Pilgrim’s Journal — St Davids: The Lamb of Revelation

St Davids Cathedral had been calling me ever since I arrived.

After all, it was the reason I'd come to St Davids in the first place.

For days I had wandered the coastline, climbed the cliffs and explored the headlands. Eventually it felt time to visit the place whose name had drawn me here.

Stepping through the cathedral doors, I was immediately struck by its atmosphere.

There was a stillness that felt different from the ancient monuments scattered across the surrounding landscape.

Arthur's Quoit carried the silence of deep time.

The cathedral carried the silence of prayer.

For centuries people had come here carrying their hopes, grief, gratitude and blessing.

Somehow, it felt as though the cathedral had quietly learned how to hold them.

I wandered slowly through its chapels, allowing myself to settle into that stillness.

Eventually I lit a candle.

Not asking for anything in particular.

Simply offering a quiet prayer of gratitude.

Afterwards, I continued following the route around the cathedral.

Just beyond where I'd lit my candle, something tucked almost out of sight caught my attention.

Beneath an altar, partially hidden in the shadows, I noticed a small white figure.

I paused.

From where I was standing, and after everything the pilgrimage had already been placing before me, my mind reached an immediate conclusion.

Another white horse.

I smiled.

"Really?"

I carried on exploring the cathedral, amused by what felt like yet another appearance of the horse.

It wasn't until later, back in the Pilgrim's Wagon, that doubt began to creep in.

I opened the photographs I'd taken.

The figure wasn't especially clear.

I zoomed in.

Still uncertain, I uploaded the photo to AI to ask whether it was a horse.

It said it wasn't.

It was the Lamb of Revelation.

I sat there smiling.

The story had softly changed.

Or so I thought.

Over the previous weeks, horses had woven themselves through almost every stage of the pilgrimage.

A book titled The Scouring of the White Horse unexpectedly appearing in a London bookshop before my visit to the Uffington White Horse.

The Year of the Fire Horse beginning the following day.

A white horse greeting me at the airport on my way to collect the Cerulevan Cruiser.

The white horse upon the Pilgrim's Wagon keys.

An Ice Age horse tooth emerging from the beaches of Pembrokeshire.

Then the magnificent herd surrounding Arthur's Quoit.

Now, without my noticing, another symbol had gently stepped forward.

Not replacing the horse.

Simply continuing the conversation.

At least, that's what I believed at the time.

I'd never heard of a Horse of Revelation, but the Lamb rang a bell.

And by this point, I've learned to trust the pilgrimage.

Again and again, it has shown me that meaning rarely arrives all at once.

The experience comes first.

Understanding follows later.

The sea spray became a vesica only when I watched the video back.

The spirals revealed themselves as ancient fossils only after I returned home.

The little metal turtle became the Lo Shu only when I took it from my pocket and began searching.

And here, in St Davids Cathedral, the horse became the Lamb...

The pilgrimage had not corrected me.

It had simply widened the conversation.

The following morning, I stepped outside the van.

The neighbouring field was full of sheep.

One little lamb wandered over towards the fence, as though it had simply come to say good morning.

Then I noticed the number painted upon its side.

111

Only a few weeks earlier, I'd found the little Lo Shu turtle on the beach at Ogmore. That discovery had reopened a chapter of my life stretching back almost twenty years, to the days immediately following my spiritual awakening when I first became fascinated by the Magic Square of the Sun.

Every row.

Every column.

Every diagonal.

111

Now, standing beside the Pilgrim's Wagon, a lamb bearing that very number had innocently wandered over to greet me.

Looking back now, what stays with me most isn't the number.

Nor even the lamb.

It's the growing realisation that the pilgrimage always seems to know where it is going long before I do.

Twenty years ago, shortly after my spiritual awakening, I typed my name into a gematria calculator.

Matthew Fry.

288

There was only one corresponding entry.

Parousia.

The Second Coming.

I laughed when I saw it.

In awe that such a calculator and calculation could exist.

But it was not the first time the thought had occurred to me.

Quite the opposite.

My spiritual awakening had already led me to contemplate the possibility.

The little calculator wasn't delivering a revelation.

It was offering a confirmation.

And, if I'm honest, I've been laughing ever since.

Perhaps that's fitting.

After all, the whole thing began with laughing gas in the heart of Kings Cross, Sydney.

Twenty years later, I still find myself wondering whether I've spent my life participating in an elaborate cosmic joke.

Not a cruel joke.

The kind of joke so impossibly well told that the only reasonable response is to laugh along with it.

Since then, life has unfolded with a coherence I could never have arranged for myself.

The coherence continues now as I write and reflect from the Pilgrim's Wagon, for, after completing the previous entry and reflecting more deeply upon the symbolism of the white horse, I opened a question to AI asking how the white horse was connected to Christianity.

I wasn't expecting anything particularly surprising.

What I wasn't prepared for was discovering that the conversation had been there all along, patiently waiting for me to catch up.

In Christian symbolism, the white horse is associated with triumph, revelation and the return of the divine into history.

In the Book of Revelation, the rider who appears upon the white horse bears the names Faithful and True and is described as the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the ending.

And then I discovered something that made me laugh out loud.

The Lamb of Revelation and the Rider upon the White Horse are not separate figures.

They are understood to be the same being.

The Lamb.

Faithful and True.

Suddenly, my little mistake inside St Davids Cathedral no longer felt quite so mistaken.

As though the cathedral wished to leave no room for misunderstanding, another inscription hung nearby:

And, returning to the altar photograph today, I find myself staring at it once again.

There, hidden amongst the worn marble, there is no question in my mind anymore as to whether it is a horse.

It is.

More than that.

I could almost make out a rider.

By now, I have learned to trust the pilgrimage.

Over and over, it has demonstrated an intelligence and continuity that exceeds my ability to arrange it.

I no longer feel any need to argue for or against what these experiences mean.

I have lived them.

That is enough.

Looking back now, I find myself returning to a possibility that has accompanied me for twenty years.

Perhaps that old calculator was telling the truth.

Perhaps the Lamb and the Rider are not merely figures in an ancient book.

And perhaps what was prophesied is occurring in this very moment.