I’ll huff & I’ll puff & I’ll blow your house down….yeah right said the big bad pig you & who else’s army…..
This is a biography concerning the life/incarnation of a semi-immortal who has become known as ‘The Pig”. He appears as a central character in Chapter 15 A Pig in Tibet and also appears in a number of other chapters.
The biography is synthesised from a number of interviews & conversations I (Gordon) have had with him between April 2014 & January 2021 along with information shared by one of the human couple that he now lives with . All the ‘facts’ that comprise this biography were gathered during the brief periods when he is awake.
He currently (2021) exists in the form of a small pink pig shaped soft toy. He spends many days asleep, or so it would appear, in various beds. Currently he does this with his partner, a small Taoist panda called Tsu Lin, though she often leaves him for days at a time to wander on beaches & in woods practicing her own form of Tai-chi kung & Taoist meditation practices.
They currently ‘live’ in the bed of a couple in the Northeast of England who have adopted him & other soft toys including a number of bears, a disco dancing sheep, a fashionable mouse, a tiny lion, an eeyore, an intellectual puffin and a musical monkey. But more of them another time.......
While in bed he practices a spiritual and shamanic discipline that he refers to as “Deep snoozing” (of which he is a tantric master) as well as taking part via ESP in lengthy “snoozeathons” with others devoted to this rare & unusual esoteric practice. He is also studying/engaging with other spiritual practices including telekinesis & teleportation (though he freely admits he sometimes gets them badly wrong).
He rarely leaves his snoozing, occasionally going out for a run on his 1969 FLH 1200 red Harley Davidson with Tsu Lin & a sidecar containing his ‘soft toy’ friends who include a number of teddy bears, a sheep, a puffin & a well dressed mouse. But more of them later……
It’s difficult to tell how much of what he has divulged is ‘true’, how much embellished & how much a product of his vivid imagination & undoubted age. I say undoubted age because, for a number of reasons, not least the historical detail contained in many of his memories, it’s obvious to me that he is the age that he claims to be. Much of the information below is probably true, though times, dates & places may have become a little confused in his mind over the nearly 350 or so years he’s been alive.
So how has he lived to be over 350 years old?
He is not, unlike Slinger, the Horse, Deke/Achon & some of the other characters contained in these pages an Immortal. He has however been able to considerably extend his life span. He explains this by his continuous practice of esoteric Taoist & Tantric body & mind exercises that he learnt over many years during his travels in the Far east & China in the 17th, 18th, 19th & 20th centuries CE.
He has also spent time over the centuries with shamans, medicine women & men in Africa & the Americas learning about the use of herbs & other Earth medicines to prolong life.
His nickname of the Pig was originally given to him because his laughter sounded like a pig grunting. It still does when he’s awake enough to laugh, mostly at his own jokes or just at himself. The name has stuck & has had some unusual consequences.
So here is the first part of a shortened version of his biography which is as up to date & coherent as I have been able to make it, though some of the dates that he insists are correct don’t necessarily correspond to those in other more mainstream historical accounts. There are a number of alternative versions of incidents in his life which I have transcribed alongside each other.
He was born in a large merchant’s house just outside Rotterdam on 22nd December 1667 to Henrick & Ulla van doffs . He was given 2 christian names. Henrick (after his father) & Bram (after his grandfather). He was nearly always called Bram except when his mother was very displeased with him.
His father was a successful & wealthy Dutch merchant trading in cloth, spices, exotic plants & dried fruits to and from the East Indies (mainly to the islands of Java, Sarawak & Bali). They moved to Middleburg when he was only a few months old into a large town house with gardens & an orchard that his father had built with the profits from the business.
He had 2 sisters, both older than him, who loved him almost unconditionally in spite of his being a disruptive & disobedient child. They were called Ulrikë & Henrietta.
Their mother while in her early twenties had met Artemesia Gentileschi when the artist visited Amsterdam to do some sketches towards a large oil painting of Venus rising from the waves for a friend of Ulla’s mother - Bram, Ulrike & Henrietta’s grandmother.
Though the work was it seems never completed, or at least has since disappeared, Ulla had spent time with Artemesia posing for preliminary sketches of Venus. She had from that time on been convinced that women could be as creative and artistic as men. In fact given the opportunities probably even better.
This strong belief she had passed on to her daughters and her son. So this is not the last you will hear of either Ulrike or Henrietta who both lived very different but interesting and creative lives.
The two girls were friends of Vermeer’s daughter and as a child Bram was painted by Vermeer & Rembrandt appearing in a number of paintings with his sisters & one with his whole family. He says that these were painted around 1665 though there are no known paintings by Vermeer containing a family scene or a young boy with 2 older girls.
He told me that in all his family pictures by Vermeer they are in a large sitting room playing musical instruments. His mother was apparently a virtuoso flute player, his father played the french horn, his sisters were accomplished viola & cello players and Bram played the clavichord.
In 1668 he says he was painted as a young man by Rembrandt, who died the following year. He told me it was one of Rembrandt’s last paintings, apart from his final self portrait. He was dressed in a dutch officer’s military uniform specially made to fit him carrying a sword in his right hand with a goshawk on a glove on his left hand. Behind him was an open window with a view of a wide sky with mountains and fields, but no such painting has ever been found or attributed to Rembrandt.
However this ‘lost Rembrandt’ will reappear later in our narrative in 1946 post war Berlin.
From the age of 5 he learnt to play the virginals, clavichord & harpsichord under the instruction of Pieter Bustijin, who was at the time a well respected harpsichordist & composer. He claims that even at that early age he was a talented musician and was co-composer of many of Bustijins compositions. These were all destroyed in 1940 during a Nazi bombardment of Rotterdam where all Pieter’s musical manuscripts were stored in the town hall archives.
His first love affair and experience of sex was with Pieter’s daughter Emilia when she was 18 & he was 15. Pieter strongly disapproved of their liaison, forbade Emilia from ever seeing him again & fired him (he was by then his musical assistant). Bustijin told him that if he ever came near Emilia again he would have him killed. Bram obviously believed him as it was to be many years before he saw her again.
His education was normal for a boy from a wealthy Calvinist merchant family. According to him he did well in school, learning to read & write earlier than most of his peers with a real aptitude for mathematics. He can still carry out complex calculations & solve difficult equations in his head.
He got beaten a lot by his teachers. He says that this was mostly for asking intelligent questions about the nature/existence of God & why should he believe everything his teachers told him? He admits he was also one for elaborate practical jokes at the expense of teachers or other students.
He had a particular interest in creating & exploding his own varieties of indoor fireworks. Sometimes in the desks of other pupils and on the lecture tables of his teachers. He claims they weren’t dangerous but created interesting sounds & spectacular colours.
Surprisingly it was his mother Ulla who was most upset by these extra curricular activities. His father never beat him or struck him and seemed proud of his son’s creative expressions. Bram suspected that though in outward appearance his father was a good Calvinist actually somewhere in him was an unbeliever trying to get out.
From the age of 13 he left school to travel extensively in Europe with his mother & her lover, Johannes Bouwmeester who was a scholar and translator of Arabic texts including Hafaz & Rumi and a poet in his own right.
She had, he assured me, always been beautiful and his father’s financial success had turned her into a busy socialite. She had (unknown to his father) taken Johannes as her lover after the last of her children had been born as his father had lost all appetite for any kind of sexual activity and she was still filled with desire.
Bram often went on long journeys with them as Johannes spent time with European artists, writers & musicians and had friends & associates from Islamic & Russian culture. In the past Johannes had travelled extensively in North Africa & Siberia. Occasionally Bram’s sisters would come as well.
Bram had known him as Uncle Johannes and told me that he had a much closer relationship with him than with his own father.Together the 3 or 5 of them travelled (in some style it would seem) to most of the capital cities of Europe. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Madrid, Barcelona, Prague, Stockholm.
Their voyages were mostly by coach and by boat and occasionally on horseback.. Travel by coach was a truly appalling experience he told me even though his mother owned a ‘luxury’ cross country carriage. The equivalent at that time of an upmarket 4 by 4. But it had no real suspension & they spent bone juddering days or even weeks on the road in the heat of summer and the icy blasts of winter.
But he enjoyed their night time stop overs in hostelries, inns & with people who his mother corresponded with. He had enjoyed the rich variety of food, wine & entertainment provided at these places & the friendly hospitality afforded them by his mother’s correspondent friends.
She wrote letters incessantly & compulsively both when at home & when travelling. Mostly to people she’d met in Holland - traders, bankers, artists, sailors and others from all corners of the world who were members of the Dutch correspondence society. A secretive organisation that had links with many countries and nationalities. They were intent on creating a global network of free thinkers & establishing the equality of men, women, children and all varieties of humans.*
Travelling by boat was really not much better than the coach as he got seriously sea sick in even a slight swell. So it was on these long journeys by land and sea that he first learnt to snooze whatever the external circumstances. A skill & attribute that would serve him well throughout his life.
They met & spent time with many artists and musicians including Amadeus Mozart, Johan Sebastian Bach, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Albrecht Durer, Osias Beert, Franz Hals and as already mentioned Artemesia Gentileschi.
During this time Bram became a proficient painter mostly, so he told me, using charcoal sketches & water colours as they were easier to carry than all “that oil painting paraphernalia”
This was a skill and practice that he continued through most of his life until fairly recently, filling a vast collection of sketch books, notepads and sketchpads with his record of places he visited, people he met and occasionally his dreams. He told me that he had managed to save all his sketchbooks over the years and they were now in the same safe place as his mothers letters. (See foot note below)
He also became proficient on the church organ collaborating & composing sacred music with Andreas Hammerschmidt.
As well as travelling round the countries and cultures of Europe he was, unknown to his mother & lover, working on his father’s behalf cutting deals with spice, exotic fruit & sugar traders in most of the cities they visited. These encounters taking place in the early hours of the morning before Katerina & Josef were up as they liked to lie in bed late when not travelling, eating breakfast & sometimes even lunch before rising for social engagements with friends, artists, politicians and other celebrities.
His father had opened a bank account with the Louis de Geer merchant bank in Rotterdam and paid Bram a 20% commision on any profits that the business made from these transactions. Sometimes these profits were considerable so he began to build up a healthy bank balance.
In late summer of 1685 Ulla, Johannes & Bram were staying in St Petersburg where Josef was meeting with a Russian traveller who had just returned from Persia with a full manuscript copy of Ibn Tufayl’s great work Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. He wanted to commission Johannes to translate it into Russian & Dutch, posssibly French & English. All languages that Johannes was fluent in as well of course as his native Prussian variety of German.
It was while they were there that Bram received a letter from his father telling him that he had decided to enter a Franciscan monastery in Padua & leaving the business to Bram. He included a formal letter of introduction to William of Orange, a personal friend of his father’s from his twenties when they had both been in the same local militia company, later painted by Rembrandt.
His father had always loved Italian music, painting & culture. He spoke, read & wrote Italian so the move to the monastery in Padua would not have presented any linguistic challenges for him.
When Bram had told his mother the news she had merely shrugged, said something along the lines of it making life easier for her and Johannes but that it was a strange thing to do as she was sure that his belief in god had grown fainter and fainter as he grew older.
The Pig told me that he thought it might have been a last ditch attempt by his father to revive his belief or at least quieten his growing atheism. A rather extreme solution he had to admit but had hoped to find out more by immediately leaving his mother and Johannes to travel to Italy and talk with his father. A trip he was really looking forward to as it was a country in Europe he hadn’t so far visited and he was hoping to meet up with Caravaggio and Scarlatti.
But he had to change his plans on hearing the news that William had been offered the throne of Great Britain and was putting an armed expedition together to travel to England and take up the offer. So, with his letter of introduction, he travelled to Rotterdam, obtained a short audience with William & his sister Mary and was appointed special adviser to both of them on spices and exotic fruits. #
In 1688 he travelled to London as part of Williams almost bloodless invasion, except for a few stunning and significant military exploits on his part on the way (or so he told me) to take up his new prestigious post. He lived at Hampton Court Palace where he had his own suite of rooms and warehouses in the docklands at Putney as he had started importing and storing quantities of spices and fruits, though the supplies were often unreliable because other Dutch, English & French entrepreneurs & traders had entered the market since his father had become a monk and Bram was still finding his feet as the new owner of the business
In the second year of his residence in London Mary, who liked him and had taken him under her wing, decided to send him to the East Indies on a mission with a royal charter to investigate the expansion of trade so that she and her friends could profit from it by importing and selling a number of spices and exotic fruits including cardamoms, cinnamon, hing, bananas, mangos, star fruit & passion fruit.
William, on hearing that Bram was travelling to Europe, had instructed him to go to Russia, meet with Tsar Peter (to whom he personally penned an introduction letter in what the Pig described as “really rather dodgy Russian”) to discuss the possibilities of opening trade links with Russia exchanging spices & exotic fruits for timber and furs.
It was on his way to the East Indies & Moscow via Rotterdam that he met again with Emilia Bustijin. His passion for her had remained, he told me.
“Locked deep in my heart. A fire whose embers had kept burning and burst into flames the moment I saw her again.”
Even though she had aged he still found her the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
This meeting had been quite by chance in the main covered market in Rotterdam where she was shopping for silk for a new ball gown & he was buying eggs and other ingredients to create a super omelette as eggs had been in short supply in England due to a national outbreak of fur & feather pox.
She was married to a wealthy Rotterdam ship owner. They had no children and their relationship was on the rocks. It was easy to persuade her to run away from her marriage with him to Moscow where he had some ‘loose ends’ to tie up & those errands to run for, as he called him, ‘the big orange’
She took with her the bolts of blue & green silk which were fashioned into a beautiful ball gown by a dressmaker in Moscow whose grandson later became the personal tailor to Catherine the Great.
She wore her new dress to stunning effect at a lavish ball thrown by Peter the Great to celebrate 10 years of the declaration of Russian unification by himself. The Pig painted a number of watercolours of her wearing the dress including a death bed portrait of her when she died, the day after the ball, along with dozens of others including Peter the Great’s niece as a result of drinking some ‘bad’ vodka.
The Tsar had the entire catering staff arrested and sent to Siberia where, after many years of hard labour and privations, most of them died. The chief chef of his kitchen staff was beheaded by Peter himself at a public execution to which all the relatives of the deceased came. Except for Bram who had survived because he had only drunk the wine and had left that morning, shocked & totally devastated by her sudden death, to travel to the East Indies.
Though he met, loved & even married a number of women in the rest of his life he told me that “she was my greatest and most passionate love. Sometimes we would make continuous love for days....”
But he had not returned to Holland nor felt able to meet with Tsar Peter. Instead he had sent his friend Alexie, who had travelled with him to Moscow from Amsterdam, with the letter of introduction.
Bram later learned that Alexie had been most successful in his meeting with the Tsar. He had negotiated a lucrative trade deal exchanging spices & fruit for furs and pine wood. On taking this news to William in London he had been knighted and given a fine country residence in Cambrdgeshire where, Pig insisted, his family still lived.
Mary had been very upset by the news of Emilia’s death as she had known her in Middleburg when she was first married to William on visits to Bram’s family home. As time passed and there was no news of Bram or his whereabouts apart from the letter that Alexie had given her from the Pig she had become increasingly concerned for his life and safety.
He couldn’t remember exactly what the letter had said though it had been brief and had outlined his intention to carry out his duties with his trip to the East Indies, that he would achieve this by setting out on the long and dangerous journey via Vladivastock on the east coast of Russia.
The time that this cross country journey would take should, he hoped, help to heal the wound of the loss of his love. He had confided to Mary in his letter that he had intended to marry Emilia once the annulment of her marriage to the merchant for non consummation had been achieved. The merchant had apparently preferred young men to young women so had been unable as the Pig told me “ to get it up on their wedding night or on any other occasion”
From Vladivastock he would take ship to Sarawak. He had also sent a letter to his mother via Alexie letting her know what had happened and of his intentions to carry out his duties in visiting the East indies. However she had never received this letter as she had moved from Middleburg to Hamburg to live with Johannes.
Alexei had put the letter under the door of the house in Middleburg. The house had remained empty for over a decade and it seems likely that the letter had been eaten by mice as when the house was finally sold to its new residents, a Scottish ship architect called Brian Mckenzie, his wife Elsie and their 2 children Hamish & Fenella there was no trace of the letter.
The Pig had later met Brian’s son Hamish in Scotland during the Jacobite uprising. Hamish, against the strong wishes of his staunchly Calvinist father had, like the Pig been part of Charlie’s army.
In a slightly different version/reminiscence he says that he first met Hamish in London at a meeting of the Royal Philosophical & Scientific society at a demonstration by Newton of the possibility of building an anti-gravity device. The two of them had travelled to Ireland to fight on the side of the Catholic rebels against Cumberland’s army of Dutch, German and English mercenaries.
But more of that later.
So for many years his mother, sisters and Johannes had no idea what had happened to him other than rumours reaching them from the court in England.
He had travelled by horse with 2 companions. A cossack & a Rumanian gypsy woman. Both of them had made the journey a number of times before. He told me, though they were very different characters, that he had trusted both of them totally and in his grief for the loss of Emilia had ended up in the arms of the gypsy Drusilla after the Cossack Petrovitsa had been killed in an encounter with a black bear.
Unfortunately he got separated from Drusilla a few days later in a blizzard only a couple of hundred miles from his destination and would have frozen to death in a snow drift on the edge of the endless forest and taiga if he hadn’t been found by a woman out foraging for hallucinogenic lichen that only grew on the north side of the bark of certain birch trees.
Her name was Gala and she was he told me “A shaman of incredible power, compassion & knowledge”
He had lived with her for over a year learning some of what she knew about herbal medicine, shamanic hallucinogens & trance travelling. He was very clear that this was a relationship of student and teacher though she was “ a woman of extraordinary sexual power and beauty” he had never had a physical relationship with her.
One morning in late Spring 1691 she had woken him early, fed him a breakfast of kasha with yogurt, beech nuts and wild forest honey then taken him outside where a beautiful black mare with a blanket and saddle bag filled with food on her back was waiting for him.
She told him it was time for him to rejoin “the flow of your life’s path and destiny” that the Horse would take him to Vladivastock where there would be a boat he could embark on to take him to Java via Japan.
Once he got to Vladivastock he was to keep the blanket but let the Horse go as she would return to Gala. She had embraced him once, kissed him on the lips, told him that they would certainly meet again, helped him to get on the back of the Horse and, with a wave of her hand, watched him ride out of sight towards Vladivastock.
The Horse was able to travel at a gallop or a canter across all kinds of terrain. They travelled by day & through the night. The Horse always seemed to know exactly where she was going, only stopping occasionally so that he could relieve himself or eat some of the delicious provisions that Gala had packed for him including black bread, smoked meat & fish, dried apples, nuts, yogurt, cheeses & some delightful sweet/sour beverage that he later found out was called Kefir, while the Horse grazed the fresh growth of grass, flowers & herbs that had burst into life as Spring arrived and now grew in abundance along the edge of the track that eventually brought them to the outskirts of Vladivastock.
They drank deeply from freshly melted snow in ponds, streams and rivers on the way.
Though he was an experienced horseman he had never ridden a horse without a saddle, bridle and reins but found this experience natural & easy, as if there was some sort of attraction between him and the Horse that kept him on her back and meant that he could snooze for hours while she travelled on.
He told me that he remembered very little of the journey. “Just endless forest, occasional rivers or lakes and then more forest...until finally after 5 days of continuous travelling we arrived in Vladivastock”
The Horse took him straight to the embarkation house at the docks where a large 3 master called Zeedraak (Sea Dragon) flying the Dutch flag was moored. It had been late afternoon when they arrived there and the Horse, seemingly unfazed by her long almost endless exertions had stopped near the gangplank leading onto the ship.
From the activity onboard including the raising of sails and preparations to cast off ropes and weigh anchor as the last few passengers walked up the steep entrance to the ship it would seem it was about to depart.
Bram had been astonished when, as he was dismounting from the Horse’s back, she had spoken to him.
“Hey Bram. Don’t forget the blanket. You can take the saddle bag as well. I think you’ll find them both useful. It’s been a pleasure spending time with you. This Dutch 3 master Zeedraak will take you where you need to go. Good luck on your journey little pig. Do take care, get some deep snoozing done and, as my friend Slinger would say “Hasta La Vista baby”
He had been so dumbfounded and astonished by her speaking to him that he had only just managed to take the blanket and unfasten the saddle bag from her back before she had turned round, setting off at a good trot along the bank of the River Vlad in the direction they had come from only a few minutes before.
The saddle bag still seemed to contain as much food as when they had started and also held his wallet, his letter of introduction in French, Dutch, English & a language in an unusual script that he didn’t recognise but assumed was Indonesian or Sanskrit with the Royal Charter from Mary with her royal seal attached to a beautiful ornate red and gold ribbon. It also contained a number of other personal items including his knife, magnifying glass, sketch books, water colours, brushes, pencils and his silver christening cup. The wallet was full of roubles.
He carefully folded the blanket and put it in the saddle bag which he slung over his shoulder and walked towards the gangplank at the foot of which he was greeted by a tall thin man in a long brown leather coat trimmed with fur. He was clean shaven with deep brown eyes, an aquiline nose and a slightly sardonic smile on his broad lips. He was wearing a mink hat that covered most of his head from which flowed long black locks of hair.
He looked Bram up and down studying him for a moment, taking in his appearance. A short stocky young man in a sheepskin jacket, long leather boots, a beaver skin hat and curly gold hair that framed a sun beaten round face with bright blue eyes set in it and a slight smile on his lips.
He spoke quietly but clearly to Bram. He asked him if he wanted to buy a passage on the Sea Dragon and where he was headed. He introduced hiomself, in Russian, as the ships purser Achonova Deckovitch.
In the time Bram had spent with Gala he had acquired, through sleep learning (a technique she had taught him) an almost complete knowledge of reading, writing, speaking the Russian language so he had no trouble in understanding Achonova’s question.
He had explained that he wanted to travel to Indonesia and yes he wanted to buy a passage so how much would it cost him. His name was Bram van Doff.
The smile on the man’s lips widened as he told Bram that if that really was his name, though he would need proof, then there was no need for him to buy a passage on the ship as one had been bought and booked for him already with a full state room and passage to Sarawak via Japan. He had showed Bram the ship’s manifest with its list of passengers and there, in perfect hand written Cyrillic script, was his name.
Bram had shown him the letter and testament from Queen Mary though he was puzzled and enquired as to who had paid for his voyage. Achonova studied the 2 documents carefully for a moment or two before handing them back then merely smiled and shrugged saying that he did not have any information as to who had bought his passage. Then, putting the long fingers of his left hand on Bram’s shoulders, he had suggested that they board as quickly as possible as the gangway was about to be pulled up and the ship was ready to leave.
So it was that Bram, closely followed by Achonova Deckovitch, walked up the steep wooden ramp and arrived on the deck of this large Dutch schooner ready to sail for the East Indies and whatever lay ahead of him.......
*They usually corresponded in a secret language similar to 20th century Esperanto. The Pig has a complete collection of her correspondence. He deposited them all in a bank vault in New York in the early 20th century with a view to publishing them one day. He told me that their publication would completely change the way we see and understand the development of human history. One of her correspondents he also told me was a mercenary and warrior who went by the name of Slinger.
§ This letter the Pig had kept carefully folded in his wallet for the last 3 centuries. A rather tattered copy of it is reproduced in the Appendix of Albion’s Children Book 1 along with a copy of the introductory letter to William. How they had both survived his numerous travel and mishaps is one of life’s mysteries.
# 2 centuries later he visited the monastery at Padua where he learnt his Father had become abbot and lived to be over a hundred years old. He had also written, in Italian, a short book called “Doubt, God & what the.....” a well considered (in some circles) theological discourse on belief and atheism though it was for a time on the list of Catholic, Lutheran & Calvinist proscribed texts. One of the few pieces of writing to have that shared prejudice/distinction. It was also a popular piece of reading and a starting point for theological dispute among the heretical Waldensian communities of the 18th century in the Hautes Alpes.