak of the general theme
guiding the creation of the last four novels.
05.05.05: Dear Diary - this cycle of novels is intended to
witness to the birth of the human Ego, a cosmic event that is happening
now. However, I have seen far greater truths than this by other means,
that leave me wondering if I will ever complete this cycle. I know what
the next and the penultimate novels are about, but I have little or no
inclination to write them out. There is also the fact that hardly anyone
has read these novels. Only one person has read each of the last three,
and she is not a practiced novel reader. The world changes and changes
and all the time the themes and techniques of the novels become less
and less relevant. PM

THE EAGLE FLIES ON FRIDAY – Introduction

Starting a new cycle is always difficult, like changing focus
from something that has become familiar to something that is new and a
bit strange. It is not that the theme of The Eagle flies on Friday was
unknown – it's based on the Epic of Gilgamesh – but the tendency, as it
were, of the novel was uncertain. I knew what the novel was to be about
but didn't know if I could realise it.
As it turned out, the novel found its own way to its end, as they
all have done. Is that all? Actually, yes. I sat down and wrote it. It took
far longer than usual. Sometimes I had to wait a week to find out if a
paragraph “worked”. It did; they all did.
Writing can be very strange, with gratitude due afterwards.

THE EAGLE FLIES ON FRIDAY – Summary

The Principal rules the City and so can do what he likes. He
likes raping women and murdering their male kin should they complain.
The City Council must find a way to curb the Principal and so save their
City from impending chaos. The solution is to provide him with a
friend, with the companionship he so desperately needs. They find a
Wild Man, abandoned in the Desert as a child, as an appropriate friend.
Because the Wild Man has lived with animals since he can remember,
21
and the Principal has behaved like an animal for so long, they both need
to be prepared in advance.
It's a curious relationship, with so little and so much in common.
The Principal and the Friend come to spend most of the time wandering
in the Desert like outcasts. It is the Wild Man's idea to climb the
Stairway to Heaven, hidden away high in the Mountains to the East and
guarded by a fearsome monster.
It's an unlikely task for the two of them, and it is likely to be
their undoing

(back)

ANGEL OF TRUTH – Introduction

A writer starting out often has to content with the problem of
subjectivity. By this I mean the leaking of his or her own self-ness into
what is intended to be reasonably objective fiction. For my part, I did
not surmount this problem until I wrote REHEARSALS in the summer
of 1975, just before burying myself in a university for eight years. Thus
the first volume of the Richard Butler tetralogy, THE FOURTH MAN,
is permeated by this subjectivity – for good or for ill. For what it's
worth, I think it helps make the younger Richard that bit more credible.
Imagine my chagrin to discover that the fourteenth novel of the
series, presented here, was also freighted with the dumb presence of
subjectivity, after thirty years of relatively well controlled objectivity. It
made writing ANGEL OF TRUTH extremely difficult. It is a shortish
novel, a limited cast and situation, yet the step from one sentence to the
next at times seemed impossible to achieve. One page took over two
weeks to write, mainly because I could not frame one fairly
straightforward sentence. I could not understand what was happening at
that point in the novel.
It took me a good while to recognise what was actually
happening overall in the novel. Until the last pages I believed – I'm not
dissembling here – that ANGEL OF TRUTH was a mediocre work, in
fact the worst I had written. It was only when I had finished it and could
step back that I saw what had been achieved. The subjectivity I
22
encountered in the novel was not my own, but that of Peter Lacey, the
main character of the novel. I know that is a lot to say, but that is how I
understand it. Peter Lacey lives in this novel. Read the novel and see
him come to a birth.

ANGEL OF TRUTH – Summary

Peter Lacey has been obliged to abandon his life as peripatetic
researcher into the more obscure areas of Utopianism. Now, he works
as a temporary credit controller in various companies in London. One
day, while en route to a routine business meeting, he and an associate
from Sales pick up a hitch-hiker and give him a five minute lift to help
him on his way.
Within a week, Peter's life is totally transformed.

(back)

RESTORATION – Introduction
One of the problems with subjectivity in a novel is how it limits
the author's voice. You are trapped in your character. This is not
necessarily a bad thing nowadays. Over-educated authors – with the
internet only a browser away – can easily overwhelm a narrative with
an excess of character development and local colour.
However, what if your character is weird and wonderful? How
far can you go in being true to this weirdness? I suppose it depends on
the character. In RESTORATION the heroine has little or no memory
(due to spending too much time in reality). She is also obsessive and
extremely determined (characteristics of artificials). She is also charged
with the mission of saving mankind (against its better judgement).
You cannot easily “live” with such a character; she is just too
strange and – because of the lack of memory – too empty. Yet you are
possessed by something – the atmosphere of the world she inhabits, the
odd insight you get into her – which sustains you between writing
sessions. I developed the habit of waking up at 5 AM each morning and
spending two hours letting that day's work as it were grow in me. And
yet what went down on the page was often a too simple, step-by-step
narrative about a monomaniac woman and her derelict world, written in
23
an semi-literate phonetic English. Sometimes I feared the onset of
Alzheimer’s or the like and developed a second habit of carefully
scrutinising that day's work as soon as possible, while the memory of
what I intended to write was still with me.
Yet I got to know her so well. I was never sadder finishing a
novel. I miss her company. But she has gone back into the oblivion of
reality again, where she has become someone else for the duration.

RESTORATION – Summary
It is about a thousand years into the future. The world is a dried
out husk, most of the water having been exchanged for omnium from
the Other World. The human race is dying out because most women can
no longer bear children and the alternatives don't work. Artificials are
self-obsessed and clones die of loneliness. The few natural offspring
that there are – called natals – rule the world as a time-serving
bureaucratic clique. The rest of the human race subsists on what is
known as Machine Maintenance, a superlatively efficient welfare
system that oversees life from incubation bottle to render plant.
Into this hell on earth awakens the artificial woman who will be
known to some as Sophie. She has just lost her fortune in the latest
Bubble and so finds herself turfed out of reality into the tender metal
care of the Machine. Her memory has been destroyed by her overlong
sojourns in reality, and her only consolation perhaps are the strange
dreams she has when she manages to sleep.
Even so, she is filled with an overwhelming desire to journey
across the desolated land towards the high towers on the northern
horizon. She doesn't know why she wants to go there, but she goes in
any case – if only because she cannot do otherwise.
(back)

REFLECTION – Introduction
This is I believed at the time was last novel of the entire cycle.
You might expect the great climax – fireworks and what-not – but what
you get is the first novel I was not able to write forty years ago. Very
24
strange and for me very touching: to come so far in order to say what I
would like to have been able to say when I was twenty!
The novel is in part a retelling of the tale of Oisín and his
sojourn in the Land of Youth, which is then completed by means of a
modern second part – in which the Fairy Princess of legend is enticed
into our realm, the Land of the Wise.

REFLECTION – Summary
After the failure of a love relationship, a young man travels to
Kerry in order to throw himself into the ocean there. Complications
prevent him from doing this, so that he finds himself instead carried off
to another part of the country, to an ancient house that nestles close to
the same ocean. In this house there is an equally ancient crystal mirror,
and through this Looking Glass there is everything a young man might
want. But of course there is also much more – that might take the young
man a lifetime to understand…
(back)

REFLECTION was completed in July 2010. I believed then that

the Dark Liberation project had been fulfilled. I was even extremely
satisfied with what I had achieved, and was content to rest on my
laurels as an unknown writer of unpublishable novels. You see, what I
had managed to do – throughout all the ups and downs, the certainties
and doubts – was at once so far beyond what I had ever believed I was
capable of and yet so consistent and plausible that it had the effect of
making almost a new person of me.
So, the prospect of years of contented retirement, reading for
pleasure and perhaps some travel. Found myself writing essays from
time to time, which I assumed grew out of the last sub-cycle of Dark
Liberation and so of only passing interest to me.
Then, in April 2016 I had a fall and broke a front tooth. Ten
days later I sit down here and start typing. By 17 December 2017 I had
written four more novels, about 280,000 words in eighteen months.
Even today, 17 October 2018, I cannot believe that I actually composed
25
these works, though obviously I did write them out. The finale of
REFLECTION, the last novel of the fourth sub-cycle, expressed very
completely all that I myself believed I could say on the subject of
human destiny. Anything beyond that would be phantasy, in which I
had absolutely no interest: it would serve no useful purpose, except
perhaps to lead to illusion or worse.
What I had not realised at the time was that the essays I wrote –
short and apparently incidental for the most part – after 2010 were in
fact charting an entirely new level of insight. Even now, as a reasonably
down-to-earth person, I cannot see how I could access that level of
understanding, there is no run of logic or reason that I can follow from
here to there. All I can do is point to these last novels and invite you to
look for yourself.

Fifth Subcycle: Beauty’s Secret

The Three Mysteries

The Third Adam
Media at Home
The Final Mystery

Lilith

FIFTH CYCLE – Introduction

You sit down and write day after day. The words are there for
you and all you have to do is marvel at times at the insights you seem to
be capable of expressing. You are not fazed by your apparent temerity,
describing spiritual practices for which you have no evidence but which
nonetheless make sense from a specific, if very strange, perspective,
and which engender a quite remarkable eroticism that is strangely non-
sexual. Yet the path followed by Adam is a real one, which you know
from personal experience is effective, a path that anyone could take.
Then you set out to enact what you call the Mystery of the
Mother, a scrambled hotchpotch derived from quite distinct cultures, in
fact rooted in the two alternative spiritual streams that inform Western
consciousness. The success of this novel indicates sufficiently to you
26
that this weird syncretism is operative, though whether it should be
regarded as true for that reason is an entirely different matter.
And so finally you set out to pull the whole schema – that has
informed eighteen novels, fifty years of work – together by means of a
lengthy meditation on identity, an apparently mechanical identity,
moreover. And what if human identity is only a passing construct, good
for an instant’s reflection and then gone forever? It has got us into the
darkness, placed us where we can at last ask the overwhelming
question, one that has no answer that we could know.
And you have the nerve now to call this Human Destiny? Is this
what we get up each morning for? Work ourselves to the bone for?
Fight wars for?
What else is there?

THE THIRD ADAM – Introduction

THE THIRD ADAM, being a modern Gothic novel, recounts

the circumstances leading to the attainment of the Final Destiny of
mankind, and provides descriptions of the many frightful temptations to
be met with on this path.

THE THIRD ADAM – Foreword

The late Adam Auber’s journal grew haphazardly from a

desultory enquiry into what has remained an unknown phenomenon he
called the Voice. The sources from which he compiled the journal vary
in nature, from incidental jottings through notebook entries to lengthy
dictations, in which his memories and musings are recorded often in an
elliptical style. Though Adam elaborated the more gnomic passages for
the journal, the reader may still find it necessary to read the text with
care, especially in the later parts where the details of his spiritual
experiences become rather obscure.
The title and the eccentric arrangement of the journal into five
parts are Adam’s own. Also, it is at his specific request that the journal
is being published in an electronic form on this website – an
acknowledgement apparently of the influence a novelist called Eliza
27
Browne had on him. It is also at his insistence that it is being offered to
the world for free.
To quote Adam on this point:

“The most obvious is often the most hidden: it is intended for

those who know what they are looking for.”

MEDEA AT HOME – Introduction

A fantasy opera in three acts, with a prelude, some intermissions

and an Aftermath. It is the second mystery in a cycle of three mysteries,
and performs the Mystery of the Mother.

MEDEA AT HOME – Preamble

Once upon a time religious practice consisted of two main

ceremonials: The Mystery of the Mother and the Mystery of the Son.
Under the influence of Christianity the Mystery of the Son ritual
assumed pre-eminence while the Mystery of the Mother was officially
deprecated. Needless to say, despite doctrinal and ideological pressure,
the laity did not forsake the Mystery of the Mother. Its sublime
expression spoke to them more clearly of their experience of life than
the somewhat stilted Passion of Jesus Christ, with its regressive happy
ending.
The Christian churches tolerated this state of affairs, tacitly
acknowledging the popular sentiment so long as the official ritual was
paid lip service, until faith in the efficacy of the Communion sacrament
began to wane in the thirteenth century – signified by the popularization
of the Grail legends – and culminating in the Reformation crisis of the
sixteenth century. The surviving element of medieval Christianity
reacted by legalising its core dogma of the Death and Resurrection of
Jesus Christ and driving out all remnants of the ancient Mystery of the
Mother ceremony. The laity responded to this by setting up the Opera
House in opposition to the Parish Church, so that an ancient practice
that served to enfold the common life became operatic performance.
28
 Of course, much of the sublimity of the original mystery was
lost as instinctive ritual became public entertainment. Nonetheless, to
the extent that opera remained distinct from mere theatre it could still
convey something of the original magic of the divine Mystery, even as
the focus of the music shifted from motherhood to womanhood and – in
the early twentieth century – to sexuality. This transition mirrored the
larger social change from aristocratic to bourgeois culture and values,
from lineage to property, from honour to morality. Then, perhaps
inevitably, the primordial impulse seemingly failed and modern opera
becomes mere theatre with music.

What has failed here? Is it possible for such a fundamental

impulse to fail without the loss of all hope? Has mere theatre improved,
expanded or deepened to do any more than mimic mundane quandaries?
Or has music failed in some way? Perhaps we have failed as an
audience, faith even here finally lost?

In this work a solution to this problem is offered. What if our

understanding of the Mother’s experience has changed? And what if
therefore a new medium of expression is required?
So, let us forego the music, the Opera House and its stagecraft,
let us – sadly – forego the singing even. Let us have Opera of the
Imagination instead, where absolutely anything is possible.

Let us now celebrate the Mystery of the Mother.

THE FINAL MYSTERY – Introduction

The Final Mystery is the culmination of over forty years of

research and inner exploration. The mystery recounted here has not yet
happened, so much of the novel will seem merely fantastical. However,
it is hoped that the wealth of suggestive historical, social and personal
detail, together with the inspirational effect of the three characters, will
prove most persuasive for the reader.

29
THE FINAL MYSTERY – Notice

Because the Third Mystery has not been enacted by anyone yet,
what you will read here will be a projection only. This does not mean
that the novel is merely a fantasy – though it will certainly appear so to
the casual reader. Again, the various elements of the novel are not to be
treated as merely symbolic. Though the Third Mystery has yet to be
initiated by someone, its lineaments already exist in all of us, so that it
can be projected here by me and grasped by any reader prepared to open
to the figuration as it will appear here. Of course, a simple openness to
this story will not be sufficient in itself, but the reader who finds a path
into it within himself or herself will also have the patience to allow the
Third Mystery grow within, though this may take years, perhaps many
years.
At its core, the Third Mystery is quite simple, in fact almost
static. But because its final phase occurs completely outside present
human experience, presentation of it here will appear to be in symbolic
form. For most purposes – certainly in terms of the entertainment value
of this novel – it will be sufficient to treat the figuration presented there
as symbols. Even so, be aware that at a very profound level – beyond
what any of us could hope to attain – we have a part to play in this final
event. Thus you should – to the extent possible – regard the figuration
as real, but without falling into the trap of turning your experience into
knowledge, that is, of trying to make a possession of it. Allow the
experience to pass through you and trust that some element of it
remains deep within you.

LILITH – Introduction

A woman should have written this novel. A man could get lost
in all the fantasies, not having direct access to a woman’s soul. The
story is simple. A man has a purpose in reuniting his incarnated and
spiritual entities, while the woman here can act as a kind of midwife. A
woman might want to imitate the man and seek to unite herself with her
spiritual part. This is not possible, but some try anyway.
30
LILITH – Preface

A woman should have written this novel. A man could get lost
in all the fantasies, not having direct access to a woman’s soul. So bear
this in mind when reading LILITH.
The story is simple. A man has a purpose in reuniting his
incarnated and spiritual entities, of profound significance for the destiny
of mankind. The woman has a role here as a kind of midwife, her gift a
special light to help man find his path in the dark. A woman might want
to imitate the man and seek to unite her incarnate self with her spiritual
part. This is not possible, but that would not keep a woman from
wanting to unite them anyway.
LILITH tells the story of one such woman. It will show you the
source of her overwhelmingly powerful desire and detail the
extraordinary lengths she will go to achieve her goal.

It might be that this woman is completely deluded, and yet she

might even so achieve something of lasting value, if not for herself,
then for other woman who might be tempted to follow on this path of
Lilith.

31
AFTERWORD

It might be that few will be prepared to read through the cycle

with the intense concentration and openness of mind with which the
novels were written. So, for those who agree with this sentiment, let me
tell you a secret:
The primary beneficiary of a work of art is the artist himself –
even when he or she has no idea that this is the case. A work of art is
then more like a discarded husk than the object of aesthetic enjoyment.
However, this husk retains the lineament of the artist’s endeavour –
much as a husk in nature retains evidence of the form of the fruit that
developed within it – so that it is possible for a peruser of the work to
re-enact the artist’s labour and thus catch a glimpse – if only partially or
fitfully – of the original inspiration that informed it. Now the value of
such an experience lies not in the knowledge gained about the artist’s
intentions or the like, but rather lies in the degree to which such insights
help to stimulate that part of the reader that is analogous to the artist’s
source of inspiration. This does not mean that he is necessarily made an
artist, or that he should hunt out artistic experience just so as to feel
again the thrill of stimulation. The artist’s source of inspiration is not an
artistic source, it is a universal spring found in every human being.
What the artistic stimulation can do is make people aware of this spring
within themselves.
What happens then is down to the individual.

Philip Matthews
25 February 2011

Here is a small volume of essays that may help those who wish to
enter more deeply into the experience of this universal spring. Note that
the earlier essays were composed between the third and fourth subcycles of
Dark Liberation, that is between =OR= and THE EAGLE FLIES ON
FRIDAY. Some experience of the earlier novels will therefore help in
assimilating the content of the essays.
32