Pagan Magazine: Remembered and Reimagined

A mock-up cover illustrating how Pagan Magazine might look 

in 2024 based on a recent post on Torpedo the Ark

 

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of Pagan: The Magazine of Blood-Knowledge (1983-1992). 

 

And, whilst I have discussed the origins of this obscure publication previously on Torpedo the Ark and provided a full index of issues - click here - I think this might be an opportune moment to offer a few further remarks in response to a suggestion that Pagan be digitised and made available online and in answer to the following questions asked by this same person:

1. Can you explain why you chose the title Pagan for the magazine?

 

As far as I recall, this was inspired by D. H. Lawrence; not just his religious and occult writings, but the fact that he and his close friends belonged to a literary society as adolescents referred to by some as 'the Pagans' [1]. 

 

This small group would discuss all kinds of ideas and read authors including Marx, Nietzsche, and Darwin and I wanted the magazine to reflect the same degree of intellectual curiosity. My readings of Nietzsche in the mid-1980s only reinforced my view that this was the perfect name for the magazine and although I never used the following section from The Will to Power, it very much reflects the kind of thing that fired my imagination at the time:

 

"We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralised world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is: - to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral. We believe in Olympus - and not in the 'Crucified'." [2]

 

I still think it's a nice title, although that's partly due to the fact that I'm strongly inclined towards auto-descriptive words beginning with the letter P: punk, pirate, poet, pagan, etc. However, I would almost certainly change the subtitle - if it ever was the subtitle and not merely a strapline - as the irrationalist concept of blood-knowledge is one I have come to find problematic [3]. I think now I would be tempted to go with Pagan: the Magazine of Dark Enlightenment.

 

 

2. Can you remember the circumstances surrounding the production of the early issues?

 

Not very well. I was twenty at the time and studying for a degree in Leeds. That period is very much like a dream now and I don't remember much about it.  

 

Fortunately, however, I kept a diary and, apparently, it was on Thursday 7 April, 1983, that I suddenly had the idea of putting together a magazine that would reflect my new philosophy - a post-punk primitivism partly inspired by D. H. Lawrence and a second-hand copy of the Larousse Encyclopedia of World Mythology.

 

I designed a front cover - which, to be honest, is a complete dog's dinner - and began writing the text that evening. The first issue wasn't completed, however, until the middle of the following month, when I was in London at Charisma Records. 

 

It was there that I made a hundred photocopies of the ten-side issue on 16 May. Don't ask what happened to them, but I know that one was sent to Malcolm McLaren's office at 25 Denmark Street and it might be noted that the woman's face featured on the cover with a thick black band of makeup across her eyes was inspired by the dancers in the 'Buffalo Gals' video (a look McLaren borrowed from Ridley Scott's Bladerunner (1982)). 

 

The image of Priapus which also featured on the cover was intended to be a kind of logo, but, sadly, it didn't appear on any future issues and I think Pan became the presiding deity for the most part.   

 

The superior second issue, with original artwork by Gillian Hall - my on-off (mostly off) partner at the time - came out in July and was quickly followed by issue three, which was a poetry issue with a picture of Jordan (Pamela Rooke) on the cover. The magazine didn't really come into its own until the period 1986-89, which is when the vast bulk of issues were produced (on A3 paper). 

 

 

3. Were you part of the pagan/esoteric/occult scene in the 1980s?

 

No, not at all. 

 

My interests were very much to do with art, politics, and popular culture, rather than magic or witchcraft. I read books about the latter and had a T-shirt with a picture of Aleister Crowley on, but that was about it. 

Having said that, there were issues of Pagan on subjects including alchemy, astrology, and tarot, so it would be a little disingenuous to say I had no interest in (or knowledge of) these things. Further, I was a regular reader of Pagan News, edited by Phil Hine, who has since become an internationally respected author on chaos magic and related topics and we occasionally cross paths in London. 

 

However, my attempt to garner support for the magazine from Leonora James, the Gardnerian High Priestess who was then serving as President of the Pagan Federation, ended badly after she decided that images I had used by German Expressionist painters had paedophile undertones. She warned me that if I were to send her any future copies of Pagan Magazine she would immediately report me to the police!

 

After that, I had no further contact with people on the pagan scene until I met Christina Harrington, in 2004, and became involved with things happening at her magical little bookshop, Treadwell's [4].     

 

 

4. Finally, do you still identify as a pagan and do you see Torpedo the Ark as a continuation of the project you began with Pagan Magazine forty years ago?   

 

I don't really identify as anything to be honest and, whilst there are certainly posts on TTA that might be interpreted as pagan in character, the blog is ultimately a very different kettle of fish and has a radically different philosophy and perspective. I found it fun doing the mockup cover for an imaginary issue of Pagan Magazine published in 2024, but don't think my heart would really be in it if asked to produce an entire new issue. Some things are very much of their time and Pagan belongs in the 1980s like a fish belongs in water. 

 

But again, having said that, I obviously still read Lawrence and Nietzsche and I have presented two papers at Treadwell's recently - one on the magical allure of objects and the other on occultism in the age of transparency [5] - so, who knows, perhaps for the 50th anniversary I might be tempted to reboot the magazine. But I doubt it.      

 

 

Artwork for Pagan Magazine, Issue 2 (1983), 

by Gillian Hall

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 170.  

[2] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books, 1968), section 1034 (1888), p. 533.

 

[3] I have twice discussed Lawrence's concept of blood-knowledge on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here. 

 

[4] See the post dated 4 December 2012 entitled 'The Treadwell's Papers' - click here. 

 

[5] Details of both these events can be found on the TTA Events page: click here.

 

 

On the Whip and the Wand: A Response to Joanne Pearson

Artwork by Stephen Alexander for the Treadwell's Paper 

'The Whip and the Wand' in the Sex/Magic series (2005)

 

 

According to the academic author Joanne Pearson, the use of a whip or scourge as a magical tool within the context of (post)modern spirituality, including pagan witchcraft - or Wicca, as many of its adherents prefer to call it - has elicited little debate and ritual flagellation tends to be a largely concealed practice. 

 

She writes: 

 

"Techniques associated with BDSM in the public imagination [...] tend to be ignored, sidelined, dismissed, and whitewashed, both by Wiccan practitioners and by academic studies of Wicca, rather than being explored as mechanisms by which boundaries might be transgressed through the infliction of pain, exercised on the body, eliciting religious experience from skin and flesh." [1] 

 

However, that's not quite true: way back in 2005, for example, I presented a six-part series of lectures at Treadwell's Bookshop on Sex/Magic, at the behest of Christina Harrington, a respected authority on all things esoteric and the store's founder and presiding spirit.  

 

These talks discussed a variety of topics from a philosophical perspective, including masturbation, anal sex, nakedness and - in the final paper of the series, entitled 'The Whip and the Wand' - fetishistic aspects of modern pagan witchcraft [2].

 

The lectures were eventually published in 2010 by Blind Cupid Press as Volume I of The Treadwell's Papers. 

 

Of course, to be fair to Pearson, this is not something widely known; the talks were attended only by a handful of people and neither filmed so as to be uploaded to a social media platform, nor livestreamed online as so many events are today. 

 

Similarly, the two Blind Cupid books of Treadwell's Papers - each consisting of twelve essays - were produced in an extremely limited number and those not sold via Treadwell's were left in the philosophy sections of several other London book stores for anyone who came across them to freely acquire [3].

 

Having said that, however, as a scholarly researcher and writer in this area, it's surely incumbent upon Pearson to be aware of this and not mistakenly assert that no one - other than her good self - has ever been bold enough to investigate the links between Wicca and BDSM [4].

 

Notes

[1] Joanne Pearson, 'Embracing the lash: pain and ritual as spiritual tools', Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, Vol. 23, (2011), pp. 351-363.

      See also Pearson's earlier essay: 'Inappropriate Sexuality? Sex Magic, S/M and Wicca (or Whipping Harry Potter's Arse!)', Theology & Sexuality, Vol. 11, Issue 2, (Sage, 2005), pp. 31-42.   

 

[2] For full details of the Sex/Magic series - as well as all other papers presented at Treadwell's between 2004 and 2012 - click here. 

[3] Apparently, these books sometimes turn up online described as rare collectors items and selling for laughably exorbitant prices.

[4] I suspect that Pearson has sought to gain a little speaker's benefit by positioning herself in this manner; i.e., as the only one who dares to speak openly about the prohibited and the perverse, thereby challenging the established order and its taboos. 

      To her credit, however, Pearson began exploring the common conceptual ground between Wicca and BDSM several years before I thought of it; first presenting a paper on this at a conference at the University of Glasgow entitled 'Dangerous Sex: Contesting the Spaces of Theology and Sexuality', in 2002. But her later claims about the continued attempt to deny or overlook the kinky aspects of Wicca need some (retrospective) qualification. 

 

 

Readers who are inerested can read three extracts from 'The Whip and the Wand' by clicking here.  

 

In Defence of Isis Veiled: What a Practice of Occultism Might Mean in an Age of Transparency

Cover art for the Treadwell's Paper 

Occultism in the Age of Transparency (2023)

by Stephen Alexander (shadowy version)

 

 

This post is a slightly revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's Bookshop, on 7 September, 2023. The event was graciously hosted, as ever, by Christina Harrington, and marked my return to the store as a speaker after an absence of eleven years [1]. 

 

 

**************************************************

 

 

The Veil of Isis is a metaphorical and artistic motif in which nature is personified as a goddess, covered by a veil or mantle representing the inaccessibility of her secrets [2]. 

 

Illustrations of Isis with her veil being lifted were extremely popular from the late 17th to the early-mid 19th century and were usually intended to show the triumph of Reason. However, even occultists were happy to play this game of indecent exposure; Madame Blavatsky, for example, used the metaphor of Isis unveiled when expounding the spiritual teachings of Theosophy [3]. 

 

According to Blavatsky, whilst scientists and philosophers revealed only material facts and superficial forms, she would penetrate further to the most hidden truths. That, to me at least, is a shameful ambition.

 

And I don't much like it either when practitioners of modern ceremonial magic also attempt to unveil Isis, or command demons hidden in darkness to make themselves apparent and obedient to the will of the one who has summoned them forth. 

 

For me, occultism - particularly in this, the age of transparency - should be a defence of concealment and anonymity, not making visible and naming those beings who stand dark on the threshold of the Unknown. 

 

I don’t want to violently drag everything out into the open - least of all some poor demon - so it can be subject to our x-ray vision. For even gods and demons die when they shed all negativity (all shadow, all darkness). That’s why Goethe’s Faust encouraged us to hold tight to the veil of Isis, even if we can never embrace the goddess, or catch anything other than a glimpse of her [4]. 

 

Occultism is ultimately not about revelation, but mystical initiation. And this involves closing your eyes and shutting your mouth; for it's an attempt to maintain the silence and stillness. Thus, when casting a spell, for example, whisper it in a voice that is lighter than breath. For magic, like poetry, is an event of stillness (i.e., a phenomenon of negativity) that enables us to listen to the silence (to be attentive to the darkness). 

 

In other words, magic is about tuning in to intensities; about forming a sensitive relationship with the world "that is not characterized by representation (that is, by ideas or meaning) but by immediate touching and presence" [5]. Only in silent stillness "do we enter into a relation with the nameless, which exceeds us" [6].

 

Silence, stillness, secrecy, and shadows are the fourfold of terms at the heart of occultism. 

 

And I would suggest to any would-be wiccans or neo-pagans here this evening that, instead of trying to move with the times and making secret rituals open to everyone, you stay concealed, hidden, and withdrawn. 

 

And, above all, stay still: for just as we can only ever catch a glimpse of the gods, they can only cast their gaze upon those who "linger in contemplative calmness" [7]. 

 

In sum: occult practices and magical rituals are symbolic techniques of becoming-imperceptible [8] and I’m hoping, that via a form of occultism, we might learn how to stage our own disappearance and darken the world, giving it back its shadows, its secrecy, and its silence. 

 

For whilst people talk a lot about plastic in the seas and worry about their so-called carbon footprint, I would suggest that light pollution and noise pollution are far more threatening to our ontological wellbeing. 

 

 

Photo by Paul Gorman 

(as posted on Instagram)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers can find a full list of previous Treadwell's papers by clicking here.

 

[2] The motif was based on a statue of Isis located in the ancient Egyptian city of Sais, which was said to have an inscription reading: I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my mantle - which admittedly sounds like a challenge. For an interesting philosophical study of this topic, see Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis (Harvard University Press, 2008). 

      Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both ancient and modern thinkers (the latter including Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger), Hadot traces successive interpretations of a cryptic phrase which has long intrigued the Western imagination and is attributed to Heraclitus: Phusis kruptesthai philei (Nature loves to hide). 

      Hadot concludes that there are essentially two (contradictory) approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. 

 

[3] Blavatsky’s most famous work - Isis Unveiled:A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology - was published in 1877. For some, a seminal text; for others, a work largely plagiarised from the writings of other occult authors. 

 

[4] Whilst most people understand a glimpse simply to mean a brief or partial view - to catch a quick look, perhaps in passing, of something or someone - it has a more poetic and philosophical resonance for those with ears to hear. D. H. Lawrence, for example, was fascinated by the word and often used it in his late poetry to describe how aspects of divinity are seen in the faces and forms of people when they are momentarily unaware of themselves. It's this glimmer of godhood which gives human beings their more-than-human beauty; which makes the flesh gleam with radiance or the bright flame of being. See the related group of verses on pp. 579-582 of The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 

      Heidegger also privileged the word Blick, which I would translate as glimpse. For Heidegger, a glimpse is a kind of lightning flash which provides an insight into that which is, whilst, at the same time, guarding the hidden darkness of what remains forever withdrawn. See 'The Turn', from the 1949 Bremen Lecture series Insight Into That Which Is, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 64-73.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', in Non-things, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 77. 

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han, 'The Magic of Things', Non-things, pp. 56-57. 

 

[7] Byung-Chul Han, 'Stillness', Non-things, p. 83.

 

[8] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996). According to the above, there is one becoming towards which all other becomings rush, marking the immanent end of becoming and providing the process with its cosmic formula; the becoming-imperceptible (279). 

 

 

Readers who are interested might also like to see two earlier posts that acted as previews to the talk at Treadwell's: 

 

'In Memory of Anne Dufourmantelle: Risk Taker Extraordinaire and Defender of Secrets' (14 May 2023): click here 

 

'On Georg Simmel's Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies' (10 August 2023): click here. 

 

 

Scattered Pictures of the Smiles We Left Behind: In Memory of Four Treadwellians

Thomas, Meni, Mark & Bianca

Treadwells, 34, Tavistock Street, London, WC2 [1]

(c. 2006) 

  

I. 

 

I rarely think back to what might be termed the Treadwell's period (2004-2008), but, when I do, I find it is with increasing fondness for the curious little bookshop and its owner Christina Harrington, and, of course, for the handful of people who used to assemble in the basement to listen to my philosophical reflections on topics including sex/magic, thanatology, and zoophilia [2].  

 

Some of the regular attendees to these lectures soon formed a magic circle with whom I would go for drinks and discussion afterwards. As this group had around a dozen members [3], the Little Greek used to jokingly refer to them as the disciples, though I'm sure none of these highly individual characters recognised themselves as such or thought they had anything to learn from me. 

 

 

II. 

 

Sadly, very few pictures were ever taken at the Store when I was there; 2004-08 was just prior to everyone carrying a smartphone and sharing photos and video footage on social media.

 

However, in a rare snap reproduced above, we see four members of the Treadwell's contingent all looking surprisingly cheerful for some reason [4]. 

 

The gang of four are:

 

(i) Thomas the Austrian; an artist and genuine oddball, whose chief pleasure was telling me how wrong I was about everything and whom I used to imagine as a bald-headed bird of prey picking at my entrails ...

 

(ii) Melpomeni Kermanidou; a beautiful and talented singer-songwriter from Down Under, who, knowing how I hated the sight and sound of people clapping, once threw rose petals at the end of one of my talks - an act for which I will always adore her ...

 

(iii) Mark Jeoffroy; an occultist, poet and illustrator with finely curved lips and a boyish, slightly sinister charm; his eyes sparkling with the conceit of his own corruption, he told me once he was the spiritual heir (if not the actual reincarnation) of William Blake.     

 

(iv) Bianca Madison (aka the Great Dane); a former model turned therapist, nutritionist, activist, author and public speaker, who encourages everyone to learn how to love themselves and live inspired, healthy and compassionate lives (i.e., become a bit more like her).    

 

Wherever they are and whatever they're doing now, I hope they're just as happy as they seem to be in this picture and that - one fine day - we all get to meet up once more ... 

 

Notes

 

[1] Treadwell's moved from this address to 33, Store Street, WC1, in 2011. Those who cannnot visit one of London's friendliest and most fascinating bookshops in person, can go to treadwells-london.com

 

[2] See the post from 4 December 2012 entited 'The Treadwell's Papers' for details of the thirty papers presented at the store during 2004-08 (and the four additional stand-alone papers presented in 2011-12): click here. 

      Readers might also find Gary Lachman's 2007 article in The Independent on Treadwell's interesting, providing as it does an insider's insight into the store at this time. Lachman is spot-on to argue that what set Treadwell's apart from other occult shops is that it was a centre where people from different intellectual and artistic backgrounds could meet and exchange ideas. For this, all credit must be give to Christina, who conjured up an environment in which the world of philosophy and literature could flirt with occultism and pagan witchcraft.

      See: Gary Lachman,  'Pagan pages: One bookshop owner is summoning all sorts to her supernatural salons', The Independent (16 September 2007): click here.

 

[3] Other Treadwellians in my little circle included Steve Ash, Tom Bland, David Blank, Dawn Garland, Annette Herold, Simon Image, Sara the Satanist, Fiona Spence, and - of course - Simon Thomas. 

 

[4] We know from the clock on the wall that my presentation would have just finished, so perhaps that explains their joy; now they were free to go off and enjoy themselves in the pub.         

 

 

 

Ash to Ashes (In Memory of a Pagan Philosopher)

Steve Ash, the writer and pagan activist who was well-known in occult and counter-cultural circles in London, is dead.

That's not a sentence I expected to be writing, or take any pleasure in so doing. I wouldn't even have known of his passing in the autumn of last year were it not for the kind dedication of a recent book review made by Mr Tim Pendry who, like me, had a somewhat ambiguous, on-off, up-and-down friendship with the deceased. 

I knew Mr Ash via Treadwell's - Christina Harrington's wondrous bookshop - and for a brief period in 2009 we were fairly regular correspondents. He had an MA in philosophy from King's College London and was interested in questions to do with mind and consciousness from both an academic and an esoteric perspective. He also wrote on a wide variety of other subjects including the Knights Templar, Queer Theory, and the work of H. P. Lovecraft.

I can't ever remember agreeing with him on anything and thought that he was fundamentally mistaken on pretty much everything (particularly his reading of Nietzsche), but I always admired his ambition as a writer and his populist touch; here was a man who was unafraid to place the multiverse in a nutshell. 

The last time I heard from him was a couple of years ago when he left a comment on a post written on this blog (see How Even Witches Lose Their Charm). Ever-provocative and desirous of conflict, he accused me of being a crypto-Christian. But, now, in the circumstances, I suppose I can forgive him for this final erroneous insult. 

I'm told he has a loyal following and I'm sure they, as well as his friends and family, will miss him greatly. I won't, but wanted nevertheless to take this opportunity to write something in his memory.