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“They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the words have been spoken and the rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with their voices and the earth mutters with their consciousness.”
The Necronomicon, The Dulwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft
The Nyarlathotep Coven was a collective of magicians from a variety of backgrounds who came to work together to explore Lovecraftian magic.
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One thing that continues to fascinate me is people that have been influential in their own time but have dropped off the radar since and received comparatively little attention since. When a friend alerted me to Jon Chapple’s biography of Sri Krishna Prem, I knew this would be a fascinating read. An Englishman, born Ronald Henry Nixon, who served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. After the war, he became Professor of English at Lucknow and Banares Universities; and in his final incarnation, as it were, became Sri Krishna Prem – a Vaiṣṇava spiritual leader who attracted both Indian and western followers, including counter-cultural figures such as Timothy Leary and Ram Dass.
Continue reading »In the previous post in this series, I briefly examined the North American “panic” over Dungeons & Dragons and other FRPGs that began in 1979. Now I’ll move to the case that triggered the main “Satanic Panic” – the McMartin Preschool case.
Continue reading »In the previous post in this series I examined some of the factors that contributed to the North American Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Now, I’ll take a look at the Dungeons & Dragons “Panic”.
Continue reading »A major theme in Delinquent Elementals, edited by me and Rodney Orpheus, is the British Satanic Panic of 1988-1992. For this series of posts, I’m going to examine the background to the “Panic” and various contributing factors. For the first few posts, I’ll concentrate on the North American Satanic Panic that preceded and influenced the British phenomena.
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If there’s one thing I’d like to be remembered for, it is Pagan News, the zine that occupied a central place in my life between 1988-92. Delinquent Elementals, edited by myself and Rodney Orpheus (my co-creator and co-editor), brings together a selection of the best content from Pagan News over the 36 or so issues. Six years in production, Delinquent Elementals features a selection of news stories, essays, interviews, tips on practical magic, and more. It is a fascinating window into the UK’s blossoming occult scene at a time of rapid social and political change.
Looking back, I can only wonder how we did it. Of course, there were those at the time, that said we’d never keep to a monthly publishing schedule – producing a zine every three weeks. We developed a system – one zine on the street, one in production, and several in various stages of planning. There was a quiet satisfaction to be had in telling a potential contributor that the slot their submission would be published in was already full for the next three issues.
Delinquent Elementals is available direct from Strange Attractor, or all good bookshops.
This account of ritual experimentation from the archives of the Nyarlathotep Coven was originally intended for inclusion in a sequel to my short book, The Pseudonomicon, but by the late 90s I’d more-or-less abandoned lovecraftian experiments in magic, so it never came to pass.
The ancient Greeks created special places – often underground – where visitors could commune with the spirits of the dead. These places were called psychomanteums. The following is a description of the Nyarlathotep Coven’s experiments in recreating a psychomanteum for the purpose of two-way traffic with Lovecraftian liminal spaces and their denizens.
Continue reading »It is perhaps not surprising to discover that the British Museum, founded in the eighteenth century at the former mansion of the Duke of Montagu, has more than its fair share of ghosts.
Continue reading »Go on any pagan or occult forum or social media platform, and at some point, inevitably, someone will assert that contemporary Witchcraft was, more or less, “made up” by Gerald Gardner. This was the conclusion drawn by Ronald Hutton in his 1999 book, Triumph of the Moon. Over the last two decades though, the story has changed, thanks largely to Philip Heselton’s careful investigation of the New Forest Coven in his books, In Search of the New Forest Coven and Witchfather. Thanks to Heselton, many of the members of this bohemian group have been identified, in particular, ‘Dafo’, Gardner’s friend, lover, and magical partner for 15 years.
Continue reading »Mike Magee, my friend, teacher, and publishing collaborator passed away in the early hours of 11 August 2024.
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