Heuristic England

Netherwood

2012-01-17T23:42:00.001-08:00

Netherwood, a set on Flickr.

Mistley

2012-01-07T16:25:00.001-08:00

Mistley, a set on Flickr.

Alderley Edge

2012-01-07T16:14:00.001-08:00

Alderley Edge, a set on Flickr.

Wyrd Tales 2 - Available in the souvenir shop now!

2011-12-12T03:21:00.000-08:00

cover by Sarah Sparkes

English Heretic is delighted to announce the delivery of Wyrd Tales 2: a salvaged miscegenation of occult pulp, speculative meta-fiction, neolithic fantasy and mythic sci-fi. Wyrd Tales 2 will transport you to the horrific record collections of R'lyeh and the submerged libraries of a comic book Crowley.

Within its lurid pages, futuristic crab men crawl and the Machiavellian spectre of Joe Kennedy plots. Reports come in from the east coast of radical cannibal cults, we scry the haunted inner cinema of Norfolk beaches and shamanic lights are seen in ancient Britain's aeyr ways.

Featuring contributions by a renowned and talented roster of guest artists and writers, together with a CD of aural lagan, Wyrd Tales 2 promises to provide the magical vehicle for an archetypal voyage to England’s deep.

CD artwork by Dean Kenning and Lisa Cradduck

Wyrd Tales 2! Art and writing by Lisa Cradduck, Mark Fisher, English Heretic, Ken Hollings, Dean Kenning, Phil Legard, Mark Pilkington and Sarah Sparkes.

Cost £15 UK, £16 Rest Of The World

Book Contents (140 pages full colour)

Wyrd – in poetry, theory and practice
Planet of the spiders
The Dunwich tapes
Heuristic catalogues: A.W.D.R.E.Y Recordings
The storm towers of Atlantis
Skyline
‘Bleak and solemn...’ the hauntological landscapes of M.R. James
First reports of a Tantric death cult At Ganges

CD Contents (41min) comes in Digipak featuring: 'The Dunwich Mix Tapes'

Wyrd Tales 2! Launch and Synopsis

2011-11-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

cover by Sarah Sparkes

CD artwork by Dean Kenning and Lisa Cradduck

Luminous Books have kindly invited English Heretic to launch Wyrd Tales 2 at their shop on Saturday December 10th. The evening will include annotated readings by contributors, DJ sets, libations and a chance to purchase copies of the book and CD.

From 7.00pm till 10.30pm.

More details here:

http://luminousbooks.tumblr.com/

Luminous Books
3-5, Frederick Terrace E8 4EW

Performances and talks by:

Ken Hollings – The storm towers of Atlantis (with musical backing by Indigo Octagon)
Mark Fisher – Bleak and solemn... the hauntological landscapes of M.R. James
English Heretic – First Reports Of A Tantric Death Cult At Ganges
DJ sets by Dean Brannagan
Display of Art from Wyrd Tales 2.

Wyrd Tales 2! Art and writing by Lisa Cradduck, Mark Fisher, English Heretic, Ken Hollings, Dean Kenning, Phil Legard, Mark Pilkington and Sarah Sparkes.

Available in the English Heretic souvenir shop from 12th December.

Cost £14 UK, £16 Rest Of The World

Book Contents (140 pages full colour)

Mondo Qliphoth! Kennedy Day 1

2011-11-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

Live On The English Heretic Histrionics Channel...

English Heretic Mondo Qliphoth. Kennedy Day 1

Live At THE OTHERS

6 and 8 Manor Road

Stoke Newington

London

N16 5SA

Tues 22nd November

Doors 7.30pm

This day in psychohistory: 22^nd November 1963

Psychohistory: the study of psychological motivation for historical events

Is it possible that a single violent event can rupture the fabric of the space-time continuum, create an Alice In Wonderland like portal to an eternal nightmare. And do the illuminati of politics and pop culture tap into these dates for their evil ceremonies - ceremonies of which we are mere chattle?

Was the world sucked into its own qliphoth on one such day in 1963?

Tonight on the English Heretic psychohistory channel, we offer the opportunity to explore the mind-bending, mind-blowing synchronicities of 22^ndNovember 1963. For not only did the president of America fall victim to the assassin's rifle but that very day in California, author and psychedelic voyager Aldous Huxley succumbs to cancer. As his physician Dr. Bernstein watches news of JFK in the living room, Huxley's wife injects the writer with a death bed dose of lysergic acid. Stranger still, beneath the dreaming spires of Oxford, England, the much loved chronicler of Narnia, Clive Staples Lewis slips to a synchronous coma before departing to the otherside of the mortal wardrobe.

More sinister yet, in the world of pop, The Beatles, a few hours prior to the assassination, release their second album “Meet The Beatles” - a coincidence? Possibly, though 5 years later to the day, drug-addled, Messianic and world conquering, they release the infamous White Album. The White Album becomes the apocalyptic seal for Charles Manson's California death cult. Were these release schedules really occult marketing events?

Is it also possible that the cosmic arbiters of good and evil, use this date to deliver us from rex mundi, the satanic possession of the planet. A ridiculous theory perhaps, but 27 years to the day of the savage ceremony at Dealey Plaza, Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Maiden of British Politics resigns at the door of Downing Street. Britain awakes from her Elizabeth Bathory like reign of blood sacrifice in South Sea Islands.

In our inaugural Kennedy Day celebration, we are inviting performative responses to each or all of these synchroncities: musical, visual or theatrical re-enactments of Huxley's death bed trip, Thatcher's exit from her Macbethian rule, Lewis on the other side of Narnia, decodings of The Beatles' pop grimoires.

Featuring

themed performances by

English Heretic , Msyterium, Amnertia

Film Screenings

And More

TimeLine

22^nd November 1963 – Dealey Plaza, Texas – President Kennedy Assassinated

22^nd November 1963 – California, USA – The Death of Aldous Huxley

22^nd November 1963 – Oxford, England – The Death of C.S. Lewis

22^nd November 1963- London, England – The Beatles release “Meet The Beatles”

22^nd November 1968 – London, England – The Beatles release “The White Album”

22^nd November 1990 – London, England – Margaret Thatcher resigns

Burnt Out - Fire Sermons, Fire Summons

2011-11-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

English Heretic will be playing this Friday 4th at The Apiary gallery, along with Mysterium, Guy Harries + Yumi Hara Cawkwell, Graham Dunning + Ingrid Plum.

DOORS 7PM
FREE
Curated By Kevin Quigley
BURN MAGICK BURN is a unique evening of performance that brings together a series of artists / performers to explore the boundaries between performance, music and ritual. Coming together under the cloak of Fire magic Ritual in conjunction with the sacrificial bonfire weekend the artists will present new performance works evoking the sprites and imps of fire!
- expect an evening of spine chilling immersive enchanted music -
ARTIST DETAILS
ENGLISH HERETIC
English Heretic Present: Burnt Out – Fire Sermons, Fire Summons

Tonight English Heretic explore the Buddhist concept of The Fire Sermon in the context of its Black Plaque recipients. The Fire Sermon – a metaphor for the burrning nerves of complete psychic capitulation epitomised by the suicides of Michael Reeves and Robert Cochrane; the schizophrenic Ian Ball’s act of royal treason. The Fire Sermon was made popular in the West by TS Eliot’s Wasteland. In 1925, Eliot wrote the Hollow Men, an allusion to the straw effigies of bonfire night, an allusion to his own mental breakdown. More frighteningly, did Michael Reeves summon a curse upon the village of Lavenham by filming a witch-burning scene in the medieval village during the making of Witchfinder General? Actor Ian Olgivy described the mood in the village following the witch-burning scene:

“…There was an element of spectacle there and it was curious that the next day several inhabitants of Lavenham who had taken part in it and lived around the square, said ‘You should have heard the clanking and the crying and the screaming last night’. That we’d woken a lot of the ghosts up. And they were quite serious about this. ‘There was a terrible, awful noise of wind, screams and moans’. It was strange”.

Shortly after completion of the film Reeves dies in a suspected suicide. In 1969, Sharon Tate, the wife of Roman Polanski had a role in the film The 13 Chairs, a comedy horror, interior and exterior scenes of which were shot at Lavenham. In 1970, John Lennon and Yoko One filmed their experimental movie Apotheosis above the snow covered fields of Lavenham and in 1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini directed The Canterbury Tales, which used the Suffolk village as the location of medieval London . The 13 Chairs proved to be Tate’s last film before she was brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family. In 1975 Pasolini was senselessly beaten to death by an acquaintance on the shores of Ostia, and in 1980 Mark Chapman gunned down Lennon outside the Dakota buildings in New York.

GUY HARRIES + YUMI HARA CAWKWELL

Yumi Hara Cawkwell and Guy Harries perform another intense sound ritual around the theme of fire, using electronics, found objects, movement and voice. Otherworldy, engimatic, transformative, magical.

MYSTERIUM

will perform a intense drone vocal piece with earthquaking ‘transcending’ vocals / drone phasing guitar / dark organ / euphoric saxophone

mysterium players for this performance are -

Christos Fanaras (analog synth-organ)
Colin Webster (alto-sax)
Kevin Quigley (Guitar / electronics)
Leslie Goosey (vocals)
Leigh-ann Abela (vocals)

GRAHAM DUNNING + INGRID PLUM

GRAHAM DUNNING
Is an artist/musican and his working practice deals with temporality, memory and narrative through sound, performance and installation.
He is interested in people’s discarded memories and the function of archiving. Found objects, photographs and recordings feature in my work investigating notions of the artefact and implied narrative.
INGRID PLUM
Is a Danish-born Artist living in the U.K.Her work mainly consists of installations using video, sound, sculpture and live performances, often involving a spatial arrangement of screens,monitors and objects to create dialogues between visuals and the spaces they are shown in. The imagery filmed focuses on unnoticed, accidental phenomena that occur in our everyday environment, sometimes recreated in a studio or filmed on location.
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The Magical Library - Ghosts Of Senate House

2011-10-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Magick Concrete are delighted to be contributing to Sarah Sparkes' Magical Library "The Ghosts of Senate House" at the Bloomsbury Festival.

For more details on the Magical Library

Celebrated psychical researcher, expert amateur conjurer and paper bag salesman Harry Price, left his library of Magical literature to the University of London on his death in 1948. Artist Sarah Sparkes has been researching the Price bequest and is creating her own "Magical library" for the 21st Century.

Phase one of the Magical Library, "The Ghosts of Senate House" is a collection of specially created writings, recordings and artworks documenting ghosts and other apocryphal stories emanating from Senate House and its immediate surrounds.

The Cult Of Ku Talk

2011-09-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

I'll be talking at Treadwell's on 10th November (Thursday) on The Cult of Ku: The Occult Chinese Poison Cult

One of the most exotic of the many enticing tendrils of Kenneth Grant's Typhonian Trilogies is The Cult of Ku. References to an illusive coterie of Chinese adepts run through his work like dreamed wafts in a Limehouse Opium Den. Grant's hints that such a cult once existed in London: did it? In this talk Andy Sharp will trace Ku back to its roots as a form of poison magic in ancient China. He will explore Ku as a multi-layered monad, its syncretic correspondences with alchemy and UFOlogy, Grant’s extrapolations, and its collision with the pulp horror of Sax Rohmer. Sharp will also discuss how this particular obsession of Grant has fortuitously intruded into his personal wyrd. Andy Sharp is published in Strange Attractor and runs the creative occult project ‘English Heretic,’ an imaginary organisation dedicated to the reification of malefic energy spectres and the adumbration of a modern qliphoth.
Price: £7.00
Time: 7.15 for a 7.30 start

Further details at:
http://www.treadwells-london.com/lectures_and_launches.html

The Haunted Sea

2011-09-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

I've been invited by GHost to perform at the Haunted Sea Film Screening this Friday in Folkestone. Think M.R Jacula...

GHost presents

The Haunted Sea

Short Film Screening
and
Musical Performance by English Heretic

Friday 23 September 2011

7pm doors open,
7.30pm musical interlude by English Heretic
8pm film screening commences

64 Tontine Street, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 1JP
Map: http://tinyurl.com/6zd2ssc

Twelve international artists have responded to our call for short films on the theme of “The Haunted Sea”.
The films will be screened together on the final weekend of the Folkestone Triennial.

English Heretic will open and close the event with “An intermission of aural lagan, manipulating phonographic salvage from the actual locations of M.R.James' ghost stories “A Warning to the Curious” and “Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You.”

Film Programme

Arctic Echo, Dir. Eva Rudlinger, UK, 2008
[desı’re:] the Goldstein Reels, Dir. Romeo Grünfelder, Germany, 2006
The Radiographer’s Daughter, Dir. Stasis73, UK, 2011
Ash On My Skirt, Dir. Amy McDonough, UK, 2011
Dziwy Mórz Głębokich (The Deep Sea Wonders), Dir. Tymon Albrzykowski, Poland, 2010
Oh Dreamland, Dir. Inez de Coo, UK, 2010
The Salem Ghost Ship, Dir. Glenn Church, USA, 2011
Mermaid Song, Dir. Nick Baxter, Jude Cowan, Joanna McCormick, UK, 2011
Edges of the Peripheries, Dir. Emma Caddow, UK, 2007
West of Arran, Dir. Neil Baker, UK, 2011
Joy, Dir. Kieron Clark, UK, 2007
Seaworthy, Dir. Ellen Lake and Chris Green, USA, 2010

Saturday 24th September, 2.00p - 6.00pm
the films will be screened on a loop at 64 Tontine Street
and the B&B Project Space will be open with a final chance to glimpse the GHost CLHub

4.00pm – Performance by Joanna McCormick and Jude McGowan
the B&B Project Space, 14 Tontine Street

http://www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com/

Painshill park

2011-08-28T02:12:00.001-07:00

English Heretic's photostream on Flickr.

England's Desert De Retz

Rothwell Bone Crypt

2011-08-01T04:09:00.001-07:00

Rothwell Bone Crypt, a set on Flickr.

Earth Is The Alien Planet 2 - on board an imagined Nostromo

2011-07-24T13:17:00.001-07:00

Earth Is The Alien Planet 2 - on board an imagined Nostromo, a set on Flickr.

Great Plaque Nights

2011-07-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Upcoming gigs:

Montague Arms 20th August 2011, New Cross, London

English Heretic present Great Plaque Nights: We will be performing 4 pieces in honour of plaque recipients.

Documenting Witchcraft, the ritual misuse of psychedelics and psychopathology in the Home Counties, traversing the M4 corridors of a sleazy inner cinema, we will reveal the lurid soul of the suburban world through celebrated mediums:

Dick Bush (ritual cinematographer of Blood On Satan's Claw and Dracula AD 72)

Robert Cochrane (self-delivering 60s witch cult leader)

Ian Ball (the most dangerous working class dissenter this country has ever seen)

Dr. Robert Vaughan (hoodlum scientist and anti-hero of JG Ballard's Crash)

Support from Christos Fanaras (evoking the soundtracks of Popul Vuh and Goblin).

10th September, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge.

The English Heretic mystery machine will be heading to Brideshead Revisited land for the psychedelic all-dayer. More details here. Promises to be a great day out with various pals from across the country including Raagnagrok All Stars, Disinformation, Time, Pete Um, Man From Uranus and many more.

Earth Is The Alien Planet 1

2011-07-06T09:17:00.001-07:00

Earth Is The Alien Planet 1, a set on Flickr.

Is it not also possible to report the activities of an alien planet, by use of tactical psycho photography?

Chutney Preserves 5 - Camberwell Green

2011-06-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

I was delighted to attend Chutney Preserves 5: The School Of Chutney this Sunday, on Camberwell Green. A slice of English surrealism has transformed my future memories of the Green into the venue for an off-kilter school fete... in many ways a simulacra of the real thing of my childhood, only a few feet parallel to this universe. Chutney is curated by Sarah Sparkes with great love for the subversion of the perverse and absurd rules of England - preserve and perverse, unerringly similar in spelling.

This year was a topical parody of the whole notion of education. The collected artists, vanguards and veterans of previous years. What made the event so engaging and heartwarming was the exquisite attention to detail of each performer. The spectacle worked as a whole and together with a graduation marquee gave the day a natural flow. One could follow the students of Chutney through each class until their big moment when they received their scroll, delicately put together by Miyuki Kasahara; enough to bring a tear to the eye of any proud parent. Indeed the tears may have been caused by the proximity of the graduation tent to the School Re-Onion marquee of PEPOMO - A bizarre stall honouring that most lachrymose of vegetables, hosted by the wonderfully creepy Richard and Rupert - one whole table was laid out entirely with onions, upon which a large axe has been placed. A sinister motif - invoking Columbine...

In order to graduate one needed to attend strict singing lessons by Miss Birch (Joanna McCormick) take time out in the naughty corner with Linda Barck and join the paramilitary gardening troop of Ian Robinson and Vanessa Scully. I particularly like the regalia of the Gardeners - camouflaged flak jackets with flowers on the back; the regiment flag - crossed trowels.

Out in the wilds, Two Lonesome Cowboys From Hell (Tim Flitcroft and Calum F. Kerr) , who had never even been to school, offered cattle brands to the attendees of their strange lessons in Rustler speak. Their performance culminated with their classic "Coffee And Beans" - think, Blazing Saddles meets Captain Beefheart. Lonesome Cowboy Calum - heroically downing a can of baked beans before the nauseous crowd at the finale.

There was even an unwrong quiz hosted by Frog Morris and Mark Dean Quinn- the winning prizes more queasy than Lonesome Cowboy Calum's dietary habits: yellowing cookery books by some celebrity who looked uncannily like Peter Sutcliffe; videos that would never leave the shelves of petrol stations; sleazy listening LPs.

As I said the delicious attention to detail was epitomised by the plate drawing class of Rachael House. The aim of the lesson was to create a gallery of future feminist icons and examples were setup with some icons of the past, including a lovely felt tip triptych of The Slits.

The vista took on its Dada-Burroughsian complete when the performers could be seen in harmony. At one point Miss Birch and the Lonesome Cowboys undertook a musical face off - the green uniformed teacher and the skeleton herdsman in the foreground, a forelorn dunce against a tree in the distance.

What was also great about Chutney was the subtle art editions many of the performers had lovingly created: Linda Barck's handmade badges for the naughty corner and photographs which will go on her blog; Sinead Wheeler's fascinating A0 posters of a notorious education pamphlet The Red Book, Miyuki's beautiful graduation scrolls with accompanying instant pic. I hope the students of the School Of Chutney will look upon their day at this seat of unlearning with pride and affection.

Perhaps my favourite moment that captured this surreal intrusion to Camberwell was when a couple of badass local kids walked passed the onion table and with great admiration asked:

"Is That a Real Axe?"

***

Chutney Preserves 5 is part of The Camberwell Arts Festival 2011. Chutney is supported by Camberwell Arts and Space Station Sixty-Five.

The Black Sun

2011-06-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

The following text is from the English Heretic talk and performance at The Apiary Studios - 20th June - backed by Kevin Quigley's Spiritual Heat Free Jazz ensemble.

Max Ernst's "Cage, Forest And Black Sun"

Tonight I want to do discuss explore the concept of the black sun from alchemy to archetypal psychology, the soul's desire for nekyia and the dangers of literal interpretation of this desire.Once we can apprehend the vital need to take refuge in our psychic hypogeum and understand this to be a very real meditational space, then i'd like to offer the possibility of insight in the truest sense of the word. The ability to see in the dark. Once we can see in the dark, then the imagination has at its disposal, the mechanism for creative vision: of achieving the myth of our age. I'd like then to propose this mechanism as the true escape hatch to the psychedelic; evidenced in such disparate cosmonauts as Sun-Ra and Max Ernst. After all psychedelic merely means soul revealing. Finally I'd like to offer a Mithraic ritual, designed to be be employed only at a time of emergency, its express intention of bringing into conscious operation, the celebrant's own hidden nature, the root substance of their being.

The Black Sun, as with all alchemical ciphers, is a marriage of opposites. But why were the alchemists so obsessed with such absurd conundrums? Does The Black Sun represent an ontological truism, or more to the point the agony of perfection. Is the Black Sun a warning against spiritual inflation – the monotheistic notion that we can achieve godhood through simple solar ascent – in other words through the goodness of Christ. To the Greeks, Christ was just one of many Gods, his correlate Heracles. But Heracles too had to clean out the Augean stables, work in the manure, the prima mater. But maybe it is less a warning, a more a clue as to where the true inner light can be found. Hand-in-hand with sol niger, the black sun, goes the term lumen naturae – the natural light or the luminous vehicle. It said that the shine of darkness is the lumen naturae. But this kind of lumen is a subtle one. Imagine a dank tomb, really imagine it, its smell and feel, and you'll start to see maybe a drop of moisture hanging from a cobweb. Its not a burning light, an overpowering ketheric bliss, but a wet jewel, a malleable form of light that can be worked with, can be used to guide you in the dark. Perhaps The Black Sun represents a psychic fact – the necessity of working in the dark to discover our true imagination.

The Black Sun is also a dalliance between thought and image – introspection and seeing the world as it really is, of not thinking – the impossibility of meditation; the esoteric urge to bliss or negation of bliss. The Black Sun is a kind of light that the darkness comprehends. The Black Sun is a complexity or maybe in analytical parlance, a complex.

As the archetypal psychologist Stanton Marlon states:

It can open the way to some numinous aspects of psychic life and give us a glimpse of the miracle of perception, the mystical union of thought and image; logic and intuition.

But here arises a problem. If The Black Sun is a psychic truism, then do we merely follow its motifs into reality?

Part 2.

What are we to do with the soul's desire for descent? Literally sacrifice ourselves at the mid-summer solstice? I'll return later with a very real example of such an insanity, but want to talk about the nekyia. The deep priest of archetypal psychology James Hillman in his heretic workbook Dreams And The Underworld offered the aphorism “stick with the images”. Dreams And The Underworld is a polemic against the literal interpretations of dreams. He likens them to the nekyia – both a Greek cult practice in which ghosts are communed with to inform of the future, and a physical journey, a katabasis, or physical descent into the underworld. He argues that therapy has overconcentrated on treating dreams in the context of the day world. That we interpret them as capital for greater psychic efficiency in our lives. But the material exploitation of dreams has led to the crisis of of complexes and anxieties that riddle our modern psyche. He advises us to work with the images of the dream like a sculptor, instead of lazily equating that snake we encountered while sleeping as a phallic symbol, describe how it looks, its colour, its texture. Is this approach not similar to the notion of the working with the Black Sun as a real meditational device – of working with the malleable, moist light of the lumen naturae hanging from the cobwebs in our hypogeum? Is it not a more truthful way of understanding the automatic cinemas of the unconscious; sure there's less a given truth of healing from the outside, but a more tangible set of clues toward soul revealing.

At The Summer Solstice in 1966, Robert Cochrane, a self-proclaimed neo-pagan witch and Master of the Clan of Tubal Cain, decided to offer himself to the gods. His life was in turmoil, a rising star of the occult scene, his mundane life collapsing around him, his marriage disintegrating while he took a lover from the coven he headed. When the schism of the ordinary and the glamorous created a psychic crisis, he took this as a sign to commit ritual suicide. In his council house, on June 23^rd Cochrane took an overdose of librium (prescription for his depression) and belladonna (growing in his garden). The sacrifice didn't quite succeed straightaway and as he sank into unconsciousness, huddled himself in a sleeping bag on the couch. He remained in a coma for 10 days before passing away in hospital. A very suburban, tragi comedy from the heart of the Black Sun, Cochrane's self-sacrifice is the perfect proverbial warning against literal interpretation of the soul's desire for nekyia. John Lilly, psychedelic pioneer, voyager of deep brain phenomena under the influence of LSD, suggests that there are lethal neurological programs such as suicide that can be activated by hallucinogen use. Could it be also that there are antique ritual analogues within the brain that Cochrane with his ritual self-deliverance was acting upon?

Part 3.

If The Black Sun is not a juvenile indulgence of the dark then it is a jewel to create a larger mythic appreciation of our nekyias. When the surrealist Max Ernst was a boy, he had a beloved pet parrot. He tells of his major childhood trauma, when at the moment he discovered the bird dead, his parents rushed into the room to announce the birth of his sister. From then on, his imagination fused these two events. Experimenting with the techniques of decalcomania, the most fantastical chimera of woman and exotic plummage would reveal itself in the masterpiece "The robing of the bride". Indeed Ernst even constructed a deeply enigmatic work “Cage, Forest And Black Sun”, in which a dark frottaged background has a small bird scratched in white within its cage, at the hearth of the wood. Alchemical woodcuts depicting the blackening stage, the nigredo of the great work, are replete with images of doves and crows. Ernst is an example par-excellence of creating myth from the complex that is the black sun, of giving apotheosis to traumas, to re-imagining them as universal cosmic events. And perhaps birds and flight represent alchemy in reality, there is movement in nigredo.

The free-jazz legend Sun-Ra joined a black masonic lodge at the age of ten. It was one of the few places afro-americans had access to literature. As a teenager he suffered from chronic testicular hernia which caused him great pain, shame and isolation. During a period of deep religious concentration, after dropping out from college he experienced a profound vision, in which he was teleported to Saturn and saw himself on stage surrounded by aliens with eyes on antennae. They instructed him the world was in chaos and that he should speak to them through his music. Sun-Ra goes onto invent a cosmic arkestra. It would be easy to neuroticise Sun-Ra's vision as the by product of a mental health crisis – but what if we look at from the perspective of alchemy. Saturn is the planet attributed to nigredo, the blackening stage, again we have the idea of flight as an escape vehicle to a greater vision – is not the lumen naturae also a lenticular spaceship, our drop of dew, warping before our eyes. Dr. Michael Persinger, pioneering researcher into the neuropsychology of alien abduction phenomena proposes that such experiences are inducible by send low level magnetic frequencies across the temporal lobes. His original hypothesis came from the study of bereavement hallucination – death and vision, again the oxymoronic truth of the Black Sun.

HP Lovecraft's cosmic horror came from the profound isolation of his introverted personality and the terrifying nekyias of his nightmares. His final tales, “The Shadow Out Of Time” and “Colour Out Of Space”, prophecy the age of the UFO. I would venture to suggest the weird psychedelic orbs he describes in these stories are the luminous vehicles of the Black Sun. The occultist Kenneth Grant has made a divine dark occult cosmology weaving together all manner of strands of syncretic esotericism with Lovecraft as the prophet. He even claims that it is possible to enter a state of creative vertigo if one listens to the jump rhythms of Jazz musician Count Basie. In his delirious voyage of occultism, music and UFOlogy “The Outer Gateways”, Grant explores the sonic formulas for invoking extraterrestial entities. In doing so, he investigates the Persian mystery cult of Mithras and extrapolates on one of their rituals, suggesting that it contains within it a primitive language of hissing, popping and clicking. He relates this to Lovecraft's description of the sounds heralded by the proximity of the Old Ones, and alien contactees descriptions of the sounds of extraterrestial space vehicles. The Cult of Mithras on an exoteric level, was a solar cult. But the Victorian GRS Mead scholar of the rituals of the sect observes:

“Mithra was not the Sun, either in the Iranian religion or in the Mithraic mysteries”.

Their rites may be concerned with the transformation of the physical body through yogic breathing similar to the Hindu practice of Premdeha. In other words of “evoking from the depths of our own being, our primal substance or root-plasm”. The analogy with Ernst and Sun-Ra's creative working with their core experience to create their own myth is tangible, and hopefully one can now apprehend a connection between the symbol of medieval alchemy and hatha-yoga. In the final part of tonights talk, I'd like to perform the first section of this Mithraic ritual.

The Ritual

THE INVOCATORY UTTERANCE (LOGOS).
1. O Primal Origin of my origination; Thou Primal Substance of my substance; First Breath of breath, the breath that is in me; First Fire, God-given for the Blending of the blendings in me, [First Fire] of fire in me; First Water of [my] water. the water in me; Primal Earth-essence of the earthy essence in me; Thou Perfect Body of me - N. N. son of N. N., son of N.N. (fem.) - fashioned by Honoured Arm and Incorruptible Right Hand, in World that's lightless, yet radiant with Light, [in World] that's soulless, yet filled full of Soul!
2. If, verity, it may seem good to you, translate me, now held by my lower nature, unto the Generation that is free from Death; in order that, beyond the insistent Need that presses on me, I may have Vision of the Deathless Source, by virtue of the Deathless Spirit, by virtue of the Deathless Water, by virtue of the [Deathless] Solid, and [by virtue of] the [Deathless] Air; in order that 1 may become re-born in Mind; in order that 1 may become initiate, and that the Holy Breath may breathe in me; in order that 1 may admire the Holy Fire; that 1 may see the Deep of the [New] Dawn, the Water that doth cause [the Soul] to thrill; and that the, Life-bestowing Æther which surrounds [all things] may give me, Hearing.
3. For 1 am to behold to-day with Deathless Eyes - I, mortal, born of mortal womb, but [now] made better by the Might of Mighty Power, yea, by the Incorruptible Right Hand - [I am to see to-day] by virtue of the Deathless Spirit the DeathlessÆon, the master of the Diadeins of Fire - I with pure purities [now] Purified, the human soul-power of me subsisting for a little while in purity; which [power] I shall again receive transmitted unto me beyond the insistent Bitterness that presses on me, Necessity whose debts can never go unpaid - I, N. N., son of N. N. (fem.) - according to the Ordinance of God that naught can ever change.
4. For that it is beyond my reach that, born beneath the sway of Death, I should [unaided] soar into the Height, together with the golden sparklings of the Brilliancy that knows no Death.
5. Stay still, O nature doomed to Perish, [nature] of men subject to Death! And straightway let me pass beyond the Need implacable that presses on me; for that I am His Son; I breathe; I am!
IV.
[THE FIRST UTTERANCE.]
Silence! Silence! Silence!
The Symbol of the Living God beyond Decay.
Protect me, Silence! †!
Next "hiss" forth long: Sss! Sss!
Then "puff" saying: †!

[THE SECOND INSTRUCTION.]
When, then, thou see'st the Upper Cosmos clean and clear, with no one of the Gods (or Angels) bearing down on thee, expect to hear a mighty thunder-clap so as to startle thee.
Then say again:
THE [SECOND] UTTERANCE (LOGOS).
1. O Silence! Silence!
I am a Star, whose Course is as your Course, shining anew from out the depth 20.0pt'>†.
Upon thy saying this, straightway His disk will start expanding.
2. And after thou hast said the second utterance - to wit, twice Silence and the rest - "hiss" twice, and "puff" twice; and straightway shalt thou see a mighty host of stars, five-pointed, emerging from His Disk, and filling all the Air.
3. Then say again:
O Silence! Silence!
And when His Disk is opened [fully] out, thou shalt behold an infinite Encircling and Doors of Fire fast closed.
Straightway set going then the utterance that follows, closing thy eyes:
THE THIRD UTTERANCE (LOGOS).
1. Hear me, give ear to me - N. N., son of N. N. (fem.) - O Lord, who with Thy Breath hast closed the Fiery Bars of Heaven; Twin-bodied; Ruler of the Fire; Creator of the Light; O Holder of the Keys; Inbreather of the Fire; Fire-hearted One, whose Breath gives Light; Thou who dost joy in Fire; Beauteous of Light; O Lord of Light, whose Body is of Fire; Light-giver [and] Fire-sower; Fire-loosener, whose Life is in the Light; Fire-whirler, who sett'st the Light in motion; Thou Thunder-rouser; O Thou Light-glory, Light-increaser; Controller of the Light Empyrean; O Thou Star-tamer!
2. Oh! Open unto me! For on account of this, the bitter and implacable Necessity that presses on me, I do invoke Thy Deathless Names, innate with Life, most worshipful, that have not yet descended unto mortal nature, nor have been made articulate by human tongue, or cry or tone of man:
ëeö · oëeö · iöö · oë · ëeö · ëeö · oëeö · iöö · oëëe · öëe · öoë · ië · ëö · oö · oë · ieö · oë · öoë · ieöoë · ieeö · eë · iö · oë · ioë · öëö · eoë · oeö · öië · öiëeö · oi · iii · ëoë · öuë · ëö · oëe · eöëia · aëaeëa · ëeeë · eeë · eeë · ieö · ëeö · oëeeoë · ëeö · euö · oë · eiö · ëö · öë · öë · öë · ee · ooouiöë!
3. Utter all these with Fire and Spirit once unto the end; and then begin again a second time, until thou hast completed [all] the Seven Immortal Gods of Cosmos.
When thou hast uttered them, thunders and crashings shalt thou hear in the Surround, and feel thyself a-shake with every crash.

Then once more utter Silence!

What Was, What is And What will be

2011-06-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

Past And Future - With the family and my nephew at The Natural History Museum

A short update on schedules and recent happenings.

English Heretic go free-jazz... Smoking

The New Lexicons Of Dark was an enjoyable event. I performed with a line up of Dean Brannagan and Sarah Sparkes, who both excelled in their parts. The symposium was a highly stimulating talk with Kevin Quigley, Martin Sexton and Leslie Goosey, the discussion covering all manner of topics including Cognitive Dissonance, the alchemy of the black sun, and theatre as a form of collective witness. Following on from this event, I'll be appearing as English Heretic with a Free Jazz ensemble! at the Apiary Gallery for a Summer Solstice Happening, on Monday 20th. Briefly, it'll be a talk in three parts backed by cosmic jazz, discussing the Black Sun and lumen naturae as creative meditative devices, following onto the perils of literal interpretation of the soul's nekyia, with allusions to the work of Sun Ra and Artaud, culminating with a performance of a Mithraic Ritual. Please come along, in your best black poloneck, beret and beatnik beard.

Wyrd Tales 2

All writing and re-drafts completed. Release will be September, with hopefully at least one gig around the launch. The Book is approx 150 pages A5, with 8/16 page colour inserts. Authors are as outlined previously. Artwork by Sarah Sparkes, Dean Kenning, Lisa Cradduck and Phil Legard. The CD will be approx 45 mins of entirely new material divided into three sections. It'll come in a digipak with artwork by Dean Kenning and Lisa Cradduck.

1] The Dunwich Tapes (a 20 minute collage of pieces gleaned from the stories in the book)

2] Anthropophagic Rituals Of The Old Ones (a ritual soundtrack)

3] Nostradamus - a take on Peter Bellamy's beautiful folk song (written by Al Stewart)

It's been over 4 years in the making and has encompassed a time in my life of great change, tribulations and insight - but necessary in the most archetypal sense of the word - alluding to ananke, the Goddess of necessity. Wyrd Tales 2, I hope stands as testament to the creative force in the nigredo. It's very much dedicated to my kids Dave and Hannah, though sadly they're too cool to play in The English Heretic Youth Orchestra - way too much like the scouts and girl guides, probably. However, they're a constant source of inspiration.

Night Of The Black Plaques

I am in rehearsals with killer bassist Dean Brannagan to perform a new set of gigs called Night Of The Black Plaques. These will be events to honour some of the recipients of this coveted award. Provisionally, the first series will cover: Robert Cochrane, Ian Ball and Robert Vaughan (anti-hero of Crash). More on this as it happens.

Abraxas Journal Two

Will feature a new English Heretic track called 240 Hours based on the final days of tragic figure Robert Cochrane. Master Of The Clan Of Tubal Cain, Cochrane took an overdose of Belladonna and Librium at Mid-summer 1966, an attempted self-sacrifice that left him in a coma for 10 days, before he slipped to the other side. Analogizing Cochrane with Ian Curtis, 240 hours is a play on the Joy Division title 24 hours - and is an imagined pop song playing in Cochrane's head as he sank into his coma. The CD also includes some wonderful artists (Cyclobe, Raagnarok, Arktau Eos, Phil Legard, Psychogeographical Commission). More details on purchasing the Journal and CD here

Wish You Were Heretic

A bumper compendium of literary and visual postcards from the modern qliphoth, beneath the cinematic substratum of England - with a closely sympathetic album of psychoprography Wish You Were Heretic - well it was bound to happen, I fully intend it to be a bloated behemoth of a beast. Writing and recording is under way, though release will like be in time for the Mayan apocalypse.

Actophile Society 3: Folkestone, Hythe and Dungeness

2011-06-11T04:18:00.001-07:00

Actophile Society 3: Folkestone, Hythe and Dungeness, a set on Flickr.

Glenside 'Lunatic Pauper Palace' - Bristol

2011-06-11T00:25:00.001-07:00

Glenside 'Lunatic Pauper Palace' - Bristol, a set on Flickr.

Another family day out, another lunatic pauper asylum; this time an incredible display at the Glenside Hospital museum, near Bristol. I was delighted to see that Princess Anne opened the ITO workshops at Glenside back in 1969. I'd like to think the ceremonial opening of the facility (her first civic duty as a royal), inadvertently released some bad juju, which eventually manifested in Ian Ball's failed kidnap attempt.

What's interesting, browsing the exhibits, is the desire to document normalcy, epitomised by the psychiatric hospital hairdressers. Perhaps the patients under the hoods of those old bakelite hairdryers represent a paranoiac critical double of the ECT experimentation that was carried out with great zeal at Glenside. Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion works at Thurloes beauty parlour prior to her psychotic collapse. But at least the vast hospital ship of the asylum attempted to create a sense of community, mirrored by the omnipresent boutique in the parade of shops in any residential area. Any residential area but the new housing estates. I'd like to imagine that when the outbreak of psychosis visits the residents who dwell in complexes such as St. Audry's, they'll be wild tousled crazies, not a stiff blue rinse nor a neat brylcreemed side parting in sight. Philip K Dick's wonderful dissection of psychiatric disorders in The Clans Of Alphane Moon, restaged as The Abandoned by Vidal Sassoon.

Actophile Society 2: Southend-on-Sea

2011-06-04T12:50:00.001-07:00

Actophile Society 2: Southend-on-Sea,

With Dave, Hannah, Jon, Yuka and Amy at Southend, in part two of English Heretic's leisurely psychopaddles in tomorrow's flotsam. What would a theme park look like to an archaeologist from another space and time. Iam obsessed with what we are actually seeing and the fairground natural cartoon surrealism feels like the perfect place to reframe reality as something altogether more deliriously unhinged.

My friend Jon is an Upminster lad, so grew up visiting Southend and Adventure Island in its older incarnation. The Crooked House, Helter Skelter and Pirate Island are still there but dwarfed and annexed to an almost quaint museum by the newer structures - which look more like apparatus to test the physiological breaking points of Astronauts. They represent an ergonomic, military approach to thrill seeking, eschewing the fuel of kitsch imagination that powered the wonky attractions of the past.

In trying to photograph the rides, I've been keeping in mind the aphorism that came to me a while back when walking through South Kensington (posted here).

"Can we reconstruct an exoticism from a carefully edited perspective of the exoteric? Could it be possible to create an entirely false travelogue from capturing the mundane at the correct angle?"

Ride 1: Pharaoh's Fear

A space time travelling archaeologist would have a field day of psychedelic and syncretic theories about Pharaoh's Fear, guarded by its phalanx of futuristic mummies. This ride is almost the perfect metaphor for instilling the delirious surreal - Iam listening to Sun Ra's Solar Myth Approach as I write this entry and this is a soundtrack that could easily accompany the unearthing of the Pharaoh's Fear's stellate vehicle. What kind of curses would be set upon the excavators of this ludic tomb?

Ride 2: Candy Cottage And The Fudge Factory

OK, not exactly a ride but more a fantastic voyage fuelled by sugar, who the hell is the marketeer behind the naming of these sweet shops? They sound like slang for something much less saccharine and much more profane. It invokes all kind of queasy trips - Hansel and Gretel's anthropophagic forest retreat, the archetype of the fun fair as the abductor's hunting ground. In a weird way the Candy Cottage reminds me of Alma Tadema's The Flower Market - so perhaps what I am exploring with the future archaeology of the theme park, is analogous with desire of the Victorians to re-imagine Rome and Greece. I was recently visiting the Holbourne Gallery in Bath and was struck by a series of Giovanni Panini's Capriccio paintings. The whole notion of inverting the capriccio technique seems a very fecund mechanism for intuiting a mythic present from the perspective of an archaeological future.

Ride 3: Lucifer's Return Saloon

I can't tell you how much pleasure and possibility this crazy realm of the dust demon gave me. The hooded figure approaching the Helter Skelter is the spectre of Manson - Choronzonic destroyer of the 1960s. I really hope when I finally confront a Babylonian djinn in the astral desert, he'll look like the Satanic Orville outside Lucifer's Saloon. What I love particularly about Philip K. Dick's exploration of Lovecraft in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, is that when the egregores manifest, they have a decidedly Dr. Seussian air about them. Strangely these are a lot more sinister than any imagined HP Geiger occult fetish.

Ride 4: Firewheel

A Pagan Catholic Sacrifice machine, more like it. I can easily put myself in the mind of an overwrought self-appointed expert in comparative religion - cross referencing this ride with the Sun Wheels carved in the temples of Kornak. I love the idea of a religion part Jonestown, part techno-occultniks inventing these contraptions to hoist their sacrifants before the Solstice sun; all under the tutelage of a megalomaniacal child emperor - The Heliogabalus of Southend-On-Sea.

Ride 5: Pirate Island

In finishing off this short exercise in tactical psychophotography, I must show this incredible picture Dave and I concocted. I was taking some snaps of the De-Chiricoesque tower, when Dave stuck a Super Mario toy in front of the lens - booty from one of the stalls. I told him to throw it up in the air and see if we could capture him. Almost paranormally, we managed to construct this photo whereby Mario appears to be stepping off the top of the building. I am sure most readers will think this is a wind up, but absolutely not. It also gives the picture a religious resonance: Crowley's Tower Card, figures falling from the Tower Of Babel. I'd love a future archaeologist of the funfair to discover this photo in their researches, and for it to construe a fabricated ritual intent for the Tower's past purpose.

St. Audry's Asylum Collection

2011-05-25T14:46:00.001-07:00

St. Audry's Asylum Collection , a set on Flickr.

A delightful surprise on a visit with the kids to Felixstowe museum - an amazing room dedicated to St. Audry's Lunatic Pauper Asylum: ECT machines; photographs of the hospital facilities - including the hairdressers; creepy paintings by patients; an even creepier painting of the main entrance - complete with ambulance delivering or taking away an inmate; a mortuary toolset.

Self-administering ECT

Painting of the main entrance to St. Audry's

Shrine to the Matron

Ritual In The Park

2011-05-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

Arthur Machen's short story Ritual concerns a journalist who, on the Whistun Bank Holiday, is perambulating through London. Arriving at Green Park he witnesses a group of boys playing a strange game,

"... there seemed to some sort of dramatic action, perhaps with dialogue, but this I could not hear. Then one boy stood alone, with the five or six others about him. They pretended to hit the solitary boy, and he fell to the ground and lay motionless, as if dead. Then the others covered him up with their coats, and ran away. And then, if I remember, the boy who had been ritually smitten, slaughtered, and buried, rose to his feet, and the very odd game began all over again."

Returning to his offices, the narrator recounts the incident, to which a colleague enigmatically replies,

"Hiram Abiff?"

The story then jumps forward many years. The narrator is taking an American friend of his on another walk around London. The friend has requested that he been shown aspects of the city that are "so ordinary that nobody ever sees them."

The American friend is taken to the vicinity of Kings Cross station and is shown some houses guarded by twin plaster Sphinxes, as well as a street that purportedly featured in Dickens' Little Dorrit. They wander in a haphazard fashion through wastelands to a region that is unfamiliar to the narrator. By all impressions it feels like they have stepped back in time or to another geographic region, the outskirts of a provincial town; a ghostly market square (or the suburbs of a paranoiac-critical town, to borrow Dali's fantastic painting title). A small gang of boys rush into the square. About a dozen of them, marching like soldiers, overseen by a young ruffian, they bang on meat tins with bits of wood, howling barbarously. After performing this ceremonial music for a while, the leader beckons a little boy towards them, arms wide in a gesture of embrace, before drawing his arms back in. He does this three times. After the third repetition of the gesture the little boy in the tattered jacket issues a piercing scream and falls forward as if dead.

The American friend informs the narrator that what they are witnessing is essentially the Njoru Ritual of the Asiki tribe in East Africa.

The story culminates with the narrator recounting the tale to a friend, who somehow miraculously reveals a newspaper article telling of a young boy found dead in a North London market square following a heart attack during a game of soldiers.

Machen's story, I speculate, hopefully without too much controversy, is based on Whitsun Folklore. A child born on Whit Sunday is doomed to kill or be killed. This fate can only be averted by going through a ceremony of a mock funeral of the child.

The engimatic Hiram Abiff alluded to - by the narrator's colleague at the office - is a character who plays an allegorical role in the Masonic psychodrama of the 3rd degree rite. He is presented as the architect of the Temple Of Solomon who is murdered by three ruffians for refusing to divulge the Master Mason's password.

Interestingly, the market square in Machen's yarn is described as composing of "high severe houses, built of whitish bricks, complete in 1840 Gothic, all neat and well-kept, and for all sign of life or movement, uninhabited." Perhaps the narrator and his American friend have wandered by Machen's strange form of magical perichoresis into the Temple Of Solomon?

In many ways the mock ritual killing by children of a child echoes researches into Blood On Satan's Claw and the case of Mary Bell. What's even more curious is that I first visited Bix (scene of the ritual killings in BOSC) on May Eve 2005. During the Whit holiday that year, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire there was a very disturbing case of a young boy of 5 who was led into a wood by a group of older children, tied up and nearly strangled. The incident received a good deal of coverage in the press. The boy survived and when questioned said he thought he had been taken into a jungle. Perhaps they were enacting the ritual of the Njoru, or the weird Masonic thanatologies of the 3rd degree.

For more on that case read The Daily Telegraph coverage here.

Reports compared the attempted murder, inevitably in lazy media histrionics, to the Bulger tragedy and the case of Mary Bell. The place of their attempted murder was in an area of woodland known as "Devil's Ditch". The resonance with Blood On Satan's Claw and Machen's Ritual would be ludicrously obvious, if it were not so chillingly real. Again this raises the question, are we not programmed at some deep neurological substratum (akin to John's Lilly's 'Lethal Programs') to act out antique ceremonies?

Devil's Ditch, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

Path leading to the ruined church of St. James, Bix - scene of the ritual sacrifices in Blood On Satan's Claw

In a more pleasant coincidence, I've been asked to take part in the New Lexicons Of Dark event in Hoxton, on Whit Monday (30th May). I'll be doing a short performance based on the set I did at The Toilet Gallery on May Day. On a personal note, I consider these less performances than public nekyias to concentrate the imagination and demonstrate the process by which English Heretic operates: essentially a form a depth magick, ceremonies are valuable in materialising more images to guide progress into the creative hypogeum. Images as psychopomps. They're also a great excuse to have serious fun, as is the whole project...

Iam hoping to tailor the performance to take in the significance and threads in the mock procession from May Day to Whitsun. I'll also be involved in the symposium later in the day, as part of the same event.

Hellfire Caves

2011-05-14T00:23:00.001-07:00

English Heretic's photostream on Flickr.

Bawdsey

2011-05-03T12:39:00.001-07:00

Bawdsey, a set on Flickr.

Investigating Bawdsey missile base.

English Heretic - 2nd May, Live at The Toilet Gallery

2011-04-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

Herb Robert Rises!

LOCATION: Nipper Alley, Kingston Upon Thames, KT1 1AD

Time To Rattle Your Scrotal Tambourines, Herb Robert of English Heretic will be making his debut performance in town. An idiot cunning man, Amprodias his sewer sentinel, a ritual muck spreader.

More details here

We headed over to Hurley and Bix on Saturday to capture essences from BOSC locations, finishing off with drinks at Oakley Court (The iconic studio of Hammer House).

Some pictures below:

Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne LP.

2011-04-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

New from English Heretic! A special commemorative Black Plaque for Ian Ball.

Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne (Picture Disc LP and mp3 download)

Order from the souvenir shop

Using found recordings, a research group from English Heretic have reconstructed the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne by Ian Ball. On the evening of March 20th 1974 Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were returning from a charity film event in support of The Riding For The Disabled Association, when their limousine was held up along the Mall, by Ball. Eventually tackled by police officers, Ball was arrested. In May 1975, Ball was convicted of attempted murder and kidnap. A diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, Ball still remains in detention under the Mental Health Act.

In 2005, Ian Ball set up a website from Broadmoor Hospital. On the site he explained that the kidnap was in fact an elaborate hoax set up by himself, offering 1 million pounds to anyone who could prove it was a hoax. Ball also paid £15 to the Anarchist magazine Class War for an advert to promote his cause. He later sent Class War a letter complaining of their cowardice in refusing to display the advertisement. Class War did actually run the advertisement in issue 90. There has been some suggestion that the Ball's website is really a clever piece of viral marketing by Channel 4 – as part of the promotion for the 2006 docudrama To Kidnap A Princess.

In his explanation, Ball claims to be 'the most dangerous working-class dissenter this country has ever had and is ever likely to have'. At the time of the attempted kidnapping Ball stated his intention was to raise a ransom of 2 million pounds for the National Health Service. While the ransom fee has the ring of a comedic anachronism, there is an ironic resonance with the current political climate, in the run up to the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The main sonic refrain on this release comes from an LP, "Music For a Royal Wedding -A BBC recording from Westminster Abbey on Nov 14th, 1973 – H.R.H The Princess Anne & Captain Mark Phillips". We took a small section of the recital of The Lord's Prayer from the wedding ceremony – in Plainsong – and reversed it to create the mantra that plays throughout the reading of Ball's hoax explanation. Additional analogue synthesis has been provided by the English Heretic Electronic Workshop, together with manipulated field recordings taken from the Mall.

What are we to make of Ball's hoax. Is the hoax itself a hoax? If it is a piece of viral marketing, then the Channel 4 copywriter responsible certainly has talent to burn – either that or they have a supreme grasp of the logic of clinical paranoia. Ball's monologue vacillates between megalomania and persecution; an individual tortured by isolation to such a degree that all other players in his reality are merely weird servitors of his self importance. In other words it is a mechanically perfect model of a severe affective disorder. There are even hints that Ball seems to be displaying symptoms of Capgras Syndrome when he 'realises' that Princess Anne has been replaced by a double during the kidnap attempt. But Ball also reveals himself to be a master of tragic fiction – the logical descent into madness echoes Guy De Maupassant's short story A Piece Of String.

In presenting the kidnap from different angles: Ball's confession; Reggie Bosanquet's slurred ITN news report; and the mumbling gaucheness of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips' recital on The Parkinson Show – what emerges is a Parallax View of the event. A cubist documentary in sound. Time conflates and distorts, the players exhibit distinct symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – flashbulb memories of trivial details magnify and the actual forensic truth smashes like a broken window in the back of Princess Anne's limousine.

“You can look at a piece of a puzzle for three whole days, you can believe that you know all there is to know about its colouring and shape, and be no further on than when you started. The only thing that counts is the ability to link this piece to the other pieces. The pieces are readable, take on a sense, only when assembled...” (G. Perec).

English Heretic, April 2011
Order from the souvenir shop

Blood On Satan's Claw And The Triple Goddess

2011-04-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

English Heretic will be performing a rare live event at the Toilet Gallery in Kingston Upon Thames, on Monday 2nd May. More details to follow but here is a brief synopsis:

As part of its ongoing research into the Sacred Geography Of British Cinema:

English Heretic present a comparative study of the classic horror film Blood On Satan's Claw in relation to Robert Graves' mythopoetic delineation of the May Eve Witch Cults of Northern Europe.

Featuring a screening of the film, annotated with a mindbending report extrapolated from location hunts to the key scenes.

The talk will discuss the palimpsest of myth and toponymy hidden in the film, the cultural climate of its making and incredible evidence of the possible reincarnation of a coven at Bix.

Following on from the talk, English Heretic will attempt to transcend Time And Space by means of ritual electronics to transport the audience to the very cult of a May Day sacrifice.

The Sacred Geography Of British Cinema.

Is it not beyond the bounds of credulity that a well staged, suitably ornate ritual portrayed through the visual arts may harness the power to tear the fabric of consensus reality - and with what results: the letting in of monstrous denizens from a fantastic and bloody celluloid nightmare? The blind atavisms of the preternatural realm may not know the difference between theatrical ceremony and the incantations of the supposedly initiated. The Sacred Geography Of British Cinema presents the results of a series of investigations and site visits to real locations that have been employed as the backdrops for some of the most powerful and frightening scenes in British film history. Focusing on sites of violent immolation and qliphothic invocation, English Heretic provide a series of guides to enable you to imbibe the troubled spirits that may now haunt these environs. With detailed scene synopses, walker's guides and field experiments for you to try out, The Sacred Geography of British Cinema aims to provide a tangible portal to fantastic and uncanny realms.

Wyrd Tales 2

2011-04-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

With the boys now, on Laundry Hill - At Ganges

Wyrd Tales 2 is reaching the final furlong, alas no Hippomania in this edition, that'll be a separate longer story, but here's the provisional outline:

Wyrd In Poetry, Theory And Practice

Planet Of The Spiders

The Dunwich Tapes

Stormtowers Of Atlantis (Ken Hollings)

Heuristic Catalogues I : The Delmer Institute

Heuristic Catalogues II: The O-Jazz Explosion

Skyline (Mark Pilkington)

At Ganges: Memoirs Of An English Aghora

Bleak And Solemn...: The Hauntological Landscapes of M.R. James (Mark Fisher)

Artwork by Lisa Cradduck, Dean Kenning, Phil Legard and more to be confirmed.

CD - full length, one single track: "Songs And Ceremonies Of The Elder Ones"

It was time for Wyard to release the songs and ceremonies of the Elder Ones

Clarice Qliphoth Dinner Plaques

2011-04-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

For Kenneth Grant... (rough draft, plate to follow)

Plate, unglazed without text... Outside The Dinner Circles Of Time.

Pagan Drum Machines Of Whittlesea

2011-04-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

New download over at Magick Concrète.

Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne

2011-04-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Coming soon from English Heretic...
Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne

Royal Wedding News

2011-03-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

April promises to be busy and exciting at English Heretic. Just a brief update of things that were, things that are and shall be.

On a personal note, I've completed my final exam for the msc and will be starting my project. The project will involve the development of a computational tool to mine omic and mri data from Alzheimers studies.

In addition to this, Wyrd Tales 2 is coming together and Iam starting to put together the layout. A CD will accompany the book - a single long piece, that is taking shape - ritualistic and surreal, using heuristic field recordings... think psychoprography... I'll be posting up the book contents in the near future.

I've been invited by Fortean Times to cover and take part in the Sonic Weekend at Buxton, which is happening on 8th/9th/10th April.

Finally, in honour of the Royal Wedding, we will be releasing a commemorative recording. More on this exciting venture soon.

Pondering the future, at the tomb of John Allan, Nunhead Cemetery

Strange Attractor Journal 4

2011-03-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

The delicious Strange Attractor Journal 4, edited by my pal Mark Pilkington is now out. It contains wonderful pieces by Gyrus, Stephen Grasso, and Ken Hollings amongst many others. Iam delighted too, to have an essay in there. Order from Strange Attractor here.

Some may say brutality, others rigorous discipline

2011-03-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

English Heretic Postcard - Victorian Toilet and Memorial at Shotley War Cemetery.

Martin Jones, author of the enjoyable Psychedelic Decadence has a fine new 'zine out called Bedabbled! The first issue is loosely themed around the subject of deviant children in film. It contains articles on Blood On Satan's Claw" and the film Bloody Kids, which is described as social realism meets horror. The next issue will be on the subject of the Cult of Satan. Martin is also happily contributing a piece of speculative fiction to Wyrd Tales 2.

Violence and childhood, with BOSC as the prime metaphor continues to provide creative nourishment. There is also much interest and controversy, in neuroscience, concerning the development of the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis in children suffering maltreatment.

Briefly summarised, the HPA axis is responsible for the mopping up of cortisol which is released by the adrenals in response to stress. The work of Michael Meaney on generations of rats separated from their mothers has demonstrated loss of expression of the genes that code for receptors that modulate the HPA axis feedback loop. In other words it has been proposed that early trauma can switch on an epigenetic program that blunts the mechanism for suppressing stress, leading to a whole range of psychopathologies. It's a controversial theory, but of particular interest when one looks at the case of Mary Bell (inspiration for Angel Blake in BOSC), and the whole notion of violence in childhood that Bedabbled! explores.

Along with Witchfinder General, BOSC is a horror film, despite itself, that has big themes at its core. William Burroughs once said that when reading a book, he would ask himself, does it explore the big themes, and employed this as its critical marker. Budget compromised, BOSC certainly does, and irrespective of its less than integrated plot, holds power for this reason.

Perhaps the nature of the HPA axis was intuitively apprehended by medieval philosophers, when one considers Hippomanes. A piece of flesh on the forehead of a new born colt, it was said that unless the mare herself partook of the hippomanes, she would never after love her foal, or let it suck. The key behavioural traits of grooming and licking are found to be absent in rats with blunted HPA axis response.

Champagne meditates on the housing estate of the borderlines.

The issue of violence and youth is a recurring imaginal thread. On a recent trip to the war cemetery at Shotley, I met a chap who was conducting a tour of the graveyard. We got talking in the church about HMS Ganges, the naval school nearby. Chatting about the history of the school, we got into a discussion of the Victorian methods for handling urban migration and in particular, what to do with unruly youths.

"Of course Ganges was known for its rigorous discipline", he cautiously remarked.

"Brutality, you mean?" I responded

"Some many say rigorous discipline, others brutality."

The tour guide then went on to mention the lunatic pauper hospital at Melton, near Woodbridge, St. Audry's. The previous week there had been reports in the papers that graves at the hospital chapel had been excavated and three of them left exposed for a number of months. Naturally interested, we popped over to Melton the following day to explore the place. Much of the hospital buildings are listed and the entire complex has been converted into a huge housing estate. Even the mortuary and one of the chapels are now homes for the professional class. The graves, alas, had been earthed over since the media coverage, but there were nevertheless some bizarre juxtapositions of psychiatric hell and domestic idyll, to enjoy. A small children's playground overlooked the chapel cemetery, a child's football kicked over a conservatoried garden lay among tombstones - altogether, the hackneyed disaster scene of a tabloid photographer's dream. Only the scene, I suggest, is of a psychic disaster of tomorrow; one awaiting the inhabitants of this housing estate on the borderland.

The Chapel graveyard at St. Audry's, Melton.

The whole place had the air of the opening scene of John Carpenter's Halloween. Indeed, there was even an incredibly creepy Willow tree on a grass bank in front of the former Male Block of the hospital. The tree had a huge growth in the centre of the trunk, with a face carved on the growth.

I suspect, and hope, future horror films will be liminal events in which we will play active roles. Media control of huge budgets dictates that we must cast ourselves like the psychedelic and ontological pioneers of the 1960s into the the roles of directors, heroes and victims of our own psychic B-movies.

The next musical download from work in progress is based on an extrapolation of Robert Graves' theories of the Triple Goddess and its relation to Blood On Satan's Claw. The track is provisionally called The Dangerous Gift, the title taken from a poem in Graves' essay, Intimations Of The Black Goddess. The lyrics were written in collaboration with the artist and curator, Kate Renwick, and explore the idea of the sacrifice of the Poet by the Muse and the Wyrd. The imagined venue for the sacrifice being the ruin of St. James church at Bix, location of the ritual murder scenes in BOSC. An edited and remixed version will appear on the CD release coming along with the next English Heretic Collection.

View of the children's playground from the graveyard at St. Audry's

I've also changed the title of the CD, it's now provisionally entitled Wish You Were Heretic.... a set of postcards from the excavated substratum of England.

Download "The Dangerous Gift" here.

Tales of The New Isis Lodge

2011-03-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Back in stock, in time for Easter - go on treat the kids to something far more healthy and decadent than chocolate...

Available here

Never Has England Looked So Beautiful Yet Been So Violent

2011-02-20T05:10:00.000-08:00

The next few months will be very busy. As well as completing my MSc, I am in the process of putting together the next Wyrd Tales and starting work on a new issue of The English Heretic Collection. A CD will accompany the magazine and I will be posting mixes from the CD as work in progress over the coming weeks. The title of the CD is Never Has England Looked So Beautiful Yet Been So Violent. A first mix of the title track to the CD is available here.

The CD title comes from the trailer to Witchfinder General. I can't help but feel we are becoming overblown advertisements for the bathic truths of our inner lives. It as if some portentous voice over artist is hyping the actuality of our self-importance, accentuating false peaks and air-brushing out the natural vales. I've been watching lots of low budget film trailers and love the disconnect between the crummy sets, the hammy actors and the hackneyed monsters, and the maniacal revved up promises of these quick cut edits.

I imagine if we do ever have a revolution in England, it will be similarly paced and promoted. I've been reading Summer Of Blood, Dan Jones' middlebrow page turner on the Peasant's Revolt. The book culminates with a poem by a young Robert Southey, dedicated to John Ball, one of the ringleaders of the revolt. Southey later went to become the poet laureate, "a hoary old conservative", in Dan Jones' words. Much to the embarrassment of the older Southey, the poem was published some two decades after he originally penned it.

I include two sections of the poem at the climax of the song, over sweeping strings.

...Flattery's incense

No more shall shadow round the gore-dyed throne;

That altar of oppression, fed with rites,

More savage than the Priests of Moloch taught,

Shall be consumed amid the fire of Justice;

The ray of truth shall emanate all around,

And the whole world be lighted!

John Ball, a "hedge priest" from Kent, was executed on 15th July 1381. He was hanged, beheaded, disembowelled and quartered, his butchered body sent to four parts of the country. Ball and John Lowes, the vicar hanged at the behest of Matthew Hopkins represent a different kind of heretic. They are totemic by products of the paranoia of civil war - the question Iam asking on this track is how might this curious strain of paranoia manifest today, as the country becomes seemingly more divisive?

I'll also be publishing a series of English Heretic postcards with the tracks. The first postcard is made from a visit to Thetford, in honour of Dad's Army, which was filmed there, and the climax of this year's Straw Bear parade at Whittlesey.

That said, all these images and cute film samples merely represent the psychotic top soil of the subconscious, a prophylactic film protecting us from access to a far more visionary and mysterious deep. I hope to unearth more archetypal relics as the CD progresses...

Download Never Has England Looked So Beautiful Yet Been So Violent

Magick without K

2011-02-02T03:50:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Grant died on 15th January 2011. I first read Grant's Outside The Circles Of Time when I was at school. It contains a wonderful occult mind bomb that on reading genuinely sent me into the 'neither-neither' state. A free copy of my "Tales Of The New Isis Lodge" CD, to anyone who finds this particular example of initiating the creative vertigo. His books are full of this kind of weird humour. Cults Of The Shadow is dedicated to B.L - presumably Bela Lugosi.

I feel Grant was genuinely tapping into the astral of the 20th Century, not inhabited by a platitudinous carnival of the traditional arcana, but something considerably more squamous - spewed from the seas off Nagasaki. William Burroughs said the entrance to a subway is an entrance to Hell. I would also add that they serve as entrances to the Tunnels of Set, beloved by Grant. Ballard, in his introduction to Zodiac 2000 complains that the unconscious is no longer ruled by the animals of Chaldea. Grant's books read from the same disturbing Tarot deck. The criticisms against Grant's interest in the qliphoth are criticisms against the Universe - a vain attempt to delude ourselves that we are not embroiled in some delicious nightmare. At least Grant et al., are honest enough to dive in and swim the teratogenic oceans of the occult. Not only honest, but wearing the magickal blocking factor of black humour as protection against the fallacy of the Sun.

The threads of influence and intriguing characters and concepts that I have gleaned from Grant is the perfect epitaph for post-mortem studies.

New Reification From Magick Concrète

2011-02-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

Over at Magick Concrète, we have a new reification for Imbo lc.

Cult Of The Black Goddess is composed from recordings taken at the mountain monastery of Montserrat, near Barcelona. There are two sound sources that have been manipulated through MISTY: the Boys' choir singing The Virolai, and the Christmas Day Mass (played backwards). The Virolai is the anthem of the Black Madonna, venerated at Montserrat. It begins with the words "April rose, dusky lady of the mountain chain". We are reifying this track on the Feast of Imbolc (1st February). Imbolc belongs to St. Brigid, one of the aspects of the Triple Goddess. Also known as Candlemas, the day has long been celebrated as The Feast of Purification of The Virgin.

The Black Madonna at Monsterrat is one of the oldest such statues in Europe and Montserrat itself has been imagined as the location of the Holy Grail in the Romantic vision of Goethe. Ean Begg's gazetteer The Cult Of The Black Virgin mythopoetically proposes a lineage with Egyptian Goddess Isis. This imaginal thread derives from Robert Graves' lesser known essay "Intimations Of The Black Goddess", written in 1963, a fascinating epilogue to his magnum opus, The White Goddess.

Download "Cult Of The Black Goddess" here

Zombie Diaspora

2011-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

Yet more on earthquakes and magick. Zombie Diaspora is the blog of John Cussans, well worth investigating.

The latest entry from John:

"Andrè Eugene is planning to build a memorial to the earthquake with the bones of victims. It’s a brilliant idea. I think that will be a major and much needed work that will hopefully bring international attention to the hypocritical double-standards of the western corporate media’s approach to the permanent man-made catastrophe occurring in Haiti."

The Occult Peter Parker Of Holborn

2011-01-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

One of the more impenetrable mysteries of Kenneth Grant's mythos is Auguste Busche's Emporium. The place crops up in Hecate's Fountain. It appears that the young Kenneth visited this shop just prior World War II to buy some occult nick nacks, but inadvertently walked off with a statue of the devil. Mundane distractions inexplicably prevented him from returning the object until 1958! However on visiting the emporium, a mere 20 years later, Grant was surprised to find the place closed down with a "To Let" sign up. At the time of his appropriation of the statue Grant states he was living in Fetter Lane, Holborn. Auguste Busche's Emporium was on Chancery Lane (just around the corner).

On our recent walk through Holborn, Mark pointed out the building on Chancery Lane that Crowley shared with Allan Bennett. There's a great description of the pad on Lashtal, courtesy of the Daily Mail!

"The visitor passed from the cold stone dusk of the stairs to a palace of rose and gold that has long since vanished. Gold-black Japanese wallpaper covered the rooms and the place was lit like a brothel by an ancient silver lamp with a red bulb. The floor was covered with leopard skins and on the wall there was a huge crucifix in ivory and ebony.

There were two temples, one to good, the other to evil. In Crowley's 'Black Temple', actually more of a cupboard, a blood-stained skeleton sat before an evil altar, made of a round table supported by the figure of an ebony negro standing on his hands.

On the altar a sickening perfume smouldered in a container and one visitor claimed the stench of previous blood sacrifices filled the air."

frame 1: The Busche Emporium, frame 2: Fetter Lane, frame 3: Printer's Devil Pub, Fetter Lane

Could it be that Auguste Busche's emporium is a magical rendering of Crowley's flat and that Auguste Busche is a qabalistic cipher (A.B being the initials of Allan Bennett). It maybe a playful poke at Crowley himself, who chided Grant for his use of "mock qabalah". Grant claims his "mock qabalah" is perfectly legitimate and derives from something called "Theosophical Qabalah".

In Remembering Aleister Crowley, Grant defends himself,

"My 'mock' qabalah is perfectly legitimate. It is known in some circles as the 'theosophical' qabalah, the word theosophical being used in its etymological sense and having no connection with the Society of that name. Ouspensky alludes to the Theosophical Qabalah in connection with the 17th century mystic, Gichtel, author of the Theosophia Practica. The system has been widely used ever since."

Funnily enough, we also found a pub called "The Printer's Devil" on Fetter Lane, a paranoiac double of Grant's stolen statue?

In the final tome of the typhonian trilogies, Ninth Arch, Grant obsesses about Busche, but also makes an allusion to the Holborn Viaduct referring to,

"a spectacle that arrested his [Frater Aossic - i.e: Grant!] attention whilst passing along High Holborn. In deep shadow, the thread of a spider's web underwent a sudden magnification and presented a solid seeming cable whereby one could swing from the (Holborn) viaduct on to staircase. This he did, and found himself strolling down chancery lane in brilliant sunshine."

One has a vision of a young, sensitive Kenneth Grant, undergoing some kind of arachnidal transformation, an occult Peter Parker, swinging through the smokin', jazz infused streets of 50's London.

What's also interesting is that Austin Spare was born near Holborn Viaduct and attended the church school of St. Sepulchre Without Newgate. The church stands on the junction of The Old Bailey and The Viaduct Pub. There is a legend that The Black Dog of Newgate haunts this area and used to appear before executions. According to the legend the black dog began haunting Newgate after a scholar tried for sorcery was eaten by fellow inmates, before he could be executed.

Frame 1: Holborn Viaduct, Frame 2: The Staircase of the Viaduct; Frame 3: St. Sepulchre Without Newgate Frame 4: The Viaduct pub

What's also clear from Ninth Arch (see page 306), is that the Busche Emporium is one of the nine hotspots in Grant's often bewildering magical world. To summarise they are:

1] Dongola, in the Sudan associated with the Children Of Isis

2] Kabultiloa in South Africa associated with the Cult Of The Spectral Hyaena

3] Ku in the Chinese Province of Honan

4] Leng on The Sino-Tibetan border

5] R'lyeh associated with the Cult of Cthulhu

6]Limehouse, the abode of Sin Sin Wa Wa

7]Chancery Lane associated with The Busche Emporium

8] Bond Street, the abode of Kazmah

9] Candleston in South Wales associated with The Cult of Qrixkuor.

I think the time is ripe to pick apart these various psychogeographies, to draw a map of the delirious other world of Kenneth Grant, we could find ourselves exploring a Trouille like dream terrain of confabulation and the hyper-realised mundane.

The Art of Clovis Trouille, what the inside of Grant's magickal lodge might look like?

Spring 74: Alchemy

2011-01-06T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Spring Journal 74, which has some deeply insightful essays on the lumen naturae, separatio, true imagination, and the alchemy of colour.

Elizabeth Eowyn Nelson's discussion, "Conflict as Creative Act: Psyche's knife, Separatio, and the Feeling Function", focuses on the image of the knife in the myth of Eros and Psyche. Nelson argues that the knife has been much neglected by analysis and artistic depictions of the tale, in favour of the lamp. Psyche is given the lamp and the knife by her sisters. They have convinced her she has married a monster - Eros. She creeps into his room at night to obtain a glimpse of his face - the lamp, to cast light on the suspected monster, the knife to kill him. As it turns out, Psyche is overwhelmed by the beauty of Eros, but Eros is betrayed. He has forbade her to look at him.

Nelson goes on to relate the knife with the separatio of alchemy and makes the assertion that,

"[w]hen we take up Psyche's knife as Psyche did, we make choices with our vulnerable emotional bodies and not simply with cool, unfeeling intellect. Little wonder that our pace in such times is slow rather than brisk, we feel confused long before we are clear, and even clarity is evanescent."

Our symbolic use of Psyche's knife is a means of becoming conscious through finer and finer discrimination. The awakening of Eros by Psyche is to relinquish puer aeternus, the perpetual child, a world of possibilities with no genuine existence at all.

"The individual is one who has sacrificed the puer dream of being all things to become something more humbling but infinitely more valuable: a 'real fragment'."

Nelson introduces the paradox that only by becoming a real fragment can we relate to the eternal whole. Aware of our unique personal combination - by definition, limited - we then have the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. "But only then", cautions Jung.

Taking her thesis to a conclusion Nelson argues boldly,

"Psyche's real guide is the cosmogonic Eros, the original, primordial force of love and desire who helped engender the cosmos... Even in agonising confrontation, the soul's fate is always erotic in the largest sense of the word: dynamic, fluid and relational... Sometimes eros flows towards another person, our work, a cause, an object or a place... At other times, the flow of eros is inhibited..."

Our task she states, quoting James Hillman, is "to trust that the movements of eros in our lives are meaningful and right."

The Concrete And The Clay beneath our feet

2011-01-04T16:02:00.000-08:00

There is now a site dedicated to the Magick Concrete project

I was amused to read the news report of the earthquake in Cumbria at 23.00 hours on the 21st December, the day of the reification of Do They Know It's Mithras? For the first time in any of the recitals of this Mithraic Rite I used the section of text from the eight utterance:

1. Hail Guardians of the Pivot, ye, sacred sturdy Youths, who all, at once, revolve the spinning Axis of Heaven's Circle, ye who let loose the thunder and the lightning, and earthquake-shocks and thunder-bolts upon the hosts of impious folk,

The epicentre of the quake was at Coniston, resting place of Donald Campbell, overlooked by John Ruskins' house. According to one local:

Neil Wilkinson, of Whitehaven, Cumbria, said the tremor "shook my house and the bed I was lying in".

Whitehaven is my birthplace. Given the connotations of rebirth in the later sections of the rite, one might say this is a synchoncreticity... Today (4th January) is the anniversary of Campbell's death, at Coniston Lake.

The Christmas period was spent in Barcelona, Montserrat and Figueras researching, documenting and recording for Magick Concrete. Christmas day was spent in Montserrat, where I attended the Mass and took part in the adoration of the Black Madonna in the crypt of the Santia Maria monastery...

One of the shrines on the path to the holy grotto at Montserrat

Do They Know It's Mithras?

2010-12-21T04:51:00.000-08:00

Bracken House Sundial

Sunday 12th December saw the first act of Magick Concrète. Mark Pilkington and I took a 3 hour walk from Tottenham Court Road, through Crowley's Holborn beneath the pealing bells of St. Paul's, to the displaced remains of a Mithraeum at Walbrook. Along the way a number of field recordings were made. Mark then processed the recordings through his modular synthesiser set-up - MISTY. I have subsequently taken these recordings, to create a ceremonial structure, overlaying them with readings from a Mithraic Ritual. We are releasing the the resulting track "Do they know it's Mithras", as a free download. It is possibly the first ever occult charity record. Each download will accrue magical energy for worthy causes over the Christmas period. By downloading this song, you are pledging 13 minutes worth of pure oja. It's a radically different working of the "English Heretic" family favourite standard "Open The Mithraic Stargate".

Download "Do they know it's Mithras?" here.

Statue of Ceres at Holborn Viaduct

The last few weeks have seen tumultuous scenes in our capital city. As education becomes the key symbol of a gnostic power struggle, "Do they know it's Mithras?" is a timely ritual. Knowledge as power, gnosis as the power of psychic freedom. The Persian Mithras is a gnostic deity appropriated by the Roman military. Education - and by inference knowledge - sacrificed at the behest of the military industrial complex. The Feast Of Mithras, imported to Rome, took place on 25th December, at the culmination of the week-long festival of a Saturnalia. It was a celebration of the return of the sun in the darkest time of the year. Whilst the recent vote was passed to increase tuition fees, it may represent the necessity for a more autonomous future. Though it may be possible to handicap the right to formal education, what cannot be taken away is brightness and potential, an unconquerable Sun, that transcends class and wealth. Perhaps this is the time to imagine the ludic revolution as envisaged by Bob Black. In this respect "Do they know it's Mithras?", is an economic sacrifice to precipitate such a revolution: an opportunity to steal from the fire of serious play. Black inspires the notion of the gift economy, lessons as presents. To be in the ever-present and see the ever in the present - akin to P.K. Dick's "the empire never ended" - is the initiatory lesson in concrete magic.

The remains of a Mithraeum at Walbrook

The track is dedicated particularly to the activism of lecturers and students alike, who have shown both courage and vision, using the society of the spectacle and its machinery to subversively bright ends. Moreover, that the vital tools of humour and imagination can disarm and re-vision evokes Octavio Paz's statement, "a chained man need only close his eyes to make the world explode". To mix the puer of Jupiter with the senex of Saturn is dissolve the lectern between pedagogue and pupil. As such, "Do they know it's Mithras?" is a ceremonial volley from the esoteric underground of the spectacle, a shadow academy - the society of the spectral. On a more hermetic level perhaps it is necessary for us to dwell in the saturnine night of discontented winters in order to glimpse the jupiterian light and new possibilities - what the alchemists called the lumen naturae.

The black dog of Newgate

The track serves another purpose. As we know, Christmas is often a time of celebration induced stress and unwelcome guests. Therefore, rather than treating this track as a piece of festive entertainment, and because of its somewhat atonal nature, I would recommend playing it towards the end of Saturnalia when one wishes to rid the House and Parliament of toffee-scoffing hangers on. A banishing perambulation to work off the gluttony of capital.

A common custom during Saturnalia was role reversal, in which masters would play the slave and slave the master. This psychodrama is patently obvious in the recent demonstrations; the would-be buffoon king and his equine wife pelted with paint is a masquerade conducted by the very lords of misrule. It also shows the arbitrary nature of power. Words as power, the mithraic liturgy, used in this hymn, contains a vowel based mantra. GRS Mead believes these to be a form of theurgic language, a nomina barbara. A set of seemingly meaningless utterances, they may actually represent a yogic exercise in breath control, of harnessing emotion, forging from the fire of eiron, anger and energy tending unto change. Our final instruction for the listener is to gather their family and friends around the mithraic tree and join in with the mantric section from the ritual. In doing so, one will only serve to raise the mercury to boiling point in the charity oja-ometer installed at the English Heretic HQ. Be warned though, like all dodgy gurus before, we may run off with the proceeds to build ourselves a Scientological yacht somewhere exotic.

St. Pauls, the luna temple

Found Object Podcast Volume 1.

2010-11-29T20:54:00.000-08:00

I recently took part in the first, and very enjoyable Found Objects Podcast. The inaugural meeting took place at the Angel pub off Denmark Street: hosted by Ken Hollings, along with Dolly Dolly (David Yates) and Andrew Demetrius. David has distilled the two hour conversation into a podcast for Found Objects. Ken discussed Morning Of The Magicians, Andrew - HPL artwork, David - A honeycombe from his bee keeping interests. Myself, I took along Christopher Evans' Landscapes Of The Night.

The Actophile Society: Great Yarmouth

2010-11-29T20:29:00.000-08:00

For English Heretic: Andy, Dave and Hannah

For K-Punk: Mark, Zoe, George and Michelle

Destination: Great Yarmouth - Louis Tussaud's House Of Wax, Regent Street and Promenade.

Great Yarmouth is one of my favourite places. I first visited it about 10 years ago with my then wife Helen and our son Dave. Helen had just found out she was pregnant with Hannah and was suffering really bad morning sickness. So it didn't help that we booked into the seediest hotel, serving the most gelatinous minestrone soup and salads lubricated with a homemade dressing - of a consistency more David Lynch than Paul Newman. The hotel proprietors were Harry and Terry. Terry was a muscular middle aged Geordie who did a drag routine on a Tuesday evening in the exquisitely uncomfortable and bijoux lounge bar. On the wall of the stairwell leading to the bedrooms, there was a photograph of Terry - dressed as a mermaid. Still, it remains one of our favourite holidays - like being in a George Kuchar film...

Recently I've been pondering a new kind of psychogeography - one for the family, after all every coordinate of pretension and speculation has been annexed by some flavour of the 'art'. The Society Of The Actophile is therefore a natural extension. A play on Bataille's esoteric cult of revolutionary sacrifice - The Actophile makes an apotheosis of the beach and, by extrapolation, a religion of leisure. Whilst this conceit is obviously bathed in lazy irony, Actophilia has real potential. It's where the situationist disciples of the ludic revolution go on a day out, more charabanc than Left Bank.

As a place for praxis, the beach itself is a clean talisman, waiting for dead seals to be drawn upon it and jetsammed to the subconscious of the next tide.

One only need look at the revved up world of Jeff Keens, the terminal sands of JGB, the incubal revenants of M.R. James' Burnstow and, the hints of R'lyeh at Dunwich to know that seaside psychogeography represents the most powerful frontier between what is known and a queasy occult: where the relics of a hideous pre-historical weekend break are washed up as the future's lagan.

Louis Tussaud's House Of Wax

Plan For The Assassination Of Princess Ann

The Ultimate Power Electronics Supergroup: Eichmann on laptop; Black Panther on beaters; Manson on vocals and Beads

Forensic evidence proves that God told the Yorkshire Ripper to do it

A three eyed, idiot dwarf, cannibal killer from Poland - an identity parade nightmare

Fontastic Diner

Trish Clowes' Tangent - the best name for a jazz band ever

Onomatopeaic Coffee Bar... an even better name for a Jazz band

Dave in retro holiday photoshoot

With a name like Gypsy Roaselee, you'd expect her to be clairvoyant

Existential Noddy, reframed as Kowalski in Vanishing Point

The Question is... What kind of Family?

The shores of Boleskine atop a Carousel

Joyland - This is what i'd imagine the end of the world looks like to a 3yr old

Brutal Sports Centre

Ridiculous food sculptures - Oppenheim at the Seaside

A place to perform the treasure seeking rituals of Magick Concrete

Lost Underwater Chippies

Roadside East Anglia

Yarmouth - after De Chirico

Gothic Hotel

Neptune - Equester

2010-11-21T13:57:00.000-08:00

On our way down to Ilfracombe with Dave and Hannah, we drove past Dunster. From the road, you can see the Castle. The kids looked suitably impressed. Yes, it's a fairy tale castle. We decided to visit it on the way back. Dunster is just outside Minehead and I've subsequently discovered some great connections with horses about the place (that is feeding into the work Hippomania which will be appearing in the next Wyrd Tales).

Dunster is a medieval village and the castle dominates. On the other side of the village is a folly, in the style of a ruined tower - it's called Conygar Tower. Apparently there also used to be a huge statue of Neptune visible from the sea, in the same woodland. I've yet to find any depictions of this statue.

Last week, I was heavily involved in the writing of Hippomania - the visionary phase of the process. One of the scenes involved the character discovering a drowned woman in a pond. Later returning to the pond there is a stone the shape of a horses head. It started getting me thinking about horses, water and drowning?

Of course there is the phrase "you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink". While this cliche has moral over-tones, it's also a great phrase to encapsulate the work of the imagination. The imagination will do what it wants to do, ultimately it's a stubborn mare that has its own agenda.

Kerenyi has a section on Demeter and Poseidon's stallion marriage.

"It was told that when Poseidon began to pursue Demeter with amorous importunities... Demeter turned into a mare and mingled with grazing steeds... Poseidon perceived the trick, and coupled with Demeter in the shape of a stallion... The wrathful goddess turned into Erinys, the goddess of anger, and was actually called Demeter Erinys until she washed away her anger in the river Ladon... She bore to Poseidon a daughter and at the same time the steed Arion, the horse with a black mane."

So, both Neptune and Poseidon are the "God of Horses", as well as the sea. Neptune Equester is the God of horse racing.

There is where it becomes interesting. Minehead, the neighbouring town to Dunster is famous for its May Day hobby horse ritual. The hobby horse is shaped like a boat. The hobby horse also parades through Dunster. Last year, the parade returned to Dunster Castle. There are some amazing old photographs of the ceremony here:

http://www.minehead-online.co.uk/hobbyhorse.htm

which suggests the origin of the hobby horse:

"... be in commemoration of the wreck of a vessel at Minehead in remote times, or the advent of a sort of phantom ship which entered the harbour without Captain or crew. Once the custom was encouraged, but now is much neglected, and perhaps soon will fall into desuetude"

"King Neptune" plays a central role in the long-standing tradition of the "Line-crossing ceremony" initiation rite still current in many navies, coast guards, and merchant fleets. When ships cross the equator, "Pollywogs" (sailors who had not done such a crossing before) receive "subpoenas" to appear before King Neptune and his court (usually including his first assistant Davy Jones and Her Highness Amphitrite and often various dignitaries, who are all represented by the highest-ranking seamen).

And this is where it gets crazy!

Davy Jones is really an epithet for the state of death of drowned sailors... possibly a corruption of Devil Jonah...

Davy Jones (the dimunitive singer with 1960's pop band Monkees), orginally harboured ambitions to become a jockey.

In July 1992, Hampshire-based Anita Jones, wife of said pop star Davy Jones, had two mares attacked within days of each other. One received a wound to the shoulder. One had her genitals slashed and a fence post driven inside her. This was perhaps the most infamous incident in the horrific phenomenon of horse mutilation.

For more on horse mutilation see:

http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/features/mutilate3.shtml

The following section is particularly interesting...

Clive Meux, senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry and a consultant at Broadmoor hospital, believes the pathology of horse attackers is similar to that of sadistic killers who target people. "I think that many of these attackers get some sort of sadomasochistic pleasure from inflicting pain on animals," said Dr Meux. "You often find the human victims of sadomasochistic killers have wounds to their genitals and eyes. What we have with horse attackers is somebody with the same drive and passion but who chooses a horse rather than a human to fulfill sexual desires. But we cannot say whether they will eventually move on to humans."

In Germany, where there have been about 400 horse attacks since 1993,a former horse caretaker was arrested during the summer. He admitted attacking nine horses because of his hatred of women. The attacks bring a chilling reminder of Peter Schaffer's 1973 play Equus, where the main character, Alan, pokes out the eyes of horses, who for him represent love and sexual passion.

For psychiatrists, however, the continued failure to catch a real-life perpetrator means they are still unable to explain why horses in particular are targeted. There have been cases of geese, hens and even guinea pigs being attacked, but horses are the most popular victim. Dr Meux said: "It may be because of the symbolism of horses in mythology and their alleged magical powers."

Executioner's Songs: The Wurzels - Live at the Ipswich Beer Festival

2010-11-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

It's not often I feel the urge to write gig reviews. I did a couple for Wire magazine a few years back. However, when Richard called me to say The Wurzels were playing at the Ipswich Beer Festival, I couldn't really say no. Ironically this was just after I had written my essay on Kensington, in which I boldly stated that "certitude is the concrete engagement with life". I had resolved to live with reality as it actually is, rather than a fantasy projection of some infinitely glamorous other existence. So I really perceived Richard's invite as a message from the Gods, much like Crowley felt compelled to treat every action as significant following his reception of "The Book Of The Law".

The first thing to say about The Wurzels is that they have that cheerful look of the ruddy faced rustic Satanist. I suppose this has its archetype in the look of Charles Grey and the activities of Fred West. The highlight of the set for me is their take on "Una Paloma Blanca" ("Iam a cider drinker"). "Una Paloma Blanca" was a hit for celebrity pederast Jonathan King. It was also famously the song played in the prison van that took Gary Gilmore to be executed.

During the set, lead singer Tommy Banner strips down to a brown thong. He turns around and gyrates his - doubtless heavily flagellated during scrumpy libated rites - posterior to the audience. It's an act of transgression that puts me in mind of the performance of Eugene Robinson of Jazz Metal outfit Oxbow. I can imagine "I've got a brand new combine harvester" chortling from a transistor radio on the patio of 25 Cromwell Road during the shimmering heatwave of 1976.

In fact there is a link between The Wurzels and Fred West. The Wurzels covered the disco classic "Go West" by The Village People. When West committed suicide visiting football fans would taunt teams in Devon and Avon by singing "Go West"...

The Wurzels are not so much saucy as pan-erotic; the kind of people that would engage in romantic liaisons with farm machinery. If love between farmer and tractor seems absurd, then I would point the reader to the following case of autoerotic death detailed in The Journal of Forensic Sciences:

"A 42 year-old Asian man was found hanging by the neck, suspended by a rope attached to the raised shovel of a John Deere Model JD410, diesel powered, backhoe tractor...The decedent was suspended in a semi-sitting position by a cloth safety harness strap wrapped around his neck and clipped to a rope that was hooked to the raised shovel of the backhoe tractor. A towel was between the loose fitting strap and the victim's neck. A long piece of plastic pipe was connected on one end by conduit tape to the hydraulic control lever of the shovel in the operator's compartment of the tractor. A broom stick was taped to the other end of the pipe and was partially under the decedent's buttocks. The hydraulic shovel could be easily raised or lowered by slight pressure applied to the broomstick. The decedent was fully clothed, and his genitals were not exposed. No pornographic materials, women's clothing items, or mirrors were at the scene...He had no known psychiatric illness.

Determination of autoerotic death was made from decedent history and circumstantial indicators. The victim kept a journal of love poetry dedicated to his tractor that he had named "Stone," outlining his desire for them to "soar high" together. The victim was unmarried and lived with his parents on their farm. He also had a reasonable expectation of privacy for an extended period, as he engaged in this behavior in the late evening down by the barn. Cause of death was determined to be accidental autoerotic asphyxiation with carbon monoxide intoxication as a contributor. [1]

Towards the end of the set, The Wurzels cover "Ruby Ruby" by the The Kaiser Chiefs. It's a frighteningly easy mutation, replacing the chorus with "Oooarrr oooarr ay". Indeed I can't help thinking that the pork pie hat, turned up jeans and suit jacket look of The Kaiser Chiefs is an updated version of the country bumpkin stylings of The Wurzels. Perhaps The Wurzels are The Kaiser Chiefs', cider drinking, combine harvester mating, rural uncles?

References:

1] Dietz, P.E., & O'Halloran, Ronald,"Autoerotic Fatalities with Power Hydraulics", Journal of Forensic Sciences, No. 2, March 1993, pp. 359-364)

Magick Concrete

2010-11-08T06:43:00.000-08:00

As anyone who has spoken to me for more than about 10 minutes will know, my creative inspirations are quite transparent. For years I've been obsessed with JG Ballard (who in a weird way, I consider a surrogate father figure), and Kenneth Grant (though I would NEVER seek practical parenting advice from his words). I've spent alot of time introspectively trying to tie together their creative worlds. The brook to bridge between JGB and Grant appears to be Ballard's refusal to countenance anything paranormal. This seemingly irreconcilable difference has actually provided me with the dialectical fuel to see a possibility of synthesising their mythos'. Where Grant and Ballard meet is in their appreciation of the science of the imagination, revealed through Surrealism. The pivotal figure in the equation is Salvador Dali and his siddhi of manifesting - the "concrete irrational".

I've recently started moving the English Heretic project abroad, following the imaginal across the channel to Europe. In doing this, I've been groping for a suitable moniker to describe the research. Of course the hankering for exotic soil is a subconscious one analogous with Roussel's "Impressions Of Africa".

I've decided upon "Magick Concrete". Starting in 2011, I'll be developing this project. I envisage there being three broad aspects to it: "Theory" (essays, discussions, hermeneutics); Art (Concretised Irrational); Practice (Ritual/Fieldwork). Of course this may all change on the hot deserts of the imagination, but it feels like the time (albeit it told with soft clocks) is right.

English Heretic Autumn Expedition: Papa Lazarou's Army Go Wild In Devon

2010-11-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

George Sanders And The Abandoned Sausages

2010-10-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

Extracts from David Wilde's "A Shadow History Of Rock Music"

"One of the more cinematic groups to come out of the whole English Americana scene was "The Abandoned Sausages". Their debut album was a lush post-rock imagined documentary, based on the final years of the actor George Sanders. The archetypal cad of British Cinema, Sanders had heavily invested in a Fife meat company and pig factory, ironically named "CadCo"... When the company went belly up he lost his money and barely escaped prosecution. Sanders committed suicide in April 1972, taking an overdose of Nembutal, at a hotel near Barcelona. His suicide note read: "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

The record received mixed reviews - criticised for its derivative nature, borrowing heavily from Scottish Post-Rock giants - Mogwai... One particularly harsh jibe lampooned - 'The Future of post-rock? more like rock 'n' sausage roll..' In the light of these scathing attacks, The Abandoned Sausages changed their name to Hogwai and were never heard from again... "

English Heretic are proud to be re-releasing this lost classic in the near future as part of their English Americana research project.

The Escape Vehicle

2010-10-22T01:09:00.000-07:00

One of the most touching yet saddest cases I had to deal with in the early years of my practice was that of Paul. Not long after I had set up my clinic at Elvaston Place in Kensington, I began to notice a man, gaunt, unshaven, wandering around the mews. His hollow eyes suggested lack of sleep, his slack jowls and permanently furrowed brow, deep anhedonia and excessive rumination. At first, I suspected he was a car thief. He seemed to have a preoccupation with my pink convertible Nissan Figaro parked outside the clinic. One morning I even caught him attempting open the drivers door. But as I watched him from my office window, sipping my first strong coffee of the day, sucking on my third malboro, I sensed there was a deeper assignment underlying his clumsy car-jacking. It was then the idea struck me to take my practice into the outside world. Trained in CBT and archetypal psychology, I was, at that time, still slightly uncomfortable with both therapeutic disciplines. They seemed artificially extreme systems: CBT one hand, excessively positivist and materialistic; depth psychology obversely buried in neoplatonic melancholy. I was grasping for a synthesis of these two models. Moreover, the patients who visited my clinic were all too aware of their psychic circumstances, too conscious of the parameters of the dynamic with their therapist. If I were to really reach out and provide a service, my practice should concern those who were unaware of their agitations and all the attendant and external manifestations of the resulting disease.

That evening, after my last appointment, I walked to my car, left the keys in the ignition and made sure the driver's door was unlocked. The following morning, for the first time in many months, excited, I drew back the blinds of the surgery, to see if Paul had taken the opportunity to appropriate my vehicle. Surprised and disappointed to see the pink Figaro still there on the cobbled mews, I rushed out to check if the key had been taken from the ignition. Opening the car door I glanced up at my office, only to see Paul standing at the window, sipping a coffee, smoking a Malboro, smirking... Events started to take a more disturbing course, when at the moment I discovered the ignition key missing, Paul opened the window and poured the contents of a petrol cannister over the roof of the Figaro. He then held a lighter up at his face, smirking all the more... I could neither leave the vehicle nor make my escape, for each action, I presumed would precipitate Paul setting both myself and the Figaro alight.

***

Reporter for a South London news programme, Diane Lilly stood at the ornate entrance to Elvaston Place. She detailed the tragic suicide of a talented psychotherapist Peter Leibowitz. He had been found in the burned out carcass of his Figaro convertible in the courtyard of the Mews. His surgery overlooking the courtyard had also been set alight. Following the recording of the news item, a scruffily dressed, swarthy, diminutive man walked up to Lilly. He appeared to be affecting the mannerisms of the television detective Columbo. He took out a birth certificate from the inside pocket of his beige Mackintosh - September 16th 1968. "Same day as Peter Falk", he nodded cryptically at the reporter, touching his right temple with his index finger, before walking away from the scene. Lilly had been unable to see the name on the birth certificate, the words having been occluded by red felt tip. Back at the news room, she checked the biography of Peter Falk. Sure enough, he had been born on the 16th September. "Who was that guy?" she asked her new cameraman boyfriend, Andreas Gabriel.

"Ah probably some Barry George type... a fantasist, harmless"

"Iam not so sure..." Lilly was ambitious, always on the lookout for a story to increase her profile. Later that evening in the charred husk of Leibowtiz's study they found a typewriter. The typewriter was intact. Deciphering the text on the ribbon, they read the final words of the psychotherapist. It appeared to suggest that he was being stalked by a patient named Paul.

"Columbo?" Andreas suggested.

"Too obvious" Lilly scoffed. "The typewriter is a plant. I mean there's no evidence of any burn marks... either that or its been made from the same material as a black box recorder..."

"It is a black box recorder" Andreas concluded with unusual insight.

At least their discovery had given Lilly a title for the piece, she was to write for the Sunday supplement, some weeks later, suggesting a conspiracy around Leibowitz's death "Fry away Peter, Fly away Paul - the psychotherapist hoisted by his own Petard".

***

"This is just the psychotic top-soil of the subconscious - the filmic, televisual memory, we need to dig deeper". Peter Leibowitz leaned over the frothy hot coffee in Dino's Italian Restaurant.

"We seem to be entering an age of the ever more atomised self, we are diffusing across hypermedia, fragmenting even futher beyond the worlds of Mcluhan and Warhol, it's closer to extreme Buddhism, the ever becoming I. We are undergoing psychic deaths on a daily basis... Actually Iam not sure the subconscious still exists, in its classical sense..."

Lilly couldn't help but be impressed by Leibowitz earnestness - it showed in his bright green eyes, though she felt he was still behind the times...

"Does it matter? You speak like someone who is too concerned..."

"That's exactly my point, one minute Iam a worrymonger prophesying the loss of self, the next I am a cartoon of my own seriousness, yesterday's debacle at the surgery being a case in point. The Columbo like imp at the end of the news report, a clown demon at the periphery of the goetic circle of our neurotically held onto sanity...That's why I bought you here to this cafe... Part of me wants to run from the noise of our inner cinema, but that would be a mediaeval retreat. Polanski filmed "Repulsion" here - it's the perfect junction for a schizophrenic breakdown."

"And Paul?" Diana teased, blowing the froth across her coffee...

"Well he's my wyrd, the moment we engage in any idealised fantasy of ourselves, we conjure our wyrd, our blood brother... I mean that's a given, but it does make the day very difficult for me... Iam constantly fighting to stay alive for fear of Paul's next sabotage..."

"Fear, sabotage, aren't you forgetting the dialectical escape vehicle?" Diana swept her hair back.

"Don't become all anima on me, Diana..." Leibowitz laughed, "and what about Andreas.. is he still on the scene?"

"Ah no, he served his purpose, bludgeoned him to death in your office with the typewriter last night after he showed me the evidence. He'd have only sold the photographs to the tabloids..."

"Good, you are learning, these people are so incidental". Leibowitz looked down at the now swirling froth of his stirred coffee, the hypno-wheel of a sociopathic analyst, "I share a birthday with Columbo, don't you know..."

Searching For The Keeley Institute - Kensington

2010-09-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Bit of a random walk through Kensington last sunday. Our main intention was to find some locations from a few films - namely "Satanic Rites Of Dracula", "Performance" and "Repulsion", but took in a few other interesting sites. Here is an octagonal library - actually a pre-fab, nicknamed "The Hut" - at Baron's Court.

Da Mario's restaurant on a corner of Gloucester Road fondly remembers Princess Diana who used to visit the place with William and Harry. Apparently they serve a pizza named after Diana. The building is largely ornate but the neon lighting of the disco signs give it a slightly tacky heir: the glitzy godhead with a lurid underbelly; but that's the nature of personality too. Perhaps Warhol's emotional blankness rather than being a trait of autism, was a form of protection against the pain of revealing his personality. Was Ballard's deliberately clinical style of writing exactly this, a form of self-regulation. When linearity becomes too occluded, it's time to breakdown the words that construct linear reality. Create a new blueprint for the future. What we are doing now is a ritual for what we will be in 5 years time. We live out myth before we are conscious of it. When the myth becomes too conscious of itself it becomes codified. But what is the myth of dismantling? Dionysus and Osiris are too melodramatic, too much pain, something more ludic is required, ludic but not frivolous...

Hillman in "City and Soul", has an essay in "The Street Corner: Gods, Disease, Politics". Recalling Joseph Campbell, he says the Gods are right here on the corner of Broadway and 42nd street, waiting for the lights to change. In the same essay Hillman states "Certitude is the concrete engagement with life, and it precedes all principles, theories, and interpretations, in thought or law. We live myth before we declare it to be myth".

The buildings in Kensington portray a wedding cake facade to reality. After the walk, the idea came to me for a material practice - "magick concrete"... a way of working with the anima mundane... the only materials we have.

Hillman, again, in "City and Soul" says when the budget is cut on urban development, the first things to go are the objects that beautify the planned space - the murals, the fountains. Dali used to stare at a blank canvas until the image reified on it. A practice of magick concrete, the concrete irrational. Time to remove the murals.

Queen's Gate Mews - was a location for the film "Performance", the scene where the chauffeur has his head shaved. A Zen practice. The central theme of "Performance" - one person becoming another, the film also employed cut-up. The dismantling of narrative, essential for not being yourself. When words fail us (myths come from the mouth) our only cues come from the concrete.

Lots of furrowed browed ontology, so here is the "Keeley Institute", a possible Headquarters for English Heretic. Well actually, it's Elvaston Place, setting for the microbiology lab in "The Satanic Rites Of Dracula". In the background, is the new English Heretic mystery machine. Yep in true bathic style, the heart of Sunday's mission resolves in camp lampoonery. As Charlie Chaplin said "Comedy is life in long shot, tragedy life in close up". There's nothing like distance, to get perspective and humour. The complete distance and irony of Ballard's forensic writing style knows this too... irony before it was post-modern, irony when necessity made it the weapon of choice. The word irony comes from the Greek eiron. The eiron in Greek comedy was the character who bought down his braggard opponent alazon through a mixture of understatement and self-depreciation. It's interesting to see how the word has been inverted to become a weapon of choice for alazon, the smug. Ballard's use of irony in "Atrocity Exhibition" was borne from tragedy, a means of bringing down alazon, a world that purports to be rational... Camp lampoonery masks the truth. The impossibly groovy pink bubble car and the ridiculously ornate and imagined headquarters are fictions of eiron - things that will never be - unless we hotwire the car and squat "The Keeley Institute".

Dino's Italian Restaurant - location for Roman Polanski's "Repulsion".

"Repulsion" was the first in Polanski's trilogy of Apartment films - following on to "Rosemary's Baby" and culminating with "The Tenant". It is the perfect metaphor for the disintegrating furniture of the personality. I've been wondering recently why the interest with psychogeography and found objects. Is it because the interiors of our myths are messy: over-exposed and psychotic soap operas. Our personalities are so distorted by the celebrity of ourselves, that the only clues as to who we are must be gleaned from the exterior, the concrete: alchemical ciphers of the outside - the meditative woodcuts to describe our soul journeys. Moreover where the personality bleeds across hypermedia, it is necessary to contain the bubbling alembics of our volatility within the apartment: to surrogate who we are to psychometric objects. The squatted Keeley Institute is the setting for a subliminal bio-pic, the pink car, an escape vehicle to a split second cameo in a fantasy of our ever more atomised future selves.

Thurloes Beauty Parlour - location in "Repulsion".

The character Carol in "Repulsion" works at the beauty parlour, Thurloes. As she descends into psychosis she retreats to her apartment, the noise of her schizophrenia rendered unbearable by the outside world. But the walls of her apartment soon become her persecutors. Apparently psychiatrists on viewing "Repulsion" applauded the film for its accurate portrayal of schizophrenia and were surprised to find out Polanski and his co-writer had done no research, just followed a train of thought from her circumstances. The creative process as paranoia.

Jung says the Gods are in the diseases. Not only are the Gods standing at the street corner waiting for the lights to change, but the traffic lights themselves are minor deities of decision and risk. The "incentive salience" hypothesis of schizophrenia posits that sufferers experience abnormal dopamine firing to events considered insignificant to healthy people. For example, a traffic light changing colour may be seen as a significant event - dopamine being the reward drug in the brain - when we experience dopamine firing it hard wires meaning to the stimulus. Gordon Burn's "Born Yesterday" is a master lesson (and warning) about the incentive salience of our hooked-on hyperlink existences. The book starts with the author encountering Margaret Thatcher in a London park. In a weird coincidence, my guide on Sunday's walk realised that Thurloes beauty parlour is now used by Margaret Thatcher. The ex PM turns up every few weeks in a blacked out limo to get her blue rinse. My guide and her friend watch her from the cafe across the road during their lunch break. We are going to try to get a photograph of this surreal palimpsest of film location. What is the significance to our conspiratorial inner documentaries - the Panoramas of our paranoia. We are like crazed David Dimblebys, CPU accelerated, our minds racing faster than a drunken Henri Paul, down the underpass to cataclysm at column 13 with schlocky Goddesses. Our world becomes revved up. We are no longer allowed melancholia in our vales but force sped through the dark night of the soul.

There must be a way to halt this collision course with infinity, before we vapourize... But quietude as antidote is the hermit's cop-out. The walls of the cave will become his persecutors. In fact antidote is the problem. Interiorisation in reaction to exteriorisation, depression to paranoia. Is dialectic the way to insight of the outside? Jarry said he was writing above everyone's head including his own. It's time to write below everyone's feet - including our own. To feel the ground beneath our feet.

'A trained scout will see little signs and tracks, he puts them together in his mind and quickly reads a meaning from them such as an untrained man would never arrive at'.

So states Baden-Powell in "Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship". A couple of years ago, I attended the launch of Steven Freeman's book "Paranoia: 21st century disease", actually nearby in Kensington. It argued that increased urban living was a major factor in the prevalence of paranoia.

However, I feel, over communication is also a major contributory factor, moreover insight will be the real disease of 21st century. Paranoia will no longer cause the agitation that defines it as a disease; insight will cause agitation. There is a way out: accept insight is paranoia read backwards. Baden-Powell's affirmation is the perfect aphorism of paranoiac insight. For a while I've photographed signs on buildings, sometimes etched in, sometimes a pleasant retro-font. They fire the imagination, jokes, puns. The reading of the exoteric as one big hermetic wordplay is the key to Fulcanelli's "Mystery Of Cathedrals". People no longer offer us clues to who we are. The psychologists took away our masks, the neuroscientists moleculised us. Both Phillip K. Dick's "Time Out Of Joint" and Walter J Miller's "A Canticle For Leibowitz" start with the past revealing itself through discovering the words behind the world. In "Time Out Of Joint",a soft-drink stand dematerialises to be replaced by a scrap of paper saying "soft drink stand". In "A Canticle For Leibowitz", the monk, entering a nuclear fall out shelter discovers a shopping list from the 20th Century.

I've always had an uneasy relationship with the scout movement. I never joined having been put off by some graffiti on the local scout hut: "Cubs are spastics". Years later, I found "The Ladybird Book of Scouts". One of the pages had a drawing of a disabled scout practicing archery, holding the bow with his feet. The text explained that even though a scout may be "spastic or delicate" he can still join in. I think this is the key to being insightful in an age of perfect paranoia. Disabled with insight, we can still join in with joys of paranoia, play little jokes with ourselves and yet hit the target. English Hermetic. To paraphrase "Time Out Of Joint" - "Suppose Dr. Champagne is becoming sane again?"

People have their year... mine was 1973. It was also "The Osmonds" year. 13 top ten hits and a Mormon concept album "The Plan". "The Plan" was "The Osmond's" "Dark Side Of The Moon", also released in 1973. 1973 was when I first experienced England. My family moved back from Kenya that year, we went out in 1968, when I was 3 months old. Increasingly, I have found the English Heretic project hankering for a move away from England, to not be in England. If the Keeley Institute is an imagined headquarters, then the Mormon church is a snapshot from a psychic world tour. Again we can reconstruct an exoticism from a carefully edited perspective of the exoteric - this is dream cinematography. One could almost be in Utah. Could it be possible to create an entirely false travelogue from capturing the mundane at the correct angle? Raymond Roussel-like we do not need experience Africa in order to write our impressions of the place. Might some Oulipo like manoeuvre with found objects and tactical psycho-photography allow us access to the narrative that could not possibly exist through a linear and neurotic analysis of our biographies. If we can successfully remap our creative memories, then we can create imaginary biographies and fictions from that. The Mormon church becomes the headquarters of the Eironists, a magical organization, part scientology part CBT. Their followers, under the tutelage of Dr. Champagne have successfully activated their ajna chakras through concentrated experiments with the animated mundane. But we think Dr. Champagne maybe going insane again, he's been listening to too much Pink Floyd and "The Plan"...

Ognisko's Polish Club - Of course, working with magick concrete is a dangerous pursuit. Dealing with reality as it actually is and trying to fashion it into a holistic dream through our limitless tendency to fantasy is bound to lead to hypermania. We need a come down, that's why all operations with the hermetic exterior end up down the pub. We need a bit of glutamate inhibition... Jean Julien Champagne one of the protagonists behind the Fulcanelli mask was an absinthe abuser... I suspect "The Langue Verte" alluded to in "Mystery of Cathedrals" is absinthe. Jarry too. This Polish club is another place that might not be in England: leather panelled bar, paintings of army generals and antler shaped light fixtures. Iam now becoming obsessed with the exiled and the alien East European.

Polanski - cinema's paranoid everyman, survivor of Auschwitz, husband of Manson murder victim. Could it be that the first two apartment films "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby" were inadvertant magic ceremonies for the murder of Sharon Tate. "Repulsion" was made in 1965. As I said earlier, what we are doing now is a ritual rehearsal for what we will be in 5 years time. It took 7 years (following Tate's murder) for Polanski to complete the trilogy with "The Tenant"... Tellingly the film stars Polanski himself. He takes over the flat of someone who has attempted suicide and takes on their persona. We never see the face of the previous tenant. Polanski visits her in hospital, but the woman screams as she sees Polanski from behind her bandaged face... who is this person - Sharon Tate or Polanski himself? Could it be "The Tenant" is a confession of Polanski's role in the cinema ritual that led to his wife's murder?

So to end at the beginning, the first photograph in this journey has not been extrapolated, mythopoetically tied in. It's strange, it's taken me a few days to construct this tour. Increasingly I've felt like the accompanying pictures serve the role of some kind of major arcana in a tarot reading of the world as it is. Italo Calvino's "Castle of Crossed Destinies" reframed in the kingdom of Kensington. What is it in this picture that caused me to take it? Along with Polanski, Warhol, alien in America, seems to have the answer. Warhol said "I just think any picture you take is a good picture". Of course the profane think Warhol is taking the piss, but he's not, he's making the pith. He is the first mystic of the latter day church of the eironists. What he's saying is that irrespective of what we photograph we are revealing the soul of our world. Even children, clumsily photographing their feet, are grasping with the magnitude of the task the camera offers them. Not only is it time to write below everyone's feet, but also to photograph our feet. To capture the sole of the world.

Of course now I can see why I took this picture. It's the fact that the sign is falling to bits - the libary is due to be demolished - the letter "R" is falling - one of the three Ars. It seems like the ultimate image of eiron, the library is defunct. Information without insight offers us nothing of ourselves and everything of a reconstructed artificial engrammed tomorrow. Burroughs' mantra of cut-up experimentation is the perfect heading for this picture: "Word falling, photo falling, breakthrough in the grey room"... The grey room is the alchemical laboratory to distill the concrete yet masonic - of updating Fulcanelli's reading of Notre Dame, to work out the myth of what is, rather than what was, or what we wish to be.

"Dr Champagne, he may be coming, Messianic again, too much animation, much too mundane"

My Tulpa

2010-07-26T02:39:00.000-07:00

Working on English Heretic, I often encounter tulpas... Last night was a case in point. After revising for my forthcoming exam, I popped to the local pub for a pint and to read Paul Devereux's "Fairy Paths And Spirit Roads". It was a nice evening and I was looking forward to planning routes to visit some of the locations Devereux talks about.

However, when I got to the pub, this young man, about 20, with a fixed gaze, insisted on giving me a high five greeting. He was quite clearly very drunk. Anyhow I decamped to the garden area.

No sooner had I sat down, than I was joined by this chap. He had two whiskey and coke's, which he drank almost immediately. He started to engage me in conversation, in between giving me multiple high-five salutations. It turned out this young man was called Andrew. He had recently come out of a mental institution in Norwich having had a psychotic episode during his first term at UEA. He was living in a half-way house in Ipswich with a number of other mentally compromised individuals.

Over the next hour, he repeatedly asked me my name, where I lived and what I did for a living. He must have drank 8 whiskeys in that time. When I replied each time to tell him my name, he expressed great surprise saying his name was Andrew too... he explained he was a member of the Ipswich Anime Society and that they had been showing films in the pub that afternoon.

The weird thing is that I have been working on my urban qliphoth and english aghora projects. For the urban qliphoth, a visit was made to an abandoned psychiatric hospital just outside Norwich. For the English Aghora project, I've been doing radio experiments at the war cemetery in Shotley. During one of my visits to Shotley, while scanning the radio waveband, I started recording a radio 4 documentary about the reclassification of the DSM-IV index. The documentary featured an interview with a paranoid schizophrenic sufferer called Andrew who had suffered his first psychotic episode while at university...

I can't help but feel the chap in the pub last night was some kind of tulpa, reified by the workings at the psych hospital and the war cemetery... What started off as a quiet evening to unwind and research, turned into an eerie Pinteresque dialogue with a phantasm of my creative experiments.

The Fool as the future

2010-06-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

I was once asked if English Heretic was a cynical project. The question astounded me, but it has made me wonder what is the governing aesthetic. I've been doing tarot readings recently and my last reading gave me "The Fool" (ATU 0) as the future. This was an instruction to write a blog entry about the Fool, I intuited. To be honest I hadn't really apprehended what the aesthetic was until I saw Stewart Lee doing a routine on his "Comedy Vehicle" TV series about the funniest moment in TV history, which is Del Boy falling over in a bar in "Only Fools and Horses". He developed the sketch into this folk ritual whereby the routine was enacted as a Wicker Man type ritual. Essentially the "Extended Conceit".

The crazed overwrought narrative of the sketch clicked with this project. English Heretic really came out of a discussion at work with a colleague where I was trying to explain what I was doing at the weekend, which was hanging around Ipswich crematorium, recording the ambience and talking into my tape recorder as I walked around the Temple Of Remembrance. Anyhow, I felt pretty foolish when I was doing this, but extracting a few samples of my talking, it actually came across quite sinister.

At one point during the project, I had thought of making each of the Black Plaque celebrants into one of the major arcana in Tarot, ie a Fool, an Emperor, an Empress. That was until I realised that most of the celebrants would be Fools. The fool has further resonance for me at the moment. Last week I visited a lecturer to discuss a project using neural networks. In our discussions, we talked about Mindfulness. He mentioned a book to me called "Zen and The Brain". I've been trying to use Mindfulness alot recently as a means of living with an emotional narrative, as opposed to thought based narrative. The effects have been astounding. By thinking about often buried painful memories, I can create huge involuntary spasms in my stomach, accompanied by a deep groan. It's almost like the opposite of the Janov's "Primal Scream". This has made me suspect that the whole basis for spiritual enlightenment is based on the fallacy of ascent - essentially spiritual inflation. It's not so much switching off the mind that is important, but realising that the brain is merely a machine, part of the body. Hearing and accepting its chatter for what it is, just as you hear the gurgle of the stomach. It's certainly less important than the gurgle of the stomach. What it constructs is a set of instructions based on a set of instructions given to it from another machine and so on. What thinking can't give is insight, the solution as something seen, and the path to the solution then derived.

The Fool represents mindfulness in this way, operating with insight. It doesn't attempt to control reality, like the Magician, hence why it is ATU O. It operates without the need for conscious conjuration, more like Don Juan of Castanada - its mistakes are choreographic into successes, it stumbles into an elaborate dance. In terms of the research for English Heretic, it follows the idea of the apotheosis of the absurd. There is an ontology to the absurd say in Jarry's Caesar Anti-Christ that represents this perfectly. The taurobolium at the climax of the play started off a school boy joke against a much loathed teacher at Jarry's school.

This also relates to our Wyrd. Our childhood obsessions can be revisited, made more grandiose, beatified and made into this overwrought history - a conspiracy of which we are at the centre, playing the fool, probably. And the fool has an interest in follies. Follies themselves represent the apotheosis of the absurd. The structure has beauty but exists on the basis of a whim. We are but the stuff that whims are made of, we are but the stuff that cum is made of.

English Heretic was really something borne from nothing. A hobby to engage the imagination on family holidays and days out - a bit of fun. The Fool expresses the equation 0=2, something from nothing. It was also conceived as a nothing organization, imaginary, a organization of the imaginative faculty. We are all nothings "thinking" we are somethings. This is the neural network. As soon as we start believing we are something it becomes precarious. We cease to be mindful and mistake fantasy for reality. We lose our step and lose our keys, this is the psychopathology of the everyday of Freud. We lose our ability to have fun. But we can't find fun, just as we can't find spontaneity, or what is already there... if magic works by the path of least resistance, then fun works by the path of no resistance. Fun and ludic play are not only not magick without tears but without magick and with laughter.

The fool at the centre of the great conspiracy indeed is a masonic initiation, the pharmakos surrounded by hoodwinkers. The structure of Wicker Man and James Shelby Downard's Kill King 33 are two great inspirations. The pagan sweet shop in the Wicker Man, the ambient aesthetic. If all thoughts are fallacious, then all thinking is essentially a paranoid construct, one of interpreting reality for what it is not. The fool intuits this and attempts to remain mindful of the present. This is the ultimate paradoxical joke of being dealt "The Fool" as the future...

Horse Trials

2010-06-07T03:49:00.000-07:00

I was in Bath this weekend. On Sunday we visited Westbirton Arboretum. On the way back, we passed Badminton Stately home and I was pleased to see that the Worcester lodge there has two pyramids either side of it.

Indeed, Gloucestershire itself is home to 10 pyramids, so is somewhat of a hotspot. Badminton, of course, is famous for its Horse Trials. I am currently working on a writing project called "Hippomania" which concerns man's relationship with horses. This has got me thinking on the connection between horses and pyramids.

It would seem there is a strong connection between Horse sacrifice and pyramids. In Vedic India, the greatest of sacrifices was the Ashvamedha (Horse sacrifice). Kings would spend fortunes in elaborate rituals which lasted for weeks. The sacrifice of the horse was often associated with the sacrifice of the goat. Both sacrifices were often associated with Tantric practices. In the Ashvameda, the wife of the officiating priest simulated mating with the sacrificial horse, before the sacrifice itself. The rituals would take place at Pyramidal temples.

The ritual itself an enactment of symbolic of the Cosmogonic Hierogamy - the primordial sacrifice of the world. Prof. Jose Alvarez Lopez, has investigated the connection between Pyramids and the Cosomogonic Hierogamy in detail. The horse is likened to Purusha, archetypally associated with Christ.

This morning I received a mail from a journalist who I had talked to a couple of weekends back. We were discussing follies and she mentioned a folly in Chambourcy in Northern France that was much loved by the Surrealists. Georges Bataille's "L'Acephale" group also were obsessed with this garden. It is called the Desert De Retz. The Desert De Retz reflected 18th Century interest in antiquity and includes an ice-house in the form of a pyramid, an Egyptian Obelisk, a Temple dedicated to Pan, and a Tartar tent.

One of the many famous visitors there was Jackie Onassis. Given that the L'Acephale group were obsessed with the head as a mystical totem, it's maybe not unsurprising the JFK's wife should be unconsciously drawn to such a place. The symbolism of the horse in the funeral of JFK is interesting. The coal black horse at the funeral procession of Kennedy was riderless with a pair of spurred boots facing backwards in the stirrups. This denotes that the deceased person will never ride again and is a feature of Military corteges of high ranking officers.

We must follow the images dictated by our wyrd... English Heretic will be expanding its remit to take in European and hopefully eventually World Heretic sites, threads and commemorations. A new website is under development to take in European Heretic.

Links:

Pyramids in Gloucester:
http://http//news.bbc.co.uk/local/gloucestershire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8220000/8220841.stm

Horse Sacrifice
http://http//.lost-civilizations.net/horse-sacrifice-atlantis-indies-page-2.html

Desert De Retz
http://desertderetz.info/

Pine Cones and Baphomet

2010-06-06T15:58:00.000-07:00

The front image on English Heretic website comes from the gates of Christchurch park in Ipswich. On top of the columns are two pine cones. The entrance to the park is opposite the Ipswich Masonic Lodge. A few year years ago, I worked in a suite of offices next to the lodge called Saracen's House business centre. Inside the business centre was a picture of the building as it was. The business centre used to be the Saracen's Head public house.

Of course the Knight's Templar worshipped a severed head. A few months after joining the company, we relocated to Crown House offices, just up the road. Sometime later, a chap visited our offices offering my then boss a whiteboard that his company in the same office block, no longer required.

A few weeks later my boss told me the man who had visited was the brother of Ken Bigley, the hostage. Bigley had just been beheaded.

The truth reveals itself in images...

http://www.conesandstones.com/historical-symbolism.html

English Heretic Interview

2010-06-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

Recent interview with English Heretic on ResonanceFm, in conversation with Ken Hollins and Mark Fisher. Two commissioned pieces of music by English Heretic were also played.

To listen to the podcast go here:

http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/3725

Almias - rural psychogeography project

2010-06-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

Friends and collaborators of English Heretic are involved in a rural psycheography project in Yorkshire. They are looking for contributions/experiences and will be hosting a tour as part of the Harrogate Fringe Festival in July.

"Over the next month a number of artists will be exploring the desolate gritstone tor of Almsclife Crag, which lies in the civil parish of North Rigton, between Harrogate and Leeds. Responses to the place, which dominates the local landscape will be published here on the 16th of July 2010, along with details on how to participate in a unique tour of the area."

For more details, go to:

http://almias.org.uk