by jim » Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:43 pm
DEAD MODERNISM
The journey to this quietly crumbling ‘retreat’ begins to take on all the trappings of a Holy Quest! By train to the small, Clydeside village of Cardross, then up to the local post office to ask directions. Various muddy tracks and a dangerous manoeuver between two golf courses brings me to a winding forest path. This is where I started to think, ‘where the fuck is this place?’
Perhaps at this point I should back track and attempt to explain why I am searching for a ruined catholic seminary in the first place?
This isn’t just any old seminary, this was a piece of state of the art modernist architecture. Everything about it screams ‘the sixties’. Dreadful pebbledash cladding, nasty white window frames. Its as if a bit of Cumbernauld retired to the country and quickly succumbed to cancer. Or perhaps this is the place old shopping centres come to die? Either way this place is redolent
with symbolism. Is this where modernism breathed its last? How could I not come?
The path veers sharply to the left and there it is. A brutally linear shape nestling close amongst some tree’s, only relieved by those odd rounded protruberances grouped to one side. It is very beautiful. Like a JG Ballard scenario brought to life.
OPUS DEI
I climbed the recently erected fence and made my way into the dripping wet interior. The place had been trashed. Well and truly. The roof gaped at the sky as I made my way up a curving ramp leading to the main hall. This was incredible. A huge concrete slab sat at the top of a wide set of steps. I imagined a cabal of new-brutalist architects and catholic priests gathering here to sacrifice beautiful doe-eyed supplicants to some stygian deity.
But something peculiar was going on here. Why were Isi Metzstein and John Cowell of forward-looking architectural practice Gillespie, Kidd and Coia collaborating with the Vatican in the first place? Recent research has revealed that Jack Coia (founder of the firm in 1927), was a member of the secretive and authoritarian Catholic organisation Opus Dei. He designed many buildings for the Vatican , here in Scotland and elsewhere.
THE ROSY CROSS UNVEILED
Yet Opus Dei were (are) slippery customers. There are certain indications that their reputation as the thought police of the Catholic church is just a clever ruse to disguise their real proclivities. As practitioners of the ancient craft of Alchemy and titular heads of the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross! In other words Master Masons and dedicated Occultists! So the peculiar elision of the Vatican with New-Brutalism begins to make a certain kind of sense. Since the avowed intention of such organisations is the imposition of a world-wide New Order of Anarcho-Situationist priests dedicated to the overthrow of rational thought by any means necessary.
At the moment their plans are limited to semiotic terrorism and Ritual Magickal assaults on the foundations of our society. Yet already their plans are well underway, as can be seen in the work of their close associate, that High Priest of Kali, Goddess of Destruction, Osama Bin Laden.
QLIPHOTIC ENTITIES
I determined to find a way to psychically reconstitute the space. To reignite the qliphotic energies of all those furiously masturbating priests in their little floral cells at the top of the building (now decorated with Satanic graffitti by the locals). A recent encounter with a stoat in the process of killing a rabbit had reminded me that a blade of grass pressed between both thumbs and then blown on hard will reproduce the high-pitched screams of a dying rabbit.
I positioned myself in the centre of the vast refectory space, facing the altar. Naked and daubed with entoptic and occult symbols I filled the building with a banshee concerto! After around fifteen minutes the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise, and I knew that I was having some sort of effect. Fear being the first sign of the manifestation of the entities.
SYMPATHETIC MAGICK
At this point I decided that I had done enough. This magnificent building was now safe from the depredations of developers, and others who might wish to resurrect it. Its slow disintegration would continue to mirror the dissolution of the dream of Progress and the perverted enlightenment ideals which have led us to this sorry pass. Yes, I too am a member of that shadowy affiliation of dreamers who wish to see the chains of rationalism loosed (just a little), so that, by means of sympathetic magick, we can rediscover the vast and unruly realms hidden within our skulls. By which subtle craft we will (in the end) dispossess the Capitalist Archons of all their worldy power!
a pair of stout boots, a stick, and away...