Smatterings & Offerings

We are always interested in what our authors are doing, whether with Skylight or with other great presses.  Here is a smattering of recent new release offerings from various places…

IAIN SINCLAIR:

Ghost Milk: Recent Adventures Among the Future Ruins of London on the Eve of the Olympics

The Olympics, the story goes, have transformed London into a gleaming, wholly modern city. And East London—Olympic headquarters—is the city’s new jewel, provider of unlimited opportunities and better tomorrows. The grime and poverty have been scrubbed away, and huge stadiums and grand public sculptures have taken their place.
The writer Iain Sinclair has lived in East London for four decades, and in Ghost Milk, he tells a very different story about his home: that of a neighborhood turned upside down, of stolen history. Long-beloved parks have vanished; police raids can occur at any time; and high-security exclusion zones—enforced by armed guards and hidden cameras—have steamrolled East London’s open streets and public spaces. To prepare for the most public of events, everything has been privatized.
A call to arms against the politicians and public figures who have so doggedly preached the gospel of the Olympics, Ghost Milk is also a brilliant reflection on a changing landscape—and Sinclair’s most personal book yet. In an attempt to understand what has happened to his beloved city, Sinclair travels farther afield: he walks along the Thames from the North Sea to Oxford; he rides the bus across northern England; he visits Athens and Berlin, Olympic sites of the recent and distant past.

Elegiac, intimate, and audacious, Ghost Milk is at once a powerful chronicle of memory and loss, in the tradition of W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolaño, and a passionate interrogation of our embrace of progress at any cost.  (Faber & Faber)

ALAN RICHARDSON:

Dark Light: A Neo-Templar Timestorm

Jack Hobbes finally had to admit that all the Conspiracy Theories were right – every damned one of them – when he found himself driving his Mobile Library at speed down narrow Wiltshire roads at dawn, pursued by implacable Frenchmen who were not sure whether the sealed box he had strapped onto the passenger seat contained either a see-through electric kettle from Argos, or the preserved head of John the Baptist. On top of all that he then had to contend with the real Men in Black and the Trans-Galactics, plus MI5, the CIA, Opus Dei, numerous Freemasons and neo-Templars, Knights of the Star Gates, and various incarnate aspects of the Wild Hunt – who had been hiding for years in a certain little Old Peoples’ Home in rural Wiltshire. And it had all been caused by two silly women – Jenny Djinn and Lilith Love – who just happened to also be Death Goddesses, and who fell for the same Mobile Librarian in a small Wiltshire town that was named after trolls…  (Mutus Liber Books)

Inner Guide to the Megaliths

Megalithic remains are still scattered across the countryside thousands of years after being built, and their meaning – like dreams – are often the subject of intense and varying interpretation. Ordinary folk have been unexpectedly touched by these ancient sites, had the most inexplicable experiences, and have felt their own lives enlarged. In the first book of its kind Alan Richardson has brought together a collection of astounding experiences from a cross section of people, including leading mediums, psychics, shamans, druids, exorcists, witches, remote viewers, magicians and mystics of every tradition – as well as ordinary day-trippers who have found that the ancient sites have in some way ‘spoken’ to them. More, he shows that not only are there are secrets buried within the countryside of every nation, which the mystics, mediums and magicians can help us find, but that there are secret places within the mind that are aligned to stars, and planets, energies and entities, and which – apparently – can take us across Time and within ourselves.  (Megalithica Books)

WILL ALEXANDER:

Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture

One of the most prolific and original figures in the field of contemporary literature, Will Alexander is known worldwide for his arresting explorations of European and Caribbean surrealism, postcolonial history, twentieth-century philosophy, and contemporary scientific theory. Here, Alexander undertakes nothing less than a redefinition of the essay form itself, opening an ‘artery of twilight’ wherein aesthetic, political, historical, social, cultural, scientific, and theoretical discourses often become indistinguishable elements of an holistic investigation into the composition or, re-composition of the physical and metaphysical worlds. Edited by poet Taylor Brady, Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat is an indispensible record of Alexander’s thought, and confirms his reputation as one of the foremost exponents of Afro-futurist modernism.  (Essay Press)

GORDON STRONG:

The Five Tarots

There are 78 cards in the Tarot, 22 of which are known as the Major Arcana, containing a breadth of wisdom and magical philosophy. Yet it is within the first five of these cards that the main principles of the Tarot can be found. The Tarot is a tangible demonstration of High Magic, and nowhere is that more evident than in the extraordinary power of The Magician and The High Priestess. Combined with The Fool, The Empress and The Emperor, the keys to the Tarot are ready to be unlocked.  (Kerubim Press)

 

Doorway into Darkness

By evoking Earth Spirits beneath an ancient stone circle, demonic powers are bestowed upon the evil Lord Folds who enslaves the soul of England. Mr. Tonks, Mandy the barmaid, and Martin, a philosophy student, join forces to defeat the tyrant. Our hero must journey into the darkness and chaos of the Otherworld to save his love. Will Barstowe University be forever corrupted and destroyed by the corporate menace? You will weep at this tale of thrilling magic, multiple dimensions and romance…mainly with laughter.  (Dioscuri Press)

 

MARTIN ANDERSON:

The Hoplite Journals (Complete in one volume)

This compendium edition of all three volumes of Martin Anderson’s The Hoplite Journals evokes events and places largely in South East and South Asia as well as the West, exploring allegiances and identities within the troubled context of mostly colonial and ex-colonial possessions.  (Shearsman Books)

 

 

PEREGRIN WILDOAK, NICK FARRELL & OTHERS

Commentaries on the Golden Dawn Flying Rolls

This book contains the 36 pivotal papers given to Adepts in the original Golden Dawn order, providing key insights and instructions into the theory and practice of magic, from theurgy, imagination and symbolism to clairvoyance, divination and telesmatic images. For the first time these texts are brought together in a single printed volume, along with some rare administrative versions that were all but ignored by modern eyes. In addition, extensive and insightful commentaries from modern Golden Dawn magicians from a variety of orders are here provided, adding to the corpus of teaching provided in the Flying Rolls themselves.  (Kerubim Press)

MARGARET RANDALL:

The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones

A poetry collection about connectivity, this book suggests that humankind is linked by its concerns for global human rights and a sustainable global climate. Named for a root system that connects seemingly separate plants, like a stand of aspen trees, this compilation seeks to celebrate common human roots.  (Wings Press)

 

 

 

JOHN MATTHEWS:

The Celtic Shaman

Probably the oldest known spiritual discipline, shamanism is the timeless art of living in harmony with creation, providing a universal system to work with today, whatever our religion or spiritual affiliation may be. A reflection of a living tradition with a supremely practical approach to life, it teaches skills for living and ways to utilize latent abilities which we all possess. Celtic Shamanism derives from the native traditions of North-West Europe. The shamanic contribution of the Celts and their predecessors has been overlooked until recently, and is one of the last shamanic traditions to be explored. While it shares common elements with American, Australian and Siberian teachings, it derives entirely from Celtic source material. The Celtic Shaman offers a varied and easily followed plan of self-tuition for anyone interested in Celtic mythology and the Western mysteries.  (Ebury Digital)

The Faery Gates of Avalon by Gareth Knight

The Faery Gates of Avalon is the first of four books originally published by R.J. Stewart Books to be reissued imminently through Skylight Press. The other three to follow are The Little Book of the Great Enchantment by Steve Blamires, Stewart Farrar: Writer on a Broomstick by Elizabeth Guerra and Janet Farrar, and Melusine of Lusignan & the Cult of the Faery Woman by Gareth Knight.

Gareth Knight is a scholar of mediaeval French as well as a heralded expert on various spiritual and magical traditions. He has visited the wellspring of the Arthurian tradition on numerous occasions, always providing fresh insight and new practical applications for these treasured stories. Originally published on December 12, 2008, The Faery Gates of Avalon presents the power of the faery lore as it appears in the Grail romances of Chrétien de Troyes, translated from the mediaeval trouvére tradition. The stories of Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval, Gawain and other Knights of the Round Table are excavated from Old French manuscripts as inspired by Welsh and Breton storytellers, which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend.  Chrétien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously – some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors! So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics. No mere theoretical treatise, however, The Faery Gates of Avalon provides practical exercises for those seeking to enter the realm and explore a deeper purpose.

Skylight Press is grateful to R.J. Stewart (whose contributions to the books will remain in the new editions) for his help in making this happen – and honoured to reissue this great book and the other valuable works to follow. The Faery Gates of Avalon is available from various retail outlets such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or direct from the Skylight Press website.

Review of The Book of Melusine of Lusignan

The following is a review of Gareth Knight’s new work, The Book of Melusine of Lusignan: In History, Legend and Romance, from the June edition of the Inner Light Journal (reprinted here with permission):

I wonder if you have ever seen the wonderful Mediaeval illustrations from the “Tres Riches Heures” of the Duc de Berry? If you have, and have seen the picture representing March, you will have seen the Chateau de Lusignan, and perhaps noticed what looks like a golden dragon flying above the tower on the right hand side. This is no dragon proper, but a winged serpent, one of the forms taken by the castle’s foundress, the Faery Melusine. Sadly the Chateau no longer exists as shown in the picture; it was burned to the ground in 1575. However, the legend of Melusine was documented by Jean d’Arras, the Duc’s secretary, and this story has survived in various incarnations since the 14^th Century.

Gareth Knight has long been fascinated by the serpent-tailed Melusine, and has investigated her links with the history of her descendants, the lords of Lusignan. He has previously published “Melusine of Lusignan and the Cult of the Faery Woman” (RJ Stewart Books 2010) a short monograph on the legend, and has subsequently made a masterly translation of the evocative 20^th century novel “ The Romance of the Faery Melusine” by Andre Lebey from the French. (Skylight press 2011)

However, as Mr. Knight says in his introduction to this latest book, “I think she deserves better.” And so he has edited a book of source material which gives the reader a more rounded picture of his muse, much of which is translated from the French for the first time. This new material will be invaluable to the scholar, not least in his masterly comparison of core texts.

We have several versions of the legend, followed by material Gareth Knight has collated about the castle, the town and the church at Lusignan, an area that is well-known to him after visiting there with his family. There is nothing like going to the actual sites where these mythical events took place, one makes a connection with the land and the forces that have been playing out down the centuries. It may sound fanciful to say that it is as though Mr. Knight  met the Lady Melusine on her own terms, however it is clearly a labour of love as well as a labour of scholarship.

I was particularly interested in the final two chapters, where Gareth Knight answers such questions as “So what” or “Why does this story, and similar tales, matter?” Or more usefully, “What happened next ? What is the relevance of these far-off histories today?”

Simply, that we can see the results of an Ideal, that of the other-worldly marriage being enacted upon a particular place on Earth, in historical time, and the repercussions thereof.  As usual, things did not go quite to plan; however, sometimes apparent failure is a part of a particular process, as any student of comparative myth will know. Melusine founded a remarkable dynasty, a dynasty that left the realms of legend to enter that of history. The first of these essays is “A Historical Outline of the Lords of Lusignan” and is scholarly and historical. The second essay is more speculative, perhaps, and explores the links between families who seem to have married into the world of faery, and sheds fresh light on relationships between seemingly disparate myth cycles.

Mr. Knight, you have done your lovely lady Melusine proud! Taken together, the three volumes mentioned, culminating in this book, are the fullest exposition of the legend, lore and history of Melusine and her “serpentine bloodline”. This is the definitive academic and romantic work on Melusine in the English language.

Review Editor

Patrick Harpur on Skylight Press

Born in Windsor, Patrick Harpur began writing professionally in 1983, aged 33. Previously, he had travelled for a year in Africa before going to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, to read English. Subsequently he did much of the reading and research that he would eventually use in his books, and wrote poetry, stories and plays by way of practice, while supporting himself with part-time jobs, such as teaching, market research, gardening, computer personnel etc.  Between 1978 and 83, he was a researcher and then an editor with a book-packaging company.

Since the mid-eighties Harpur has fashioned an impressive catalogue of books and has become known for dealing with such topics as Forteana, Folklore, Daimonic Reality, and various portents of the Western Mystery traditions —Alchemy, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and Depth Psychology. His first book was a ‘theological thriller’ entitled The Serpent’s Circle (UK Macmillan, 1985; Coronet, 1986, and US St Martin’s Press, 1985; Warner, 1986). This was followed by a novel about an autistic child, The Rapture (Macmillan, 1986; Coronet, 1986). Mercurius; or, the Marriage of Heaven and Earth, a partly fictional account of the Great Work of alchemy, was published by Macmillan in 1990. It was hailed as “the most explicit account of the alchemical art ever published” by the Literary Review and described as “an authentic spellbinder” by The Guardian. The Fortean Times was equally praising:

“Each of its 479 mystical pages needs to be closely read, for the dramatic turns in this extraordinary alchemical novel are so well hidden that one dare not skip a single sentence for fear of missing an essential key to the developing mystery. It is rare to find an author who can expound with such authority on a subject whose very existence is known only to a few initiates. He goes far beyond Jung… This book is uniquely useful. There is no rival to it.”

Harpur’s first attempt at non-fiction was Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld (UK Viking, 1995;Penguin, 1996 and US Penguin, 1995, 96; re-issued by Idyll Arbor, 2003), which attempted to make sense of visions and apparitions by recourse to Platonic philosophy, Jungian psychology and the Romantic notion of imagination. The book was described as “a taxonomy of spirits” by the Don Wood Files  – and one that “offers a uniquely holistic and metaphysical perspective concerning otherworldly events” according to the Midwest Book Review. A more extensive commentary is offered by The Guardian:

“In common with writers as diverse as Carl Gustav Jung, Jacques Vallee, Graham Hancock and Michael Talbot, Harpur demonstrates to us that ghosts, apparitions, UFOs and alien abductions, encounters with faeries and elves, bigfoot and lake monsters, stigmata, Marian apparitions, even phantom hitchhikers and `men in black’ are objectively real as part of `the otherworld’ but can never be understood through the prism of what he terms `scientism’: the modern western intellectual convention of scientific reductionism which must always seek “a rational explanation, Mulder”. These phenomena Harpur names `daimons’. Both physically real and unreal at the same time, they are manifestations of the `world soul’ or `collective unconscious’, leaving physical traces sufficient to profoundly affect percipients but to never quite convince the hard-nosed skeptic that they exist.” 

The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination (UK Penguin, 2002 and US Ivan R. Dee, 2003) outlined an esoteric Western way of seeing the world, which has been largely forgotten. Donna Seaman from Booklist offered this appraisal: “A learned and holistic thinker, Harpur excavates the “root metaphors” in everything from shamans’ dreams to Plato’s concept of the soul of the world, the Kabbalah, Greek myths, Jungian psychology, and the theories of evolution and particle physics.” In 2010, Rider published the rather ambitiously titled A Complete Guide to the Soul, which appeared a year later in the US as The Secret Tradition of the Soul (Evolver Editions). In these works Harpur traces the evolution of the Western imagination from early shamanic traditions to modern science and the shadow world of gods and daimons beyond each.  With inspiring commentary he dares to link such diverse fields such as Greek philosophy, Renaissance magic, tribal ritual, shamanic ecstasy, Romantic poetry and depth psychology in order to examine new discoveries about the world.  As in all his works, Harpur explores the hidden tradition, one which places the human imagination at the centre of the universe in an attempt to re-discover what was once lost. The Squeeze Press has recently re-issued both Mercurius and The Secret Fire.

At the same time as he was writing these wonderful works, Patrick Harpur was commissioned by BBC television to write an adaptation of The Rapture; as well as writing various pieces for such publications as The Guardian, Country Living, Fortean Times, Gnosis, Resurgence and the Independent on Sunday. He lectures both in the UK and the US and has taught post-graduate students at Schumacher College (Dartington). He lives in West Dorset. We at Skylight Press are enthralled by his unique work and honoured to publish his exceptional new novel, The Savoy Truffle. For more information about Patrick Harpur see his website.

A chat with publisher Skylight Press

Reblogged from songoftheseagod:

This week I’m delighted to welcome my publishers Skylight Press to my blog. Daniel and Rebsie from Skylight have kindly agreed to answer a few questions about what they look for in manuscripts and give a few words of advice to aspiring writers who are looking to get their work published. I feel I’ve been very lucky to work with Skylight as they clearly really care about the books they publish and are in it for the right reasons.

Read more… 1,774 more words

A recent interview with Chris Hill... in which we answer questions about writing and the publishing process... all from our perspective of course.

The Avant-Garde is an Old Man!

Every writer aspiring to break new literary ground has been rattled by that old chestnut from Ecclesiastes: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. And yet under our emblazoned star we’re determined to find something shiny that at least has the semblance and the sheen of newness.

While serving in a Master of Fine Arts programme at a literary institution that prides itself on vanguardist roots from the 1950s I often noted various literary techniques being eagerly flaunted as ‘cutting edge’ and very much in vogue. The term ‘Hybridity’ can be applied to an assortment of new parameter mergers from various literary genres but loosely denotes some gleeful welding of prose and poetry idioms to various effects – in short, the prose poem, or as some have called it, the ‘proem.’ Although this has been taught and studied as a new phenomenon in academic circles it goes as far back as ancient Greece and had quite a heyday in 19^th Century France and Germany when championed by the likes of Baudelaire, Novalis, Hölderlin and Heine. Even Oscar Wilde dabbled in it after realizing the subversion of formal principles stirred people up. Similarly, I have noted young poets excited to produce lines of random words determined purely by chance – what has come to be known as the ‘cut-up method’ as devised by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs in the 1950s. Again, this is so often thought of and practiced as a bold new technique despite the fact that it wasn’t even new when the American pair stumbled upon interesting juxtapositions of text in sliced up newspapers, directly copying a practice supposedly formulated by the Dadaists some thirty years before them. These techniques along with others are still thought of as new and shiny – but in an age where even post-post-modernity is old hat – I realized that amid all the posturing about newness we are in fact indulging a self-perpetuating delusion. In reality, the avant-garde is an old, old man.

In fact, the term ‘avant-garde’ itself isn’t new; it comes from a 15^th Century French word denoting the front section of an army formation in battle, later borrowed to express an innovatory or pioneering spirit in the Arts. It is not really a movement or a period but a jumble of philosophies and practices bent on following Ezra Pound’s invective to ‘make it new.’ Pound’s view, that ‘Artists are the antennae of the race’ was taken up by a generation that infused current forms with new techniques, including Eliot, Lawrence, Woolf, Joyce, Conrad, Mansfield and the like, which then became radicalized and politicized with a second generation of pure vanguardists and their manifestos. But how new were these ideas really? Take ‘Stream of consciousness’ – a term coined by the established philosopher, William James, and a writing style prefigured in the prose of Laurence Stern, Edgar Allan Poe and even William’s brother, Henry. ‘Free association’ and ‘interior monologue’ were well-established ideas in the psychological traditions, as well as the late 19^th Century Euro fiction of Dujardin, Chekhov and Hamsun.  While there is no doubt that the application of these literary techniques was perfected by Joyce, Proust, Woolf and Faulkner, they certainly didn’t just magically appear as new with the ‘Lost Generation.’

It’s amazing how Surrealism is still often thought of as a new genre, despite springing out of Dada activities during the First World War. Guillaume Apollinaire supplied the word ‘Surréalisme’ many years before the movement gained momentum  – and the practice of ‘automatic handwriting’ had adherents in psychological and esoteric circles well before Aragon, Soupault and Breton took it up in the 1920s.  Despite having the semblance of newness, surrealism is approaching its centenary as an official movement and the philosophy behind it has since become well entrenched in mainstream art and corporate advertising, almost to the point where it no longer provides the shock value initially intended by its stark imagery.  Indeed, recent movements often thought of as bold and pioneering owe much to old man Surrealism, as can be said of both the Beat Generation and Magic Realism. The ‘Beats,’ again more of a rogue collective than a movement, owed much to the work of Breton and Artaud, especially the likes of Ginsberg, Corso, Soloman, Joans and Lamantia.  Others, like Kerouac, could be said to emulate various modernist traits albeit to different cultural effect. South Americans, Garcia Marquez and Fuentes, were inspired by the revolutionary tenets of surrealism and applied some of Breton’s Freudian dreamscapes to larger portions of text in their Magic Realist novels.

The avant-garde has been well theorized in the latter part of the last century, perhaps confusingly subverting and yet increasing its mystique. Renato Poggioli studied the vanguard collective as a cultural phenomenon focusing largely on how it reached beyond the bounds of art into society, forming non-conformist or Bohemian enclaves.  Peter Bürger criticized its complicity with capitalism as an “empty recycling of forms.” Conversely, Clement Greenberg viewed it as a clever new articulation of post-war conditions by its use of ‘Kitsch.’ The Frankfurt School, including Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin tied it to the new enveloping phenomena of the mass culture industry as one mechanically reproduced. Rosalind Krauss took things even further in her work, Originality of the Avant Garde and other Modernist Myths, by smashing the artificial barriers that literary historians had placed around these new groups in order to neatly encapsulate them for posterity. It seems that Krauss, well before I, had come to know the avant-garde as a slightly disingenuous old man.

New innovative groups come and go – to then be defined by the elite – the victors of cultural and literary wars. But was post-modernism anything but slightly perverted modernism?  Does Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) and its use of constrained writing techniques break away from other recent self-reflexive enclaves?  I’m sure Queneau, Perec, Calvino et al are aware of the mediaeval and indeed antiquitous uses of palindromes, cryptograms and lipograms. Did the post-structuralists really topple the edifices of the 19^th Century – or simply build new looser structures from their carelessly placed rubble? Even if all these devices are new – the avant-garde is bent with age and use – as becomes us all.  I say ‘old’ because anything ‘cutting edge’ will always be blunted by a passing century  – and ‘man’ because 90 % of these movements, techniques, manifestos, were the products of the male (although slightly decentred) gender.

It appears that we can’t ‘make it new’ by inventing new building blocks – but we can create a simulacrum of newness in an artful repositioning of old blocks. Take that you old curmudgeon writer of the Ecclesiastes!

Daniel Staniforth, for all his theoretical posturing, aspires to be an avant-garde author with recent works such as The Groundlings of Divine Will, Diddle, and Weaver in the Sluices.  He also tries his hand at various ‘vanguard’ music styles.  

© Daniel Staniforth/Skylight Press

Conversation with Alan Richardson

As my conversation with Gareth Knight was so well received last month I decided to try and have a similar confab with his friend and somewhat younger colleague, Alan Richardson.  Alan has written extensively on Paganism, Celtic and Faery lore, the Arthuriad, the Qabala, Ancient Egypt, British mystery traditions, as well as producing a series of delightful novels.  He has given us important biographies on occult luminaries such as William G. Gray, Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley, Christine Hartley and Charles Seymour.  A couple of hermits, we conducted our conversation on the digital plane, as Alan no doubt kept one eye on the footy scores in hopes that Newcastle United would stave off relegation from the premier league.  Readers of Alan’s work will have come to know his razor wit and unassuming charm… always laced with a healthy dose of honesty…

DS: Given that you write in various styles and genres – from serious esoterica to wild polyglot fiction -  can you tell us what sort of writing comes most naturally to you? Are you the sort of ‘modal’ writer that works on one thing at a time or are you able to bounce between these extremes at will?

AR:  Well, I dunno what a ‘modal writer’ is. But I wish I could bounce between extremes at will.  When I’ve tried it’s been disastrous. Usually I wake in the middle of the night with a title or a first line for a new project and the whole thing is suddenly glowing and complete in my head like a a big, tangled piece of cosmic string, if that’s an apt analogy. The title or first line is a means of grasping one end and unravelling it. Somehow, rhythm comes into it too. If I can ‘hear’ the rhythm I’m looking for in the prose, the rest of it comes along. ‘On Winsley Hill’ had a very marked sense of rhythm. I kept trying to change it, the whole style, but somehow it wouldn’t let me. I suppose ‘it’ was the spirit of the hill itself. (Where, with the encircling Limpley Stoke valley, Dion Fortune’s parents met, courted and married, incidentally.)

DS:  You have written about inner Egypt, Inner Celtia, Inner Megaliths, Inner Gateways, as well as displaying an ever-inventive imagination in strange and exotic novels like The Fat Git. Where does this come from?  What can you tell us about the private Alan Richardson that produces this magic?

AR:  Oh gosh I don’t know where it all comes from. Y’see I wish in my early days I’d chosen a pen-name for myself to help define and cope with this ‘other’ self of mine. The Alan Richardson who writes these odd books is somewhat different to the lower case alan richardson answering these questions. And I can’t switch into him. Wish I could – I think. It’s one of the reasons I try to avoid contact with the outer world of this strange business: people want to bang on to the upper case AR about all sorts of recondite and esoteric things, but lower case ar hasn’t got the slightest interest in talking about them, and is distinctly, cheerfully and determinedly low-brow. I suppose I’m a bit of a freak in that I can genuinely believe in two completely opposite things at the same time. If it was scientifically proved that the whole magical realm was bollocks it would not bother me in the slightest.

The ‘private’ me isn’t really private at all. I’ve never been able to make a living writing, though lord knows I’ve tried for almost 50 years now. So I’ve had a vast variety of jobs: a teacher; wastrel; actor; general labourer in a brickyard; nursing auxiliary bum-wiping for the NHS; care worker in an OAP home; Instructor for the RNID, teaching deaf and deaf-blind adults using sign language and braille; Instructor in a day centre fo adults with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. And many more. Now, in my last working years, I’ve got the best job in England managing a specialist Mobile Library which takes Large Print books and Talking books to the elderly in remote communities right across my beloved Wiltshire. Perhaps all these have given me a sense of whimsy. Plus I would add that I’ve gone into these jobs not because I’m caring, but out of the sheer necessity of supporting my family.

DS:  I was particularly struck by On Winsley Hill, and The Giftie before it, both of which show elegant literary craftsmanship with wit, voice, pacing, characterisation, setting, etc,. As someone with a natural flair for fiction are there authors that particularly inspire you or do you just follow your own writerly impulses?

AR:  Well, thanks for those comments Daniel, but I don’t think I’ve got a flair for fiction. To my shame I never read novels unless they are very thin. Perhaps because I’m out of touch with mainstream fiction this is why I’ve never been able to appeal to the mass market. So I only read non-fiction, though voraciously, on all sorts of topics, none of them very learned.

In a sense I was cursed in the early years of my writing by a resonance or echo of D.H. Lawrence. There was a time when I was younger and bit loopy that I thought I might have been DHL reborn. I don’t think that now. But whenever I tried to write a simple tale the ‘tone’ of DHL would come floating in and turn it all into an unreadable pastiche of his style. I eventually exorcised him by writing (and re-writing and re-re-re-rewriting) ‘Shimmying Hips’ which was a parody and piss-take. The main character Godwin Jelph is DHL. Fritha was Freida etc. Every image, every place, is a warped version of his, although only a Lawrencian scholar might notice and appreciate. I put it out on Kindle, and although I’m told it’s largely unreadable at least it got rid of the bugger.

DS:  There is a telling line on one of your Amazon pages: “He does not belong to any occult group or society, does not take pupils, and does not give lectures on any kind of initiation. He insists on holding down a full-time job in the real world like any other mortal. That, after all, is part and parcel of the real magical path.” You seem to have a very humble and down-to-earth approach to an occult world that has harboured no small number of egomaniacs – is this an important ingredient to your success?

AR:  What success is that Daniel? Humble? Me? 40 odd years ago I stuck on the side of my old portable typewriter the letters HSW. The stood for: Humility – because when I was younger I was an arrogant bastard, though I had no achievements which might justify this; Simplicity – because I was uncomfortably aware that all this psuedo-intellectual study of dark and deep things (especially the Kabbalibosh) could well cause me to disappear up my own fundament; Work – because although I do work hard, it doesn’t come naturally to me, and I’d far rather lounge on a couch having adoring but mute servants feed me grapes while I watch ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’.

Plus there is an extent to which I’m a bit of a phoney, magically speaking. Except on rare occasions I can’t ‘see’ a thing. Nor do I have any of the powers you might expect magicians to have, and which I’ve witnessed in a few others of the real kind. So how can I teach anyone? So here is a secret which the little ar has observed in the capital AR: sometimes the latter uses literary style to hide the fact that he hasn’t a bloody clue. But don’t tell anyone, eh?

DS:  If I may extend that last question somewhat – you have been involved with the biographies of some celebrated occultists – Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley and W.G. Gray – and now find yourself becoming a bit of an elder statesman in the Western Mystery Tradition in your own right.  Where do consider your work in relation with these pioneers?

AR:  Elder statesman! And here was me thinking I was still a Bright Young Thing. Where did all the years go… I just write down what comes along. I’ve often said that the story of how I came to write about Dion Fortune would take a book itself, involving staggering levels of coincidence and serendipity, but I didn’t go looking for any of it. Perhaps I’m just a kind of scribe, with no real axe of my own to grind. In football terms those characters you mentioned are the Real Madrids and Arsenals and Chelseas of this world. Me, I’m probably level with Plymouth Argylle – though I do have the odd FA Cup run in which I can surprise myself.

DS:  A couple of years ago you wrote Sex and Light: How to Google your Way to the Godhead.  Is this an example of one of your “dodgy books on Magick” as per your words in your bio statement?  What about other recent projects – what’s this new romp with the Templars?

AR:  Sex and Light… Well that was orginally called ‘The Google Tantra – How I Became the First Geordie to Raise the Kundalini’. It was a tongue-in-cheek and rude sort of semi-autobiography in part, but mainly a love letter to Margaret. A couple of big publishers were interested in the concept but wanted me to do it without the personal stuff, yet that would have killed it. Tiny little ignotus press took a chance, and then Twin Eagles took it on with its new title. In fact, as I learned only last year, my oldest and wildest friend Maxwell who never showed the slightest interest in the ‘occult’ when we were lads together, actually had experiences of his own which showed he raised the kundalini quite naturally long before me. So he ruined the whole damned book.

The Templars? Oh you mean the recent ‘Dark Light’ published by Mutus Liber. Well, it’s just a romp, based on my magnificent Mobile Libary. A number of the characters in it are described ‘as is’, being fellow workers in the library service. I thought that was one way to get some sales. But the Templars, like DHL, have floated in and out of my psyche for years and although I’ve asked them what they wanted from me I never got any sort of sign or answer. I suspect ‘Dark Light’ will do to them what ‘Shimmying Hips’ did to DHL – drive them away in a huff. It is the greatest novel ever written about the Wiltshire Mobile Library Service – if only because…etc etc

Then again I’ve got the non-fiction ’Geordie’s War’ coming out in the autumn which is the one project I’m really proud of. It’s about what my grandad did in the Great War, and how it affected my Dad and then me. It’s a strange little book, I think. Actually, forget the Humility thing – it’s bloody brilliant. I had the Northumberland Fusiliers in my psyche for several months of convalescence after a serious op, and I think I’ve done them proud. Oddly, Sting appeared as if my magick and it turns out he’s as obsessed by the Great War as I had become, so has done me an excellent Foreword.

DS:  Finally, do you feel that we are at the end of a golden age or are there up and coming thinkers and writers that give you hope for the future?  What advice do you have for aspiring neophytes in your field?

AR:  I don’t read many books on magick, but those recent ones by Wendy Berg, Josephine McCarthy, Mike Harris, R.J. Stewart, Normandi Ellis and Gareth Knight are in classes of their own. They know what they are talking about, and make me hugely jealous.

Advice for aspiring neophytes? First, do no harm. Then work hard, don’t give up, don’t worry if you make an absolute dick of yourself at times – and DON’T DO DRUGS.

Interview conducted on Monday, May 13, 2013
Photograph – Alan Richardson in Australia

For more information about Alan Richardson  visit his Amazon Author page.

Skylight Press has published two novels, On Winsley Hill and  The Fat Git, as well as two edited works, The Old Sod: The Odd Life & Inner Work of William G. Gray (with Marcus Claridge) and Working with Inner Light: The Magical Journal of William G. Gray (with Jo Clark).  We will be publishing his non-fiction memoir, Geordie’s War, later this year.