Reflections of a Former Eco-Pagan

Pagan: The Magazine of Blood-Knowledge

'The Green Issue' (Issue XXIX, Sept 1989)

 

 

I. 

 

I know that for many people the attempt to combine ecopolitics with some form of religious faith is something new and exciting, but I was working in this (dangerous) area thirty-five years ago, during a time when I identified as a pagan of a distinctly dark green variety and called for countercultural revolution and Lebensreform.

 

Not only was I member of the Green Party in 1989, but Pagan Magazine was enthusiastically advocating a kind of Year Zero primitivism that might have made even Pol Pot uncomfortable. In issue XXIX, for example, I cheerfully called for halving the UK population and praised the blood and soil philosophy of senior Nazi Party official Richard Walther Darré [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, looking back, I'm mortified by my own moral idealism and fanaticism which, somewhat ironically, I was only able to overcome via an intensive reading of Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence during 1994-2000; two of the authors who had led me to the edge of the Abyss in the first place.   

 

Nevertheless, I don't regret the fact that I explored the mad political and religious fantasies that I did during the mid-late '80s and early 1990s. 

 

It's because of my own background in ecospirituality and ecofascism, that I understand perfectly what motivates radical activists such as Roger Hallam; co-founder of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, who is currently serving a five year jail sentence for causing a public nuisance [2].  

 

And it's why I understand also what attracts people to charismatic conspiracy theorists such as David Icke, whose obsession with New Age philosophies didn't prevent him from becoming a national spokesman for the Green Party at around the same time I was working in the press office of their London HQ [3].       

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Darré was one of the leading Blut und Boden ideologists and served as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Not only was he a high-ranking functionary in the Nazi Party, but he was also a senior commander in the SS. It is important to recall that in 1933 many environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed Hitler's regime and praised the Nazis for creating nature preserves, championing sustainable forestry, curbing air pollution, caring about animal welfare, etc. 

      Readers who are interested in knowing more should See Anna Bramwell's Blood and Soil: Walther Darré and Hitler's Green Party (Kensal Press, 1985). Her later work, Ecology in the 20th Century: A History (Yale University Press, 1989) is also recommended.

 

[2] Readers who visit Hallam's website will note that a blog containing an archive of his writings since 2017 has a whole section entitled 'Sprituality', exploring dark nights of the soul and ecstasies of being. Hallam also reveals why, for him, Jesus is still the Man: click here.

 

[3] Icke and myself were both forced to resign roles within the Green Party at around the same time; he because of a penchant for wearing turquoise shell-suits and me for favouring traditional Tyrolean jackets. Admittedly, there were other factors apart from fashion choices that contributed to our leaving; for example, he went on Wogan in April 1991 and claimed to be the Son of God and I was openly contemptuous of the leadership of the Party (and most of the members).    

 

 

Pagan Magazine Vs the Pagan Federation

Fig. 1: Pagan: The Magazine of Blood-Knowledge Issue XXVIII (Spring 1989)

Fig 2: Letter from Leonora James, President of the Pagan Federation (1 Nov 1989)

 

I. 

 

A reader writes:

As someone who is researching the history of paganism in the UK during the twentieth-century, I was naturally interested in a remark made in a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark [1] concerning some kind of dispute between yourself and the then President of the Pagan Federation, Leonora James, in the 1980s.

      

You allege that she threatened to report you to the police on the basis of some artwork sent to her, but provide no further details of this incident, nor any proof with which to back up this claim. If you could provide a little more information and any documentary evidence relating to this case that you may still have in your possession, I'd be most grateful.    

 

 

As I'm always happy to assist those doing research, here then are a few more details as requested, along with materials submitted in evidence ...

 

 

II. 

 

Issue XXVIII of Pagan Magazine was entitled 'Expressions' and was dated Spring 1989. 

 

It mostly consisted of a selection of poems written over the winter months and illustrated with some of my favourite works by several German Expressionists, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Mueller. 

 

Later that year, I decided to try and get some support from the Pagan Federation (PF) for what I was doing - not just the magazine, but also a line of Pagan T-shirts - and wrote to the then President, Leonora James, a high priestess in the Gardnerian tradition of modern pagan witchcraft. 

 

The PF had been founded in 1971 and aimed to protect the rights and raise the profile of all those who described themselves as pagan and to provide information on pagan beliefs and activities to the wider community and media. Vivianne Crowley, founder of the Wicca Study Group in 1988, was appointed Secretary of the PF in that same year.   

 

Just to be clear: I wasn't a member of the PF and didn't seek membership. I was simply looking for recognition and, perhaps, some financial assistance (though I had no idea of whether they provided such). 

 

Unfortunately, after a long wait to hear back from the PF, I received the following letter dated 1 November 1989:

 

 

Dear Stephen Alexander,

I am returning your paedophile mag unopened herewith. If it is a serious attempt at Pagan erotica, we suggest you leave Paganism and join the Church of England, where choirboys seem to be all the rage, according to the many documented criminal convictions in the last year. If it is an attempt by artists to interest Pagans in paedophilia, buzz off, we're not interested. If its lurid cover picture is intended to link Paganism with paedophilia in the public's mind, rest assured, we shall take any future issues straight to the police for investigation - of you. 

The neo-Nazi overtones of the picture's legend are unlikely to arouse much interest among Pagans of the Norse tradition. Asatru is concerned with building a free and honourable lifestyle for people of all ages, not with living out regressive fantasies about children. 

May the Gods guide you through your misconceptions, and don't bother us with this kind of rubbish again. 

 

Sincerely, 

 

Leonora James

President, Pagan Federation

III.    

 

I have to admit, I still find this frankly bizarre and ludicrous letter as astonishing today as I did when I first read it. My reply read as follows:

 

 

Dear Ms James,

                        

Your letter referring to Pagan Magazine (Issue XXVIII), leaves me absolutely astounded. You accuse me of paedophilia, eroticism, and neo-Nazism and base all three accusations purely on the cover alone! 

      

Of course, I strongly deny at least two of the above charges: Pagan Magazine is not a paedophile publication and nor does it have any neo-Nazi overtones, undertones, or sympathies. And if it sometimes features erotic art, it is hardly pornographic in character (nor a 'serious attempt' to be such).

      

I'm not quite sure what troubles me most about your letter: your ignorance and philistine stupidity; or your hysterical obsession with child-sex. The image you describe as 'lurid' is in fact a well-known work by the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 

      

As for the phrase blood-knowledge in the magazine's subtitle, please note this is taken from D. H. Lawrence and refers to a way of knowing that is intuitive and instinctive; i.e. pre-mental and non-headbound. It has nothing to do with the racial politics of the Third Reich. 

      

Returning to the erotic aspect of Pagan Magazine, if this worries you so much then I suggest you rename your church of the closed mind and unopened text the Puritan Federation! It's shocking that someone like you is a representative of the pagan community, as your letter clearly demonstrates you are unworthy of such a role. 

 

'May the gods guide you through your misconceptions ...'

 

Stephen Alexander Von Hell

PS: please note how, at no time, did I threaten to send a policeman after you ...!

 

PPS: I will one day expose your foolishness. 

 

 

Thirty-five years later and it seems that my second postscripted remark has finally come to pass  ... 

 

Image used on the Contents Page of  

Pagan Magazine XXVIII (1989)

 

Notes

 

[1] The post referred to - 'Pagan Magazine: Remembered and Reimagined' - was published on 1 August 2024 and can be accessed by clicking here. Another recent post in what might be thought of as the Pagan series can be read by clicking here.

  

 

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.

 

 

In Defence of Trivia

Thou, Trivia, goddess, aid my song: 

through spacious streets conduct thy bard along

  John Gay (1716)

This just in by email, with reference to a recently published post:

"It's bad enough when writers like you try to persuade us that superficial and boring phenomena, such as fashion, have great import or interest. But what is worse is that when you do decide to discuss serious topics, such as cultural appropriation, which involve issues of class and race, you invariably reduce them to questions of style or semantics in a manner that is disingenuous, disrespectful and disappointing. Surely philosophy - even of a postmodern variety - should do more than trivialise everything with an ironic smirk; particularly things that have real consequences for real people in the real world." 

There's obviously quite a lot here to which I might respond. But it's the idea of trivia that I think I'd like to address (briefly and obviously not in depth; nor with the appropriate gravitas that my critic seems to expect).

It's clear, is it not, that those who hate trivia do so from a moral position that is thought superior, but is in fact only snobbish and judgemental.

For what constitutes trivia after all other than forms of knowledge believed to be of lesser value or commonplace; fine for those of limited education or intelligence (and postmodernists), but not for those who have greater intellectual gifts and who, like my critic, prefer to discuss important issues from a serious perspective and not waste time playing language games or worrying about aesthetics.   

The Romans used the word triviae to describe where one road forked into two. And this too provides a vital clue as to why people such as my critic hate trivialisation.

For rather than being a reductive process, it's one that adds complexity and ambiguity; multiplying alternatives and proliferating difference; demonstrating that there is no single, super-smooth highway to truth, just a network of minor roads and what Heidegger terms Holzwege - paths that might very well lead nowhere and cause the seeker after wisdom to get lost. Ultimately, my critic is frightened of losing their way by leaving the straight and narrow. But I'm more like Little Red Riding Hood and prepared to take a risk; I might miss the point - but, on the other hand, I might meet a wolf (and there's nothing inconsequential about that).

Alternatively, I just might encounter a deity ...

For Trivia refers not only to fun-facts about popular culture or the minutiae of everyday life, but is the name of a goddess who, in Roman mythology, haunted crossroads and graveyards and was the mother of witchcraft and queen of ghosts, wandering about at night beneath the harvest moon visible only to the barking dogs who told of her approach. Again, one suspects all this rather frightens and repulses my critic, who would doubtless dismiss it as superstitious nonsense. But as the former editor of Pagan Magazine, the thought of encountering such a figure continues to secretly enchant.   

And so, in a nutshell, it's better to trivialise than to moralise and be forever bound by the spirit of gravity.
          

Pagan Magazine (1983-92)

Pagan: the Magazine of Blood-Knowledge
Issue I (1983)

For some, the way to move beyond the ruins of punk was via a colourful and poppy new romanticism. For others it involved wearing all black and the creation of a queer gothic sensibility; or power dressing for a job in the city and a shameless embrace of Thatcherism. 

For me, however, the natural progression was towards a post-punk primitivism inspired by - amongst other things - D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse, McLaren and Westwood's Nostalgia of Mud, Killing Joke's Fire Dances, and a second-hand copy of the Larousse Encyclopedia of World Mythology.     

And so, in 1983, I created Pagan: the Magazine of Blood-Knowledge ...

For nearly ten years I single-handedly wrote, illustrated, photocopied, and distributed the above giving full-range to my various obsessions, including those that were not only literary and aesthetic in origin, but esoteric and political in character as the magazine veered dangerously from poetry, art, and nature worship towards the black hole of Nazi occultism.

This is not to argue that the latter is always the fatal outcome of the former. But, in aggressively confronting Occidental reason and Christian morality with its absolute Other and in promoting a pessimistic vitalism tied to an anti-modern, anti-democratic politics of cultural despair, one inevitably runs the risk of encountering and thence succumbing to the temptation of fascism. Habermas is not wrong to argue this.    

On the other hand, just as Dionysian philosophy can lead you into the abyss, so too can it lead you out and I would say that it was ultimately Nietzsche and those thinkers often derided as postmodernists - not Jürgen Habermas - who helped me see that irony, indifference, and incredulity are preferable to the faith, fanaticism, and fervour that I valorised and called for in my younger days.

I can still look back at Pagan Magazine with some pride and amusement. But I have to admit there are also feelings of shame, embarrassment, and even horror. Anyway, for the record - and for those few readers who may be interested - here's an index of the issues:


I: Dark Sex (1983)
II: Pan (1983)
III: Pagan Poetry (1983)
IV: The Cult of the Plumed Serpent (1984)
V: Pure Sex (1984)
VI: Rejuvenate! (1985)
VII: The Priest of Love (1985/86)
VIII: Erotic Art (1986)
IX: Once Upon a Time (On Folk and Fairy Tales) (1986)
X: Death to Democracy - Long Live the Folkish State! (1986)
XI: Ragnarok: Twilight of the Gods and the Coming of the Wolf (1986)
XII: The Ithyphallic Issue (1986)
XIII: We Shall Remain Faithful ... (1987)
XIV: Women (1987)
XV: And Time is Running Out ... (1987)
XVI: The Summer Edition (1987)
XVII: Transformation (1987)
XVIII: European Folk Dress Fashion Special (1987)
XIX: Poetry for the New Age (1987)
XX: Killing Joke: A New Day (1987)
XXI: The Tarot (1987)
XXII: Alchemy and the Transference Phenomenon (1988)
XXIII: Astrology (1988)
XXIV: On Magick and Witchcraft (1988)
XXV: Retrospective: the History of Pagan Magazine 1983-88 (1988)
XXVI: An Illustrated Miscellany of Curious and Interesting Items (1988)
XXVII: The Dead Kennedys Issue (1988)
XXVIII: Expressions (1988)
XXIX: The Green Issue (1989)
XXX: Farewell to the 80s ... And Welcome to the 1990s (1989)
XXXI: Modigliani: Le Peintre Maudit (1990)
XXXII: Vincent Van Gogh (1990)
XXXIII: Vive Picasso! (1990)
XXXIV: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: On the Life and Work of William Blake (1990)
XXXV: Dreams, Nightmares, Visions (1990)
XXXVI: The Pagan and Occult Roots of National Socialism (1991)
XXXVII: Adolf Hitler (1991)
XXXVIII: The New Order (1991)*
XXXIX: Blood and Soil: Race, Nationality, and Eco-Mysticism (1991)*
XL: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pagan: The True Confessions of Stephen Alexander (1991/92)*
XLI: New Poems and The History of Pagan Magazine (Part II): 1988-1991 (1992)


Note: The issues marked with an asterisk were not completed and so never circulated. Three further issues were also semi-assembled after issue XLI: one on the figure of the prostitute, one on Nietzsche, and, finally, one entitled 'Bits' that was a celebration of fragments and leftovers.