People often seem to be interested in my life, or more
accurately, in how I came to be me. Most of what you may hear or read about me
is more than likely true, but just to put the record straight, here's a very
brief summary of my life to date.
I was born dead with umbilical strangulation, but they
brought me back, this is why I feel that I've always had a foot rooted in both
worlds.
As to my family, I was born the son of a humble carpenter in
the little market town of Beverley, (bet that sounds familiar lol, but actually
it’s true), my mother worked as a stenographer but gave up her job to set up a
selling service.
Nothing much of a worthy mention happened until I was around
six years old, unless you count the fact that I have a brother who is two years
younger and that my parents moved into a house that backed onto an abandoned
farm.
By the age of six I had started to take an interest in
anything that had a freakish nature, I felt different to other children my age in
many ways. Whilst they played with dolls I collected fossils and no end of
curios that I was given by my parents who had started a house clearance
business. If any jobs came in on the weekend I would go along and help sort
through the junk and treasures and then hopefully pick out a few choice items
for what I referred to as "My private museum".
It was around this age (6-7 years old) when, in one of the
house clearances, I found a small library of old esoteric books that included
works by Crowley and Eliphas Levi. I kept some of the more interesting ones
including an early edition of "The sacred magic of Abramelin” Above all I
found this book to be intriguing, mainly due to the lettered and numbered
magikal squares that it contained.
As time moved on I became ever more interested in our human potential,
psychic powers and anything of an occult or psychic nature. Above all I became
more interested in the idea that the power of magik was real, even if I was
informed by my peers that it most certainly wasn't.
So I picked up several other esoteric books and also studied
folklore and many other beliefs via a magazine that was entitled "Man myth
and magic".
At the age of thirteen, I started a new school and met a
friend called Mark who also had a great interest in magi. The school allowed
the pupils to set up their own lunch time clubs, so we, along with a couple of
others, started a magikal practice and study club. It was going great until the
highly religious school headmaster got wind of what was going on.
On arriving at school the next morning we were ordered to
give up our group, and were then dragged up before the heads of year and told ask
the lord god for forgiveness. I, of course, refused to do this and so was
removed to another class where Mark and I wouldn't come into contact with each
other.
I am dyslexic and they simply didn't pick up on it at school,
so rather than receiving personal help and encouragement, I was overlooked in favour
of other allegedly brighter pupils. I
have of course discovered since then, that dyslexics, if anything, tend to be on
the intelligent side, it's down to the way that our brains process information,
one of the most famous being none other than Albert Einstein.
At the age of 17, I abandoned Art College in favour of
finding a job to finance my ever growing interest in night club culture and the
bizarre creatures that attended them. I became totally absorbed in the scene
and dressed to excess, these were crazy days that I totally loved. Every few
weeks I would change my image: sometimes my hair would be spiked a foot high,
only to be followed by cut short with a quiff. I tried endless looks (not all
of them worked! lol) and people would often use pictures of me on posters to
promote their clubs nights. I was totally outrageous and most certainly out of
control, but these days were good and the chaotic feeling of the time just
added to the fact that anything could happen at any moment.
By the way, I should have mentioned that I was in a
relationship that was to last some 28 years, but I'll come to that shortly.
By the mid to late 1980's the original scene had just about
died a death so I latched onto the emerging rave scene, the atmosphere at these
events was great, there was something almost primordial about the energy that
was raised by the raging dancers, and it
started to remind me of my neglected magikal studies. I had continued with the interest but hadn't
practiced much for quite some time. Then a strange idea came to me; basically I
decided to wear my cloak to these events and see them as a ritual, after all
there were endless amounts of energy being released so it seemed like a great
opportunity to make use of it.
It was at this point that I had the opportunity to do a
little study with a South American and then a Siberian Shaman. I'd read about the practice in an obscure
journal and felt it matched very well with my own studies. After absorbing the
basics, such as entering trance states via drumming and the healing harmonics
that are contained in vocal tones, I added the principles to my own eclectic
system.
I then decided it was due time to put theory into practice. There
was a lengthy ritual described in the book of Abramelin that was intended to
deliver knowledge of and conversation with your Holy guardian angel. The ritual
would take around 18 months and would involve me practically becoming a puritan.
To cut a long story short, I decided to opt out of society, leave my job, and
concentrate my efforts into the great work, my magikal path.
The first attempt at the ritual only lasted a few weeks, I
loved drinking on my nights out and so progress felt to be nothing more than
boring, the second attempt lasted a little longer but yet again I decided that
it was beyond me to even think of completing. I then decided to give it one
last go, this time I was determined, and although the days were slow to pass,
they did pass and before I knew it the ritual was nearly over.
I completed the ritual high up in the snow-capped Scottish
mountains and yes indeed the "Angel" did speak to me. As this time
approached I had started to alter internally, not just mentally but physically,
certain foods appeared to be intolerable to me, a few days after the ritual all
hell broke loose and I entered the fabled shamanic death and rebirth, my body,
sight and soul had been totally shattered, I had medical tests but they found
no physical or mental problems that could explain what I was experiencing. I
lived out the next five years in a body that felt foreign to me, a shell that I
seemed to have little contact or interaction with. My sight was reduced to two
dimensions, it was as if I had somehow sidestepped away from myself within the
structure of reality. But, given time, I slowly became myself again. Not the
old me, a complete new version of myself that could see the world through new
eyes.
The new world appeared to be flowing with energy, and my
mind seemed to be somehow different, better, more fluid, as if I'd created a
second ego in my subconscious mind that was capable of passing on unfiltered
information directly to me, hard to describe but akin to having an overtone of
information that downloads directly into the conscious mind.
Although doing anything constructive during this period
wasn't easy I had managed to set up a business selling antiques, it turned over
a reasonable income, whilst giving me plenty of time to peruse my studies. I
spent hours and sometimes days in meditation either at home or in remote places
such as the North Yorkshire moors.
I will confirm that I also wrote articles and poetry using
several pseudonyms during this period for many underground style magazines, but
would rather leave that work behind as my theories have evolved somewhat since
those days.
By the mid 1990's things stagnated a little, I became ever more
bored with life in general. Life had felt promising but I now seemed to somehow
be in the wrong life. Don't get me wrong, I got married and continued to live a
party fuelled life, but something was missing. I had a few good friends but the
rest of my life felt to be devoid of magik. I spent most of the time on short
holidays, there were some great times, especially those I spent on the east
coast in places like Whitby, long summer days sat in bars by the sea, and the winter’s
evenings were even more spectacular.
I had put much of my concentration into collecting the
bizarre and obscure, I'd also decided to return to writing, but not in
publications, I mainly decided to work within esoteric chat rooms, here I could
be incognito and wait to see the responses to my thinking.
This period was very enjoyable, but still things didn't feel
right, and my drive towards correcting things eventually forced me to take
drastic action. I decided to go up onto the North Yorkshire moors and do a
complex ritual that was designed to realign my life path. So we headed up there and combined a weekend
away with the ritual work. The ritual itself was rather short, an hour or so,
but deep down I knew it had worked and that it would be the end of the safe
life I had always known. When the change came, it came fast: in fact it started
a roller-coaster period of change within the structure of my life that I wasn't
prepared for. Within a matter months my relationship of 28 years was over, and
that was only the start of things to come.
It was at this point I decided to appear on the internet
under my own name, within the next year I found myself co-running an esoteric
website that was based in America with friend and fellow thinker Jordan Mikena,
the S.A.K.R.E.D site gave us the opportunity to build on ideas and projects and
also open up different conversations with like-minded people, and we spent many
hours in very deep conversation (as we often still do).
Around the same time I entered a new relationship, but it
wasn't what I was expecting. Without going into it I'll just say that some
experiences only serve to make us stronger and shouldn't be dwelled upon!
I seemed to be creating more than a little interest in my
life and ideas, and after an argument that appeared in the press over the
ownership of a genuine shrunken head I'd purchased from an auction I agreed to
do an unprecedented appearance and short interview for the world renowned
Bizarre magazine. I was infamously
pictured in the ritual cloak whilst holding a statue of Baphomet alongside a
photo of some of my collection that includes, ancient human elongated skulls, head-hunter
skull, shrunken heads, and mummified hands and feet. The interview itself was
badly cut and made me sound quite mad, but then I knew it would.
Over a several year period I had also been working with
several other occultists and artists, I had the idea of producing works of art
such as posters featuring characters such as Crowley and Baphomet, I actually
redesigned Baphomet with well-known artist and witch Rowan Wulfe so that he has
bats wings, it seemed more fitting!, we've since started work on several
projects including illustrated books that will come to fruition in the near
future.
In time I made
alliances with several other very well-known occultists, and after lengthy
discussions with the late, well respected friend and internet mage Ronniucci
Gasparri (Ron), we made plans for the Universal Order of Telos to be created,
of which I'm now the head. We came up with several names at the time, but this
summed up our beliefs more than most and as group we aim to go mainstream with
public membership in the near future. The intention of the order will be to
send out regular messages of hope and wisdom to humanity. I'm also working on a
book to accompany the order, ‘The Lakharne’. It will put forward an alternative
theory of how the universe and humanity came to be that poetically unites
evolution with creationism in several short chapters followed by a second
section that will be a book of magik.
People appear to see me in many ways ranging from fantastically
outrageous, to being painfully shy, a madman to great thinker and holy man, I
guess the truth of the matter is that they instinctively know that I'm the real
deal, I don't pretend to be sat meditating in a temple 24 hours a day, I have a
real life, I dance, I drink, I practice magik.
In the last few years I've started to write and publish
regular articles in well-known Pagan journals both here and abroad such as
Greenmantle and the enlightening times. These outline many of my beliefs and
ideas and appear to be very well received, I think the world needs to open up
to the true nature of reality and see what we can actually achieve.
As time has moved on I've entered a relationship with my
artist friend Rowan Wulfe, we both had a great interest in everything esoteric,
and also dressing up for events such as Whitby Gothic festival, our meeting
appeared to be destined from the moment I did that life changing ritual,
perhaps it was always meant to be, but it was much more complex than that, a
great chain of events had to take place before we eventually got together, but
that's another story.
As to the future, I will simply say, watch this space, it's
going to be magikal!
