DE DRACONE ET SPELUNCA |
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by Frater Choronzon
First published in 'Chaos International' #9; Autumn Equinox 1990
There was snow on the ground in Wales in December 1946, and a young man was taking a weedend walk with an entrenching tool along and up the side of a valley in South Wales. Peter Harvey was out walking with a purpose, he had been a caver for some years and had participated in the exploration of several newly discovered caves in the area.
For years it had been obvious to anyone who stared at a map that the water disappearing into Pwll Byfre, above Penwyllt, must come out somewhere, and tests with dye had shown that the resurgence was at Fynnon Ddu (the Black Spring) close to the east bank of the Tawe just across from Craig-y-Nos Castle. It was clear from the time taken for the dye to pass from Pwll Byfre to Fynnon Ddu that there must be an extensive cave system under the intervening tract of countryside, but the few natural orifices to be found in the area were short and uninteresting, and attempts to dive the sink and the resurgence had been unsuccessful.
Harvey knew that a large cave system contains a lot of air, and that that air tends to remain close to 52 degrees fahrenheit all year round in these latitudes. After an hour or so he found what he was looking for. All around a small cleft in the ground the snow had melted away, and a bit of probing with the entrenching tool left him rubbing dust from his eyes as a strong draught blew loose material from the small opening he had made. The following weekend a small group of cavers worked to widen the entrance. The hole they made is now called Ogof Fynnon Ddu (OFD), the longest and deepest cave in these islands, the eighth longest in the world, and the subject of this paper.
The accounts of the exploration of Ogof Fynnon Ddu are written up in extensive detail in the archives and log books of South Wales Caving Club (SWCC). It is a long story, with significant new discoveries being made during the sixties, when the cave was first properly surveyed, and it continues up to the present. In the early years there are frequent references to an entity known as Smith, presumed by the cavers to be a custodian or guardian of the cave, and vested with malevolent intent against those who would disturb his domain - i.e. the cavers; but who also carries the attributes of a worthy, if cunning adversary.
Smith was always frustrating the cavers efforts. He gouged out great potholes in the floor of the steamway to soak them and impede their progress. He constructed three dimensional labyrinths of interlocking passages to make them lose their bearings, and even harassed them with the occasional roof-fall. Eeriest of all, they would occasionally hear him chuckling at them quietly from a distance - this strange effect being explained by the rationalists as the result of the myriad sounds of falling and flowing water being echoed through tunnels of different lengths from a common source.
This explorers mythology is preserved in some of the names given to some of the chambers and features in Fynnon Ddu, for example 'The Smithy', which was said to be an inner sanctum where he worked his malefic schemes; and 'Smith's Armoury' at the upstream extremity of the system where the cavers felt they had finally discovered the store house where Smith kept the rocks he threw at them.
I happened upon this eccentric psychodrama in 1973.
I spent the early part of 1973 house-hunting for somewhere secluded, which might be suited for the performance of the operation of Abra-Melin the Mage. My attention was drawn to a remote, but good-sized detached house for sale by auction, and its position adjacent to a large working limestone quarry seemed to offer some hope that it might be affordable.
I moved into the house with my family just on the Summer Solstice of that year. We soon discovered that our near neighbours on the far side of the quarry were the South Wales Caving Club, and learned that our new home was right on top of this huge and rather mysterious cave system.
I had done a bit of caving at school, indeed I had been a member of an expedition to explore some caves in the Extremadura region of Spain ten years earlier, so I was well pleased of an opportunity to brush up my pot-holing technique, and started actively looking for an opportunity to get underground.
For their part, the leading lights of the SWCC were pleased that someone sympathetic had moved into the house across the quarry, as they were concerned about the risk of damage to the cave system from the quarrying activity. They were always grateful of feed-back on what went on there during the week, and of a watchful eye being kept on the club headquarters. I was soon treated to my first trip in Ogof Fynnon Ddu beneath the hollow hill on which we lived.
The lower part of the system is known as OFD1 and is accessible through Harvey's original entrance. It is an impressive cave in it's own right. There is an underground river course or streamway, which is sporting in all but the driest weather, and downright dangerous in flood. Above this there are two and three levels of dry chambers and passages as well as some impressive tributary subterranean stream series. For safety in the event of a sudden flood the SWCC maintain an escape route using the higher level passages together with some mildly terrifying roof traverses above the streamway - including the one infamously known as 'Airy Fairy'. Particularly intrepid novices have been observed to swing hand over hand along the safety wire, without noticing that there are well formed ledges on the sides of the chasm above the roaring frothing streamway which can be straddled without difficulty.
The top section of the cave (OFD 2 and 3) was first discovered by diving through a sump, or blind spring, in OFD 1, that is a resurgence where the stream comes out into open cave passage after flowing in completely submerged channels for some distance. Later, as the system was found to be more extensive, a second entrance was dug at a point determined by radio location from underground, and finally a dry route was discovered (and partly dug) linking the two main sections of the system. There is also now a third entrance in Cwmdwr Quarry, Penwyllt, but this is strictly for masochists as it involves about half a mile of flat-out crawling through a maze of twisty little passages, some of these being shared with small, cheerfully babbling streams.
OFD 2 offers some three miles of streamway, including a section where there are no fewer than 42 of Smith's pot-holes in the stream-bed. These are typically about 10 feet deep and extend completely across the passage; they are often cunningly placed just round a twist in the canyon-like passage, and many an unwary caver has bounded along an easy stretch of streamway only to wind up fishing for handholds while being swirled round and round in a seemingly bottomless pot. It is possible, by careful application of technique, to get past each and all of these pots without getting too wet, but for some reason one or other of them always seems to get you. Other parts of the OFD streamway could be the design inspiration for some of the water-slides which have become popular in holiday resorts and recreation centres. If the stream level is just right, it is possible to slide in a wet-suit for some hundreds of metres along almost smooth sided stream passage. This popular caver's diversion was once filmed by the BBC, and it also features, with uncut obscenities, in a rare 1974 reel-to-reel video about the BBC making a film in a cave.
Much of OFD 2 above and away from the main streamway is very muddy, including the passages immediately accessible from the Top Entrance. There are places where a whole body mud-bath can be experienced in a passage where there is only a few inches air space above the surface of a glutinous fluid which has the consistency, but not the taste, of Vichysoise, the renowned cold vegetable soup. It isn't all grim and gloopy though. These old passages, which may well have been formed by water from melting glaciers in the Ice Age, contain some rare and delicate formations. These include 'The Columns' which have been featured in a poster, and the little known and rarely visited 'Pom-Pom'. This is a spherical cluster of calcite crystals which has formed around the end of a thin stalactite straw hanging into a crystal encrusted pool - it is about the colour and size of a ripe grapefruit.
OFD 3 comprises the upstream extensions of the system. The route into that section passes some tricky climbs and awesome traverses along narrow ledges overhanging 'The Crevasse' with a drop of around 100 metres straight down; not the sort of place to stop and roll a joint. OFD 3 is one of those places where one's approach to caving is conditioned by the knowledge that if some accident should befall, there is unlikely to be much prospect of a successful rescue; getting a stretcher and a live occupant past the Crevasse traverses was generally reckoned to be impossible.
Through 1973 and 74 I got to know my way through OFD quite well. I became a recognised leader for the system, and, living so close, was first on the list for call-out when rescues occurred. These were mostly due to people getting lost somewhere in the 28 miles of passages, or under-estimating the time required for a particular trip and running out of light. Such incidents are kept to a minimum by strictly controlled access, and the practice of leaving a 'ticket' giving details of the trip, the participants and the expected time of return on a prominent notice board in the Caving Club. The unofficial fee for a cave rescue call-out is a barrel of beer, which discourages frivolous rescuees, as well as compensating those who have to give up their drinking time to go out looking for Smith's latest victims.
Finding new cave passage is one of the most exiting experiences available in the sport. It is a magical experience to leave the first footprints in mud which has been undisturbed for millennia, and to know that your light is the first to have ever penetrated some dark recess, illuminating perhaps an exquisite display of delicate formations. There is always a good opportunity of finding something new in Ogof Fynnon Ddu, particularly in some of the less frequented parts of the system. A vital element in any search involves some detailed poring over the cave survey, followed by systematic underground probing, sensing for the draughts which can reveal the existence of passage extensions beyond some boulder choke or constricted passage.
One technique that was tried, with a little success, involved locating a position on the surface immediately above an area of interest within the cave. This can be done by overlaying a surface map on the survey, or with a radio locator. Then, by using water divining methods, we would try to pick up the line of any passage or streamway beyond an extremity of the known system. It was while in a state of gnosis, partly induced, I feel sure, by this strange technique of communion with the telluric currents, that it became suddenly obvious that the cave was laid out in the shape of a Dragon. OFD 1 forms the head, with Harvey's original entrance near the mouth. OFD 2 is the body, slightly contorted so the streamway comprises the spinal column, with the muddy top entrance just where the ass-hole would be; and OFD 3 is the tail, with one complete loop and the hint of a pointed tail given by Smith's Armoury.
The constricted Cwmdwr Quarry entrance is near a wing-tip. The Pom-Pom is the jewel in one of the fore-claws; and just in the dragon's ear is Crystal Pool Chamber, a superb subterranean cathedral in the OFD 1 Waterfall Series.
The mythology of Ogof Fynnon Ddu had acquired a new dimension.
There is a rich Celtic mythological tradition in and around Swansea Valley; many of the stories from the Mabinogion impart the feeling that they could have been set there. The spectral wild boar 'Twrch Trwyth' is said to have inhabited Cwm Twrch nearby, and his name and device have been adopted by the local chapter of bikers. The lake at Llyn-y-Fan is said to be the residence of a damsel of virginal purity, given to making occasional offers magical swords to passing hikers; and the unmistakable shape of a reclining giant can be seen picked out in the topography of the Cribarth mountain as seen heading up the valley from Ystradgynlais and Swansea.
The briefest trawl through the literature reveals the postulated existence of a subterranean Realm of Annwm; it features in an epic poem 'The Spoils of Annwm' in the Red Book of Taliesin. In some accounts it is a hellish place, in others a species of nether-world ruled over by an entity identified in the traditional mythology as Gwyn ap Nudd.
To a few of us who cared to think about such things the parallels were self evident: here was a vast hidden cave system (at least in the sense that there were no original natural entrances). It was laid out in the shape of a mythical beast no less than the Dragon emblem of Wales itself, and with a guardian entity intent, in the view of the early explorers, on preserving the sanctity of its abode. Ogof Fynnon Ddu had to be Annwm itself and Smith was Gwyn ap Nudd.
The first subjective test of this thesis was on the Winter Solstice in 1975. By this time I was no longer living in Wales, but I overstayed a weekend visit to the Caving Club intent on trying to effect some sort of contact with Gwyn/Smith. It seemed essential that if contact was to be made that it should be done in the cave, but there was nobody about who I considered to be sufficiently open-minded to participate without considering the whole venture mad and dangerous; which it probably was.
My diary records a brief statement of intent at the Top Entrance, then an apprehensive journey through a fairly non-hazardous part of the cave to a favourite, and fairly well concealed small pretty chamber (*). I laid out various artifacts I had brought along, then an invocation of Gwyn was performed and topped off with a blast on a Tibetan thigh-bone trumpet, with a specific request for some sort of indication that communication had been successful. I closed my eyes in meditation for some minutes while rocking slightly back and forth, and when I opened them I found myself staring at a stunning image in a crystal ball scrying glass I had brought with me. My posture was such that the glass sphere was magnifying a small calcite crystal so it filled the field of view, and the reflection of my cap lamp had co-incided with this, so that the impression was of a triangular white peak with a supernal light shining forth. I was a little gob-smacked by this, and fairly swiftly made my departure, though foolishly leaving one or two items behind.
* Footnote for the safety conscious: Solo caving is rightly regarded as being extremely dangerous and this account should not be interpreted as constituting an endorsement of such lunacy; I did leave a ticket on the Caving Club notice board saying where I had gone, and, had there been any mishap, there is a reasonable chance that I might have been rescued the following day. *
The immediate outcome of this experience was a series of bizarre events for which the curious among you may have to wait until the pseudo- posthumous publication of my Hagiography.
Shortly afterwards came the formation of a Magical Study Group, occasionally referred to these days as Stoke Newington Sorcerers. That group came into being as a continued association of a bunch of people who had answered a classified advert in Time Out about the Order of the Golden Dawn, and included in its membership several present day contributors to Chaos International and recent speakers at 'Society' meetings.
I naturally felt moved to share my recent experiences with these sorcery associates (in fact I was incapable of talking about much else for some time) and they felt that these matters merited some further investigation, or it may be that they just went along with it to humour me.
The articles left behind in the bowels of the dragon were returned to me, including the scrying glass; this in particular having apparently caused some alarm and trepidation on the occasion of its being discovered. My instincts were that it should go back in the cave, it having been left there once already, and procedure for a ritual re-interrment was discussed.
It was felt that this should be done in the context of a more adventurous invocation of Gwyn, and I volunteered (or was pressed) to attempt to take on a manifestation; Peter Carroll was nominated to perform the invocation, and it was decided to use Crystal Pool Chamber in the dragon's ear for the ritual. This was carried out in June 1976. Despite initial enthusiasm there was some bottling out, even among those Sorcerers who made the trip to Wales, and there were eventually only four people present at the ritual, including one bemused caver who was not much into the occult, but who was intrigued by the Smith mythology.
Diary entries record the participants perception of the manifestation as having been useful, even memorable, in that, to my knowledge, it has not since been repeated in the cave. A rope circle was laid out, candles lit at the quarter stations, appropriate banishings were uttered, and a strong invocation performed. As a recipient of such manifestations I never find it easy to recall what transpires in the following phase, and in that instance diary entries recording the answers to a prepared list of questions were compiled from memory by the other participants immediately after the event as no-one had thought to bring a pen.
After a license to depart the scrying glass was again left in the cave, though better concealed than previously, and, as far as I know, it is still there. As a ritual setting Crystal Pool Chamber is unsurpassed in my experience, but access is more tricky now than previously, as various cavers fixed aids have been removed.
Another fanciful set of correspondences attributed to Ogof Fynnon Ddu concerns the 'through trip' from the OFD 1 Dragon's Mouth entrance upstream to the OFD 2 Dragon's Ass exit. This journey follows the subterranean west to east passage of the sun through the hours of darkness. It follows the underground river for much of its course and, co-incidentally, splits neatly into 12 recognisable sections. It is especially peculiar to note that descriptions of the individual sections of the cave tally in some respects with the divisions of the Egyptian Underworld given in 'The Book of Pylons' and 'The Book of What is in the Duat', or 'The Twelve Hours of the Night'. This applies even to the extent that the 42 'Assessors of the Dead' of the Egyptian Texts occur exactly in that section of the OFD through-trip where the traveller encounters Smith's sequence of 42 pots in the OFD 2 streamway.
That correspondence was more than enough for the intrepid Stoke Newington Sorcerers. A ritual for 'The Passage of the Sun Through the Hours of the Night' was prepared, with suitable orisons to be declaimed at each of the 12 Pylons separating the different parts of the chthonian journey. The OFD through-trip is rated as a severe caving expedition in its own right, and in the end only two of us actually took part in the ritual in July 1976. The adventure passed off smoothly enough, and although, by falling in a few pots, we demonstrated that all was not well with our negative confessions, at least we didn't get lost or have to be rescued!
Have these rituals ever been repeated in the years since 1976? Not to my knowledge. At the time they created a certain degree of local horror and outrage, despite attempts to keep everything in fairly low profile. Within a few months personal circumstances severed my own previous close contact with South Wales Caving Club, and the Stoke Newington Sorcerers dispersed to other pursuits, though threads exist to link their activities directly through to today's IOT Pact.
The main problem today for anyone planning a repeat performance lies in gaining access to the appropriate sections of the cave. Both the through-trip and any activities in Crystal Pool Chamber would require the involvement of a certified OFD 1 leader, as approved by the Nature Conservancy. The cave has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, as much to preserve it from the ravages of the Penwyllt Quarry as from the activities of demented magicians. There are no more than a couple of dozen people holding the relevant leadership qualifications; most are longstanding SWCC members, and none, to my knowledge, is an occultist. Admittance to membership of the SWCC is at the discretion of the club committee, and would normally follow an introduction through, say, a University Caving Club, although living next door can help!
Another possible strategy might take advantage of government plans to privatise Nature Reserves.
Buying Craig-y-Nos Castle has already been tried in 1988, when the Welsh Office put the place up for tender after the local Area Health Authority stopped using it as a geriatric hospital. It should be said that there is no way that ownership of Craig-y-Nos would confer an automatic right of entry to Ogof Fynnon Ddu, but it would be a good spring-board for launching into other activities in the area, and within shouting distance of Peter Harvey's original entrance. The castle is an imposing gothic edifice and was formerly the home of Adelina Patti, the Victorian prima donna. It is currently in the hands of a prominent local freemason whose mysterious success in the Welsh Office tender process remains an inspiration to any of us keen to see Black Magic at work. It is unfortunate that he seems unable to do much with the place, and there are persistent but unconfirmed rumours that it is to come on the market again. It would make a better headquarters for the restoration of the Chthonian Rites here described than the Spartan rigour of the Caving Club in my view.
Frater Choronzon.