In 1986 I was living in Horham in Suffolk and in discussions with Bernard Stringer who had designed the successful Prediction Tarot deck in 1985 and Illustrated by Peter Richardson, to create a Celtic Tarot. On one occasion Bernard Stringer presented me with a project he had been working on and consisted of 6 sheets of A4 paper with mystical directions to build a magical apparatus, he called Excalibur, the Rock and the King.
This was in the early days of my Merlin connection that started in 1983 and though M had collaborated on Merlin The Immortal there was always the feeling there was a more powerful synergy to come. My drawing board was often covered in lights and the energetic pressures on my body were often intense, but there was always the sense that I was still a novice in the work we did together. I think that this was mostly my fault as I couldn’t let myself free of my thought process and just go with the flow of this otherworldly direction.
I had been preparing to begin work on The Celtic Source Book, which was my first book for a major publisher, and it meant a heavy schedule of work to get it completed on time. My studio at the time consisted of an A3 lightbox resting on a small wicker table in the living room. For some reason the idea of creating art for the Excalibur, The Rock and The King project fired me up, though there was no fixed idea how we would take it further.
My wife at the time owned a very old caravan at a North Sea coastal caravan park in Southwold on the Essex coast and I decided to go on my own for four days to work on the artwork. As with old caravans they are cold, damp and smelly, but made the best of it and prepared to start work.
As I started work on the rough outlines, I was conscious that there was something, possibly a symbol embedded in the paper and it was radiating and connecting with my heart. So began 3 days of intense work, without my lightbox or photocopier that I normally relied on to build the images in preparation for colouring. The 3 days I worked were erased from my memory, it was as if I had been placed in another dimension and returned to the caravan for brief times to eat and drink, there was no memory of sleeping, I had dreaded sleeping in the musty smelling bedroom area so it was a relief that there was no memory of sleeping there or if I had actually slept at all.
When my wife came to pick me up and take me home, we were both amazed how much work had been achieved in such a short time and the experience would put me in could stead for the Celtic Tarot that began a year later and the dramas that accompanied it.
I think the surprising thing for me was that I had gone to the caravan with no expectations of how much work I would accomplish while being so close to the sea and its lure for walking the beach and fine real ale beer. The times I expect a strong connection with M it doesn’t happen and early attempts to force any kind of contact only lead to disappointment. Over time and mostly frustratingly, I have accepted is that for my personal connection with the Mage that its down to vibration and any needy pressure is reinforcing the closure rather than releasing.  
Will post on the Celtic Tarot next.