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TWPT:
Tell me about some of your earliest memories of being
exposed to the ideas of magick and Witchcraft and what your initial
impressions were of these often misunderstood disciplines?
DR: As a young child I was a voracious reader. At this age I used to read all the books on
mythology I could find. This lead me
into reading Carl Jung and the Tao Teh King when I was ten, and this in turn
made me start wondering about whether magick really worked. I always dreamed lucidly and experienced a
lot of synchronicities, so Jung’s writings were a trigger for me to think about
the efficacy of magick. My mother had a
tarot deck and a book on the tarot I read, which I think was by Stuart Kaplan. My mother used to do tarot readings to see
how well I would do in my exams, and was always very accurate – she would do
the spread and put the interpretation in a sealed envelope, and then show me
what she had recorded after the exams.
This really got me thinking about how we could be prepared for the
future and make the right decisions and helped me decide that magick was going
to be for me.
TWPT:
When you decided to look a little deeper into these
ideas where did you go to find your information? Was it a difficult
search to get reliable and detailed information on a subject that still
was dominated by stereotypes and misinformation?
DR: When I was 14 a friend gave me a catalogue for Occultique
in Northampton, and a lot of my books used to come from John Lovett, who owns
Occultique. I also discovered Golden
Dawn Books in Manchester, and this was my other main source of books to
buy. I used to get the local library to
order books in for me from other library services around Britain. I used to get some funny looks from the staff
as they handed over books by authors like Paracelsus and Agrippa that had come
for this fourteen year old! I didn’t
find it that hard to get good information, but I think I was lucky in that my
instincts guided me to buy some very good books, and also Barry Bender (of
Golden Dawn Books) and John Lovett used to offer me advice when I phoned to ask
about books in their catalogues. In some
ways it seems more difficult now with the massive amount of books and no way of
knowing how good the material is without help.
In the late 70’s and early 80’s it was a much smaller range of books
available so it was easier to pick the wheat from the chaff.
TWPT:
Speaking of sorting the wheat from the chaff, do you
have any ideas or suggestions on how those
who are just starting out along this path can avoid spending lots of
money and wasting valuable time on books that are shallow at best and
dangerous at worst?
DR:
I would suggest looking at the reviews on
decent websites, and also reading what other people have said on Amazon or
other sites that offer customers the chance to write their own reviews of books
they have bought. That aside personal
recommendation is the only other option, or looking in the bibliographies of
books you have bought to see what the sources were. Assuming the book has a bibliography that is
– I must admit I tend to put books down that don’t have a reasonable
bibliography at the back – I like to see where material has come from, so I
don’t have to take everything on faith from the author or not know where their
information has come from.
TWPT:
When was it that you came to the decision that this
was the path for you and what did you do to begin the journey?
DR: When I was fourteen and received my first order of books
for my collection, one of the books was “Techniques of High Magic” by Francis
King and Stephen Skinner, which I still consider one of the best magick primers
written. I took the magickal vow they
give in there and dedicated my life to magick.
I then started spending 2 hours every day practicing the techniques –
pentagram ritual, hexagram ritual, pranayama techniques, meditation,
visualization, any technique I read about that looked interesting. I practiced spending an hour holding the
image of a tatva until I could hold it without any shift for that time. It took me 18 months but was great for
sharpening my powers of visualisation.
TWPT:
Was there a magickal/Wiccan community to speak of at
that time in the UK? Did you attempt to make contact with this community and
what were some of your thoughts about those you met in those early forays into
this new world?
DR: There were magickal and Wiccan communities in the UK, but
they were quite separate in many ways, and also I was at school and there
wasn’t much going on in rural Lincolnshire, so I just worked with a school
friend who got into magick at the same time.
The first person I really spoke to was an old lady in her seventies, Mrs
Fletcher, who I used to run errands for like shopping and helping with her
cleaning. She was a spiritualist and she
introduced me to skrying, and a very experienced spiritual healer who taught me
laying on of hands and the do’s and don’ts of healing. I thought they were lovely people, but they
were not interested in “magick” but more into the ideas of spiritualism. I didn’t get involved with the Wiccan
community until I was in my mid twenties and had already been practicing for
many years. My path had taken me into
other areas like Qabalah, Thelema, ceremonial magick and tantra. When I met my ex-wife I was getting more
interested in Wicca, and she was an Alexandrian HPS! I had reached a point where I felt I needed
to focus more on the earth and being grounded.
From there it was a natural progression into the Craft.
TWPT:
Follow up: Did having a magickal background
make the move into Wicca seem like familiar territory? Could you,
for our readers, distinguish between what are the basics of Wicca as
opposed to a basic magickal path.
DR:
Yes it was quite familiar territory when I
got into Wicca, which is essentially a ritual magick tradition in itself, but a
bit more nature-based than classic ceremonial magick and qabalah.
I would say the main difference between
Wicca and a basic magickal path is that Wicca combines magick, mysticism and religion,
whereas magick tends to leave out the religion (and in some cases the
mysticism). That was the great appeal of
Wicca to me, that it combines the religious priestly (or priestessly) side with
the magickal side, and opens the door to more personal mystical experiences,
which are the root of any experiential spiritual system. Wicca tends to be more nature based, whereas
magicians can get a bit cerebral sometimes and divorced from their environment. This isn’t always true though, I used to work
in a Thelemic ritual magick group where we frequently worked at interesting
sites appropriate to the nature of the magick being done.
TWPT:
What was the
first group that you decided to commit to and why did you choose them from
among the available paths open to you?
DR: When I was eighteen someone I knew through a sports club
I used to go to approached me and asked if I would like to attend a meeting of
a magickal group. I went to my first
meeting and was told that when I returned next week, I would have learned the
Hebrew alphabet, the numerical attributions, what path on the Tree of Life and
tarot trump went with each letter, what number and what the letter meant. Any mistakes meant I didn’t get into the
lodge. I chose this path because it
opened up for me and it had the high level of focus and discipline I had been
putting in to my studies. There was no
socialising outside the lodge, and first names only. I am still bound by my oath not to reveal the
name of the group, but it is not a public group. I got in through being in the right place at
the right time and displaying the sort of approach they wanted.
TWPT:
Follow up: Do you think contacting secret
magickal groups (or other Wiccan/Pagan groups) is any more risky
today than what it was when you first made contact with the lodge? Why?
DR:
I wouldn’t say it was more risky today than
it was say 20 years ago. There are
certainly a lot more groups, and there are a lot more chances to find out about
groups through events, conferences, moots, etc.
The main risk is joining a group for the sake of it, even though it may
not be right for you. It can be very
disheartening for people who look for years and don’t find anything, there can
be an inclination to join the first group that comes along, even though it may
not be in the tradition you are interested in, just to be in a group. I always encourage people to wait and be sure
the group is for them. Any reputable group
will be able to give you some idea of their aims, their training material, the
commitments they expect from a prospective member, costs, etc. When you meet the group, remember you should
interview them as much as they do you.
You need to be sure that you will get on with the people and that their
aims are similar to your own. The
obvious warning signs are groups expecting lots of money (costs to cover wine,
candles, incense, etc are fine and standard) and any inappropriate sexual
overtones or behaviour.
TWPT:
What were some of the characteristics of those
teachers you had in the beginning that helped you the most along your chosen
path?
DR: Discipline, discipline and discipline! I was very impressed with the ability of the
lodge master to perform full-on Solomonic evocation from memory. He was a very focused and efficient
individual, and these qualities were the ones I sought to reinforce in
myself. He was also very humble, he
never made people feel inferior in the way he taught and behaved – I was very
impressed and came to the conclusion that with competence came control of the
ego and the ability to pass on information without dogma.
TWPT:
Was there a particular aspect of your studies that you
were quite adept at? Were there also those areas that did not feel as comfortable
to you?
DR: I am lucky in that I have always dreamed lucidly, which
allowed me to explore a lot of ideas and techniques in the dreamstate, a major
plus. I found that I was very competent at the voice work. When we practiced vibration of divine names
and mantra, I have always found it easy to allow my voice free rein to express
the energy. There weren’t really any
areas I didn’t feel comfortable with, I just wanted to learn everything!
TWPT:
Were there any memorable books that contributed to your
growth in magick and Wicca? What were some of the ones that were most important
and what did they teach you about your chosen path?
DR: The books which contributed most to my early growth would
be “Techniques of High Magic” as mentioned previously, “Magic: An Occult
Primer” by David Conway, “Magick” by Aleister Crowley, and the writings of
Carlos Castaneda. The magick books all
helped expand my horizons, and Crowley made me start to appreciate the depth of
magick. Carlos Castaneda I still re-read
every few years, as I find his writings very useful to remind me about the
importance of behaviour and efficiency – he is very good for helping shift
perceptions.
When I first read “Outside the Circles of Time” by
Kenneth Grant at nineteen, that blew me away! The scope of his material and the inclusion in
his writings of the importance of magickal art and fiction really opened my
perceptions up and widened my horizons.
The writing of Stanislav Grof and Wilhelm Reich also
helped a lot by making me question a whole range of issues, like the importance
of perception and how it works, the holistic nature of the universe, and where
magick and other disciplines merge. For
this reason I always recommend the works of the anthropologist Mircea Eliade to
people when they ask me who to read. There aren't really any books on Wicca
that made me stop and go Wow! I feel that the best way
to find out about Wicca is through doing it - it is
an experiential path, and the oral material won't be
in books, you need a reputable initiated coven to really
appreciate Wicca at its best, in my opinion. Having
said that, if people asked me to recommend books on
Wicca, I would say Vivianne Crowley's "Wicca"
and the Farrar books will give a good overview of Wicca
for people interested in the Craft.
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