John Crow Trickster

No Preacher
and if he ever done so
John Crow done defrock
Man done reap as he sow
when Preacher Man make war
on the Witch and the Whore
Puritan done for Crow

The Southwark Mysteries

John Crow and friend >

CROW, John: Whore’s Prophet and shaman, origin unknown. There is much speculation as to his true identity, or whether he only exists in the Vision World. The first reported sightings of John Crow in Southwark were in the autumn of 1996. Some… say he was himself a spirit: the wandering soul of a rogue priest who “went native” with the witches… We should beware of taking John Crow Trickster too literally. The poet John Constable variously refers to him as an alter-ego, spirit guide and shaman’s familiar. The Crow’s encounter with The Goose apparently triggered his emergence as an autonomous entity.
The Southwark Mysteries, Glossolalia p. 265

The ‘Trickster’ tag may be the key to unlocking the riddle of John Crow and his complicated relationships with ‘The Goose’ and ‘The Constable’. The Trickster uses humour and paradox to challenge all belief-systems so as to shock us into new relationships with Heaven, Earth and the mysterious powers that move between the worlds.

Some see John Crow as a separate entity, temporarily incorporated in Constable in order to serve The Goose, whilst others see them as one and the same. It could even be said that this ambiguity is an essential part of the Goose-Crow teachings. Their shape-shifting reflects the deep unity underpinning the diversity of all living beings, the ‘matrix of living energies and intelligences, interacting across Space and Time to heal the primordial rift between the Flesh and the Spirit.’