The purpose of this site is to share information, thoughts and reflections about the practice of ritual magic. I am a magician practicing in the Ogdoadic tradition, about which I say a little more in the introductory post. My magical background is wide, though, including other contemporary ritual magical traditions, the grimoires and a couple of strands of initiatory witchcraft. I try to keep abreast of modern developments and rediscoveries in magical practice; I maintain a long-standing interest, both academic and practical, in the magicians, theurgists and hermeticists of late antiquity.
I have also long believed that the Western magical tradition, patchwork and partial though it may be, is the shadow-side of our culture as a whole. As such I think drawing from the art and culture in which our magical ancestors moved enriches our practice immeasurably. I will therefore often draw from art or poetry which I think speaks to magical practice, just as ancient magicians would use lines from Homer in their invocations. Note: the use of ‘Western’ here simply betokens that great, multifarious swathe of civilisations extending westward from the fertile crescent, encompassing the Mediterranean basin and extending through Europe and, later, the colonies of the New World. No implicit claim about the singular greatness or exclusivity of that culture is intended; it is simply the culture in which I move and through which I think. It is sad that such qualifications need to be made, but it is best, today, that they are made explicitly. I remain deeply interested Vedic religion, as well as Tibetan and Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Comparisons with those traditions can often prove enlightening.
I prefer to remain anonymous, a feat which is harder on today’s internet than it used to be. Although our culture is less overtly persecutory of interests in magic and occultism than it used to be, the cultural taboo around it remains strong. It may be useful context for reading, though, if you know that I am an English magician, and that I live in London.
The header image for this website is (currently) a detail of Max Ernst’s Naissance d’une Galaxie. Painted in 1969, it was part of a years-long sequence of solar or circular paintings. Most art critics have attributed this interest to the period’s cultural ferment of space exploration and the moon landings. True as that may be, I also detect an intuitive grasp of a fairly common motif of spiritual experience. The full work is reproduced below.