THE

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The Curse of Merlin

Act I

The Awakening of Self

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THE

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The Curse of Merlin

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OX1 1AP (UK)

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British Library and the US Library of Congress.

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Contents

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The Curse of Merlin I

Life is a struggle against the curse of Merlin. The poet Peter
Redgrove first hit me with that one. I’d been to one of his
readings at the Royal Festival Hall and sharing a lift on the way
down to the bar, invited him for a drink. Drinking with Peter
could be an expensive pastime as he quaffs large glasses of red
wine in a manner us lesser mortals might fruit juice. Peter was
in the mood to celebrate the appearance of the Penguin collec-
tion of his poems. Peter later agreed to contribute a small
preface to my own first modest attempt to write on the topic of
sexual magick. Although hardly a household name, I’d known of
the work of Peter and his partner Penelope Shuttle’s for some
time. I’d ploughed my way through their seminal Wise Wound.
Whenever I see that book it always reminds me of Anne, a good
friend from my teenage years which were spent in Newport,
South Wales. It was she who first turned me onto feminism.
Alas she died ten years back, one of the first female victims in
this country of the AIDS pandemic, but that’s another story.

’The Curse of Merlin’ said Peter Redgrove, ‘lies on all publish-
ers. Publish poetry, no matter how commercially unsuccessfully
it might be, or you will never thrive.’ Peter had been laying this
trip on publishers thoughout his entire writing career, hence
our celebration. Cheers, Peter Redgrove, and well done
in convincing the increasingly market orientated Penguin to do
your not so slim volume of esoteric poetry.

But the curse of Merlin means something more to me. I read
somewhere that Merlin was born old and moved closer to his
birth as the years rolled by. From this splendid fact I surmised
that Merlin was some kind of shape-shifter, the heir to the
modern day shifter of gender. And it was in this connection – as
a mover between genders, that I personally relate to the curse of
Merlin. As I begin to write this in year four (2004 to lesser
mortals) sexuality seems to be in a bit of a dry patch. Sexuality
is just another thing to consume, its all about numbers. When I

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began this journey things were more interesting.

At home we always read the Daily Mirror. The Sunday edition
was serialising the biography of April Ashley, perhaps the first
of the new wave of shape shifters, a male to female transsexual.
It was a deliciously wicked article for a young boy to be reading
but I never forgot it. It made me wonder whether I too might
not be a woman trapped in a man’s or more properly a boy’s
body. It’s thirty five years since I first read that, my journey has
taken me to the interzone between male and female. I look at
the old photographs of myself – such a misfit.

I’m eleven years old (the number of magick!). A pivotal point in
my mind – everything before is pretty indistinct – everything to
come will be different. I’ve already lived in a couple of different
places but this is probably the one most rooted in my conscious-
ness. It’s a landscape that still lives in my head and occasionally
becomes the theatre for lucid dreams. Inner city Newport, South
Wales. The Corporation road is a long road that drives its way
all the way from the centre of town, over the Victorian river
bridge, the one decorated with cherubs who have my face when
someone hasn’t pushed a cigarette butt between their bronze
lips. The road keeps on, getting ever seedier, through Clarence
place, past the old Gaumont Cinema and art deco Odeon, past
posh 1930s semis, past the bus depot, first one shop, then a
small parade, then a whole ribbon of shops, fading out. Keep
going, past my old red brick school, St Andrews, then the tiny
Carnegie library, to where the bus stops outside Lysaght’s sports
fields, social club and steel works. Not many buses go past this
point into the docklands, and factory compounds protected by
high chain-link fences and ditches of neatly trimmed grass
flowing with dirty water. From here you need to walk to western
docks for ocean going ships, the Transporter bridge ‘Eiffel
tower’ multiplied by two whose moving carriage hangs from a
high overhead rail. This surreal contraption ’flies’ the traffic
across the mighty river Usk to the Eastern docks. This is Pill,
Pwllgwenny I suppose.

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On this side of the river there’s a road parallel to Corporation
Road called Commercial Street. I can retrace my steps back
towards the centre of town to that bridge with the cherubs
where I set out. Later Newport would get a second road bridge
flattening the next street where I can cross its 1960s box-
girders and be home in minutes. I live so close that I was the
first person to ever walk across it, before the workmen, before
the mayor. When the last section was lowered into the gap, I
was watching and waiting and in an instant, I walked across. .

Eleven years old and that’s my macrocosm The microcosm
would be the Coverack road that runs upwards at a right-angle
to Corporation road until it fades out on the river’s cinder flood
barrier. On the right side a continuous row of 1930s council
houses, on the left the backs of the shops, a corner shop, then
the Edwardian terrace of Witham street, then a few more 1930s
houses, then our shop on the corner of Feering street, then more
1930s houses, then a lane leading to the electrical substation,
the powerman’s detached cottage, then the haunted shell of an
old factory. The road crests over a railway line, where several
times a day a bright green steam engine drags trucks of coal
across the road to the power station. Next door is a wagon
works for the railway. When the siren sounds at 1pm and 5pm,
men and women spill out in a great crowd making for home,
some in cars but mainly walking or heading for the bus stop on
the corner of Coverack and Corporation rd. On the right,
opposite the wagon works is another small factory made from
bolted tin sheets. Behind a sliding door is a putty mill where a
great chrome wheel moves endlessly through a trough of chalk
and linseed oil until ‘Joey’, thinks it right to stop the machine
and scoop out the pale putty, melding it into blocks the size of
sandbags. Joey lays it with the others until he has a great wall of
putty lining the walls on all sides. Mostly Joey keeps the door
slid shut. But if it’s hot and the door is open I ask him for some
to play with. We all do that, all the kids in the street. Joey is a
black guy, one of the first I ever met. He was over six foot tall,
or so it seemed, with enormously powerful yet beautiful hands.

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Every day he came into our corner shop for his sandwiches,
which my mother, Joan, made for him from that day’s fresh rolls
and enormous slabs of mature cheddar.

* * *

One of the unexpected things about being fifty is that you
suddenly start to learn lots of things about what happened just
before you were born. That’s PR I suppose – a handy anniver-
sary to celebrate – hence Roger Bannister and the four minute
mile, another 50 years since the Book of the Law, the nuclear
tests and the floods of 1953. They say it was the UK’s forgotten
disaster. I must have heard people talking about the floods and
when I think about it this road on which I spent so much of my
youth rose upwards to a great river dyke rebuilt after that flood.
I was in the womb through most of it but someone once sug-
gested I could still have sustained some brain damage as a
result; hence some of of my minor learning difficulties and
absence of a sense of smell.

* * *

The River. Never underestimate the effect of living next to one
of the most powerful rivers in the world. I know every inch of
the Usk, Celtic for river, from its estuary of shifting treacherous
sands, to the point at which the tidal and riverine waters meld.
It’s a sacred spot the so-so country pub at Newbridge-on-Usk.
Being underage I sat in the garden with the parakeets watching
the waters rise until all was still and the basin could hold no
more water. The grey sludgy tidal water mixing like cream in the
clear coffee of the non tidal stream. There’s an almost audible
silence, and then the moment as if miles away someone has
pulled the plug and the water begins to drop out of the basin in
a mad rush.

The mighty Usk cannot be said to meander its way to the sea –
‘hairpins’ it way might be better. It rushes through Caerleon
where my parents still live, and which I knew intimately, long
before I moved there. The river slices through Cryndau, where
there was once a precipitous park now just another road. This

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is a stonethrow from the home of my dour grandfather where we
all lived for a while. Then the Newport hinterlands where the
ruins of a Norman Castle gives the town its welsh name. The
river relaxs, widening out to flow under those bridges, past
where I lived as a child. I swam in you, walked by you, dis-
carded so much in you. The black and white sign that deters
submarine captains with a warning of ‘cables’. From its top I
watched the dredgers make ‘handbreak’ turns on the mud.
The power station that once fed those cables is now nothing
more than a concrete platform. Here comes the wagon works
with its strategic promontory, a grey shell of an old gun em-
placement but to me always a ruined hermit’s hut. I used to
climb its crumbling masonry overlooking the estuary and buf-
feted by winds, act out a scene from a film where Kirk Douglas
calls out to Odin.

Just across the river rotting warships lie berthed on deserted
jetties. The river surges beneath the Transporter bridge built to
allow headroom for the ship’s masts. The surreal hulk of an-
other larger power station looms solitary over the long
severnside wetlands reclaimed by monks. Goldcliff is just
around the corner. Goldcliff holds a secret key to the character
of the locals. The Celtic tribe in this part of the word was the
Silurians. They made a deal - recorded on a golden plaque found
nearby - the Romans got to keep the coast, but everything
inland was theirs. Even now you can divine a lot there about
the relationship between the local Welsh and the English from
that ancient deal. From Goldcliff my gaze can sweep across to
a final beacon for my childhood world, to a squat lighthouse
beside a tiny dangerous beach. That’s where I took my first ever
swim in the waters of the Usk like a turtle on my father’s back..

* * *

Things sound better on paper but having no sense of smell
probably makes the whole thing more bearable. At the bottom
of my street was a small park, shelter, chain link fence, slide

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and swings, football pitch. Next to this is a plant where con-
demned carcasses from the nearby abattoir were boiled and
rendered down into glue. The smell was apparently very bad but
I was missing this sense and never noticed.

* * *

I was born a pagan. As soon as I popped out (at 2.45pm gmt on
4 March 1954) the nurse took one look at me and said ‘there’s
something funny about this one’. Actually I can remember the
situation one hour before this, at ‘dinner time’ (where I was
brought up we don’t have much use for lunch). I remember
floating under water pretending I was a submarine. The high
pitched whine in my ears sounded like the ping of the sonar.

It didn’t last. I felt hunted. In the distance I distinctly felt a
depth charge exploding, sending shock waves through the warm
amnionic fluid that surrounded me and held me up. The shock
waves bounced back and forth and eventually subsided. There
was a lull, then another explosion ripped through the water. I
struggled to regain my equipoise, the wonderful calmness of the
fluid world. The shocks came at regular intervals cutting into
my calm meditation until all is confusion. A climax was imma-
nent. Then I was born.

* * *

I always liked people, even girls. Maybe I was four or five going
to my ‘sweetheart’s’ birthday party. I drank all the orange juice
as a joke. Her mother sent me home in disgrace, orange juice
was expensive, my parents moved house and I never saw her
again. It was six years before I had another go. I went out with
Angie from my school. She had long hair and a sweet face. We
bought some cigarettes and I took her to my secret landscape.
Everyone should have a secret and sacred landscape. The
stretch of wasteground beside the river. I lived beside a bridge
next to the power station. Where my street rose up over the
flood defences of the river, I followed the rail lines to the coal
storage. It was a real wilderness, closed off on all sides by

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deserted factories. The earth was black but wild roses grew
there. I took Angie to the tiny lake to see newts and stickle-
backs. We smoked cigarettes until our mouths were dry. Angie
lay back awkwardly on the grass, her cheap sheepskin coat
bulging out. We tried kissing but it made us feel funny. Angie
said she didn’t like the smell from the ‘chem’ but I couldn’t
smell anything. I felt nausea.

I wonder where she is now? Angie’s mother could knit and made
a sweater for my mother. It was lopsided and didn’t fit. Her
mother was very jealous of Angie’s long sleek hair. She wanted
her to cut it but Angie wouldn’t do that. Her mother chased her,
jambing her hair in the door and cutting it all off. After that
Angie got all fat. I have pictures of her from the school play -
she played Mary and I was the archangel Gabriel (She’s the one
marked out by a circle of biro). I have another picture, me as
the Pied Piper, she as one of the fat burgers of Hamlin.

I kept going back to my sacred landscape, sometimes with
friends, mostly alone. I liked the remains of an old fort there. It
protects the ancient city of Casnewedd, and further upstream
the even older Caerleon (City of the Legions). My fort towered
high above the river. I was braver then and climbed the narrow
connecting wall until I could stand in the wind blasting from the
estuary. I wanted to shout something into the wind. I’d just seen
Tony Curtis in The Vikings and shouted ‘Odin’, over and over
again, it was the only holy name I knew. I’ve been close to Odin
every since.

* * *

Like the character in the Yeats poem, I seem to have always
liked ‘strange thought’. On saturday my mother always went
into town to change her library books. I went with her. I
couldn’t believe you could actually borrow these wonderful
things. My mammy liked novels, but I didn’t. She took me to the
philosophy section and left me there. I picked out books on
psychoanalysis, dreams and hypnotism and met her at the

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issuing desk. The librarian looked straight over my head and
asked my mammy whether I really wanted these? Oh, she said,
taking a quick look herself, they look interesting, let him have
them if he wants them. Now when I hung out with my gang I
sometimes suggested that I try to hypnotise them, sticking pins
in their arms to see if it had worked. Sometimes we’d go off on
quests looking for haunted houses or old women living alone,
convinced they might be witches.

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The Curse of Merlin II

I like to walk. I always liked that, usually alone, sometimes with
a friend. One of my favourite places when I was a teenager was
Belview Park. It must once have been part of the estate of the
ruined house of Tredegar or is it Morgan. Tredegar park, passed
into the ownership of the local council many years ago when
the last scion of the Tredegar family died childless. They were
an interesting bunch, gone mad over the years, more genteel
than their merchantile origins would justify. They had names
like ‘Octavius Morgan the antiquarian’, but that’s another story.
I’m still in Belview park, another of their bequests to Newport.
It seems so much smaller now but so much has happened. Last
year my mother gasped her last agonising breath in a hospital
ward overlooking that same park, overlooking the very spot
where I sat so many years before, locked in and wondered how
to get out.

The entrance to the park passes through wrought iron ornamen-
tal gates, painted green and emblazoned now with Casnewedd’s
grand crest - the one that has my face. The vegetation is so
luxuriant, almost tropical, covering the sides of the steep valley
through which gushes a vigorous stream. I love the fenced
walkways that snake the way over bridges until I am deposited
just below the huge Victorian plant house, tea rooms and toilet.
I love the view across the docklands to the Peterstone flatlands
beyond. It was her I once looked over the balustrade and saw in
the seedy bushes my companion losing her virginity to the local
pervert.

Time to move on, to the west end of the park. The feeling I had
that first time I found the megalithic stone circle, right there in
the park. The beautiful, hungry stones of local old red sand-
stone, blackened by the Casnewedd air, encrusted with lichen

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and moss. The secluded grove of ancient oaks lent it a synister
feel that spoke of sabbatic rites to a god unknown. At its centre
a single step led to a stone platform of appearance. Was this a
place of sacrifice? The atmosphere darkens, the picnickers in
the nearby meadow fade from view. Once I sat and quite spon-
taneously began to meditate - although back then I did not
know that’s what I was doing. A shiver ran through me anyway.
Was this a magical place?

It was a while before I told anyone about my secret place. When
I did I learnt that although it looked old it had been put there in
the early part of the twentieth century as part of the celebra-
tions for the eistedfod! The circle was ‘false’ but also real? But
there again was it really false? Now Paul tells me all these
‘bardic’ circles are modelled on one very special instance from
Boscawen in West Cornwall. I’ve still never quite been there.
How can you not quite be anywhere? That’s very Welsh isn’t it?
Simple - I got to within a few yards but had to turn back. Paul
tells me Boscawen is the most perfect example of all the mega-
lithic circles - that’s why it was chosen as a form. I have a
photograph of that day in 1910 when the vast crowd, now all
ghosts, but then dressed in their sunday best, as they swirl
around their priests. So maybe afterall I really did get a message
from the past, that day in Belview park amongst the wind lashed
trees?

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The Curse of Merlin III

There’s nothing quite like a trip to North Wales to make you
think about who you are. Am I getting out of touch with my
homeland? I was born in Pill (Pillgwenlly), still Newport’s most
deprived (and depraved) borough. It’s a long time since I left
Wales to become a ‘quizling’. We used to called the Welsh
speakers the viet-taff (or is it Taffi-ban?) - so the tension be-
tween the different regions of Wales is still as strong now as it
was then.

Wales’ south-eastern industrial population may not have all the
trappings of other regions but is it any less the Welsh for that - I
don’t think so? We refuse to learn Welsh because we don’t want
to lose our Welsh identity - English is our mother tongue -
English is a language of Wales - is it not?

Then there is the question of Nationalism. During my teenage
years I was an paid up member of the ultra-left - it goes with the
territory afterall. I think it was Kate Roberts who wrote that
Wales is under the ‘triple net’ - language, religion and politics.
So for me politics has always been a stronger force than the
others - which is hardly surprisingly given my roots.

Whatever the problems that beset the people of Wales, are they
really deep down about nationality? I think lifestyle and social
class are as valid a candidate for the core or base of society -
from which so many structures and problems grow. Isn’t it
always the way of the demagogue to play the nationalist card on
any and every issue?

Back in Newport in the 1970s I was a young radical - not even
out of school and bunking off to be on the picket-line with
striking building workers. It brought me into contact with Irish

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labourers, amongst whom were fugitives from Ireland’s
‘troubles’. Into this melting pot - welsh nationalists were drawn.
It was a bit of a dilemma for the neo-marxists, who had but
recently inherited the mantle of the moribund communist party
of Wales.

’Rebel in the soul’
How did it all start this political thing? Being a rebel was the
only way to survive at school after age eleven. Either that or a
victim be. Casting my mind back to my first overt act of politi-
cal rebellion - it was always intimately connected with the
whole nationalist thing - but never straight forwardly so. It was
the tour of the Springbok rugby team - a racially segregated side
from South Africa and therefore very controversial. I lived a
stone’s throw from the rugby ground - but had no natural
affinity for the players - I was too much of a wimp for that. The
newly formed anti-apartheid thing was in the news but was
hardly expected at a redneck place like Newport. There was to
be a picket of the match - I can’t remember from whom I learnt
it - but it seemed like such a good idea. I’m not sure I really
understood the issues but the idea of standing outside the
ground with placards sounded perfect to me. It was my first
meeting with my own kind. I remember being particularly
shocked then impressed by the presence there of the school
Religious Studies teacher - I forget her name. I guess she had me
marked down as just another oik but that day she made a point
of saying hello.

But whoa - did it cause a row at home. I never did manage to
get my placard out of the house. It can’t have been too long
after that my older brother Roy, who had actually joined the
Communist Party, was asked to leave. I was grounded. Why
such a strong reaction, my father had afterall been brought up in
Moscow - the Maesglas suburb of Newport that had consis-
tently elected communist town councillors? Maybe that was it -
familiarity breeds contempt? Stories of the 1926 General Strike
still did the rounds of Maesglas - lots of railwaymen lived there.

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When my grandfather - a former stoker - cold-shouldered
someone in the street - my father asked why - ‘because’, came
the reply, ‘he went over the wall during the strike. Such was the
bitterness following the defeat of the strike that nobody spoke
to that man again - nobody went to his funeral. Politics was a
serious business - the kind of thing that could ruin your whole
life if you weren’t discerning. And in the 1960s, apart from the
occasional Labour interlude, most people were happy with the
conservative consensus. The communists were seen as a mori-
bund fifth column.

I asked my economics teacher what he thought of the commu-
nist newspaper the Morning Star. He told me it was the worst of
the gutter press. I never could bring myself to read a copy after
that even though I guessed that was not a balanced view - but it
maybe gives an idea of the zeitgeist. The Communist Party was
a spent force, a pale reflection of its glory days. A new ghost
was haunting Europe - Leon Trotsky. Legend has it that my
brother went to one of those monster Anti-Vietnam war demos
in London - maybe he was even there on that fateful day outside
the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. There was a
splendid riot. He met one of the new Trotskyities called Pat
Jordan and invited him to come speak to the communists of
Newport. After the meeting the whole branch upped and joined
a little organisation, headed by the likes of Tariq Ali and
Jonathan Guinness which went by the soubriquet of the Inter-
national Marxist Group. I being still a minor was earmarked for
its youth section - the Spartacus League. My first ever political
outing, was to London for the unification conference of both
organisations.

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The Curse of Merlin IV -
Long slow magical
journey

I never did find out why it was that Newport’s Reference &
Lending Library acquired so many magical books. I spent such a
lot of my time in that library it was just a matter of time before
I read them all. Best of all was Aleister Crowley’s masterpiece -
Liber ABA - Magick in Theory and Practice. The reference library
must have bought a copy almost as soon as it was published in
an edition edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant in 1973.
It’s a lovely book with the most evocative of covers. It was kept
in a special cupboard, along with the Kinsey Report and Masters
& Johnson. If you wanted to read it, you had to ask and I did
ask.

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I can’t remember reading very much of Crowley’s book at the
time. Just looking at that cover illustration by Kenneth’s artist-
wife Steffi was probably enough. It’s so spookey, so evocative.
The entire power of magick was all there in the image, the
principles of which were really brought to a high point in the
celebrated Victorian sodality - The Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn. This is ‘visual magick’, the ‘simpliest’ form of
which is the so-called ‘flashing’ colours such as the red and the
green. ‘red and green should never be seen, accept in the realm
of the fairy queen’ or so goes the old printer’s saw. The artist is
some form of natural magician equiped with a mandala or
‘colour wheel’. It’s a mystery everywhere to be seen once you
know how to look. It is especially clear if you looked by candle
or lamplight. The red/green contrary is our most primal coding.
It is the opposition between Osiris and Seth - or Mars, the
‘planet of green men’ that appears red in our sky.

I was just eighteen and had crashed out of school. The Head-
master told me not to come back. He was classically educated
and said I was something like a spermologos. It’s what the Greek
philosophers called Paul of Tarsus. It means a ‘seedpicker’, a
person who like a bird randomly gathered scraps of information
and terminology. It all started to go wrong when someone told

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me that you didn’t have to wear school uniform in the sixth-
form so I turned up in drag! Well not really but I might as well
have done. I was expelled for the week with a stipulation that I
had to get my haircut before returning. So you can see I was a
bit of a handfull. After all that I never really settled at school. I
should say it was a fairly ‘bog standard’ State comprehensive -
although a grammar school for my first year. It’s the sort of
school that’s best left off your resume. I made the mistake of
naming it in an interview for a poxy student job in the Bodleian
library. One of the interviewers did his best to stop his lip
curling as he informed the other that it was ‘a state school.’ The
job went to a ‘grey moth in a cupboard’ - just like them.

When I left school my mother found me a job in the civil ser-
vice where I stayed for the next five years. During that time I
lived several parallel but discrete existences - trade union leader,
radical political activist, sexual rights compaigner, student of
occultism.

But let’s stick with the last of these for now. It was occultism
that really exposed the gaps in my education. There I was back
in the reference library daydreaming over a bit of Crowley and
trying to make sense of Blavatsky; unsure whether to believe
some of the outragious claims in Morning of the Magicians.
Perhaps they were all just crap books that change your life.
Somehow I just knew I needed to go to college. The Trade
Union movement had been good to me - sending me on courses,
paying for night classes. I wrote the obligatory essay for entry to
Ruskin College but was asked to defer entry for a year as they
felt I wasn’t quite ready. Perhaps they sensed I only really
wanted to go there to be with ‘my close personal friend’ who
already had a place. But then suddenly I had three offers of
places from mainstream Universities - Nottingham, Reading and
Sussex.

During my remaining time in the Civil Service I often travelled
to London to represent the Staffside, the public sector equiva-

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lent of Trade Unions. Between meetings I scoured the
bookshops. Somehow I’d heard that Jimmy Page had a little
bookshop in Kensington called ‘The Equinox’. When I got there
I was the only customer. The tiny little shop had windows
etched with an image of Baphomet. No one spoke to me - why
should they, but people new to the occult almost expect some-
one, an ‘adept’ or someone senior to say something - to call
them out. But occultism isn’t really like that - you have to ask.
Later in the famous Atlantis bookshop I bought a Thoth tarot
deck and a contemporary occult fanzine called ‘Sothis’. The
letter I wrote to the American address in the Tarot deck was
never answered (the American OTO never really got going until
the 1980s). But eventually I did receive a reply from Sothis and
it wasn’t too long before I was a probationer of the OTO. So it
was the little fanzine that proved the most useful, which per-
haps tells you something. . .

So with the help of my little library of occult books I began to
think about actually doing some magick. I copied the Lesser
Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram on a card and like almost
every other newbie began reciting that upstairs in my bedroom.
The words came easy but it was years before I learnt how to
really do it and that knowledge came via other magicians I met
through the Golden Dawn Occult Society. Our method can be
seen on a short DVD (viewable on request). I used that as my
icebreaker then settled down to practice some of the
meditational exercised from the first part of Crowley’s Magick.
These are in fact based on Vivekananda’s classic Raja Yoga. I
was very struck by the Crowley poems that prefaces book one:

There are seven keys to the great gate,
Being eight in one and one in eight.
First, let the body of thee be still,
Bound by the cerements of will,
Corpse-rigid ; thus thou mayst abort
The fidget-babes that tease the thought.
Next, let the breath-rhythm be low,
Easy, regular, and slow ;

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So that thy being be in tune
With the great sea’s Pacific swoon.
Third, let thy life be pure and calm
Swayed softly as a windless palm.
Fourth, let the will-to-live be bound
To the one love of the Profound.
Fifth, let the thought, divinely free
From sense, observe its entity.
Watch every thought that springs ; enhance
Hour after hour thy vigilance!
Intense and keen, turned inward, miss
No atom of analysis!
Sixth, on one thought securely pinned
Still every whisper of the wind!
So like a flame straight and unstirred
Burn up thy being in one word!
Next, still that ecstasy, prolong
Thy meditation steep and strong,
Slaying even God, should He distract
Thy attention from the chosen act!
Last, all these things in one o’erpowered!
Time that the midnight blossom flowered!
The oneness is. Yet even in this,
My son, thou shalt not do amiss
If thou restrain the expression, shoot
Thy glance to rapture’s darkling root,
Discarding name, form, sight, and stress
Even of this high consciousness ;
Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here :
Thou art the Master. I revere
Thy radiance that rolls afar,
O Brother of the Silver Star!

Looking back maybe it is a bit overblown but it worked for me
at the time. And indeed the first thing I noticed was how stiff
my whole body was. I spent quite a long time just mastering a
good posture (details of what I have in mind are given in greater

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detail in my little book Tantra Sadhana). But after a few weeks
my body began to yield its secrets and I experienced one of my
first real magical break-throughs. It wasn’t my first mystical
experience. In some ways like Crowley that came in a prayer
meeting. Ours wasn’t really a religious family. You had to go out
for that, out deep in darkest Pill where there was a towering
gospel hall all lit up with neon. I’d gone with friends from school
to a special teenager’s event. There was a big buildup for the
appearance of the ‘pastor’s’ wife who, so we were told, was a
noted songstress. It’s difficult to recall whether that was true,
but her manner and the fruitiness of her voice was screamingly
funny. But then having got that out of our system we all settled
down and listened. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt the call. It
sounds corny I know, but it happened. I still value the experi-
ence as being beyond the words that my conscious mind’s
‘bullshit filter’ would never have let in. I still remember the
overpowering physical nature of the experience. It was so
intoxicating. But after that nothing. Repeating the experience
was positively discouraged. There was no real tradition with
that church of working with mystical or altered states. My
mentors told me that I was only allowed one hit.

Years later and alone in my room I again experienced the call
and this time it was a terrifying experience. I went through my
routine, the banishing, the sitting quietly and trying to achieve
‘one-pointedness’. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular
when suddenly what I call the ‘vishuddha cakra’ burst into life.
I’m not sure if that’s the right term to use. Looking back I guess
it’s all about dissolution, the fear the ego has that the mind’s
familiar structures are about to be blown away. It’s a bit of a
shock to discover that just thinking in a certain way can shake
up mind and body, triggering the most bizarre, unfamiliar
sensation perhaps even hallucinations. And on the otherhand
the sensations were powerfully ecstatic, part of me wanted
them to continue until the natural resolution but the other part
was seriously afraid of what that might mean. Perhaps this is

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why mystics speak of good and bad angels contending over the
soul’s fate.

The other feature of this experience was that is was so easy to
lose it. Think about it too much and it starts to recede. The
point of equipoise is finely balanced and easy to forget. Tradi-
tion says that this cakra is situated in the throat - so it’s an odd
place to start feeling waves of ecstasy. Perhaps that’s why it was
so alarming. The well known experience of a ‘lump in the
throat’ is a reminder of the strong emotions that have their root
there. The experience went on for several minutes - sometimes
radiating from my throat sometimes just above my heart. After a
while it just ended and I was sitting there wondering what it was
all about. It was years later before I learnt that the Tantrik deity
Ardanisvara ‘resides’ in this cakra - which is strangely appropri-
ate somehow. (see notes on Ardanisvara).

Vivekanda was the most useful guide to all this. It was as if he’d
thought of all the angles. Nod off in a meditation - it would be
there as one of the signs of progress - it shows the Ego is
getting worried enough about what you’re doing to try to put
you to sleep. In a western idiom these might be likened to
‘demons’ - tormentors ultimately sent by the Ego to deflect you
from the path. Why one part of mind would want to stymie the
efforts of another is one of those little paradoxes of magick. My
little experience of ‘enstasy’ was over. All I had left was some
excruciating sensations of ‘pins and needles’ caused by sitting
still for thirty minutes or so. The positive thing was that
Vivekanda wrote that meditation was a special kind of remem-
bering. This had several senses - the most immediate being that
the experience I had just ‘enjoyed’ could be called to mind at
any future time - and doing this would repeat its effects and also
cause it to grow. Meditation, like magick, was something that
could grow, even if painfully slowly, the more I practiced. . .

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The Curse of Merlin V -
Long slow magical
journey (continued)

Like most newbies it took a while for me to really get going. I
was a probationer with the OTO headed up by Kenneth Grant.
Back then there were no real clouds on the horizon but since all
sorts of disputes had arizen on which I am unlike to be the final
word I will just say how it was for me. It would be several years
before I even met anyone from any other claimants to Crowley’s
sword. Although obviously unbeknownst to me, a sleeping
dragon had been awoken.

Crowley encouraged conflict amongst magicians. Perhaps he
knew that the ancient Egyptians also thought that without
conflict there could be no progress. The modern stop / go
progress of Thelema is in part made more comprehensible by
reading the fascinating history of its first days. Crowley had lots
of conflicts with a whole string of magical brothers and sisters.
In the case of his OTO frater superior Theodor Reuss, Crowley
upped and gave his boss the sack, proclaiming himself head of
the order (Starr 2004: 112).

One of the best and most readable studies of the OTO’s recent
history: is The Unknown God: W. T. Smith And The
Thelemites, (Martin Starr 2004). Starr tells the story of Wilfred
Smith and I suppose what one might call the second generation
of Thelemites, who set about to promulgate the Crowleyan
teachings in 1930s Hollywood.

In Crowley’s own contendings with his contemporaries he was
often to fall back on the words of John Bunyan: ‘my sword to

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him that can take it’. And indeed, according to Martin Starr, if
Crowley could only have proved his right to the OTO crown
and therefore its successor organisations, he might have suc-
ceeded in his desires to impose his control over the Theosophi-
cal Society and AMORC - and then how differently the magical
world of the 1980s might have looked. Can you imagine what
the Theosophical Society, would look if Crowley had succeeded
Besant? Would Gloucester Place be rocking to the sound of
AC/DC?

Crowley would also have done well to remember that in ancient
Egypt, the king must die. When he (or she) can no longer cut it
or as in Crowley’s case has gone gaga and starts unpicking the
thing he has made – it’s time for a little experiment. Crowley’s
geriatric obsession with trying to micro-manage the OTO
eventually led to its self-destruction – a blight from which it did
not recover until in the 1970s when several of the old guard
decided to have another go. Whatever anyone may say, none of
the current OTO twigs had much more than a paper existence
until the 1970s revival.

It was the 1970s when I myself was first drawn into the OTO
net. I met a member of a recently reformed American branch of
the Order who up till that point had been a bit of a sleeper but
was happy to be re-activated. Kenneth Grant’s UK based
‘Typhonian’ OTO was a visible presence but was, for many, an
unattractive prospect. And that’s despite KGs high profile as
consultant to groundbreaking part work Man Myth & Magic,
and the first of nine seminal books of modern occultism. Whilst
many found these books an inspiration, I’d say no other occult
writer in any other Thelemic organisation has managed anything
like their sweep of vision and font of magical ideas. The best
the rest of us have done is maybe a few footnotes to Crowley.
Despite this, as a magical leader KG obviously left a lot to be
desired – the possibilities for empire building were just too
limited.

My Caliphate friend and I edited a magazine called Nuit Isis,

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which aimed to focus on the common ground between
Thelemites. But just as in the Contending of Horus & Seth, the
first of an interminable sequence of court cases was just begin-
ning (in the original contendings the trial went on for 80 years!)
– and the peaceful coexistence of the first days of the 1970s
magical revival did not last. The ‘sword’ those days was seen
swinging in the Inns of Court. As in the ancient narrative,
people seemed to switch sides, allowing the so-called judge to
rule that such and such had no supporters. Some say those
‘traitors’ get their reward, although not everyone can be king,
and often the hand that wields the knife does not wear the
crown.

There is one paragraph in Martin Starr’s book that really ought
to be engraved in the second courtyard of the ideal temple –
you know the one that elucidates the relationship between
earthy power and the journey onwards to liberation. OK, not
the place of the highest mysteries but important none the less.
Over the last few years the erstwhile modern day followers of
the kingly Horus have become ever bolder in bellowing their
cries of ‘bastard’! So here shall be carved the more considered
judgment:

For those perhaps less familiar with some of the following
names let me tell you that they are all the main players in the
subsequent history of Thelema - here laid low by the mind
games of Crowley and his caretaker Germer. Everyone has
heard of Kenneth Grant’s ‘expulsion’ but did you know it was
for blasphemy? How does a Thelemite blaspheme? ‘You boy!
how dare you make up some hare-brained scheme about a trans-
plutonian planet, and then have the audacity to identify it with
our beloved star goddess Nuit – take six hundred and sixty six
lines – ‘every man and every woman is a STAR’!!!! Wipe that
smile off your face . . . I’m sending you home.’ Well he wasn’t
the only one sent down that week:

‘With Germer expired the last chance for Thelema to take root
in the United States, and the prospects internationally were no

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more bright. Or so one might have thought. Germer had suc-
cessfully accused Mellinger of being an FBI agent and kicked
him out of the house, expelled Grant for blasphemy, dismissed
McMurtry as a slave to his wife and ceased corresponding with
Metzger over differences in the Crowley translations in German
the latter had published. Motta had fled the United States for
his native Brazil after having been arrested in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, in February 1961 on suspicion of drug trafficking;
while in jail he confessed that the source of the drugs found in
his compartment was none other than his OTO Brother, Louis
T. Culling. In the following year Germer refrained from giving
Motta a charter to open the OTO in Brazil, mindful of the fact
that Motta, in his experience only “switched temporarily back
into sanity.” Yet on his deathbed what faith Germer had in a
future for Thelema he chose to vest in Motta, telling Sasha to
inform Frater Adjuvo! that he was “The Follower.” What this
may have meant was the subject of speculation that was never
satisfactorily resolved. The issue of Germer’s heir to the
headship of the OTO remained an open question to the few
who knew or cared about it.’ (Starr 2004:

So the moving finger in the sky pointed at Motta. But the Hairy
Pothead school for wizards could be a hard place for the aspir-
ing young sorcerer – best advice is – if you want to get on –
keep your head down – or you’ll end up like Crowley’s co-
superior in the OTO Frater Achad (expelled and mad), Jack
Parsons (expelled then blown to bits) and the Martin Starr’s hero
Wilfred Smith – lost on a wild goose chase for a god unknown.

Luckily I didn’t know too much when like a fool I joined the
OTO. . .

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The Curse of Merlin VI -
Conventionalism

‘1977 and the world is going mad’. They say when you take up
magick the life changes can be bewildering. For me it meant
leaving the safety of my parent’s home where I’d found tempo-
rary sanctuary after a failed relationship. It meant leaving a
secure job with interesting prospects. It meant leaving the town
in which I’d grown up. It was the right thing to do. Traditionally
the magical journey is more than an internal pilgrimage. As I
write I occasionally receive letters from beginners in obscure
backwoods towns wanting to study magick. I know that if they
are serious they are probably going to have to move. Those who
seek magick must travel. If when you weigh up all the options
you find you aren’t really up for that then the magical life
probably isn’t for you. It’s a first test, how attached are you to
your roots? I was leaving friends and lovers behind. I was also
leaving Wales - and for me that was no bad thing.

First stop Brighton on England’s south coast to one of the UKs
newish redbrick universities. Months earlier I’d walked up from
the little railway station at Falmer and straight into a student
picket line. For me that was a good sign - it felt like home. One
of the pickets challenged me, ‘Where are you going’ he said,
‘can’t you see this is a picket line.’ ‘But I ‘ve got an interview’ I
replied meekly. ‘Oh, well that’s alright then.’ and he let me pass
with calls of ‘He’s OK he’s got an interview.’

Somewhere in Crowley I’d read there is no such as thing as
wasted knowledge. The intellectual component of magick is
something that can come as something of a surprise. I was at
Sussex to study for a degree in philosophy. It gave me the
material I needed to develop my very own personal theory of

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knowledge - something with the rather grand title of epistemol-
ogy. Ultimately magick is the pursuit of knowledge or to use the
magicians preferred term - Gnosis. So anything that illuminated
the nature of the quest was going to be useful - nothing would
be wasted.

From the charismatic ‘catholic’ radical Ivan Illich I learnt a love
of the dialectical method long before I discovered the pagan
roots of the technique. Illich was guest lecturer on campus,
filling its largest lecture theatre to bursting point. The most
controversial of Illich’s theories was his liberal critique of
medicine. He proposed that we should contemplate some sort
of limit to medicine (and indeed science) which was now an
enterprise counter productive even hubristic. Whatever the
rights and wrongs of all that - Illich always began his lectures by
asking the audience what they thought and what would they like
to discuss.

The next big influence was the philosophy of conventionalism -
something that began in the nineteenth century with the physi-
cist Pierre Duhem, and flows through the work of Willard Van
Orman Quine. Despite the big name - conventionalism is not so
difficult to understand. It’s a philosophy that seems particularly
friendly towards mysticism and leaves (or clears) some space for
alternative views of reality.

Karl Popper summarised it thus:

The source of the Conventionalist philosophy would seem to be
wonder at the austerely beautiful simplicity of the world as
revealed in the laws of physics. Conventionalists seem to feel
that this simplicity would be incomprehensible and indeed
miraculous, if we were bound to believe, with the Realists, that
the laws of nature reveal to us an inner, structural simplicity of
our world beneath its outer appearance of lavish variety...for the
Conventionalist, theoretical natural science is not a picture of
nature but merely a logical construction

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Conventionalism seems to be making a strong comeback espe-
cially in the study of psycho-physiology where it goes under the
name of naive parallelism. This is a method of studying the
mind without worrying too much about the insoluble link
between function and structure. It makes use of coordinated
data such as the study of a physiological signs such as the
Electro-encephalogram and observed behaviour.(3)

The seminal twentieth-century statement of the Conventionalist
position is to be found in Pierre Duhem’s La Théory Physique. Son
Object et Sa Structure. Written in 1906 and therefore just before
the conceptual revolution in scientific thought instigated by
Albert Einstein and his colleagues. The new physics confirmed
many of Duhem’s views although he was not really part of the
new wave and died in 1916 without really assimilating any
lessons from it.

Duhem attempted to produce a simple logical analysis of the
method by which physical science makes progress.(5) In his
view a physical theory is an abstract system whose aim is to
summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws
without claiming to explain these laws By explain he means any
attempt to theorize about the reality behind sensible appear-
ances, any attempt to, as he put it, lift the veil of reality. He
rejects this type of explanation because of its close affinity with
metaphysical speculation. Not that he was totally opposed to
metaphysics, merely that he wanted to draw a clear line between
metaphysics and natural science. He acknowledged that in the
past metaphysical speculation has played a crucial role in the
construction of theories; nevertheless it is clear that there is no
necessary connection between a theory’s explanatory and its
purely descriptive content. Duhem may not be interested in
metaphysics but in my opinion his theory gives it some space -
which to me is no bad thing.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is an important figure in the
history of mathematical astronomy. Few people know that

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Platonic and Pythagorean components in his conception of
celestial harmony, however mystical in origin, helped him to
develop the three principles of planetary motion now known by
his name

In its narrowest sense a theory can be viewed as a mnemonic
device. A mnemonic device is best when it has a formal or
logical structure such as a classificatory table which imposes
some order on a lavish body of data. Theories tend to be based
upon a natural classification i.e. a formal system, especially in
Botany or Zoology will be based upon natural characteristics of
its participants. Duhem contends that the sole justification of a
scientific theory is that it agrees with experimental data. The
theory must ‘save the phenomena’ rather than flying completely
in its face. Belief in a theory implies no commitment to all or
even any of the entities or variables postulated in the theory, for
there are numerous theories that will meet the above criterion.
This is what is meant when it is said that a theory is under-
determined by data.

Willard Van Orman Quine, who is a follower of Duhem’s, puts
it in the following way:

“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the
most casual matter of geography and history to the profoundest
laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic,
is a man-made fabric, which impinges on experience only along
the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field
of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict
with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the
interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over
some of our statements... But the total field is so under-deter-
mined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is
much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in
the light of any single contrary experience.” (7)

Although this view of a ‘pragmatic’ philosophy of science was
never really intended to make room for metaphysics or ‘alterna-

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tives’ , for me that’s precisely what it did. This at the time was
how I came to interpret Crowley’s maxim : ‘The aim of religion,
the method of science’

Notes:

(1) Karl Popper 1983 :79

(2) Karl Popper (1983 :

(3) A Gale, Psycho-Physiology: a bridge between disciplines,
inaugural LectureUniversity of Southampton 1979).

(4) Translated by P P Wiener, The Aim Structure of Physical
Theory (Princeton, 1954).

(5) P Duhem, (1954 : 7)

(6) Encyclopedia Britannica, (5th Ed) “>’ 10.432...:

(7) W V O Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ first published
in: From A Logical Point Of View (Harvard University Press :
1964. 2nd Ed) pp 42-43

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The Curse of Merlin VII

I didn’t have much time for magick during that first year at
University. Plans for a probationary ‘practice’ was confined to a
regular correspondence with the mentor allocated to me by the
shadowy figures in the OTO. My first mentor went by the name
of Fr(ater) Leviathan. His neatly typed letters were always
thought provoking and full of very useful information. But he
wrote to me from an American military base in the Far East -
his blue notepaper sometimes embossed with a map of the
place he was defending! Leviathan told me there wasn’t an
awful lot going on where he was and his long nights watching a
glowing console gave him plenty of time for correspondence.

Leviathan presented a bit of a challenge for a precocious anti-Vietnam
war campaigner; was I talking magick with ‘the enemy’. Not that this
was something new - one of Crowley’s most trusted people was a Major
Fuller, a specialist in tank warfare in the British Army - and incidentally
an honoured guest at Adolf Hitler’s fiftieth birthday party. It’s one thing
reading that in a book when you can put it down to the ‘way it was then.’
Finding yourself in an organisation that also includes a smattering of
policemen and military was a bit of a challenge. . . .

Later I got a UK mentor called Fr Custor (mundane name JC)
from Derby where a small cell of Thelemites gathered around
an occult fanzine called Phoenix Rising. Members of magical
orders tend to adopt a new name or motto. Perhaps its a hang-
over from the time when they were secret societies. The Her-
metic Order of the Golden Dawn refined this some, the names
becoming an expression of the candidate’s inner philosophy or
aim. ‘Custor’ always struct me as an odd name - the only Custor
I knew was the guy who died at the battle of the Little Big
Horn. Custor was part of a special group of magicians,
devottees of the ancient Egyptian goddess Maat. Members of
this particular ‘sub-cult’ within the Thelemic tradition often do
have by the magical standards, quite offbeat magical names. It’s
something to do with the Maatian current, something self-

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consciously contemporary, part of their world view whereby
they are more interested in their ‘future’ than ‘past’ self.

Sometime later Fr Custor also disappeared from my mailbox and
I heard nothing more of him for more than a decade. The switch
of mentor was never really explained, it was only later that I
discovered that the Typhonian OTO was going through yet
another of its periodic purges. Frs. Leviathan, and Custor, along
with Sor Tanith and many another by then familiar name had all
gone. So letters started arriving from another unfamiliar name -
Ani Asig, the only one left with the time (or ability) to corre-
spond with a very lowly newbie. From my time in the Civil
Service came the uncomfortable recollection of how if you kept
your head down and waiting long enough your turn would
come.This process was called ‘bugging’s turn’.

* * *

None of the above seemed that important at the time as I
submerged myself into the very pleasant life of a University
student - remembering that I had a student grant, all my fees
paid and I could even sign-on during the vacation. Those were
the days. I went back to Casnewedd for the Christmas vacation
and again, probably for the last time for Easter. The weather
was balmy and I did my best to maintain some of the relation-
ship with the friends I’d left behind in Wales.

Allan was one of the strangest. Allan was an Anglican priest
who’d just returned to a Gwent parish from several years teach-
ing in a Bengal theological college. We’d met at a meeting of the
local Anti Rascist Committee and shared an interest in politics,
India and theological speculation. I don’t suppose he ever really
approved of my growing pagan sensibility but he was always
very fair minded. We had an unspoken pact that I listened to
lectures from visiting theologians and he would came along to
the Christmas soiree at Cardiff ’s Theosophical Society. We sat
in the back row trying to be inconspicuous as we were regaled
with selected extracts from HPBs publishing masterpieces and

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for light relief, a humorous monologue on Theosophical themes.
Those Theosophists certainly knew how to throw a party - not.

In the Easter break Allan took me along to the smallholding/
cottage of an old family friend. The sun was shining, it was an
idyllic day and the old stone house was everything you could
wish for in the Gwent countryside - green rolling hills with a
stream running through. Turned out his friend was an astrologer
and diviner of some skill. I wish I could remember her name but
its so long ago now and all I can remember was the beaming
face of her teenage daughter. There was something very
otherworldy about her, almost angelic.

Before I left I had my first hand-drawn horoscope - all neatly
written in blue ink on lined paper and very incisive. I knew I
was a Piscean but uptil then I had no real idea how much. I
don’t think there was a single earth sign to balance things out.
Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus in Pisces. So the final summa-
tion was a bit of a warning - ‘This is either a saint or a terrible
mess. The subject does not have one earth sign to plant his feet
on the ground - [or provide] practical ability’!

As a finisher she suggested I cast coins for the I Ching oracle,
another first for me although I’d read about its almost daily use
by Aleister Crowley. I never told her the question but she
seemed to know the answer before I’d finished the casting. The
coins fell six times on the same side which yield the first
Hexagramme in the sequence. It’s taken me a while to fully
understand what it all meant but years later I would indeed join
a magical order whose sacred emblem was the six unbroken
lines of the I Ching Hexgramme.

It was also from the I Ching that I divined my first magical name
. . . Allan was on hand to translate my idea into Hebrew. De-
spite his expertise, Allan didn’t really know too much about the
magical implications - but it seemed to work out alright in the
end. Perhaps that is as it should be - it takes a while to unrival
all of the ramifications of a magical name. ‘Katon Shual’ is a

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fairly ‘one for one’ transcription of the I Ching’s ‘Little Fox’ - the
one that is skating on thin ice but somehow manages to survive
by cunning and the judicious use of his (or her) tail. It’s also
difficult to decide which way round the elements of the name
should be viewed - but that also seems quite appropriate. There
was loads more to discover - including the mysteries of those
cunning little fox spirits - the Kami.

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The Curse of Merlin VIII
- 1st Degree

I couldn’t really put it off any longer, the time had come to
actually start. Occultists persistently call this a practice - per-
haps in homage to the tantrik ‘sadhana’. The problem was that
when I joined the OTO knowledge of the basics of ritual
magick was fairly minimal. Those who had ritual skill either did
not want to share it or had, as I recounted in an earlier section,
been driven from the Order. So guidance on actually what to do
was difficult to come by and this undoubtedly hindered my
progress.

I’m going to make a bit of a digression here to explain how this
state of affairs had come about. Under Kenneth Grant’s leader-
ship the OTO had pretty much abandoned the ritual grade work
put together by Aleister Crowley. Grant felt this was hopelessly
tainted by ideas from Freemasonry. Freemasonry was viewed as
a belief system of the old aeon before the emergence of the
new ideas in Crowley’s channelled text Liber Al. Received
wisdom was that in his twilight years Crowley had become
discontented with the way the Order was working and wanted
some sort of new convenant or new Order. He’d even got so far
as to give it a name - the Order of Thelema. More recent
research shows that Crowley was in danger of throwing out the
baby with the bath water (see Martin Starr etc). Crowley was
repeating the mistakes of many an occult leader - clinging to his
old life and trying to micromanage the work of his disciples
when he should really have been letting them go. Old ‘gurus’ are
often surrounded by those who see an opportunty for some sort
of advancement to be had from the new way. I’ve seen it so
many times now.

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So with hindsight I think it was a mistake to abandon all of the
Order’s rituals, especially the Gnostic Mass. But at the time I
didn’t really understand the issues. And indeed when I look now
at the Gnostic Mass I can see now how it could do with a good
rewrite and a few years back I did indeed construct a more
streamlined version. The Mass is of course the prototype for the
Grand Rite of Wicca. The ritual is designed for a congregation
to witness, in part or whole, the enactment of the ‘Thelemic
Secret’. If you don’t have a congregation then it probably makes
sense to dispense with that part of the rite. But at its core is the
essential act of ‘eucharist’ magick that should still be treasured.
It’s taken me a while to fully understand the meaning and origin
of the Thelemic secret. As my understanding grew I offered
various insights into this in my published works, most recently
The Bull of Ombos.

Kenneth Grant’s premature abandonment of the Gnostic Mass
was probably one of the factors that led to the reformation in
the early 1980s of the American OTO under Grady MacMurtry.
The is the group widely known as the Caliphate - and if any-
thing their problem is that the Gnostic Mass is all they have. As
I write this I thinking of a recent magical retreat were the only
work on offer was a workshop on the Gnostic Mass, followed
by a performance - this entire programme to be repeated on
each of the three days of the retreat. The Gnostic Mass is good,
but not that good.

It was always made clear to me that the OTO I was joining did
not encourage contact between members. It’s magical
programme was in fact more akin to the grade structure of
another Crowley creation - the AA - an acronymn of uncertain
meaning - perhaps Argentinum Astrum - Order of the Silver
Star. The Typhonian OTO was framed around a curriculum of
individual magical study and attainment. All this was interesting
but hardly rocket science. The ace up the sleeve for the
Typhonian was the Kenneth Grant’s own extention of the
Thelemic mythos through a series of books and articles that
form the Typhonian trilogies.

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When in the 1940s Kenneth Grant began his own career chan-
neling messages from ‘another world’ it was regarded by
Crowley’s successor Karl Germer as an insult to the great man’s
memory and as tantamount to blasphemy. Grant was receiving
messages from a trans-plutonian planet, which he identified
with the star goddess Nuit. Rumour has it that this was viewed
as a contradiction of the one of Thelema’s holiest texts where it
says ‘every man and every woman is a STAR’.

But Grant had captured the mood of his times better than any
of his contemporary magicians ever could or would. Grant was
obsessed with the idea that something out there is trying to tell
us something using a whole variety of mediums and modes of
communication. Crowley, he tells us, ‘with prophetic acumen [ ]
presaged the massive interest in alien phenomena which erupted
soon after his death and which was caused by Kenneth Arnold’s
‘flying saucer’ sighting [in 1947]. Whatever one’s attitude to
such phenomena – positive, negative or indifferent – there is no
just denial of the fact that the wave initiated an era of psycho-
mythology unparalleled since man conceived the idea of the
‘gods’…. unless, therefore, we are to write off the entire ‘myth’
as an unprecedented mass delusion, we have to accept the fact
that something approaching a seemingly new and inexplicable
nature began slowly and insidiously to disturb the world in the
year 1947.’. (The Ninth Arch p xix)

Acting on the assumptions that ‘many a true word spoken in
jest’; ‘the ‘ritualists of Grant’s ‘renegade’ Nu Isis Lodge utilized
novels and stories as other magicians might use paintings or
musical compositions to effect perichoresis and astral encoun-
ters’ xxxvi Apart from the usually occult litany, H P Lovecraft,
Algernon Blackwood et al Grant primary source is Richard
Marsh’s novel The Beetle which contains the only published
account known [to Grant] of the Children of Isis who emerge in
the channelled text in rather startling form. Kenneth Grant’s
numerology was suspect, his historical sources unreliable, but
his poetical intuition was for many strangely prescient.

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Without getting too far ahead of myself - I ‘ve never been that
into the UFO hypothesis although I appreciate how it can
function as an important metaphor that can provoke the imagi-
nation, especially of artistic types. In the words of the historian
Michael Wood, UFOs are false but also real, or Umberto Eco’s
lies that are more powerful than truth. I had more empathy for
the ideas stemming from an important sub-cult within Thelema,
that of the Maatians. Their unease at the prospect of the new
‘Aeon of Horus’ prophesised in Crowley’s Liber Al led them to
look forward to a future Aeon, which they hoped would be
ruled over by more balanced forces such as Maat, the ancient
Egyptian personification of Justice. The voices that speak to
the Maatians are not from some other race - but our own per-
fected future selves. Kenneth Grant had initially recorded and
rejected this philosophy but had over time changed his mind.
The prime source here would be his book Outside the Circles of
Time, which I was lucky enough to obtain from one of
Brighton’s remainder shops. The chapter ‘Andahadna and the
Mystique of Maat’ is particularly interesting. Andahadna or
‘Nema’ was / is an merican priestess. As I read it her story I
focussed on her mystical journey and skipped over Grant’s
attempts to analyze the esoteric subtext which didn’t mean a lot
to me at the time and I confess still don’t do a lot for me.

* * *

Well so much for theory but what do you do with it. I wasn’t
really getting too much in the way of practical guidance from
my OTO mentors but there were plenty of ideas from my books
to mull over. I had gleaned that there was a particular aim for
this first degree practice - the vision of the holy guardian angel.
So the practice was all about vision. There was also the rather
unusually stipulation that the work was to last nine months -
which implied I was to give birth to something. Of the many
books that guided me through this time two in particular were
most useful - the first was George Chavalier’s The Sacred Magi-
cian: a ceremonial diary. The author has since comeout as new age
guru William Bloom. The second was Crowley’s own short diary

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John St John. Thus primed I settled down for a fairly wearisome
practice of concentration as outlined in the first few chapters of
Crowley’s Liber ABA. Although I got there in the end, I now
know that it could have been so much more direct.

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The Curse of Merlin IX-
1st Degree continued

No sooner had the ink dried on my magical oath than there was
a complication. I’d moved off campus to a room in a shared
house in Brighton’s ‘Kemptown’. A letter arrived from Jay, a
woman with whom I’d struck up an ill fated relationship during
my second term. She was majoring in French and spent a lot of
time studying abroad including Switzerland. When I first met Jay
I quickly learnt about her complex lifestyle au pairing in a Swiss
ski resort. She’d been having an affair with the married owner of
a cafe / ski-school. The new term was about to begin and she
was returning but had no place to stay. She was desperate and
insisted that she would have to share my room for a while - we
had that kind of relationship. It was very tempting to abort my
magical practice. But then there were these words from Ken-
neth Grant running through my head ‘there never is a good time
for magick.’ So not for the first time I told myself to just get on
with it. ‘Distractions’ like Jay were like the demons that rise up
from the Id whose sole purpose is to make you change your
mind. Jay was far from demonic and in the end we came to an
arrangement over the tiny living space - and I mean tiny.

It was probably all bullshit really. I guess she really just wanted
to be with me but couldn’t bring herself to say that. She was my
first real grown-up girlfriend and I suspect it was pretty much
the same for her. We both had our hangups - conditioning that
needed to be undone. Like many women of the time she was
full of self doubt. And me, well yes, I had my own demons.
Magick helped me cultivate a ‘devil may care attitude to life’, it
made me a risk taker, much more willing to experiment and at
same time not worry too much about the consequences. That’s
why we messed the whole thing up right from the start. Jay

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played a big part in the way I developed during my first faltering
steps into the magical life. I guess we were both quite androgy-
nous and though we didn’t know it at the time, our interaction
contributed towards the emergence of a new modern version of
the older Kaula cult of Ardanari. Some of the fruits of this time
found their way in largely undigested form into my book Sexual
Magick. Something you wont read in Crowley is that when it
comes to relationships with women, kindness can get you a long
way. Last time I saw Jay she was on the point of ordination as a
Buddhist nun so I guess my influence wasn’t all bad. I’ve no
idea what she’s doing now but I wish her and Buddhism well.
Perhaps I have earned some merit from helping set her feet on
the Buddhist path. There’s more than a little bit of Jay in my
great unread novel The English Mahatma and even more in Pan’s
Road.

The appearance of Jay in this narrative definately raised the
possibility of sexual magick. Even as a comparative novice I
was already ready to express my views on the topic. There again
if you wait until you can offer a considered opinion you’ll
probably never do it. A typical me of the time went along to the
Jewish Society to listen to a debate on the topic of Gay rights in
Judaism. The orthodox Rabbi had showed but his debating
partner couldn’t make it. The organisers came out and asked if
anyone was willing to debate with the visiting Rabbi. I was
always up for an argument whether or not I understood the
issues. And these issues were becoming a bit of an obsession.

But what I keep thinking about now is a paragraph I read in
David White’s monograph The Kiss of the Yogini, a study of
‘Tantrik Sex’ in its south Asian context. A Yogini is a wild
female animal spirit worshipped in the secret rites of the
Kaulas. The eucharist in these rites is sometimes referred to as
androgynous. Androgyny is sometimes seen as one of the goals of
magick. One of the things I did learn during my interactions
with Jay was that androgyny or fusion of the sexes can be
manifest in any and every kind of relationship Hence amongst
the Kaulas some elixirs are androgynous and some gods such as

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Ardhanari are androgynous. The goal of androgyny does not
imply any particular sexual orientation. Perhaps this is why the
magician often does switch genders or orientation.

* * *

I’m probably going to have to dig around in the loft to find my
old magical record of that year. I just can’t remember too much
about it. I did once show it to another of my magical partners
and she said it was one of the most boring things she’d ever
read. Oh well - maybe it was true that it only passed muster at
the OTO because they were desperate or as another initiate
called Phil once confided to me - out of pity. So I did eventually
meet other members of the OTO including scarey geordie Phil -
bitch. Actually I quite liked Phil. I thought of him as a real
magician and indeed last time I heard from him he told me
ecstatically he had his angel.

During that first probationary year I enrolled into a yoga class. It
turned out to be one of my better decisions. My teacher Wendy
had trained with Iyenga at his Puna ashram, a place she said
resembled a medieval torture chamber. Although Iyenga yoga is
very famous there isn’t really a lot to recommend it apart from
the fame of its celebrated teacher. Iyenga had grown fat and
cynical with age and was probably quite bored with having to
teach the same stuff every day of his life. Like every Indian
guru he was grooming one of his over-induged children to take
over the family business. Wendy was full of amusing stories
about the worst excesses of the Iyenga clan, like how when
supervising a class in headstands he would kick out with his
foot anyone not in the required position. She still bore the scars
of his horny, necrotic toenails. And more seriously - strict
Iyenga types tend to make their students hold positions far too
long - which can lead to neck and joint injury.

Wendy was our guide and bullshit filter through all this. She’d
mellowed her style, integrating material from western insights
such as Alexander Technique. The way she combined different

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body magick styles was way ahead of its time. She told us that
those so-called gurus who refuse to teach menstruating women
are chauvinists who hide behind tradition. It was a very ‘tantrik’
class. After each session we all went to the student union bar for
a few beers, followed by dancing at the disco til the early hours.
We were all so charged up and fit - it really was magic.

Most Thelemites think that they can learn all they need to know
about yoga from reading Crowley; but how wrong that is. Swal-
low your pride and you can learn so much more from a mumsy
teacher at the local community centre. One thing Crowley was
right about was that yoga is one of the basic skills of magick.
Another friend Mahindra had a good way of putting it - ‘yoga,
(or was it magick?) is preparation for making love.’ What
Crowley forgot was that you can’t relax and tense a muscle at
the same time. Magick still lacks its own bespoke yoga system.
None of the available styles quite fits the bill - either too New
Age or too materialistic. In my opinion a good teacher of body
magick could go a long way. Some sort of combination of yoga
or Ti Chi with magical visioning techniques. Whatever way you
look at it magick requires a warm-up - which is maybe what
Mahindra was getting up with his preparations. Some of the
most intense gnostic states I’ve achieved have been in that
warm afterglow following a good workout.

* * *

I caught the last train back to Brighton after a hard day slaving
over a hot keyboard. My mind was straining to accomodate all
the new ideas. My body was stretched in the yoga class; I’d
drunk too much beer; smoked too many cigarettes, if I was
lucky smoked a little dope, stayed on the dance floor until the
last waltz, then back to my bedsite. Many, many times my diary
reads, did the banishing, sat down to meditate in front of the
shri yantra then passed out; crawling into bed with you know
who. There were always so many dreams, I was good at the
dreaming. Uninspiring as it was my meditations did provide
some sort of back beat to the other comings and goings in my

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life. But I knew it wouldn’t be quite enough - I needed some-
thing else - I needed to go on retreat.

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The Curse of Merlin X -
‘I’m a potato’

Memories rise up like bubbles in a liquid. Something,
perhaps the transcendental ego, sees it all. The trick is to just
witness, neither analysing nor suppressing. When the
‘bubbles’ reach the top they evaporate and Mind becomes
clearer. I read that somewhere, maybe in Vivekananda but it
was at odds with the stuff I was learning in my philosophical
training which often spoke of the fallacies of the ‘ghost in the
machine’. The machine is our physical body, the ghost the spirit
inside. But I couldn’t really see what was wrong with the idea of
a ghost in a machine. Crowley wrote how you are not aware of
certain internal organs until they go wrong. So for example some
amputees experience something called a phantom limb? Or
people seeking gender reassignment speak of a disjunction
between their internal sense of themselves and the physical
shell?

There’s a funny little story running round in my head concerning
my first encounter with Sufis. There quite a strong undercurrent
of Sufism flowing through the works of Aleister Crowley and
the Golden Dawn starting with the mantra ‘ARARITA’. Most
magicians encounter this mantra very early on as it forms a
significant part of the Hexagramme ritual, although it might not
be immediate obvious from whence it originates. The beginner
in magick is recommended to read Liber O which I presume to
be based on one of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s
‘flying rolls’.

These days, my brother, the Sufi adept and Thelemite Payam
Narbarz, has made this part of his daily prayers. For the full
explanation of the mantra you have to read a slightly lesser

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known ‘Holy book’ - ‘LIBER DCCCXIII VEL ARARITA SUB
FIGURA DLXX’. It is significant that this text actually begins
with and amplifies the meaning of the mantra, here restored to
its Arabic original:

Payam tells me that “The Mantra is one of the surahs in the
Quran

(surah 112- IHKLAAS- The Unity) :

1- QUL HU-WALLAAHU ‘AHAD
2- ‘ALLAAHUS-SAMAD
3- LAM YALIO, WA LAM YUULAD;
4- WALAM YAKUL-LA-HUU
KUFUWAN ‘AHAD

translation:
1- He is Allah, the One!
2- Allah the eternally besought of all!
3- He begetteth not nor was begotten.
4- And there is none comparable unto him.”

* * *

Back in 1979 my yoga teacher Wendy must have gotten wind of
my occult interests and took me along to a meeting in what
turned out to be a very cold loft in Lewes. About a dozen of us
struggled up the ladder to sit at the feet of Rashid, a visiting
Sufi sheikh. I suppose I was expecting something more exotic
that a western convert but he seemed nice enough. He was a big
overweight man with a manner that in a previous life I might
have called ‘camp’. A great many gay men and women are
drawn to the spiritual life in all its styles.

I wasn’t the first to climb that ladder and soon the loft was quite
crowded when without warning the meditation began.

Rashid’s fine voice boomed out -

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Allaaaaah,

Illaaaaaah

Allaaaaaah

As usual my first reaction was shock expressing itself as the
desire to laugh. It was the first time I’d ever heard someone
vibrating ‘zikker’ or dhikr’ (mantra, literally ‘a
remembrance’). I suppressed the desire to laugh as the master’s
chanting continued for an interminable 100 repetitions. We were
obviously meant to join in but this was less successful. I wasn’t
the only beginner in the room. After what seemed like an age
the chanting stopped. Silence decended on the room and with
our minds spinning, we continued meditating as best we
could in private silence punctuated by the odd shuffle and
cough.

The strangest of images popped into my head. Later, when the
meditation was done Rashid asked each of us to share what we
had experienced - what you might call the bread and butter of
group meditation. When it came to me turn I blurted out:

‘I felt like a potato’

Wry smiles went round the room. Rashid seemed a bit lost from
words and eventually responded with an anodyne ‘just persevere
and you’ll get there in the end.’

It takes a while to find the correct words to express these kinds
of experience. I had changed during the chanting, feeling some-
times very large, sometimes extremely tiny. I did feel like a
vegetable - a tuber incubating in the dark earth. It was a pro-
gression of sorts - the vegetative mind state can be viewed a
yogic trance - although to be fair the normal metaphor would be
a tree or plant. In Hatha yoga there are various vegetative poses
called Tree.

We sat in referential silence sipping tea and eating brownies. No

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one really wanted to initiate conversation. Those further up the
pecking order did their best to keep the conversation going. One
of them asked after Rashid’s future plans.

‘Oh’ he said, ‘I’ve just bought some property in New York
State. I’m going to open a guest house. I think I will call it
the Sufi Shores Hotel.’

When middle class New Age types start talking about their
mortgages you know the meditation is defininely over. We were
back to normal mode - from the sublime to the ridiculous.

But something had still changed for me. University campus was
very beautiful, great care having been taken to build it in har-
mony with undullating hills. Many of the trees were very old
and had not been uprooted during the construction
process. Now when I walk across the campus there was some-
thing different about those trees. I can’t quite explain it - some-
thing alive and because it was winter, something deep down in
the cold earth just waiting to burst forth. I hadn’t felt that way
for a long time.

- - -

Note

For more of Payam’s stuff see:

http://www.geocities.com/nabarz110/theseethingcauldron1

http://www.agoron.com/~clavis/midsum.html

eg: In ‘Great Satan Eblis’ by Dr.J.Nurbakhsh the view of many
Sufi masters on Eblis as a noble figure is beautifully discussed.
The path Eblis is taken to reach Divine union with ‘Allah’ and
can be seen by orthodox Muslims as left-hand path. In Sufism

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Eblis is not seen as the God’s arch adversary, Eblis because of
his love for God would not prostrate before Adam, he is a
jealous lover who rather be punished by God than share him
with those of clay. Such radical ideas were taken up by western
occultist; In 1910 the book entitled ‘The scented Garden of
Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz’ (Persian: Bagh-I-Muattar Haj
Abdullah Shirazi) was published. The author behind this was
A.Crowley, who was fascinated by the Persian language and
revelled in the ideas of Sufis travelled widely in Middle East as
well as India. Haj-Abdullah Shirazi is a character created by
A.Crowley after his learning of the modern Persian language to
convey his ideas based on Sufi symbols. One traditional Sufi s
described his book “someone splattering his ego in the garden,
simply pornography, which lacked anything of any depth”. I
guess being able to annoy local mystics and playing the devils
advocate is perhaps the main consistency in his life. The
scented garden of Abdullah consists of 42 ghazzals (Persian
poetic verses) and short stories, some of which refer to his male
lover back in Cambridge. Even a century after their first publi-
cation, due to their highly erotic nature orthodox Muslims can
see them as obscene and blasphemous. However A.Crowley was
not the first westerner who invented his own Sufi poet. Sir
Francis Burton published in 1880 Sufi couplets of Haji Abdu
El-Yezdi: The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi: ‘A lay of higher
order’.

. . .

In Germany in 1902 the Ordo Templi Orients (Order of the
Oriental Templars) was founded by Karl Kellner who during his
extensive travel in the East was initiated by the Arab Fakir
Soliman Ben Aifha, and the Indian Yogis Bhima Sen Pratap and
Sri Mahatma Agamya Guru Paramahamsa. The fusion of Sufism
and Tantra within OTO kept on developing. Soon after the
publication of ‘Scented Garden of Abdulah’ A.Crowley was
contacted by OTO and travelled to Germany, he was initiated
into OTO in 1912.

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The left hand path (LHP) philosophy within the OTO kept on
growing and found an even wider audience when Gerald
Gardner the British founder of Wicca was initiated into 9th
grade of OTO. Gardner himself had travelled greatly in the
East and was a Sufi initiate according to ‘Witches-an
encyclopædia of paganism and magic’ by Michael Jordan.
Gardner was also a friend of Idris Shah, the most prominent
Sufi writer in the west. Idris Shah wrote Gardner’s biography
‘Witch’ under the alias Jack Bracelin, who was another mutual
friend. It could be suggested that Shah didn’t use his own name
as he probably didn’t want to be associated publicly with Wicca,
while Jack Bracelin was already doing a great deal to catch the
eye of the media. Shah’s Octagon press published the biography
in 1960. Idris Shah’s proposal in his classic book ‘Sufis’ (1964)
of the influence of Sufism on medieval Witch cults in Europe
via Spain, was probably inspired by his workings with Gardner.
Shah’s proposed number of potential Sufi influences in the
medieval period magical lore, to name a few: Moorish (or
Morris, which is disputed) dance, witch’s athame (blood letter),
Rosicrucians, the Knight Templars and Baphomet.

It is fascinating that several of the central figures in the revival
of neo-paganism were Sufi initiates. The influence of Sufism on
paganism is still continued as seen in the work of Andrew
Chumbly and his branch of ‘Sabbatical Witchcraft’. Chumbly’s
book ‘Qutub’ was published in 1995, and consists of 73 short
gazzals. Qutub is Sufi word for the magical Pole, or point of
spiritual orientation. The book contains many poems and
calligraphy based on Sufism.

Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick regarding the herstory of
neo-paganism, but then there are people who really think the
Necronomicon is an ancient text, written by Arab mage, Abdual
Alhazred!

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Curse of Merlin XI -
Cunning little fox

'It is god's nature to be without a nature. Humanity
being made in the divine image, affords a clue to the
mystery of god. To get at the core of God at his or her
greatest, one must first get into the core of oneself at
the least, for noone can know god who has not first
known themself.'

Meister Eckhart

Every morning I took the Eastbourne train from Brighton
station for the fifteen minute ride to the University stop at
Falmer. I often meditated before setting out as I'd read some-
where that the mind is clearer at the beginning of the day. It's
just very difficult to keep awake. The ancient Egyptians, if they
ever did meditate, did so in the small hours just before dawn.
This twilight zone is the heliacal rising they called the Duat.

On the busy little toast-rack train I rarely saw anyone I knew for
more than a few days in succession. Mostly the early morning
commuters were wrapped up in their own worlds, reading
morning papers or a swanky new novel or magazine. The shriek
of the guard's whistle sent the ubiquitous seagulls screeching
into the air; doors were slammed shut and the train drifted away
from the platform. The seven hills of the city soon give way to
rolling downland. Perched up on the highest of those hills was
the grandstand of Brighton race course. I loved to see it hover-
ing there at the most unlikely of angles, before allowing the rest
of Brighton's townscape to slide by unobserved. Time to read
my book. This day I had with me Richard Wilhelm's translation
of the I Ching. I'd only read a few lines when a women said
'Now you amaze me that you'd be reading that.'

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I looked up and recognised a pretty girl called Leah from my
philosophy seminar.

'Really,' I said, 'how so?'

'Well you are always so rationalist in the seminars, I wouldn't
have said you had any interest at all in metaphysics. I've obvi-
ously got you wrong.'

I shrugged, wondering if there really was such a contradiction
between rationalism and mysticism. Perhaps all thelemites
display that kind of tension between the 'aims of religion and
the methods of science.'

'What do you think of that?' she said, indicating my book.

'Oh I don't know, I haven't really had time to read it yet.' I said
pointedly

Which you think might have detered her from saying more but
no way. She sat beside me. 'That's OK,' she said, 'I know all
about it. Let's do a reading. You're supposed to use yarrow
stalks but coins do just as well.'

'Yarrow stalks for the agricultural age, coins for the industrial,
maybe dice for the new one.'

'What?' she said

'Oh nothing,' I said, 'just thinking out loud. Do go on.'

'You're taking the piss.'

'No I'm not.'

She took three coins from her purse and invited me to cast
them. I threw them onto seat opposite, still warm from where
she'd been. They fell: 3 heads, 2 heads & a tail, 2 heads and a
tail, 3 tails, 3 heads, 3 tails.

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'Whew,' she said, 'loads to read. "Nine in the third place means
the well is cleared, but noone drinks from it. But you could if
the king were clear-minded". That's tricky - but wells are good
things "whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will
never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a
spring of water welling up to eternal life.etc etc" that kind of
thing.'

She quickly scanned a little more from the book. 'Ah!' she said.

'What?'

'The reason you arn't drinking is because the well is being
prepared . . . cleaned and lined if you like. But in the well is a
cold clear spring from which you could drink if you wanted.'

I wasn't sure about the way this conversation was going. Was
she making some sort of innuendo? The train trundled along
into Stanmer, the next stop would be Falmer for the university. I
wondered if the other passengers were earwigging our conversa-
tion.

'Shall I go on?' she said

'Yes, but be quick, we're almost there.'

'You could draw from the well without hindrance. It is depend-
able and would do you good.'

'I'll have to think about that one.'

'Don't leave it too long, sit on the fence too long and you end
up with. . . '

'Iron in the soul.' I completed the little philosopher's joke.

'Oh hang on', she said, 'I forgot, there's more.'

'There's isn't time. We're almost there.'

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'Yes there is, Just quickly - 'There's a little fox - it could be you.
He's almost there - crossing over a river or something, walking
on thin ice - using his tail to test things. If you want to get all
the way - to succeed - you must be a cunning little fox. . . here'
she said, closing the book with a snap and thrusting it into my
hand. 'Must dash. I've a nine oclock tutorial.'

Indeed the train had come to a stop and almost everyone surged
through the doors. Leah was already several yards ahead, she
took one last look back over her shoulder and called 'see you
later.'

MOGG

MORGAN

Curse of Merlin XII :
'A stone to trouble the living
stream . . '

Since that time I've wrestled with the issue of divination. Some
might say that divination reveals a certain fatalism about life.
But I'm not so sure about that. I discovered that one of the
most common methods of divination in the ancient world was a
dice oracle. The Mahabharata has one famous example of its
role in an internecine struggle for supremacy. The hero
Yudhisthira had hitherto shown no interest in gambling until the
point when he is compelled to participate in a deadly dice
match. But that is just one example of dice games that seem to
crop up all over the ancient world. My future-self eventually
published my research as the 'Tantrik Knuckle Bone oracle' in a
book entitled Tantra Sadhana.

The point about dice and any other oracle is that you are putting
the final decision into the lap of the gods. Although there are
notable examples of where that leads to disaster there are other
examples where it seems to work out OK. It's probably handy
to be able to allow a bit of chaos into the equation. Some might
object that oracles of the past were manipulated by a
machiavellian priesthood. Perhaps - although even control
freaks get it wrong sometimes, thing fall apart, things just refuse
to be controlled.

In the Mahabharata there is much talk of Dharma. This is a
difficult word to define - some say Duty others that it is like the
Thelemic ‘True Will’. What ever way you look, all these con-
cepts, Dharma etc have some connection with casting the dice?

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Ancient dice were called talus or knucklebones. They usually
had four sides in which case they were elongated - hence the
name knucklebone. Some dice oracles from Egypt have six
sides. I favour the four sided knucklebone that in the correct
sequence yields sixty-four permutations. It's safe to assume that
magical adepts of the past understood the meaning of each
permutation much as modern day Ifa priests know the 120 odd
permutations of their oracle. The magicians of the past were in
the habit of internalising certain key pieces of occult knowl-
edge. Nowadays we might be content to understand the under-
lying principles and fall back on a handbook or crib, or as Jan
Fries discussed in his Living Midnight develope an intuitive
approach.

For those who would like to try to memorise the throws - here
are the first four permutions:

444: Mantra - (Auspicious)

333: The Nine - (Good)

222: The Turban - (Good and bad)

111: Kali - (Mostly bad).

MOGG

MORGAN

The Curse of Merlin XIII

Next day I looked out for Leah on the little train. I walked
through a couple of carriages but couldn't see her. Somewhere
in the back of my mind I had a recollection that there was a way
of locating lost people using magick - but for the moment I
didn't really know how to do that. When I did eventually sit
down the guy on the seat opposite looked up from his book as
if to start a conversation.

'Not reading the I Ching this morning?' he said.

'No, not today.' I replied, although perhaps the puzzled look on
my face also said how I wondered how he knew so much about
my reading habits.

He apologized saying that he couldn't help but overhear my
discussion of the previous day. He seemed a nice enough chap
but I couldn't help but wish that someone other than he had
caught the same train twice. 'My name is Emlyn' he said, al-
though he didn't attempt a handshake. Back in 1979 people had
gotten out of the habit of shaking hands.

'Are you serious about all that occult stuff?' he said.

'Well yeah,' I said, rather lamely. Inside I'm wondering whether
he was some sort of religious nut, which is funny, because that's
what I was, some sort of religious nut. Or maybe Emlyn was an
academic from the University - but there again he looked too
young for that.

'So how serious are you?'

'Very serious.' I replied

'Would you like to join an occult order?' he said

I wasn't sure if that was an offer or just a straight question.

THE

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'Well as it happens, I'm already a member of an occult order, or
rather,' I said, correcting myself, 'I'm a probationer for one.'

'Really,' he said, 'And which one is that?'

I wasn't really sure if it was a good idea to say but in the end I
told him. He smiled in a manner dangerously close to being
supercilious.

'That's not a real occult order,' he said.

It was my stop so I got off. Emlyn kept his seat in the now
largely deserted compartment as the train moved off in the
direction of Eastbourne. I slunk off for a coffee before a ten
oclock lecture.

* * *

A week or so later and I was again on the train when Emlyn sat
down opposite. He obviously had to knack of how to bump
into people accidentally on purpose.

'Ah, he said, 'I'm so glad I bumped into you again. I enjoyed our
little chat about the mysteries although I wanted to apologise if
I was in anyway rude about your esteemed holy order.'

'That's OK,' I said, 'I wasn't that bothered.'

'Good,' he said, 'Please put it down to my own zealous nature.
I've just joined the International Order of Kabbalists and was
being a bit proprietorial.'

'That's strange,' I said, 'I'm justing reading about them in
Crowley's Magick without Tears.'

'Really, I can't believe it had anything to do with him!'

'Maybe I'm reading it wrong; confusing you with the Order of
the Hidden Masters. He didn't have a good word to say for them
either.'

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MORGAN

'Touché!'

'Well let's face it, Crowley hated everyone, anyone who was a
rival. And during the war there seem to have been a several rival
occult orders, some of which are still around and some that
seem to have died a death. I only associate them because I
picked up a prospectus for your International Order of
Kabbalists at the Atlantis Bookshop. But come to think of it,
during the war Michael Houghton, aka Michael Juste, was the
owner and he ran a lodge of the Order of Hidden Masters until
Jean Michaud, the head of the Order, ran off with his wife!'

'So you did consider joining the IOK?'

'I did but there was something in the prospectus that at the time
I found jarred. All that stuff about loyalty to King and country -
it just wasn't me - just too conservative.'

Emlyn interupted 'Hah!' he said, 'Well there's an idea whose
time has come!'

'Yeah Yeah Yeah'

'Are you forgetting what happened just a few months ago on the
4th May?' he said

'I've been doing my best to forget all that. Do you really think it
has any spiritual significance?'

'Perhaps that's going a bit too far but I've been trained to at
least consider the possibility that it might be some sort of shift
in the zeitgeist. Oh and before you say it, don't fall into the trap
of those crazy types who start thinking they are somehow the
cause - that's just ego gone mad. No, its more a case that people
engaged in magick or other spiritual activities tend to become
sensitive to changes in the underlying spirit of an age.'

It was true - I hadn't really thought about it too much up until
Emlyn mentioned it. My probationary practice for the OTO did

THE

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indeed coincide with so many life changes - change of home,
chance of occupation to name but two. Of course I was in
denial and didn't want to acknowledge that the new government
would also bring big changes. The triumph in the May election
of the Thatcherite 'counter-revolution' was a decisive moment.
And during that year one of the other secret movers of history
was taking root. It was the early days of a disease and moral
panic all rolled up in one - AIDS.

The train was stopping at the University. I gathered up my
things and made for the door.

'Shall we arrange to meet again?' Emlyn called.

'Follow the Tao.' I replied. Seeing him looking puzzled I added -
'if we're meant to meet we will.'

It may seem odd to leave things so much to chance. I was
convinced if Emyln wanted to find me he could. As it happened
I didn't see him again for quite a while.

MOGG

MORGAN

Curse of Merlin XIV

I was beginning to wonder whether a pattern was emerging via
these unexpected encounters with strangers. Each of them had
presented me a little bit of magical information, sometimes
knowledge. Would magical gnosis fall into line with the domi-
nant modality of our age - probability? Probability is knowledge
arising from tiny, seemingly random unrelated pieces of infor-
mation.

Back to the meditation – eyes half shut, my gaze gently falling
on the yantra that lies on the floor in front of me. Posture good,
breathing good, very soon I will lose all awareness as to whether
my eyes are open or shut. The outer and inner worlds will begin
to merge, and if I am very fortunate I will be distracted by a
pleasant inner vision.

It's only when you do this kind of thing that you realise just
how many distractions the physical world can contrive. It's just
people moving about at their daily business; the tiny noises a
building makes as it expands and settles throughout the course
of the day. I know by now that to become too fixated on these
'distractions' is fatal to ones inner equilibrium. It's best to try
and get used to things – but to hold onto ones resolution re-
quires a knack. 'Just let it flow over me. I will not try to control,
control is fatal.' Any effort at imposing control has the very
opposite effect. It's almost as if other beings intuitively know
what's going on and make a beeline for the door. Soon 'they' will
be hammering away.

There's a movement in the corner of my eye; that is to say at
the periphery of my visual field. This has now happened so
many times that I know the drill. It's just my mind playing tricks.
The important thing is to maintain an attitude of 'awake aware-
ness'. Which is not quite the same as ignoring whatever it might

THE

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be. Awake awareness means letting the sense data flow through
me and whatever else I do – I must not move my head to have a
good look..

But the movement continues. Maybe it's the little muscles
around my eyes – if they are twitching again as they did before
– that could give me the illusion of movement in the visual
field. I read somewhere how these are 'ideomorphic signals' and
that they can be viewed as communications from the 'Deep
Mind'. A while back I asked my mentor if he had any insight
into that. Adopted a reassuring air he told me not to worry.

I'm hoping things are going to calm down soon. But far from it
as I hear more of the little scratching noises. It takes just about
all the effort I can muster not to take a good look. Then they
stop. I'm pleased with myself, not to have given in. My eyes
open slightly and there on the yantra is a tiny mouse. I guess it
must be a real mouse that has scuttled under my door and now
it's sitting on its haunches enjoying a grooming session no doubt
before moving off again into the fluff and debris beneath my
wardrobe

* * *

Pitch black was that room, illumined by a single shaft of light.
In a corner a slow-burning wick faintly glowed. Vaughan took a
long slither of wood and lit from it the thick tallow candles. A
room seldom cleaned but cosy from the constant heat of a
furnace. A room lined on one side with large oak shelves that
sagged wildly, bowed under the weight of the books stuffed
every which way. A large table ordered with objects. A book lay
open next to a large piece of slate, pottery bowls, bottles,
knives and instruments for grinding. A chair stood near a large
burning glass upon a wooden frame.

That night he would bank the fire higher, remove the lid and sit
'til dawn observing closely the subtle changes passing over the
iridescent liquid within the crucible.

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MORGAN

Vaughan pulled a book into the candle's light. 'Well' he said,
again wrinkling his nose, 'smells like my fellow tenants have
pissed over you. Are you still here? Thank you! Your piss is said
to be the best defence against the worm!'

He fell to reading the book, taking an occasional swig from a
half-finished flagon of cider. He read on for a time before
dosing. In the stillness there came the scratching sound of a
small bird or rodent. Vaughan shifted slightly and set his eyes
upon the tiny creature. The mouse, for that's what it was, did
not seem alarmed by Vaughan's presence. 'My friend' said
Vaughan, 'I must thank you for the attention you lavish on my
humble library; you are more conscientious then any clerk. They
tell me that in the miraculous continent of India, the elephant
god of learning rides on a mouse. An elephant never forgets or
so they also say. That same elephant uses a broken tusk as a
quill. I have even heard said that there are churches there,
devoted solely to the worship of your fellows, and that no-one
dares even to shoo them away for fear of sacrilege. So I am in
exalted company tonight.'

'Tell me mouse, whilst you were caring for my library, did you
perchance read? I wondered if you might express an opinion on
the relative merits of some of these esteemed authors. What of
this one, the blessed Avicenna, Liber Canonis De Medicinis
Cordialibus, a faithful translation or so I am told, from the Arab
tongue into the Latin? This book is a great favourite, one of my
oldest and most treasured. From this book I learnt the mysteries
of mercury. See, here, where I have marked the page in silver
point, all those years ago. "What is mercury?" asks the sage, a
question I have often asked myself and am still no wiser after
all my experiments.' "One kind" he says "is obtained by purify-
ing its mineral; another is extracted from crystals by fire, just as
gold and silver are obtained. When pure it has the colour of
cinnabar." Aye yes' Vaughan went on 'I have prepared the
quicksilver myself with the aid of this glass and the summer
sun. Burning the mineral and brushing aside the metal with a
pigeon's feather. But I bore you, do please take the floor.'

THE

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The mouse was silent. Vaughan went on 'cat got your tongue,
oh perhaps I should not mention that. Forgive my lapse in
manners. You must be a learned mouse, spending so much time
pissing on my books. Here is one you haven't seen for sure.
Abbot Synesius, a learned Greek, a poet so I hear, but this little
treasure is truly that. Wondrous stuff, if only I'd seen this ten
years ago.'

Again silence, apart from the sound of clogs clattering across
cobbles in the yard outside. The rodent scurried away. Vaughan,
now silent, set his eye to a tiny crack in the doorframe, through
which he peered out into the yard.

'Father Vaughan! Is that you I can hear in there? I've to take the
dish back. Ma sends this pie for your supper, shall I leave it?'

'There's mercury,' Vaughan whispers to himself, his eye still at
the peephole. 'No wait Thomas if you would.'

In an instant Vaughan stands blinking in the late afternoon sun.

Peering over Vaughan's shoulder, the boy, says: 'Looks like night
in there father?'

Vaughan ignores him and makes for the kitchen, the boy follow-
ing. 'You're limping bad today father.'

'Yes...the gouty humour has fallen into my leg.'

'At least you've a good appetite father!' he says, nodding in the
direction of the plate, 'licked clean by the cat I'd say.'

'I'd prefer a mouse.'

'What's that father?'

'Oh no matter, yes an appetite today.'

'Must be funny not having someone to do for you at your age.
Do you never wish to marry?'

MOGG

MORGAN

Vaughan's eyes filled with tears. Thomas remembered how
Vaughan's wife Rebecca was dead seven years of a fever.

'Tis a wonder with all your cunning you could not save her, they
says...'

'Yes!' Vaughan broke in 'it was a pity, but I must get on.'

Thomas grabbed the plate, flushing to his hair line. 'I be off
then'.

As soon as the door is secured, Vaughan went up to his cot and
slept until awoken by the sound of Thomas's voice: 'I got peat
for you, and mam left a jug of soup.'

Vaughan took a lamp, for it was dark outside, and held it up
whilst the farm-boy shouldered his way into the laboratory.

'It's warm in here' he said, setting down a sack.

Not long after the boy's departure, Vaughan himself went out
and limped across the yard to the kitchen, taking up the bread
and jug of soup left there. Back in the laboratory he locks
himself in for the night.

He sipped the cooling soup. His eyes were smiling as he tore a
gobbet of bread, dunking this before propelling it into his
mouth. Vaughan scraped his chair closer to the book. Through
the corner of his eye he saw the mouse on the table, nibbling
crumbs of bread.

'Ah! Forgive my manners, here take some of this.' he said,
breaking off a few more crumbs for the visiting rodent. 'You
have that look in your eyes Do I detect disapproval? Those
rules of yours...how many times have I prayed for forgiveness
for my errors of the past, especially with you know who. What
of my wife you ask. Yes what of my wife…I still miss her…
look here for yourself… on this note in the margin of my book:
'I went to bed after prayers and hearty tears and had this dream

THE

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towards daybreak. I dreamed I was in some obscure, large
house, where there were a tumultuous raging people, amongst
whom I knew not any but my brother Henry. My dear wife was
there with me, but having conceived some discomfort at their
disorder, I quitted the place, and went out, leaving my dear wife
behind me. As I went out I considered with myself, and called
to mind some small, at least seeming, unkindnesses I had used
towards my dear wife in her lifetime, and the remembrance of
them being odious to me I wondered with myself that I should
leave her behind me and neglect her company, having now the
opportunity to converse with her after death...'

'I must stop reading this or I shall bring down a melancholy
humour on myself and spoil my light mood this night. My head
is quite swimming. Shall I be damned? ...You don't answer...I am
admonished by your silence…ha!'

The mouse scuttled off, startled by the sound of Vaughan's
exclamation. 'Yes now, I must not forget that.' Vaughan rose
from his seat to replenish the fuel for the alchemical stove. He
took two pieces of black peat from the sack. The slow burning
fire banked, he drew the chair near and removed the lid from
the crucible. As before his nose wrinkled slightly as a whiff of
gas escaped. But he was pleased to see a slight but tangible
change. He settled himself for a few hours watching the
scummy surface of the crucible's contents.

Time passed and it seemed to his sensitive eyes that the scum
had completely detached itself from the sides of the pot to
form in the centre an island of black crystalline substance. The
mass of the liquid was now white and the amorphous island of
crystal a very dark black. 'If my eyes do not deceive me a crisis
is imminent' he said out loud. Quite fascinated by what he saw,
Vaughan made no effort to move. So fixed was his body that the
muscles were frozen in their attitudes. The oil from the lamp
burnt low, his reading lamp grew faint and guttered. As he gazed
intently on the surface, the whiteness of the liquid grew ever
more pure and luminescent, the blackness ever darker. The

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MORGAN

apparently random shapes of the black and the white had by
some trick of the light, began to resemble two mythological
beasts, each entwined within the other. The white was a lion,
prostrated and wrapped around itself grasping its own tail, and
surrounded by this creature, a great winged eagle of purest
black crystal. Vaughan blinked involuntarily, causing the effect
to fade but not disappear. The hours passed in the dimly lit
room as the black crystalline eagle began a further transforma-
tion, a red tinge steadily replacing the black until the entire body
and wings of the eagle became red. Time passed and the red-
ness deepened.

After several hours of intense watching Vaughan's concentra-
tion began to waver. Pain shot up and down his back and neck.
His feet were numb. He sat another hour, dazzled and fasci-
nated by the unfolding mystery of the lion and the eagle, 'til his
twisted stomach rumbled and his neck became unbearably stiff.

At last Vaughan replaced the lid on the crucible. Long moments
of agony before he was able to open the door to the laboratory
and step out into the evening air. The sky had cleared to reveal
gorgeous night. Vaughan was greedy for one last lungful of air
before forcing himself back to the open ledger on his desk.
'Write it up,' he told himself. His pen scratching across the paper
for at least an hour. At the end he stared intently at the page,
thinking of that transcendent image of the white lion and red
eagle, iridescent and glorious. His heart expanded within his
chest, filled with natural compassion for all creatures. Then he
remembered the fuel for the stove, stood up with a jerk and
strode over to the open sack to extract two further lumps of
black peat. He stopped an instant weighing up in his mind
whether to finish the experiment now, to consolidate what he
had learnt, or to press on. Vaughan again drew his chair up to
the crucible.

* * *

'Yaaaaaooooooooll.' It was the neighbour's ginger tom yowling

THE

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outside my window. Maybe it knew there was a mouse in the
house. It's calling had broken my train of thought. 'I wonder
what that was?' I say out loud. I did not mean the cat. I meant
the long reverie into which I had been plunged by the appear-
ance on a real mouse on my altar. Mousika was long gone –
scared by the cat. 'But what was that,' I say again aloud. 'Was it
a daydream or some sort of past life memory?

MOGG

MORGAN

The Curse of Merlin XV

On the train rattling its way across the South Downs from
Brighton to the University station at Falmer. Several weeks had
rolled by since those strange meetings – but there again just
when you begin to relax ones expectations something happens.
Once again a woman's voice snapped me out of my morning
revelry 'Excuse me,' she said, 'aren't you Leah's friend?'

The voice belonged to a very pretty girl, who'd I say was about
fifteen but was probably older. 'Could be.' I replied uncertainly,
'Do you know her.'

'Of course I do stupid, why else would I be talking to you?'

'Have you seen her?'

'Yes, of course I've seen her,' she said, 'I see her almost every-
day.'

'Well lucky you, I haven't seen her for weeks and to be frank,
I'm not really sure who she is.'

'Yes that's Leah all right, very mysterious. She's away at the
moment – but she asked my to say hello to you if I saw you.'

'Really,' I said, 'So how did you know who I was.'

'Oh I just knew, Leah described you, she said you were difficult
to miss. Besides . . .'

'Besides what?'

'Oh besides nothing. She just asked me to say hello.'

The conversation stalled.

'So what's your name?'

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'Kali, or at least that's my magical name, my 'real' name is
Sarah.'

'I guess from that you must be into magick?'

'Yes,' she said emphatically. 'And you too, so Leah says. Leah
and me, we are members of the same group in London.'

I was thinking to myself that during this encounter I would try
to be more direct, to find out more about my interlocutors. 'So
what part of London?'

'Oh all over really but mainly Primrose Hill, do you know it?'

'Yes I've been there with my friend Chris, been to some student
parties round and about. So tell me more about your magical
group.'

'OK, but not too much – you know how it is – secret – but we
are into the goddess Maat – have you ever heard of her, the
vulture goddess.'

Maat is the ancient Egyptian personification of Justice – I
wasn't sure if she was a real flesh and blood goddess – she
seemed more like an abstraction of a philosophical principle –
the kind of creation put together by priestly types. Maat is very
like the image of justice that stands over the High Courts of
Justice, blindfolding, balanced rather precariously, her sword
swinging down, its point almost touching the earth.

'Like Balance in the Tarot?'

'You know the tarot?' she said then answering her own question
'Of course you do. I'm just learning. What are your cards?'

'What do you mean?'

'Your personal significators, your birthsigns?'

'Oh that,' I replied, 'Well the moon I guess for the Piscean, and

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Lust … and the Hermit.'

'Very feminine cards,' she said

'Really?'

'Don't pretend you don't know. The hermit is a feminine card –
you look – you can't see her face – everyone assumes it's a male
hermit but Leah said it's a woman. And come to think of it
that's a good way of telling you where Leah is, before you ask,
she's on the Hermit's path.'

Kali had quickly reached the limits of my knowledge of the
tarot. I needed to shift the ground. 'Tell me about Maat,' I said,
not waiting for a reply, 'Why do you call her the Vulture god-
dess.'

'Maat the goddess of the feather or Mwt the vulture goddess.'
The look on Kali's face told me she was enjoying herself. It
made me want to take her down a peg or two.

'Different feathers?'

'What?'

'Maat's feather is an ostrich not a vulture.'

'Ah,' she said triumphantly, 'Leah warned me about your argu-
mentative nature. I trust Leah. At our rituals when she blesses
the water it changes, you'd say it was still just water but when
we drink it, we know its not just water.'

That shut me up.

'So where is Leah now?'

'You'll see. You'll maybe meet again in the summer – she
wanted me to tell ask where are going in the summer?'

I'm not too sure; I haven't really thought about it, ' I lied

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MERLIN

'Well better think about it.'

'Suppose I'd better had.'

The train had arrived at Falmer station. 'Not stopping here.'

'Lewes.' she said

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MORGAN

The Curse of Merlin
XVI

It was the end of term and also near enough the end of my
magical practice. My plan now was to head off for a few weeks
retreat in order to focus on the magical progress I'd made, such
as it was. I was drawn by the magical reputation of Glastonbury
on the Somerset levels. Although as the crow flies, Glastonbury
is not particularly remote, the journey by public transport is
sufficiently convoluted to give some sense of dislocation.
Travelling mostly by train as far as Bath where, after a hour or
two kicking my heels in the bus station, I was soon rattling my
way through the Mendips to Wells, where a final mini bus
carried me over the hill to Glastonbury.

The town is preceded by its reputation - a new age ghetto with
the promise that one might meet a genuine adept. That first
night I ended up in rickety British guesthouse, typically over-
priced. The door of my room slid shut leaving barely enough
floor space in which to perform my circle rite. Tight as my
budget was I had to find something more salubrious for the next
few weeks or any hope of some sort of magical breakthrough
was pretty futile.

The next morning I headed up the main drag, past the Assembly
Rooms, the Gothic Image bookshop, the Rainbow's End Café,
St Johns Church, on until the junction with Chilkwell St where I
turned right. I kept going until I was walking beside the high
stonewall that marks the northern extremity of the Abbey
grounds. The uninterrupted grey of the wall was broken by a
high arched gateway. There was a driveway leading to a large
mansion of Victorian Gothic. A small billboard read 'retreat
house'. I strode across the gravel courtyard and tugged on the
bell cord. A pleasant looking Anglican nun answered my call.

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'Yes,' she said in a nondescript accent, 'can I help you?'

'I was hoping I could stay in the retreat house.' I replied

'For how long?'

'Not sure,' I said, 'maybe a week.'

'Should be all right, we've a party coming in next week to
decorate and a small parish retreat but otherwise there is plenty
of room. I'll show you your room.'

Was that easy - no questions asked?

Half an hour later I was sitting in my overstuffed armchair
reading through a copy of George Chavalier's Sacred Magician.
There was a knock at the door, sister Magdalena came in carry-
ing a transistor radio.

'It's mine,' she said,' but you can borrow it.'

I wasn't sure if she could read the title of the book that lay in
my lap.

'We pretty much leave you alone here,' she said, 'unless you
request guidance . . . there's a large library downstairs, on the
side that overlooks the Abbey. There's a little parish retreat
group meeting there at the moment. You might be able to
insinuate yourselves in with them if you get fed up of your own
company. Apart from the library you have the use of the garden;
it has its own gate into the Abbey grounds, so you can go there
anytime you like. At the moment a theatre group is staging the
Glastonbury mysteries, why not go see?'

'Thank you,' I said, 'I might well do that.'

'Oh,' she said, 'you already have the meal times. Its petty basic
stuff, fuel really, so if you want to eat out that's OK but I can't
really give you a key and we lock the front door at ten.'

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I nodded. 'Basic food sounds fine to me.'

'OK,' she said, but if you join us the only rule is no small talk.
You don't need to keep total silence - but apart from standard
pleasantries, people generally prefer to keep their own thoughts.'

I nodded again.

'So we shall expect to see you at supper.'

She exited my room closing the door behind her.

Sister Magdalene wasn't kidding when she said the food was
basic. I better illustrate that lest you think I exaggerate; the
evening meal consisted of boiled potatoes and tinned frankfurt-
ers. The nun's attitude to food was a good paradigm of how
they viewed the world - something to be denied. Pagans take
food very seriously for it lies at the heart of our philosophy.

Pagan and Christian, it's an ancient dialectic. Looking back I
might once have objected to the soubriquet 'pagan', wrongly
thinking it is just a negative label thrust on to us by the
Abrahamic types - Jews, Muslims and Christians. Or that it's just
a vague umbrella terms that glosses over the plurality of
magicks. Now I know something of the truth I feel we should
embrace the term.

The definition of pagan hinges around a remembered conflict
between Israel & Egypt. What we get in the Biblical 'Ten
commandments' is the manifesto of an anti-religion - that had
its roots in the fanaticism of Amenhotep IV - otherwise known
as Akhenaten.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other
gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol,
whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that
is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the

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Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the
iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of
those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thou-
sandth generation of those who love me and keep my com-
mandments. 7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of
the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who
misuses his name.

See what I mean - its all about Egyptian religion really and its
denial. It's in that remembered moment on Mount Sinai that the
'pagan' was born and fanaticism came into the world. The
Egyptian, like all his or her contemporaries in the ancient world,
could always translate or find a home for 'foreign' or 'alien' gods
or goddesses in the native language - thus Baal is Seth, Maia is
Isis etc.

The fanatic has no need of translation - anything other than 'the
one god' is a demon, everyone else is wrong. Historically that's
quite a new idea - it's the double birth of the pagan and the
fanatic - who will for ever be locked in battle.

So I'd say I'm quite proud to identify as a pagan. I feel an affin-
ity with those, in the classical world that really did self-identify
as such. And on a morning when 200 Yezidi are killed or injured
by the modern day descendants of ‘Abraham’, I feel more than
ever that the world has need of pagan values.

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The Curse of Merlin
XVII:

Dreams in the Witchhouse

The house is preternaturally quiet. Occasionally I hear someone
creaking through the claustrophobic corridors but it's always
deserted when I go out to use the shared bathroom. The combi-
nation of a strange bed in unfamiliar surroundings makes me
uneasy, which I tell myself is probably the point. I perform that
day's final practice - I do the basic LBR opening rite sotto voce. I
may have a sense of remoteness but it's surprising how far those
vibrated calls can carry. In a sense I'm 'sleeping with the enemy'
- I feel fine in myself about all that - after all I'm on a spiritual
path as valid as any of my retreat house companions - but I
doubt they would concur - so I must be discrete and respectful.

The oak flooring whilst aesthetically wonderful doesn't quite
lend itself to my habitual asana. So I was move the horsehair
armchair forward so it roughly corresponds to the centre of my
circle. After my lustrations and mystical gestures I settle down
in the chair aiming to dissociate as much as possible from my
physical body in order to explore the imaginal world of the Shri
Yantra. I am travelling light and haven't bought all my various
bits of kit - but I figured that after near enough nine months of
daily, often more than daily work with these objects; they were
pretty much now a permanent fixture in my mental landscape.
The title of a H P Lovecraft story, Dreams in the Witchhouse,
drifts into my mind. Very appropriate, I thought to myself,
becoming excited at the prospect that this spooky setting would
do wonders for my visioning.

* * *

I've never been a very disciplined thinker. Over the years I have
met many magicians who claim a rock solid concentration but

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not me. I'm much too astral. The late Gerald Suster, whose path
I was yet to cross, was very impressive describing his unswerv-
ing use of Crowley's methods such as the exercise of holding
the image of a white, equal armed cross against a black back-
ground with such resolution and application that the magician is
virtually able to drill holes in the astral. Perhaps that's why I was
so drawn to the tantrik approach - no black and white images in
Tantrism, more a riot of colour and image, overwhelming the
senses.

Well that's the theory - on this night the Shri Yantra was just too
familiar and I was soon drifting. But there again, was there really
any need to resist - surely it's good to drift, it will no doubt all
come right in the end. If the body really is the microcosm, then
it surely knows the way already, it just needs to be let go free
rather than told to tighten up?

So in my slumbering 'witchhouse', my mind was soon wandering
in the corridor outside my locked door. One corridor soon
turned into another - I found myself at the head of a stairwell
with the choice to go up or down. Up into the roof and perhaps
the refreshing night sky seemed like a good option, the way
down into the darkened corridors more sinister and foreboding,
also more interesting. Like a moth I following the scent down,
past the ground floor dining room and library, down into the
overheated, enfolding bowels of the house.

Ahead of me was a door, the warm colours of its stained glass
thrown into relief and glowing from the candlelight emanating
from within. Like all astral visions it took a while to resolve
itself. At first I was pleased to see it as the Shri Yantra - its
multifarious colours throbbing with life. Then it was a miniature
version of those magnificent rose windows of Chartres and
other European cathedrals. It was a transept window, like those
Fulcanelli described as a hidden form of the Egyptian Ankh
symbol. The light penetrates the ever-virgin glass in a most
delightful way. The single rose became two intersecting circles,
the common ground, a caustic curve, inhabited by an image of

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the Mary - but which one I couldn't say. I have the overwhelm-
ing impression that my student friend Leah, or perhaps her
fellow covener Kali are waiting just the other side of the door.
The door opens and I drift in on a current of warm scented air.
It's an overheated shrine, its walls decorated with kaleidoscopic
mosaics.

Although I can't see Leah or Kali I'm still convinced they must
be lurking in the shadows. But it's Sister Magdalene who blocks
my further progress into the circle. She moves close, her hand
behind my neck; she pulls my head down so she can whisper in
my ear.

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings
-- oh, happy chance! --
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised
-- oh, happy chance! --
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,

I recognise the familiar lines from the mystical poems of St John
of the Cross. I am very excited. Her hand slides to the small of
my back - why I feel the warm sensation that soon becomes
prickly heat, then burning and finally an agonising pain that
shoots through my left kidney.

In an instant I'm back in my physical body, my back arched to
try to get away from the very real pain. I may have called out
but now I stifle my cries, furiously rubbing the small of my back
willing the pain to go. It takes several minutes for the pain to
relax its iron like grip sufficient for me to drag myself over to

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the bed and bury myself beneath the covers. I sleep but in the
morning my back still feels very tender. By the time I make it
downstairs the breakfast room is empty apart from Sister
Magdalena clearing up. 'You missed breakfast,' she said, with
just a trace of disapproval in her voice, 'but you could do worse
than one of the café's in the High Street, try Rainbow's end.'

Over my coffee I ponder whether all that is a good or bad sign?
There's none I can really ask. The rest of the morning I explored
some of the surrounding countryside including the hummocky
remains of the original Lakeland village. I am careful to be back
at the retreat house for lunch. After lunch I let myself into the
Abbey grounds for the afternoon performance of the
Glastonbury mysteries.

I suspect like a lot of pagans on some sort of spiritual journey it
would seem churlish to pass over any possibility of some light
on the path, even if that supposed light emanates from those
who see themselves as the pagan's historical enemy. Pagans can
be terrible know-it-alls. We feel that we understand where all
religions and spiritual creeds are coming from. It's maybe some-
thing we get from Theosophy, which in turn is derived from the
Hindu Tantrism and its 'theory' of Brahmanical or orthodoxy, its
strengths and weaknesses.

The Glastonbury mysteries are surprisingly moving. I find
myself responding emotionally to the scene of the supposed
'slaughter of the innocents'. One moment the actors are carrying
their living babies and children. A moment later and red ribbons
stream from their cloths - it's a remarkable simple yet effective
convention - I am amazed by the power of a symbol to invoke
real feelings. Intellectually I doubt this massacre of the
Hebrew's first born by King Herod ever really happened - it's a
memory yes - but memories can be constructed, they can be
falsified. Even so the underlying theme is universal.

Coming on top of last night's adventure I am beginning to feel
as if this really is some sort of roller-coaster. I'm not completely

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relaxed by the orthodox, i.e. in this instance Christian context
but there again, if this really is a dialogue with the otherworld -
I should not reject the message because of the manner in which
it is spoken.

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The Curse of Merlin
XVIII

Again the quiet of the house, sometime during the day I got
myself another potable version of the Shri Yantra and a special
yoga cushion, ‘kusha’ brand, obviously named after the type of
grass recommended for this purpose in the Bhagavad Gita.

Trouble is I’ve also spent the evening in the Rifleman’s Alms
where I’ve had a few drinks, smoked too many cigarettes. How
did this come about? Well there was a big surprise waiting for
me back at the retreat house. The suppertime dining room was
buzzing with new arrivals, a party of mainly middle aged,
parishioners, volunteers who’d come to redecorate the retreat
house. And there amongst them I recognised Emlyn. The leader
of the parish group was their vicar, who seeing me exclaimed to
Emlyn, ‘ah yes, I told you there would be someone here of your
own age.’

I guess Emlyn was as surprised as I was, we’d not met since
those chance meetings months back on the Falmer commuter
train. So we both had secret lives but also sufficient presence of
mind not to blow each other’s cover. After supper, Emlyn
suggested we go for a beer. His seeming greater familiarity with
the lay of the land made it seem doable. I should perhaps have
cast my mind back to the time when as a very young inner city
teenager I’d been whisked off by the ‘Covenanters’ to a ‘out-
wards bounds’ retreat in the Brecon Beacons. The combination
of healthy physical activities, spiritual talks and clean living was
supposed to be tonic for our souls. Back then; skipping Sunday
prayers in favour of a ‘pub lunch’ didn’t exactly go down a
storm.

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We were soon eyed each other over our beers.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked

‘Well I could ask you the same question.’ I replied, although it
wouldn’t have taken a lot of research to unearth the very
intimate dialectic between Christianity and magick. Many
commentators see even Crowley’s Thelemic cult as a heretical
sect within Christianity.

‘Yes,’ he said, offering me another cigarette, ‘but what are you
doing here.’

What the hell, I thought, may as well spill the beans? ‘I’m on a
quest,’ I said, he smiled. ‘OK maybe quest is the wrong word, I
can’t remember if I told you about the OTO?’ Emlyn nodded.

‘Well I’m just coming the end a nine month probationary prac-
tice.’

‘That’s interesting. Nine months, bit different to a year and day
– like giving birth to yourself I suppose.’

‘I’m also told its modelled on the Egyptian mysteries.’

‘Really,’ he said, leaning forward in his seat. ‘Now that’s my
special interest but I can’t say I’ve ever heard that the period of
nine months was especially important in Egyptian magick.
Where does that come from?’

‘Ah,’ I said smiling no doubt in an arch manner, ‘that’s an order
secret I’m afraid.’

There was an awkward pause, punctuated by another trip to the
bar. Emlyn took a long pull from his beer. ‘So is it going alright?’
he said ‘in as far as you are allowed to divulge Order secrets?’ It
was his turn to be arch.

Ignoring the bite, I launched into it. ‘Well yes I suppose it is

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going quite well.’

‘You seem unsure?’

‘Well I had a very disturbing experience last night.’

‘Go on, you can trust me.’

I told him a little about my vision. ‘And just at that point,’ I
continued, I was wrenched out of the whole thing by the most
awful pain.’

‘Umm,’ he said knowingly, ‘sounds tricky. Apart from the pain,
how do you feel?’

‘I feel, well I feel good.’

‘You don’t feel violated in any way?’

‘Violated, not at all violated, what’s that about?’

‘It’s just that I’ve been reading in Plotinus that good spirits can
make one feel bad at the time but good afterwards. But on the
other hand, bad spirits make you feel quite wonderful when you
are in their presence but they leave you with a terrible sense of
violation.’

‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘so do you think my visions were demonic?’

‘I’m just not experienced enough to really know, just tossing
some ideas around, trying to be helpful. Oh yes, one more thing,
Plotinus says that even evil demons can be a sign of better
things to come.’

‘How so?’ I said.

‘He says that when the good daemona approaches, the first sign
that it is getting close is the arrival of the bad guys. It’s almost
as if they are pushed forward by the approach of the good.’

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‘So either way it’s not all bad?’

‘Maybe not?’

At which point the landlord called time.

‘Jesus, is that the time!’ I said, ‘we’re be locked out.’

‘Calm down!’ he said, I’ve got a key.’

I didn’t ask how he managed that. Even so I thought we’d better
get back.

We both emptied our glasses and stood up to go. But Emlyn had
one last point, always one last point to make. ‘Oh, one other
point.’ He said

I interrupted him, saying: ‘Lets not stand on the manner of our
going, but just go’ I said, paraphrasing Lady Macbeth.

To which Emlyn countered:

‘The last moments are the most magical of any hour.’

‘OK, OK’ what’s your point

‘The pain you mentioned. Couldn’t it be just some sort of yogic
thing –– something being pierced, unravelled, cleansed, that
kind of thing?’

‘I hope you’re right.’

And with that we made our way unseen, well almost, back to
the retreat house and our beds.

Midnight – the witching hour. I struggling to stay awake long
enough to finish my practice. The thought occurs to me that
Emlyn is the demon, distracting me from what could so easily
have been a breakthrough night. My mind drifts and for a
moment I am wandering again through the empty corridors of

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the house, down to that glowing stained glass door that looks so
much like the yantra.

The Abbot forbade me to forget my old name and existence.
Upon admission every novice is given a new name in either
Latin or Greek. I was Pelagius, a name identical to the British
original; “Inhabitant of the Sea”. As far as I know, my family
has always lived by the sea and often been fisherfolk or the like.

I have friends amongst the other novices but sense the antago-
nism of the monks. They were foreigners, haughty and intellec-
tual. My race has always a role in religious affairs for which they
are often resented. I was advised to seek admission to a reli-
gious order far away from home.

When it was clear that mine was to be a religious life, I got
myself accepted as a novice at a very prestigious religious
house. In the first year of a spiteful, fellow neophyte told me
that the only reason Pelagius has gotten into the place, was
because of the notoriety of his home village. “Pelagius” he said
“did not fool him!”

Home was Caerleon, world famous because of the martyrdom
of Britain’s first Christian saints. It was commonly believed that
the Druids had done them in; Caerleon had been a Druid
stronghold before the coming of the Romans. So this was not an
unlikely thesis, for the gloomy Druids did kill many an early
Christian missionary. But St Julius and St Aaron had as all the
locals knew, been martyred in the Roman amphitheatre, the
ruins of which could still be viewed outside the village. After
generations of stone plundering, the structure was not what it
was, but nevertheless retained a glimmer of its former glory.

Aaron, a converted Jew, had been an early Christian missionary.
Rejected by his friends and family and thereby freed to pursue a
quest for the sacred resting place of Joseph of Aramathea. The
trail had taken him firstly to the lakeland settlement of
Glastonbury and from there to the gilded city of Caerleon.

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It was at Caerleon that he met Julius, a minor official in the
Roman garrison. The pair met one day at the local bathhouse.
Julius was indulging in his weekly session that always ended
with an exercise swim in the large open-air pool. His routine
allowed for twenty lengths before a final rubdown. This was a
“Romans only” day, but it was common practice for assorted
locals to gather by the pool to watch the bathers. The fountain-
head of the pool issued from a small shrine to the Goddess
Diana, complete with dolphins-head spigot. Aaron recalled Paul
of Tarsus’s brush with this Goddess, and it seemed an appropri-
ate place for him to stand and pursue his vocation as disciple of
the divine fisherman.

Somehow they noticed each other and a friendship began, a
friendship under any other circumstances between a Jew and a
Roman would have been out of the question. However Aaron’s
new faith made him more willing to forget old scores. No-one
could remember the pretext for their martyrdom. Some said that
Aaron had gotten on the wrong side of one of Diocletian’s
purges and that Julius had chosen to follow his intimate friend
to the same grisly death. In that provincial amphitheatre, there
were no lions or gladiators, except on special occasions. They
were likely executed by Roman firing squad after many indigni-
ties.

Pelagius knew all this from his reading at the monastery and
from local knowledge. His interest in the subject sparked by one
of his childhood visions. The ruins of the Roman occupancy
were now a playground for the village children. A popular game
staged in the defunct amphitheatre. The oval floor was a fine
lawn, the sand and gravel carted off years since for other build-
ing projects. The grass grew stronger and sweeter and this
attracted the local sheep whose gnawing kept it close cropped.
A dozen or more would gather and with a blood-curdling howl,
chase off the livestock. Dividing into sides they acted out the
dramas of old. Sometimes they were Romans and Druids,
sometimes Romans and Christians, Christians and Lions. Hour
by hour they played, drifting home in ones and twos.

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After one of these gatherings, I Pelagius was alone in the
amphitheatre. It was twilight. Exhausted I lay on my back
watching the moon rise. I must have slept until a cool breeze
blowing into my ear roused me. Startled I realized that the
breeze was a whispering human voice. At first I was too numb
to understand. Someone was lying beside me, nudging me from
sleep with a name, a hand cupped over my ear to shield it from
the wind. On the other side I felt another hand and the faint
vibration of breath in the nostrils of a man. All the while I kept
my eyes tightly shut, it was after just an illusion caused by the
coldness of my body. Nevertheless I listened to those voices.

The first voice was of a youngish man, intelligent and sensuous.
‘You’ he said, ‘Will follow the religious life as I once did, but
entering a religious house.’

The other man’s voice was effeminate and less cultured than the
first. ‘Wherever you go’ he said, ‘there will be trouble. Expect
no support from comrades, no matter how they might seem on
the surface. It’s all the same in the end, the same petty loyalties
and factions.’

The first voice spoke again telling me that no one would ever
know who I really was, my name would become a heresy. This
heresy was to deny that anything was absolutely sinful. You
opponents will say publicly that one should do whatsoever one
inclined to, but in their hearts they will think otherwise.

After a little while the voices faded to an unintelligible whisper
and I was able to open my eyes just a crack. On the far side of
the field I saw lights dancing about and wondered if it was my
ghostly friends. As the light approached I saw my father search-
ing for me in the twilight. Cold and tired, I could not walk. My
father lifted me up onto his back and carried me home.

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The Curse of Merlin
XIX

‘Who will reject a gem for the mere reason it is found in an
impure place.’

Dattatreya

A thought kept coming into my mind of a place whose descrip-
tion really belongs in an earlier part of this narrative where I
describe my childhood home on the banks of the mighty river
Usk. If I follow the road eastwards, paralleling the river, I pass
shops and enormous factories until way up at the very end of
the road there is a tiny oasis in the midst of the industrial chaos
that is the eastern docks. A circular pond surrounding by leafy
trees, the clear water full of tadpoles, stickleback fish and
dragonflies. An old isolated cottage; probably the original
farmer’s cottage before the land was parcelled up and sold to
the Corporation that built the docks. Why they left this little
oasis I’d don’t know but it was truly a magical place to find in
the middle of an industrial wasteland. I suppose that’s why it
stuck in my mind so. It’s a physical metaphor of the wonders
that can be found almost forgotten in the midst of chaos.

* * *

Glastonbury 1980. . . The next day I paused for a moment
beside the arched gateway outside the retreat house considering
which in which direction to walk into town. The way left was
quicker but the right hand road took a more circuitous and
interesting route that got there in the end. But that morning
something drew me across the street to where another road led
directly up, presumably to the top of Chalice hill. I hadn’t really
taken that way before. As I passed the nameplate I couldn’t help
but smile wryly to myself as I read “Dod lane” - dead lane.

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Dod lane rose quite steeply and within just a few hundred yards,
at the place where Chalice Well Road forked off, there stood a
large old manor house. The sign outside read “Grail Centre –
please come in” – so I did. I walked through a pleasant garden
up to the front door where I tugged on the bell pull. No one
came – The place was deserted. There was a note pinned to the
door. It said –

“Grail Spiritual Centre,

Visitors Welcome –

Please wait in the Day Room”

The glass-panelled door wasn’t locked. Inside a long corridor led
off into silent darkness. Just to the right was a large book lined
room, with information leaflets carefully arranged on the table.
At the far end of the room a semicircle of chairs were arranged
around an elaborate array of slide projectors. I pressed the on
button and as the machine thrummed into life I sat down.

“Welcome visitor.” began a cultivated female voice, “You are
about to hear the story of the Grail centre and its place in
Glastonbury. I hope you will forgive what might seem an imper-
sonal way of presenting our ideas, but the centre is so busy, it
seemed the most efficient approach.”

I looked at the row of empty seats.

“The Grail centre is dedicated to the work of the Edwardian
mystic Evelyn Underhill. In the early part of the twentieth
century EU was a regular visitor to Glastonbury in the company
of her friends and fellow mystics, Arthur Machen, Arthur
Edward Waite, Charles Williams and Susan Howatch. These
famous writers and mystics formed a discrete fraternity dedi-
cated to the search for what they called the “ultimate
Hieroglyph”.

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The presentation continued with what was by then a fairly
familiar survey of Glastonbury lore. The tape ended with an
exhortation – “if what you have learned from this presentation
strikes a chord for you and you would like to experience more
of our fraternity – please return later today at sunset and join us
for a simple ceremony and meditation.”

Well who could refuse such an offer and I duly slipped out of
the retreat house before nine and made my way back to the
Grail Centre, not really knowing what to expect. In the twilight,
the visitors’ room was now a brightly lit cube of light, shining
out into the darkening garden. An attractive, thirty something
couple seemed to be in charge. He introduced himself as David
and his partner as Ann. Otherwise there were half a dozen of us
seekers.

“It’s time to shut the door, so you must be the last.” David said,
indicating that we should remove our footwear and follow him
into the sanctuary. There were no chairs in the octagonal room,
lined with fresh pine but was otherwise featureless and pos-
sessed of a strange anechoic quality. We were invited to settle
ourselves on any part of a double row of pine benches that
lined the walls. A great deal of human ingenuity had been
applied to the design of the room. The benches, for example
were precisely proportioned to enable all of us to sit in whatso-
ever pose we favoured.

When we’d all settled down David uttered the following bene-
diction “some look for the self in other people, their school,
work or organisation, sometimes even an ideology. Others look
to family and friends. Some look for it in another person, a
lover, husband or wife. But in the end the self is something you
must find within.” David then invited us to undertake a private
and silent meditation. I emptied my mind and got right into that.
After a while he began to speak again, his voice much quieter
and faltering. I guessed he was in some kind of a trance and was
channelling.

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“Evelyn is in the mood for a bit of a row tonight” he whispered,
“sometimes she’s a bit stroppy. She says we’ve moved away
from the essence of her teaching and what we do here will not
last.”

It seemed a very quirky, undermining message. I wondered
which part of the Grail Centres’ work she was referring to – I
suspected they had eschewed her Golden Dawn connection
and, as in many another group, denied the magical heart of
mysticism; ending up in a bland backwaters of New Age Chris-
tianity? Apart from the handful of books and the slide presenta-
tion, the Grail group did seem to be running on empty.

David continued his conversation with an unseen and unheard
protagonist: “There you go again – reminding me of the basics –
the five stages of the mystic way.”

I already knew them by heart and mouthed them to myself even
as David spoke: “Malkuth – the foundation or as she knew it
‘the awakening of self ’ – this you must do now, tonight without
delay!”

I wasn’t sure if he was speaking literally or rhetorically– “it’s
just the beginning – a crude rough vision without the benefit of
words to give it sense. Only later after you have purged the
self ”

Yesod – I whispered.

“Then,” he continued, “only then will you find illumination, the
third stage.”

Tiphereth - the sphere of the sun.

“And after illumination comes a fourth, unlucky stage called the
‘dark night of the soul’. “

Daath I remembered although it was all theory now.

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‘And finally for some of us ‘Unity’ or ‘Union’.”

Keter, I thought, the Kingdom.

David exhaled – releasing the mood – “There was a nice energy
here tonight” he said.

We all took that as our cue to rouse ourselves, and in slow
stages to shuffle out into the balmy, star spangled night. None
spoke and we each went our own ways – I was at the bottom of
Dod lane in time to hear the bells of St Peters chime the elev-
enth hour. It brought me to my senses as it meant I was locked
out. So I hurried up Chilkwell Street in the hope of catching
Emlyn in the Rifleman’s Arms for last orders.

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The Curse of Merlin XX

The pub was buzzing but Emlyn was drinking alone and looked
to be in a sullen mood.

‘What happened to you?’ he growled, almost as soon as he saw
me.

I was at the bar and offered him another beer, although I
guessed he might have had a few already.

I sat down and quickly told him where I’d been.

‘Well, you might have told me,’ he said, ‘Maybe I could have
tagged along too.’

That was true but somewhere inside I knew that of we’d both
gone off to the Grail centre, I might be accused of leading him
astray. Being a weekday there weren’t too many customers, so
the landlord called time and was soon bolting the door behind
us.

‘Tell you what.’ Emlyn says excitedly, ‘Let’s not go back straight
away – let’s go for a walk up the Tor.’

I probably could have talked him out of it but given that we
were already AWOL from the retreat house I guessed another
hour wouldn’t matter. It was only when we were passing Well
House Lane that I remembered that I really wanted to do
another magical ‘practice’ before going to sleep.

We left the road and followed a track up between high hedges
that blackened even further the way ahead. Someone in Chalice
Cottage was burning the midnight oil; I’d heard that the writer
Geoffrey Ashe lived there in what had once been the home of
Dion Fortune.

We stumbled across the field, using a lighter to find the style in

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the pitch darkness and were soon on the Tor side. We got up to
the deserted top using our night vision.

Glastonbury Tor is a low but precipitous finger-like hill com-
manding a fine panoramic view of the Somerset levels with the
larger conurbation of Bristol, Cleveland, Portishead, mere red
glows on the horizon making little impact on the night sky. It
was a great place for a bit of stargazing, especially on such a
crystalline night. We found a spot out of the perpetual breeze
and lay down to stare for several minutes in silence at the
manifest gods in the sky, especially the seven stars of the
plough, guardians of the Pole star and humanity’s most ancient
stellar companion.

Emlyn fumbled for something in his pocket, then struck a
match to light a medium-sized Jay. After a few moments he
asked me if I wanted to share some. I was already tyro when it
came to this kind of thing; university helped me with that,
although I hadn’t smoked anything since the end of term. But I
took my obligatory three puffs and passed it back to him ‘How
did you come by that?’ I said still holding my breath

‘Oh, someone at the pub.’

.‘Can I ask you something?’ Emlyn said, exhaling to break the
awkward silence.

‘Ask away,’ I replied.

‘I meant to ask, all this Crowley stuff you’re into, it’s kind of
sexy isn’t it?’

‘Sexy?’

‘Well, you know what I mean, Crowley magick – isn’t it all sex
magick?’

‘It has that reputation, but to be honest, I don’t really know too
much about that side of things. At the moment I’m just a

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beginner.’

‘Don’t they teach “sex magick” in the OTO?’

‘Well maybe,’ I replied, ‘But not so far, maybe in the higher
grades.’

‘Crowley, wasn’t he some sort of sex maniac?’

‘Sex maniac!’ I replied, ‘That’s great. He was “a head of his
time”, if you’ll forgive the pun, the drugs and all. But yes, to me
he was a sexual revolutionary.’

‘A pervert!’

‘Not a pervert stupid, he was gay, but that’s not a pervert, not in
my book anyways.’

‘Is everyone in the OTO gay then?’

‘No’ I laughed, ‘far from it, maybe they should be. Although I
did talk to someone who was convinced that they would be
buggered the time they went to see Kenneth Grant, but turned
out there was absolutely no way that was going to happen.’

‘So what about you, are you gay?’

I guessed that this was what Emlyn really wanted to ask. I knew
where this kind of conversation can go so thought I’d better
watch my step.

‘Lets just say I’m open-minded. Since I got into magick I’ve
become more experimental in my approach to sex.’

‘So you are experimenting with being Gay?’ he asked gleefully

‘No, not really, for me experimentation means experimenting
with being straight.’

‘Oh.’ It took a while for the penny to drop, then ‘ahhh!’

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‘What about you?’

‘Me, I supposed to be mixed up. That’s why I here with this
church group really. They are trying to sort me out.’

‘Do you need sorting out?’

‘I dunno?’ he said passing me the Jay ‘last toke.’

My head was beginning to swim.

‘Emlyn,’ I said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I really
ought to get back.’

‘You want to go?’

‘I have to go soon. I can’t really get into this, not now. Tomor-
row yes, but not this minute, not here.’

I guessed that in the darkness he might be looking crestfallen.

‘Emlyn,’ I said, ‘don’t take it the wrong way. I really do mean
tomorrow – we can sort it all out tomorrow – it’s going to be
better then – but now – tonight – I really have to do my magick,
my practice, it’s maybe my last opportunity.’

‘But I can do it with you, maybe?’

I thought of what I’d read about Crowley and his lover Neuburg.
It was all a very intoxicating idea. But realistically, I just didn’t
really know how to make that work. All the words from the holy
books about “a curse on because” or the Blake’s – “The chapel
of Love” were running round and round in my brain. But
somehow I just knew all I’d achieved so far could so easily come
crashing down – as at this moment fate, like a demon was
conspiring to drive me off course.

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The Curse of Merlin
XXI

“Alone at least!” I exclaimed out loud as I finally closed the door
of my room. There’d been a few risky moments in the corridor –
it was long past midnight, everything is dark, silent and
disserted, all the more so might our suppressed mumbles carry
to god knows where. And what if someone had spied that last
bear hug. Inside I was feeling elated. That’s human nature after
all – the sheer fun of being on the brink of something new. Oh
well, I thought to myself, now for some serious magick. Try to chan-
nel that feeling.

I’d soon prepared clear my little circle as before and launched
into the opening benediction: “Ekas, Ekas, Este Bebeloi,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.

Quickly followed by the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the
Pentagramme, the sine qua non of the occult realm. Even with
the slightly limited confines of the retreat house I tried this time
to take as much care as possible over its performance, combin-
ing as well as I was able to mystical gestures with the flow of
the in and out breath so that it became a variety of east / west
‘pranayama’. Crowley recommends that each action begins with
a long intake of breathe, so that the out-breath ‘begins’ from
some place very deep down inside. On this resonating column
of air that the words of the invocation float ‘Ateeeeeeeeeeh,
Maaalkooooooooot, etc…..’ it vibrates but I am careful not to
let it resonate too strongly else the whole house might be
outside my door.

By the time I arrive at the closing phrases of the invocation, the
long ahhhmeeeen – I am quite giddy and this seems no bad

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thing.

I let myself recover slightly before settling down for the slow
building lucid meditation. Images begin to form almost immedi-
ately – maybe too many of them, crowding in, an almost over-
whelming and distracting riot of ideas. But soon they begin to
thin and I feel suddenly very rooted in my posture but also very
disassociated, as if I am watching myself from some other
vantage point inside.

I am again outside my room - wandering down the corridor –

I stop momentarily outside of Emlyn’s room knowing instinc-
tively that he is just the other side of the door. Intoxicated with
my new power I wonder whether I could just pop in on him for
a moment. But thinking better of it I move off further down the
corridor past other doors where the gentle snoring of the occu-
pants indicates who is who.

Soon I am descending the stairways to the basement where I
know a kaleidoscopic door opens onto a secret shrine. In this
imaginal world I am able to push the door open and find that
the temple is crowded with people, who feeling my presence
divide to make way through which I much float.

Everyone there is familiar – near the back I see Chrissy, my old
boyfriend from my time in Wales, he’s there with his new part-
ner Simon. Emlyn is there too, also Leah and Kali, Sister
Magdalena stands together with a stranger who I somehow
know is my brother.

Then things get really wild like the car chase episode in Herman
Hesse’s “Steppenwolf ” – or Offenbach’s “Opheus in the Under-
world”. We are all crowded together, and it’s unbearably hot as
if somewhere unseen, vast thundering engines belch out heat.
Finally the entire company turns toward me and files out leaving
me alone in the temple. Some of them whisper things to me as
they file past, “good luck” or “don’t expect conversation,” or

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“vision not voice”; “not yet.” “he is waiting for you up ahead”.

The air clears in the temple. It’s fresher and above me I can
sense the night sky. I walk forward towards what I know must
be some sort of sanctuary. Now I see it – a glowing tented
structure about twice my height in the shape of the hieroglyph,
a Tao cross. The Tao is a three dimensional, symmetrical struc-
ture. The walls are of white canvas drawn across wooden
stretchers. An eternal sanctuary light hovers above the cross bar
of the Tao.

Someone says “go on, your father is waiting for you, in there.”

I step forward and part the canvas flaps and walk through. As I
do so the brilliant sanctuary lamp hovering over the Naos, sinks
down through the cross bar and fills the inside of the structure
with blinding, white light. I struggle to keep moving, forward
into the sanctuary until the light consumes my entire body.
There is no heat or pain. But the heart in my breast is beating
very fast and feels as if it might burst with joy. And indeed for
several moments I am overwhelmed. Somewhere in the whit-
eout is another figure; his features indistinct apart from his
coppery blond hair. He clutches me to his or her breast and for a
moment our entities merge. All the while he says nothing
although my ears are ringing. So here it is, I think to myself, the
vision of my higher self, beyond conversation. Certainly neither he nor
I attempt to speak. Time passes and I am again in my oratory,
my heart racing, as I sit there for several minutes struggling for
breath but still close to ecstasy.

As minutes pass I become steadily more and more aware of the
room. My racing heart slows and my breathing return too nor-
mal. I am back. Now after several minutes of discomfort as I
wake my sleeping limbs before I can stand and reverse the ritual
gestures and sounds of the Lesser Banishing Ritual. By the time
I have finished and extinguished my candles, the sky outside my
window is purple with the distance approach of dawn. I throw
myself on my bed, resolving to rest for just a few minutes but

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when I open my eyes the birds are singing outside my window
and the sun is high in the sky.

I looked at my watch – ten o’clock – too late for breakfast in
the centre. So I headed off for the Rainbow’s End Café. I fell
good, I fell that I had some sort of result and apart from the
tidying up of a few lose ends, some reflection and analysis, my
first degree practice is over. I had seen my higher self, my holy
guardian angel – I didn’t really know what it means, it hadn’t
communicated anything to me apart from its own existence –
but that is in essence the nature of the first degree practice –
the vision – the voice, the angelic conversation something for
another time and place after more preparation and training. So
on such a beautiful summer morning I was content in what I
have achieved. In the café I feel like the poet W B Yeats, when
he wrote:

‘I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup,
On the marble table-top,
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minute more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.’

I was also content to turn my attention to more mundane but
nevertheless important issues. I hadn’t forgotten about my
promise to spend the day with Emlyn, and who knows what. I
half expect him to have followed me to the café but by the time
my second cup is empty, the morning paper read there was no
sign of him so I guess I’d better head back to the retreat house
and check him out.

Sister Magdalena is waiting for me in the hallway, “Can I have a
word with you.” She says rather ominously.

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I follow her into her office. She came straight to the point, “I’m
afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

It catches me completely off guard.

“But why?” I plead

“I think you know why. Basically you are a disruptive influence
here. You have led one of the other guest astray distracting him
from the purpose of his stay here.”

“But,” I began, then think better of it.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.” I say gloomily

“Not just that but it hasn’t failed to be noticed that you have
been drinking in a local hostelry and return worse for drink in
the small hours after goodness knows what.”

“Anything else?” I am beginning to get fractious

“Well since you ask, yes there is more, some of it too indelicate
for me to discuss. But let’s just say strange sounds in the night.”

I think it best not to pursue that one.

”And”, she continued, “Several of us have not failed to notice
how the glamour of Glastonbury has woven its spell – your
visits to that Grail centre for instance. Your failure to be in-
volved with the normal routine of the centre, even your failure
to share meals or fellowship.”

There was some truth in all that.

“OK, I’m sorry for all that.” I relent, “what would you like me
to do now?”

“I’ve talked it over with the Father Jenkins, and he agrees that

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its best if you just sort yourself out and leave after lunch. As it
happens Kate, one of our other guests is driving to Bath this
afternoon and she has room in her car if you would care to take
it.”

I nodded my assent and turn to leave.

“Oh,” she says, “one last thing, just in case you think you are
being singled out I should tell you that Emlyn has already
packed and gone. The reverend Jenkins drove him back home
after breakfast.

I was beginning to smell a rat, they really had us both boxed up.

There wasn’t an awful lot I could do about it but somehow I
guessed I would catch up with Emyln when the new term
started at Sussex. Even so it had put a bit of a downer on my
plans for the rest of the vacation but I was determined not to
let it dent my optimism. Besides I just had this feeling that
something would turn up.

My ride to Bath with Kate, an American exchange student was
pleasant enough. She dropped me at the railway station. During
the journey I gathered she would be returning to Glastonbury.
“Thank you” I said, in a laboured sort of way. Just before
closing the car door I ask Kate if she would pass my address to
Emlyn next time she sees him. I’d scribbled my university
address and my parent’s phone-number on a blank postcard.
“Sure,” she says with a smile, “I can give it to father Jenkins.”

As she drives away I suspect she might toss that out the window
as soon as she is out of sight.

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