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BALM OF GILEAD
SELECTED WRITINGS
FROM CROSS OF LIGHT TEMPLE
2003 – 2006

CONTENTS
Cross of Light page 3
TOPY vs. NOS page 14
Five from the Lodge of the Sons of Amos Brearley page 23
The Sons of Amos Brearley page 30
The Sons of Amos Brearley Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun page 33
The Sons of Amos Brearley Take a Trip to Dion Fortune Land page 36
F.L.A. page 38
Free Art Free People page 40
Watch Out For Your Head Sonny Jim: Behemoth and Leviathan – A Death Metal
Nightmare page 52
Magic in Traditional Music and Song page 62
Austin Osman Spare: Anathema of Zos page 72
Uneasy Listening: Coil page 78
‘Balm of Gilead’ was originally published by F.L.A. Press in December 2006.
This revised electronic edition © Cross of Light Temple, December 2010
Collage of images on page 82 courtesy of Coil/Peter Christopherson
2

CROSS OF LIGHT
I am lost in the woods, I am lost in the town
I am lost in the woods. I am looking for a tree that resembles Christ crucified. A
white moth lands on my shirt. I admire the beauty of the creature. The moth
takes flight and I follow it. I encounter the Demon of the Woods. The demon
wears a necklace of crow skulls; his belly is a sack of blood. The moth protects me
from the demon and leads me to the tree.
At the side of the tree there is a bush. I pluck a berry from the bush and press it
between my fingers. A being arises from the juice stain and relates the tale of how
the bush came to be.
The Spirit of the Woods decreed that two lights should rule the sky and hold the
earth in dominion. He placed a portion of his brightness in one part of the sky and
a portion of his brightness in another. Rays of light from these bodies of brightness
penetrated the canopy to illuminate the forest floor. A seed was planted at the
point where the rays converged. The sky grew dark for a season; the woods grew
darker still. The brightness reappeared in the sky and the seed flourished all at
once, becoming a succulent bush, heavy with blood red berries.
I leave the woods and walk seven miles into town. I make my way to the market
cross, near the spire of the great cathedral. There I meet a friendly tramp and a
charming, well-dressed old man, who speaks in a fake Scottish accent. The tramp
and the old man are me. The three of us drink and talk together. The old man
leaves the gathering to test his charm on the ghost of an old woman who drifts
through the streets, dressed in 19 th century clothing.
3

The tramp departs and the old man rejoins me. We walk to the old man’s home. I
am full of dread. I look through a window of the old man’s house and see his
library. In pride of place on the library shelves stands a volume entitled Evil
Mythologies. Devilish artefacts are ranged about the room. The sight of the library
and the furnishings in the room paralyses me. The old man guides me across the
threshold.
Temple
Seven four petalled black flowers. Each petal of each flower shares the same
dimensions. The petals are of different shades, from deepest black to charcoal
grey. In the centre of each flower is a representation of the world in different
stages of development. A cold wind blows and the petals of the flowers are
scattered. The representations of the world fall to the ground, crack, and are rent
asunder. Darkness reigns.
The darkness parts, allowing a sliver of brightness to be seen. The light reveals a
path leading through the darkness. The path is entered upon. The darkness closes
around me. The path leads on, unseen, but clearly determined. Thought moves
along its invisible stretch. The unseen light grows stronger in accordance with my
mind’s attraction to its source. The source of all light is eternal light. The source
of darkness is the absence of light. The path is forgotten, but travelled unerringly.
The darkness will pass.
An angel flies at great speed to rid heaven of its demons. The fleshless spectres
howl and seem to explode with the brightness of suddenly appearing stars. From
these stars that mark the passing of evil further angels come. The angels guide me
to a stream.
4

I follow the stream into a forest. A great fire burns in a circular clearing. A figure
rises from the flames; black robed, hooded, blind and hairless, bound by the
chains of a hopeless wisdom. The fire burns out. The figure dissolves.
Encroaching trees fill the clearing, allowing one road of departure. I run swiftly
down this road through leaves circling and dancing. I come to a garden. I enter
the garden at a slow and stately pace. I see a sandy pathway in the form of a cross.
I follow the path in a clockwise direction, returning to my point of departure.
Land has been replaced by sea. I plunge into the sea and rise after touching the
bottom of the ocean. I find myself on a mountain range in the middle of a newly
formed island.
Beyond the mountains there is a deep grey lake of still water. A yellow sun glows
in the centre of the sky of uniform blueness above the lake. The sky is not
reflected in the water. A single ray of light emanates from the sun and penetrates
the lake’s surface. The point of connection between light and water prompts the
birth of these visions. The visions incite a kind of explosion deep in my mind. The
energy from the explosion courses through my conscious awareness, brightening
all it touches.
White Robe
The bright jewel of creation, the silver heavens, the gentle rain, the path of green
leaf and white plant, the purple flowers, the red flowers in the grass, the beech
tree approaching full bloom, the yellow blossom, the rainfall increasing, the limbs
of the tall trees embracing and the bird song reigning clear. A white flower
unfolds. I am tied to the motion of the flower.
5

I walk through deep heather to the top of a hill. I discover a place of sacrifice to
the gods of sun and cloud. I purify the altar, shifting its power to the service of a
god of love.
I look directly into the setting sun. I look away from the sun and close my eyes. I
see a creature of light formed of seven suns moving to the west. The creature of
light then moves towards the east, dissolving in stages. The creature’s
disappearance allows me to see the stars in bright daylight. I open my eyes and the
sun has set. I sleep in a cave.
Calm flowing breath gives birth to a being in the pit of my stomach. This being
stirs and stretches outwards, tickling my insides. The being seeps through my skin
and adventures in the world outside. It transforms everything it touches. It
changes everything into an image of itself. It becomes the foundation of a New
World.
I come to a temple. The roof of the temple is made of clouds, bright clouds
layered on top of each other, further than the eye can see. The floor of the temple
is made of earth. The temple could accommodate a hundred thousand people but
few are allowed to enter the place of worship. Spirit forms fly beneath the roof of
clouds. They travel in air bound chariots, hurling spears at the floor. The spears
explode upon contact with the earth. A throne appears in the temple. A figure of
dazzling brightness sits upon the throne.
I am wearing a white robe. My genitals are exposed. I am travelling through a
beautiful valley. Gently sloping hills rise from the valley. A group of aged white
robed figures travel in the opposite direction. To see them is to think wisdom.
They are knowledge made flesh. I am on a pilgrimage to the place they come
from.
6

The Church and the Holy Cross
The church of the holy cross is located at the top of a steep hill, which rises
sharply from a valley. In the churchyard stands the holy cross, enclosed by iron
railings. A stone tomb covering near the cross provides a bench for rest and
meditation. From the bench can be seen a distant wood, high rising fields and
rough trails.
Mystic sacred Saxon cross: the remains of the centuries old marker, gathering
place of the ancient faithful, calling across the span of years from time of erection
to this time now. A joining of minds: the simple Saxon hill dwelling preacher and
the sophisticated inhabitant of the ugly and corrupt modern city holding each
other’s hand, forming a circle and revolving.
A view of the land visible to the Saxon congregation is attempted, despite the rise
and fall of dwellings, trees, solid rock, stony conglomerations, delicate shifting
and changes in fashion. The eternal substance remains.
The spiritual splendour of the Saxon cross and other ancient artefacts calls me
from my temporal concerns to a contemplation of the eternal. I come upon a
fallen tree which centuries of blasting have shaped into the likeness of some
unearthly animal. The wind roars and the tree cries with the voice of a demon.
The wind shifts or softens and the tree sings angelic lullabies. A triumphant
manifestation of the eternal prances above the tree.
Gnarled trees cast outlandish shadows through the grounds of the church. Well-
leafed, smooth trunked specimens shed ordered darkness upon the earth, through
7

the shining of the sun, through the agency of the sky. Abide in the blessed land of
pure light.
The spire of the church of the ancient cross: its curious guardian thrust out at the
side, carved from stone susceptible to tarnishing, twice winged, stroking its chin
and saying: If any evil comes, let it come to me, for I shall contain it.
Pray that the spirit of love might arise in the hearts and souls
Of all that are and will be.
Pray for the salvation of the souls of the dead.
The dead are of one nation.
A vision in the sky: the twelve petalled rose protecting the towering church,
allowing it to flourish in its pleasant location, amidst rivers, above the foothills,
beneath the mountains.
Farewell, fast flowing rivers, dark rooks roosting, sun falling below the shaded
hills. Farewell to this place offering food for the soul. Farewell to its shining.
Farewell to the day.
To the Gates of Death and Beyond
There is wisdom in these branches.
Wisdom walks upon the water.
It is easily found
But hard to believe in.
Know you are a spirit existing in a spiritual world and live in spirit.
8

Two orbs of light appear in the sky. My eyes are drawn to this spectacle of
brightness. The lights transfix me. The two lights become one light and brighten,
forming a tunnel of light, a splendour, and a straight path leading my soul to the
place where it belongs. Birthless, deathless, home. The grained surface of an old
wardrobe: the light of a candle is reflected in the wardrobe’s varnish, the
brightness of the reflection fades to a vague outline, a shifting sunspot, animated
by the slightest breeze. This is another gateway.
Last gasp.
The movement is downwards,
A timeless sinking
As flesh dissolves.
What is set free?
Another death.
The liberator comes
And is recognised.
What has been lost?
I sit in a quiet place. I see the Gates of Death. I see the Gates of Death opening. I
enter the land of the dead. The land of the dead is a pleasant land. I behold the
Lord of the Dead. The Lord of the Dead is a sweet guardian. I leave the Lord and
the land of the dead. I light a candle of remembrance and the gates of death close
behind me.
The movement is upward and slight,
As if nothing was happening,
But something is.
What has been gained?
9

Heaven is the place we reach when all our worries leave us, when all mental and
physical agitation ceases. In heaven, we can turn our eyes anywhere, marvel at
what we see and feel our hearts enlivened.
The Fruit of the Dance of the Body of Light
Little man, invisible,
Come and show the way.
Expand yourself
To the limits of infinity,
Inhale the living air of eternity
And speak…
Allow a new form of being to manifest itself by dancing wildly in a room beneath
the sun. Remove your physical body from the dance and you will become aware
of the life form I speak of; invisible, expanding, and liberated from the shackles of
flesh.
The dancing room is filled with light. The light indicates the trace of what was
your body in motion. The light writhes and waves in a kaleidoscopic brightness of
many colours. Light waves rebound from the walls of the room, forming
structures made of light, melting pyramids and cubes dissolving in the air.
Light penetrates the walls and makes its way into the world, forming another sun
to illuminate what the sun of the sky also brightens. All that is touched by the
light from within is taken up within. All that is touched by the sun of the sky
remains outside the new being. Your body regains its former boundaries, but now
10

your flesh is shining. The glory of your body indicates the meeting point of the
inner and outer stars. No barriers remain.
See the figure shrouded in sunlit robes the colour of stone. A limitless blue
expanse of wind rush and bird song stretches out on either side of him. Move
your hand towards this figure and your flesh will take hold of nothing. The glory
of the figure is subtle and cannot be embraced by anything that does not partake
of his substance.
Consider what was in your mind at the moment of beholding the figure. We
search for the kingdom far away when it is always within and around us. Witness
the transformation of the leafless branches of the smallest tree from solid wood
into pure, soft light. This light is the life of the tree.
A transcendent vision is sacrificed that it might descend into matter and permeate
the solidity of flesh and mind. All that comes into the world has always been in
the world. The visible was once invisible and will be invisible again. The hidden
will be revealed. The dead are with us and we are with the dead.
Be at peace. Be satisfied with peace. Take heed of the wisdom that proceeds from
the source and the centre of all things and your life will be transformed.
Nemeton
The sun shines on a rain soaked road, transforming the road into a river of light. I
focus on the river of light. Where does it come from? Where does it go?
The land falls quiet and springs to life beneath the rising and falling sun; from
Knocknarea to Carrowmore, from bright Lough Gill to twilit Glencar, from the
11

holy well to the holy wood above it. I enter the mouth of a cave and travel
towards the heart of a mountain. I offer up a sacrifice on the altar I find there.
I fill my eyes with the light of the slowly setting sun. The sky stands still. It turns
red and divides itself. The separated sky begins to move. I see the skies revolving.
I see a strange country. I see shifting sands and bright cloth blazing. I see a city
born of the sun’s descent. I see the moon rising like a skull. A triangle of stars
forms above the city. One of the stars is reflected in a muddy pool of water.
Beneath the starlit sky, the valley of vision shines.
I see the great bird that changes colour to ensure it can always be seen. By
studying the bird at rest in a tree, by transcending the bird and the tree, I am able
to enter the essence of the bird, to blink and fly as the bird does.
Clouds enter my body and are exhaled through my nostrils. My outstretched
wings uphold the sun and the moon. I travel by means of the source of light
towards the source of light.
A sweet fragrance arises from nowhere to delight me. The moment of Christ’s
death on the cross represents the central point in world spiritual history. Salvation
emanates from the outstretched arms of the Saviour, extending to the beginning
of time on one side and reaching out to the end of time on the other. The
beginning and the end are one. Everything is redeemed in the sphere of the some
time living. The sky receives its reward through the limitless extension of the
upper axis of the instrument of slaughter. The blood that falls from the Saviour’s
wounds nourishes the earth. Sky and earth are purified, resurrected and made
new.
12

Christ is no restriction in love. There is an untouched goodness and purity at the
heart of our being that remains forever united with God. This aspect of our being
precedes our birth and survives our death; it remains intimately connected with
us throughout our lives; human failing does not touch it.
13

Heil, Loki, god of mischief!
TOPY vs. NOS
What do you remember about TOPY? Its most famous symbol was a form of
inverted papal cross. It engaged in strange spelling to deconstruct language. It
kept an archive, and that archive remains complete today, despite its partial
unfolding and application. Its aim was wakefulness and its enemy was dreamless
sleep. It was damned as a dangerous sex cult. It flourished for a period of little
more than a decade before issuing notification of CHANGED PRIORITIES
AHEAD.
A Personal Message from thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth
We have reached a crisis point.
We are aware that whole areas ov our experience ov life are missing.
We are faced with a storm ov thee fiercest strength known.
We are faced with thee debasement ov man to a creature without feelings,
without knowledge and pride ov self.
We are faced with dissolution far more coumplete than death.
We have been conditioned, encouraged and blackmailed into self restriction, into
a narrower and narrower perception ov ourselves, our importance and potential.
All this constitutes a Psychick Attack ov thee highest magnitude.
Acceptance is defeat.
Resistance is dangerous and unpredictable but for those who realise thee totality
ov defeat, resistance must be thee only option conceivable.
RIGHT NOW you have these alternatives:
To remain forever part ov a sleeping world…
14

To gradually abandon thee hopes and dreams ov childhood…
To be permanently addicted to thee drug ov thee commonplace…
Or, to fight alongside us in Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth!
Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth has been convened in order to act as a catalyst
and focus for thee Individual development ov all those who wish to reach inwards
and strike out. Maybe you are one ov these, already feeling different, dissatisfied,
separate from thee mass around you, instinctive and alert? You are already one ov
us. Thee fact that you have this message is a start in itself.
Don’t think we are going to tell you what to do, what to be. Thee world is full ov
institutions that would be delighted if you thought and did exactly what they told
you. Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth is not and NEVER WILL BE one ov them.
We offer no dogmas, and no promises of coumfort or easy answers.
You are going to have to find out your Self, we offer only thee method ov survival
as a True Being, we give you back to yourself, we support your Individuality in
which thee Spirit and Will united burn with passion and pride, thee l-ov-e
through which all is one in unity ov purpose.
Our function is to show thee way by our example, thee way we live, coumitted to
our dream. Work that is needlessly repeated is simply wasteful. Accordingly we
will be making public: books, manuscripts and other recordings ov our progress,
in various formats, video and audio. These do not contain meaningless dogma, but
are demonstrations ov our interests and beliefs in action. They are not made as
entertainment, but as experience, not thee mundane experience ov day to day
routine, but ov thee Spirit and Will triumphant.
Cross of Light
15

Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth was an international movement that promoted
self-realisation through focusing on one’s true desires. There were three TOPY
houses on Western Road in the Sheffield suburb of Crookes in the early to late
1980s. A statue of a black eagle marked one of the houses. A dog that looked like
a jackal guarded the threshold of another. The third house stood crumbling at the
end of a terrace. Various inhabitants of these three houses came together as Cross
of Light, which engaged in the production of pamphlets and live musical
performance. The following article is taken from the eighth and final issue of the
obscure journal ‘Notes from Underground’:
“ Cross of Light insists on retaining anonymity in its contacts with the public. “The
worlds of art and music have been debased by their concern with youth and
glamour. The cult of personality stands in the way of direct communication
between people. Artists are corrupted by their lust for fame and riches.”
The band engages with some arcane subject matter in its live work. “We were
interested in some of the familiar outsider figures in our youth, Aleister Crowley,
Israel Regardie, Madame Blavatsky and so on. We’ve come to the conclusion that
the work of these people was nonsense. The whole neo-pagan trend consists of
blind re-workings of obscurities dreamed up by a cast of late Victorian bourgeois
misfits. We’ve performed the rites devised by these people just to show there’s
nothing in them. There’s a lot to be said for Dion Fortune, though.” The group
relates a tale of how they were enjoying the sunset at Nine Ladies Stone Circle on
Stanton Moor on the day of the Spring equinox when their reveries were
disturbed by the sudden arrival of a group of blue painted invaders. “I’ve no idea
what they thought they were up to. It was like a pantomime. The most noticeable
spiritual charge I’ve ever experienced came when I was sitting quietly in
Westminster Cathedral.”
16

In the spacious black painted cellar of a large terraced house in a student ridden
suburb of Sheffield a gathering of some twenty souls has congregated to witness a
performance by Cross of Light.
With solemn theatricality, a black hooded figure appears on a makeshift stage and
begins to read from the Compendium Heptarchiae Mysticae of the 17 th century
alchemist Dr. John Dee. The audience listens attentively to the reading for half an
hour. The reader punctures the air of mystery surrounding the performance by
declaring at the end of the reading: “You have just received proof that alchemy is
nonsense. Nothing has happened. It offers nothing for the soul to feed on.”
Following an interval, the band proceeds to test the ears of the audience with a
forty-minute burst of electric guitar, feedback and drone. Parallels might be
drawn between this music and the extended squall of the Velvet Underground’s
Sister Ray. Time seems to be suspended as the monolithic juggernaut proceeds.
The music ends to wholehearted applause but the night is not over yet. The
energised gathering leaves the house and walks through darkness to the site of a
weather blasted hollow tree a mile or so from the building where photographs are
taken and a portable cassette player disturbs the air with the sounds of Throbbing
Gristle and Psychic TV.
The next performance by Cross of Light will take place in the vicinity of Bakewell
Parish Church later this year. Look out for the flyers. Be prepared to come
along.”
NOS
17

The Nine O’Clock Service flourished from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. It
commenced activities at the Parish Church of St. Thomas, Crookes before
outgrowing these premises and moving elsewhere in Sheffield. NOS was hailed by
Church of England authorities, including the Bishop of Sheffield, as a model for
rejuvenating a staid organisation and bringing young people to the faith. Articles
appeared in the national press commending NOS on its innovative, rave style acts
of worship. It proved so successful that it was eventually recognised as the first
Extra Parochial parish of the Anglican Church. It collapsed after being engulfed by
a sex scandal and accusations of promoting hedonistic paganism on hallowed
ground.
I had the misfortune to witness the public activities of the black clad squares of
NOS in the pubs of Crookes at the height of their smug collective idiocy. In the
kingdom of the stupid, the half-brained man is king. I knew stupid men who
spoke of passing contact with the elite guard of the service as if they had fallen in
love. I picture one of these poltroons riding in the front passenger seat of a car,
looking like a zombie. I was pursuing an interest in liquid LSD born of a kick in
the eye courtesy of a disembodied Jhonn Balance from the future. We agreed that
these hypocrites were worthy of condemnation on the grounds that their Yankee
leader fell short of fucking his self-deluded acolytes. We agreed that he refrained
from fucking them on the grounds of cowardice. We were disappointed that they
did not come to a Jonestown.
Years after the passing disgrace of the church, I ventured to St. Thomas’s to take
photographs of the birthplace of the abomination of NOS. I took further
photographs around the township, exterior and interior shots of the Old
Grindstone and the Cobden View, the places where they demonstrated their
presence to the local people. I took a photograph of the house where the leader
18

lived and preyed upon his followers and a photograph of the house of one of his
senior officers and I called the photos rat dens.
I attempted to locate Chris Brain, the leader of the fascist cult, but his
whereabouts are currently unknown. I attempted to interview NOS activists but
they were fearful to approach the subject of their involvement. I attempted to
interview people who had known of NOS but they were reluctant to engage with
the subject. I attempted to interview current representatives of St. Thomas’s but
they denied responsibility to the point of acting as if NOS had never been.
Guided by a dream, I placed an advertisement in Fortean Times asking for people
who had been involved with NOS to contact me. Following tortuous
negotiations, I managed to secure a brief interview with a nervous former acolyte.
Bee is a woman in her mid to late thirties. She is the mother of two children. She
lives in a council flat a mile or two from Crookes. She has an interest in Irish
traditional music. She is not currently in paid employment. The interview took
place on neutral ground in a room of a private house in Crookes. The room was
notable for its large mirror and the spray of hawthorn blossom placed on the
mantelpiece upon which the mirror rested.
“ I moved to Sheffield from Wolverhampton to take a teacher training course at
the Poly. I was living in a shared student house in Crookes. I didn’t really get on
with the other people in the house. I used to spend a lot of time on my own in the
pubs around the place I lived in. I was in the Grindstone one Sunday evening
when I noticed a group of young people come in. They looked really happy and
together. One of the girls in the group smiled at me and eventually we got
chatting.
19

I used to meet up with this girl quite a lot. She was a student as well and we
seemed to have a lot in common. She was really nice. She started to talk about
NOS and encouraged me to come along to the services. I put it off for quite a long
time. I wasn’t really interested in religion but this girl was so nice that I began to
think there might be something in it.
The services were amazing, nothing like I was expecting. There was a lot of
music, not happy clappy stuff, more like dance music, really. The light show was
fantastic. A lot of time and effort had been put in and the experience was really
uplifting. The people at the church were lovely. I remember meeting a lad who
told me that he’d been sniffing glue. As he was walking up the road, he felt drawn
to go in to St. Thomas’s. As soon as he entered the church, the effects of the glue
sniffing left him and he felt the Spirit enter. He never touched glue again.
After a while I moved out of the house I was living in and moved into a house that
was owned by one of the main NOS people and his wife. It was a really nice
place, just off Barber Road. It was great to live in such a supportive environment.
We used to do a lot of Bible study together and there were lots of people coming
and going.
NOS was about making the Church relevant to young people. We were really
keen on trying to understand the real meaning of the Bible and living as Christians
in an imperfect world. I felt a real sense of belonging. I was encouraged to
produce some art for the group and I was really pleased to see it displayed during
services.
After a year or two, I started to see more and more of Chris. I was really involved
in NOS by then. Most of my time was taken up with work on the services,
painting banners and rehearsing music in the church hall and other stuff like that.
20

Chris wasn’t really good looking but he was very charismatic. I felt flattered by
his attention.
I used to go to Chris’s house on Parkers Road a lot. We became really close.
Chris started to talk about the need for people to express themselves sexually. He
said that sexuality was a gift from God and that it was wrong to deny it. The Bible
forbids adultery but it didn’t say anything against touching. Physical embraces
were an expression of God’s love. We never slept together but we did other stuff
and it felt really good. It wasn’t like being with my other boyfriends.
It was really awful when the stories about NOS started to appear in the papers.
Chris must have known what was going to happen because he went back to
America before the stories came out. A lot of NOS people were saying that the
stories weren’t true but I started talking to other girls and I was amazed at how
many of them had been intimate with Chris. He used to talk about what we did as
some kind of private communion so we didn’t really talk about it in the wider
group.
The fallout from NOS was really hard to deal with. I felt betrayed and depressed.
I had to go for counselling to begin dealing with my feelings. The friendships I
made in the group didn’t last. I’ve had a lot of trouble with relationships since
then. I lived with the father of my children for three years but we split up when
my daughter was little. I don’t have anything to do with religion these days. I
don’t even read the Bible any more.”
It should be remembered that NOS was accepted as a parish of the Church of
England. The absurdities of NOS could not have flourished without the support of
the established church. NOS is a particular manifestation of a sick and sickly
organisation.
21

Wonders of Bakewell
I have in my possession copies of a questionnaire distributed at a Cross of Light
performance in Bakewell and a questionnaire distributed amongst its members by
NOS. The questionnaires are remarkably similar. I recently discovered that they
are based on a document that was first developed by the Society of the Inner
Light, an esoteric organisation founded by Dion Fortune. The Inner Light
questionnaire is three pages long. It asks about the respondent’s occupation,
interests, domestic circumstances, religious practice, health and experience of
esotericism.
• How do you earn your living?
• Are you self-supporting?
• Have you any knowledge of mythology?
• Have you any special skills, such as carpentry, cooking, mathematics, music or
writing?
• Will you be able to meditate at work or home without disturbance?
• Are those with whom you live supportive, antagonistic or neutrally disposed
to your interests?
• Have you ever had any alcohol or drug problem?
• Have you received any treatment for psychiatric problems?
• Are you, or have you been, a member of an esoteric group?
• Have you attended any experiential esoteric workshops?
• What esoteric books have you read that have impressed you?
• Are you prepared to give up working with other Groups while working with
this one?
22

FIVE FROM THE LODGE OF THE SONS OF AMOS BREARLEY
The Sons of Amos Brearley
“ They’re like Jacob Marley, that lot. They walk through walls.”
We dedicate our lives
To the cause of
The Sons of Amos Brearley
Deeply Saxon
We thank God we are English
It allows us the leisure to be
That we are
The Sons of Amos Brearley
Men in the form
Of wolf hounds
Following the grey wolf
Truly free
That is the spirit of
The Sons of Amos Brearley
Only the mopers come out to run
Through drizzle wet Sunday
Finding it fittingly reflects
Their makeshift melancholy
Only the mopers come out to run
23

And The Sons of Amos Brearley
We walk through the woods
Experiencing past times fearfully
Such are the dark enchanted woods
Of The Sons of Amos Brearley
We encounter the drugless bourgeoisie
And we treat them with scorn
Our beards look like they are formed
Of the fading morning dew
The bus fills with soap huggers
A secret Masonry make-up and hats
Far from this are
The Sons of Amos Brearley
Burger nite curry nite
Fish and chips nite
Pie nite share it nite
Fright nite and shite nite
Welcome to the world of want
Which is the land of the true outsider
Which is the ground upon
Which The Sons of Amos Brearley
Work their work
For The Sons of Amos Brearley
24

Head of the Lodge
Head of the Lodge
By the tree
Of the one true branch
Of the Sons of Amos Brearley
In Brighton
He gained invisibility
Through dissolving
Himself into light
Spreading outward
To illuminate
The mission of
The Sons of Amos Brearley
In the village of
Herne the Hunter
By a summertime
Sussex field
Head of the Lodge
Wondering at
The colour of the sun
In the light of
Goethe’s colour theory
Cow haircuts
Bold rats
25

Occupying the lane
The village church
The bright pond
In the village
Up the lane
The Holy Spirit
In the form of a dove
A dove a bright dove
Believe me
These are joined
In the mind and the memory
Of the Head of the Lodge
Of the sons of Amos Brearley
Blood of witch
Toad of bat
Skinny cunt
And fat twat
This is this
And that is that
Wearing flat cap
On wool hat
Behold!
Jabez the Stupid
Head of the Lodge
Of the Sons of Amos Brearley
26

All Hail The Sons of Amos Brearley!
We will not smoke again
Until we come to the hills
Above Satan Town
Around the bright seducing
Hills of Satan Town
The crows sound
The magpie flees
Caw! Caw! Sing the crows
At rest in the tree
Caw! Caw! Sing the crows
Merrily
Caw! Caw! Sing the crows
All hail the
Sons of Amos Brearley!
The sun is a pale disc
In grey sky but
Sons of A.B.
Branch of Walkey
Sing
Heil dir, Sonne!
Heil dir, Licht!
Heil dir
27

Sons of Amos Brearley!
The houses fields and factories
The churches moors and fading trees
The pale sun shining by the tree
Join in festive jubilee
To sing in praise of thee
All hail the
Sons of Amos Brearley!
Student Flat Range
Student flat range
Cone and trolley
Coke can plastic fork
Around noble oak tree
Metal fence cruel and cutting
It will be trolley
In duck pond
It will be coke can
Beneath living water
It will be traffic cone
In branch of tree
In student flat range
I call my dog
The Great Dog Pan
28

I lead my dog
Through student flat range
I sell my dog
To a handsome old man
Transactions in
Student flat range
A rugby playing hermaphrodite
Running through the land
Gola and Umbro
John Craven’s ghost
Is Micheala Strachan’s shadow
In student flat range
A beautifully speckled thrush
Born of a handsome wood rat
Broomhill Tavern
Pedigree downhill
Like Burton Ale before it
George Best will soon
Be getting pissed
With my mother in
Protestant Belfast Heaven
Of student flat range
Death Note Death Metal Thursday
See ‘Watch Out For Your Head, Sonny Jim’, review of Behemoth and Leviathan.
29

A rugby playing hermaphrodite
Running through the land
Gola and Umbro
John Craven’s ghost
Is Micheala Strachan’s shadow
In student flat range…
THE SONS OF AMOS BREARLEY
The Sons of Amos Brearley consists of Helgi Pedarsson (vocals, bowed bass
guitar, violin) and Carl Kasprowicz (bass, turntables, electronics). Helgi has a 25-
year history of making music. He can be heard on Psychic TV’s seminal live
recording ‘Mitt in Goetingen’, which was recorded in the early 1980s. For the
past 15 years he has been involved in the shadowy collective Cross of Light, which
has performed in obscure venues around Sheffield and north Derbyshire. Carl was
a member of Uriel 157, a cult like group of musicians and performers operating
from a commune in one of the rougher parts of Sheffield during the late 1990s.
The Sons of Amos Brearley formed in Sheffield in November 2004 to test the
theory that listening to The Fall encourages thought. The group listened to The
Fall for a period of several weeks and composed a set of songs known as ‘The Sons
of Amos Brearley Sing Songs That Will Never Be Sung’.
Helgi remembers being impressed by ‘Rowche Rumble’ and ‘In My Area’ on the
John Peel show in 1979. He recalls listening to ‘This Nation’s Saving Grace’ in a
cold, damp student house in Stoke-on-Trent and hearing ‘Bend Sinister’ for the
first time in Chichester in 1986. He makes a point of seeing The Fall when they
play in Sheffield and travelled to Doncaster a few years ago to witness a stage
invasion at The Leopard, smiling in wonder at the sight of the lasses of South
30

Yorkshire wrapping their arms around a grinning Mark E. Smith and covering him
with kisses. Carl claims not to have listened to The Fall before the advent of The
Sons of Amos Brearley, being a lover of Dead Can Dance, Cold Spring recording
artists and all other manner of spoilt Victorian children.
We encounter the drugless bourgeoisie
And we treat them with scorn
Our beards look like they are formed
Of the fading morning dew…
The name of the group comes from an encounter between Helgi and the
proprietor of an Indian takeaway in Sheffield. The man in the restaurant took one
look at Helgi’s beard and instantly likened him to the former stalwart of early
period ‘Emmerdale’, from the days when the programme was still known as
‘Emmerdale Farm’.
The Sons of Amos Brearley have appeared at the familiar local band venues in
their city of origin but their last two live performances have taken place in less
conventional settings. They appeared to the dumb amazement of the South
Yorkshire electro / punk glitterati at the famous club night Razor Stiletto in
summer 2005. Their last appearance came as part of a long and generally
uninspiring spoken word festival in the bar of an independent cinema in January of
this year. The duo had plans to play in a show organised by a Sheffield based
Death Metal band but pulled out after realising that the band in question were
prime movers in the Sheffield Death Metal Neo-Nazi underground.
Scorn, a sometimes dark and bitter humour, and a heightened visionary capacity
mark ‘The Sons of Amos Brearley Sing Songs That Will Never Be Sung’. Helgi
and Carl were quick to note these qualities during their founding journey through
31

the work of Mark E. Smith. They present the Sons of Amos Brearley as a hate
filled anti-Masonry, a secret society operating from branches of a Lodge located in
the suburbs of what was once the artisan quarter of Sheffield. The work of the
Lodge has been disrupted by the encroachment of fat arsed students, so the Sons
have taken to travelling further abroad.
The band is currently working on a recording of ‘The Sons of Amos Brearley Sing
Songs That Will Never Be Sung’, comprising of studio treated reworkings of live
performances and straight live renditions of the eleven songs in the set. Once this
task is complete, the members of the Lodge will turn their attention to ‘The Sons
of Amos Brearley Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’, a work of similar
scope to their first project but more focused on their mystical visionary
appreciation of Light.
Heil dir, Sonne!
Heil dir, Licht!
Heil dir,
Sons of Amos Brearley!
32

THE SONS OF AMOS BREARLEY SET THE CONTROLS FOR
THE HEART OF THE SUN
I am the Head of the Lodge of the Sons of Amos Brearley. I reside in a blue
painted four storey building in Hastings. From my window I see a copper
coloured sun in an indigo blue sky. I see the sea and a rocky coastline.
On the coastline there stand sentinels:
• A male figure dressed in a purple robe
• A male figure dressed in a blue robe
• A group of white robed ancients with their genitals exposed
• A female figure dressed in a green robe
• My mother in her coffin
The sentinels point towards the sun:
• The sun in the region of the solar plexus
• A four rayed sun, the rays in the form of a cross
• An eight rayed sun illuminating the body and the world outside
• The sun in the centre of the Cross of Light
By the lion and the lamb, I am the Head of the Lodge of the Sons of Amos
Brearley and I set my sights beyond the sun. I see a rose of deepest crimson, a
deep red rose inside a skull, a white rose between the teeth of bonehead.
33

I form a triangle of my fingers and thumbs and a pyramid by raising my thumbs. I
enter a constellation formed of four stars in the shape of a Y. A central pillar runs
through the Y:
• Malkuth
• Tiphareth
• Kether
Earth, the kingdom of heaven within and heaven. I enter a geometric realm. I live
in the space of a triangle formed by two rays emanating from the region of the
third eye, passing through the eyes of the head and reaching the ground. The
ground is far beneath me. I live with triangles, circles and lines:
• A blue triangle and a red triangle
• A gold triangle on a ground of deep sea blue
• A black triangle decked with gold
• A triangle of gold within a black triangle
• A gold circle on a ground of deep sea blue
• A red cross on a sun disc ground
• An equal armed cross, arms terminating in circles
• An equal armed cross, the arms extending infinitely
I hitch a ride on the arms of the cross. I travel in two directions at once. Light
rushes from the centre of the Cross of Light, a manifestation of Lux Interna, the
going out of inward glow. A pillar of light passes through the Sacred Heart of
34

Jesus. The energetic light form behind my body of flesh is the light that surrounds
all things. A lilac cloud emanates from a rent in space and time to indicate the
swift flowing energy surrounding everything solid, which resembles rain in a
wind.
I am the Head of the Lodge of the Sons of Amos Brearley. The summer breeze is
the rustling of Mary’s robe and the presence of the Holy Spirit. I return from my
journey. The body is earth. The spirit is heaven. There is flesh beyond flesh. I am
beyond flesh beyond flesh.
35

THE SONS OF AMOS BREARLEY TAKE A TRIP TO DION
FORTUNE LAND
In Dion Fortune Land. One reaches The Belfry and looks left. One comes to The
Star on -------- Mews. One beholds the stained glass motif, star within star, star
beyond star surrounded by scarlet contained in a circle of gold divided into six
segments. One looks beyond the mirror framed by wood and sturdy bolts of
wood, surmounted by a figure that could be a horned god, or an archetypal
androgyne with the sign of the crescent moon above its brow. One travels beyond
the brow and observes the customers supping beer. They are not there. They are
not as they appear. One is dressed in robes of purple. One is dressed in robes of
green. They stride and boast but their hatred is nullified by the saving grace
beyond them.
Are you aware of the song that goes:
Gone, gone, gone beyond,
Gone altogether beyond?
Then know that movement
Disturbs reverie.
The Sons are sitting perfectly still
And drifting into infinity
And let it be known that these Sons
Are The Sons of Amos Brearley
Notes
1. A rich and pleasant land, an Otherworld called Belgravia.
36

2. The mews exists. I did not register its name. A mews like any other. A short
terrace of luxury; a dead end; a sign declaring it is a private place.
3. Modest stained glass is characteristic of the area.
4. The goddess is present and does not need to be invoked.
5. The messenger of the gods: Hermes, Mercury.
6. Everything was dissolved into a state of pleasantness.
7. These rays keep on being mentioned; there must be something to them: the
blue, the violet, and the green.
8. There is more within than without, then.
9. The guild is worth pursuing.
37

F.L.A.
I was making little progress. I was working on five things at once. I was bored and
my mind was racing. I had little time to think. I tried to impose some order on a
series of notes through recourse to a system. I was happy with my progress. My
happiness proved ill founded. My system failed me. I invented a new system.
A royal blue inverted triangle
A green diamond
The triangle superimposed on the diamond
Two yellow rectangles
A black dividing line between them
The rectangles form a square on a black background
The blue of the triangle shines inwards
A red glowing pattern in the sky
A triangle of stars forms above the distant city
One of the stars is reflected in a muddy pool of water
The grey sky is shot through with sunlight
The light rays form a mountain
The summit is a pool of light
The sun is the pupil of God’s eye
A grey line passing diagonally through a white sun
A yellow sun surrounded by a blue circle
A tree branch separating two suns
The waxing and waning of the moon
A symbol of the sun dwelling behind my eyes
38

A vision of the Cross of Light formed by the stars in the sky
I see a strange country
I see moving sands
I see bright cloth blazing beneath the sun
I see the end of a tunnel approaching
I am a satellite of the sun
I praise the Lord of the Dawn
I praise the cousin of thunder
I praise the brightness of the moon
I see seven stars and a crescent moon and three stars in a line all shining
The first star of the evening brightens the whole of the sky
I observe the renewal of sunset and the greening of the clouds
The space between two orbs of light is alive with colourful forms
The sun is orange and passing
The sky is the colour of ocean
The groves and the fields are green and darkening
It is the time of the ascent through the silver white brightening sky
39

FREE ART FREE PEOPLE
Since the beginning of the 20 th century, art has become increasingly vacuous.
Generally speaking, artists have refrained from engagement with meaning, or
have sought to ascribe meaning to the infantile, the absurd, and the fantastic. This
retreat from meaning is evident in all artistic activity, but seems most prevalent in
the field of the plastic arts and their inane derivatives.
I looked directly at the setting sun through a blue lens. I looked away
from the sun and closed my eyes. I saw a creature of light, like a vast
insect, formed of seven suns moving westwards. The creature floated
eastwards, dissolving in stages. The creature's disappearance allowed
the stars to appear in bright daylight, as if I looked upon a night sky. I
opened my eyes. The sun had set.
There is some virtue in the beauty of vision. The description above outlines a
physical experience. This physical experience is translated into visionary terms. A
mundane vision. Fancy language. A retreat from authenticity.
The communities of art and music are debased by their concern with
glamour. This concern with glamour is a product of
commercialisation. The communities of artists and musicians are
debased by their overriding concern with money.
The relationship between art and commerce has long been a factor in the
production of art. How many artists would produce work if there were no
prospect of selling it? The relationship between art and commerce has
strengthened in direct proportion to the retreat from meaning.
40

FREE ART FOR FREE PEOPLE
A ridiculous proposition. There is always a price to pay for engagement with
works of art, even if entry to the gallery is free, even if access to the document
necessary to justify the existence of the work does not presuppose a cash
transaction.
We are for anonymity. We are against the cult of personality on the
grounds of its vanity.
Anonymity can be put to far from noble use. A cloak for fools to hide their
shame.
We are against narrative, for narratives are lies. We are for the
impossibility of truth.
The flight from narrative often implies an inability to utilise an effective means of
expression. To deny the possibility of truth is to render oneself a liar.
We are not free from shame. We are not free from preference. How
can we speak of freedom?
We can speak of freedom in any way we choose to. We shall probably speak of
freedom ironically.
We are against meaning. We are for the celebration of image.
There is no profit in the retreat from meaning. We might as well admit that
everything has meaning. The absurd productions of artists have meaning. Their
meaning is desire for riches.
We are for the mystical wing of Islam. We are against witches and
pagans for they have had their wisdom from New Age peddlers.
41

Similarly, we are against dope smoking, acid toting, so called
shamans. We are against the Church of England, for a monarch stands
at its head. We are against the Catholic Church and its hypocritical
riches. We are Protestant in our Christianity, although we do not
embrace the established sects. We are for the reality beyond the
appearance.
All we know of “the mystical wing of Islam” is what we have read in a book.
Witches and pagans have no provenance in the modern world. It is folly to
confuse drug inspired experiences with the fruits of religious devotion. We know
little more of the Church of England and the Catholic Church than we do of “the
mystical wing of Islam”. The problem with the reality beyond the appearance is
that it might not be a reality at all.
We are against psychiatric drugs, with the exception of the
benzodiazepines, for they go down well with a pint. We are against
drugs that make your body twist and bow down.
Millions of people around the world benefit from taking psychiatric drugs. These
drugs can be helpful in easing mental distress, and as such they should be
applauded. A pint and a couple of Valium may have been a delight in the past, but
who knows how it would strike us now? Drugs that make one twist and bow are
drugs that have been put to an incorrect use.
1.
Mongzone. A boy band consisting of people with severe learning
disabilities (it must surely exist already, sponsored by a community
arts initiative).
This is the kind of deplorable notion favoured by newspaper columnists. It rests
upon the assumption that the writer and his readers share a favoured state of being
42

that allows them to conceive of stigmatised groups of people as rightly inferior, fit
subjects for derision, or any kind of definition of the group as ‘other’.
Goad the Loonies Night
Price list:
• Come and watch the loonies dance: £1 (no dancing until the
pound is paid)
• Poke a loony with a stick: £10
• Pook a loony in the eye with a stick: £250
The obvious reference to the viewing of the lunatics in Bedlam means that this
scheme is of a different order to the idea behind the formation of Mongzone.
Replace backdrop banner reading Drink to Youth and Glamour with
banner reading Death to Youth and Glamour by substituting Death for
Drink.
List times, titles and descriptions of nasty programmes screened by
Channel 5 (during the course of a week chosen at random).
2.
Write underneath a copy of Linnell's portrait of William Blake: MY
GRANDDAD.
A desire for connection with the visionary artist / poet. It seeks to elevate the
artist by association with Blake, who is no longer a person, but an archetype.
A photocopy of Picasso's Guernica underneath the slogan STUPID AS
A PAINTER.
43

Guernica is undoubtedly one of the most overrated paintings of all time, and
Picasso is undoubtedly one of the most overrated painters. The reference to
Duchamp seeks to elevate the artist by virtue of his knowledge of the concerns of
the chess playing “genius”.
Postcard reproductions of notable works of art covered by white
linen shrouds.
3.
Finding a late Neolithic necklace made of red and black beads
amongst neatly ordered grave goods. I take the necklace and wear it.
A dream fraudulently portrayed as a waking reality.
The Book of Platitudes
A story about the gathering of the people at the Bole Hills around
sunset, most of the gathering proving to be (witless) pagans. Look
into the sun. Turn left into the shaded lands. See there three violet
globes hovering over the darkened horizon.
A dream or dope vision serving as the basis of a plan. An outline of the idea saves
the artist from the labour of writing the story. It is likely that the story would
have proved tedious to read.
A story: the number of stairs leading upstairs keeps increasing and
then they start decreasing in number until there are no more stairs
left to climb.
A notion born of a daydream. The story would probably have proved impossible
to sustain.
44

The Way of Liberation
A series of single words
TREE
EARTH
or word combinations
MOON SUN STAR
or words with immediate associations
WATER (the water of life)
with instructions to focus on each word or association for a given
period of time and to note down the fruits of each meditation.
How difficult would it prove to perform this exercise? What would the performer
of the programme be liberated from? The idea could be translated into a money
making scheme by a self-proclaimed New Age master.
4.
ELECTRIC GUITAR
FEEDBACK AND DRONE
It could be done if we wanted to bore everyone to tears. We could listen to the
relevant Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 tracks in our collection if we wanted
to subject ourselves to the experiment. We could create tape loops and play them
through a PA system to a gullible audience – the audience exists; even though it is
small in number, it is large in significance in its collective mind.
DJ Madman
Search through one’s CD collection, select tracks on the theme of madness,
mental distress, and emotional turmoil and play them at random in a live setting
or on a community radio programme. Try to obtain a grant from a national
45

mental health charity to take the project forward. Compile a CD or cassette for
sale.
5.
To each spiritual epoch corresponds a new spiritual intent, which that
epoch expresses by forms that are new, unexpected, surprising and in this
way aggressive. Kandinsky
a.
VIVA
BARNSLEY
!
VIVA
GREAT
HOUGHTON
!
DEATH
TO
LITTLE
HOUGHTON
!
The artist has never been to Great Houghton. The artist has never been to Little
Houghton. It seems sufficient to him that he is aware of the names of these places.
b.
DOWN
WITH
DRUM & BASS
46

DRUM & BASS
IS
MUSIC FOR MORONS
It seemed inevitable that Drum and Bass would fail as a musical form due to its
inherent limitations. The more these limitations revealed themselves, the more
musicians and advertising directors exploited the musical form.
c.
VIVA
ULSTER
BUS
This should be superimposed on a lithograph of an Ulster Bus, blue
on blue.
An idea born from a memory of the picture cover to the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant
(which transcended the vanity that was the Merry Pranksters’ bus in the moment
of its conception).
d.
Dances with wolves
OK-OT-ON-OWA
IK-NOM-A
GIPIL-DOO-KA
(give pill to cat)
6.
Movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies.
47

Photographs taken running.
The physical activity would not appeal to the sedentary nature of the artist.
A small horse pissing through slightly extended thick black penis,
feeding as it pisses. Enter photograph in the annual Countryfile
competition.
Cut out photocopies of the photos of the horses (three of the larger
horse, one of the smaller) and combine them.
A collection of photographs of Ian Lane entitled The Pork Butcher's
Son.
The disgusting tendency of the artist to believe that everyone and everything is
subject to his whim. Elevating association once more, this time with Picabia.
A collection of photographs of Alba entitled Cesare the Somnambulist.
If you want to change the way you look, don't look at yourself. Don't
look at yourself in mirrors. Don't rehearse the way you look through
recourse to reflection.
Attempt to photograph reflections in pewter tankard - the double
beard, no face; the creases in pale blue pyjamas.
A simple experiment, which need not be performed once it has been noted.
There is a spirit form visible in the photographs of me with full beard.
The spirit form is visible with head forward and head back. The form
is the same despite the movement between the poses. To better reveal
the form:
48

1. Photocopy - enlargement x 205 = A4 image
2. Fold to highlight right corner, x 205 = A4 image
It should be clear by now, but continue for as long as necessary.
Explore the possibilities of all images the same size.
This is the virtue of postcards.
This is a focus on meaning.
This is a fantastic notion, indicative of a desire to escape the mundane and enter a
world of the benign and fascinating transcendent.
Concrete wall near entrance to Endcliffe Park at Hunters Bar, behind
stone structure. You could lie upon this wall and focus camera on
slightly arching footbridge, taking deep focus images whenever
anyone crosses the bridge.
You could indeed.
Photograph the massive cooling towers between Long Eaton and
Loughborough on the train journey from Sheffield to London.
A random example of stark modern industry.
Photo location: power station to right of car park, Brown St / NCPM;
turn, and the drums of the NCPM are the background. Dusk the best
time, a grey sundown the best.
A realistic painting of a moving landscape (like the landscape seen
through the window of a moving train) would resemble an abstract
painting.
Video journey St. Pancras to Sheffield at real speed; speed up and
slow down. 4 films: backwards, right; forwards right: backwards left;
49

forwards left: or 8: window seat, far from window: or all seats on
smoking carriage. One would serve as well as all. The journey at
night. The journey in variable daylight. The eyes of people are drawn
towards light.
There would be an audience for this film. The Electric Guitar Feedback and
Drone soundtrack could accompany it, or the two events could be performed
separately, thus maximising income from ticket receipts. The same audience
would attend both events.
7.
Anti-neutral clothing: different shoes, one-legged trousers, one-
armed shirts; extended - half-beard, make-up (different coloured
eyes, lips, random splurges). The aim should not be to beautify. (cf.
Giacomo Balla, Il Vestito Antineutrale (Anti-Neutral Clothes)).
Drawings by tracing and combining representations of fragments of
machinery
Picabia again.
I meet Genesis P-Orridge (and others, including Cosey Fanni Tutti) at a studio in Brighton.
We engage in some artwork together. I am in Brighton to take part in an event that is being
staged in a former COUM Transmissions studio. I don’t know if this is the reason for my
meeting with Genesis, or if our meeting is a coincidence. The meeting is friendly at first, but
as our artwork progresses, Genesis tries to persuade me to use a dark watery liquid in the
work. The liquid has pieces of submerged wood in it. I refuse to use the liquid, wary of
Genesis’ sinister intent. We explore the magical power of incantations - the Lord’s Prayer
amongst them (I recognise this with gratitude).
50

A German (Nazi) youth, part of a group of people who live in a train station; he has no
legs or genitals, nothing below (and including) his hips. He moves swiftly on his arms. His
substitute limbs and hips come in the form of a flat piece of cardboard. He uses his
cardboard prosthesis when his photograph is taken.
Further reading
Marc Spiegler, Money for old soap
The Independent on Sunday Review, 21 July 2002
51

WATCH OUT FOR YOUR HEAD SONNY JIM
Behemoth and Leviathan
A Death Metal Nightmare
In the early 1990s I watched an interesting and entertaining documentary about
the origins and development of Heavy Metal music. This Channel 4
programme inspired me to write a poem called ‘Lines in Honour of the
Heavy Metal Tribe’, which was characterised by the scorn and humour that
can be noted in the majority of my non-religious works. The poem speaks of
‘snake locked musicians talking intelligently about sex and the devil’. I
intended to start this article with a reproduction of the poem but I could not
find it. The complete poem is not altogether necessary. From memory I recall
the pertinent detail that made me want to search it out:
Watch out for your head, Sonny Jim,
You will do yourself a mischief
Shaking it about…
I went to school in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town that borders the six towns
that comprise the city of Stoke-on-Trent, in the mid to late 1970s. My peers
favoured two forms of music: Northern Soul and Heavy Metal. I attended my first
Northern Soul all dayer on my 14 th birthday. I recall the heavenly glow inspired
by drinking a pint of cider. I recall the swirling skirts of the dancing girls, like the
elegant robes of whirling dervishes. I recall the impressive acrobatics of their
boyfriends, their swallow dives and backdrops. In truth I did not penetrate deeply
into this impossibly glamorous world. I did my best to imitate the easiest moves
of the dancers but I felt uncomfortable and self-conscious. I was a long way from
perfecting my act and armour as a dispassionate observer. I went to a few events
52

in the pubs and clubs of Stoke-on-Trent but I did not travel to Bristol or
Manchester in the company of my friends (friends I despised, friends who
despised me) to partake of speed and night long exposure to the chiming bell like
tones and sweet vocals of the rare imported vinyl that defined the scene. Wigan
was a memory celebrated on patches.
The Heavy Metal crowd were an ugly bunch. Gary ‘Snozza’ Tunstall was the
epitome of the type; lank, greasy hair, greasy skin, an enormous and disfiguring
boil adorning his nose (hence his nickname; he was also known as Rat). The
ambition of these youngsters was to gain entry to the biker pubs around
Newcastle and Stoke. These pubs were genuinely frightening places. Stoke is
renowned for its citizens’ propensity to violence and the bikers of Stoke and
Newcastle were particularly stalwart ruffians. From time to time the various
factions of bikers, weekend rockers and young disciples would gather in Stoke
Town Hall to drink themselves stupid and shake their out thrust elbows in a
rougher version of the celebrated dance popularised by the early 70s pop group
Mud.
I left Newcastle for Uxbridge in Middlesex shortly before my 17 th birthday. It was
in Uxbridge that my interest in music really started to develop. The town’s
proximity to London afforded me the opportunity to see countless live bands.
The pseudo-intellectual ramblings of several staff writers from Sounds and the
NME inspired me to widen the range of my cultural interests. Within 9 months of
the move, Northern Soul had become a memory trace and the details of the Stoke
Heavy Metal subculture in its basest form had been completely subdued in my
mind. I started writing for ‘Notes from the Underground’. I took to wearing
what I thought were stylish black clothes in imitation of John McKay after seeing
him play guitar on ‘Metal Postcard’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees on The Old
Grey Whistle Test. I took to sporting radical haircuts. I haunted the night time
53

streets of Uxbridge, Hillingdon and Hayes and the growing Skinhead faction of
these dreary suburban outposts of the great Metropolis wanted to slaughter me
for being a puff.
A few years ago I watched an interesting and entertaining documentary about
Norwegian Black Metal. This programme focused on the activities of Varg
Vikernes in the fields of church burning and murder. I read the sensationalist but
eminently readable book upon which the TV programme was based and my
former passing acquaintance with Heavy Metal music began to resurface in my
mind. I started to go to the Classic Rock Bar on Ecclesall Road because it was a
short and generally pleasant walk from where I was living at the time, it sold good
cheap beer and it did not charge an entrance fee. I concluded that the Sheffield
Metal crowd was more likely to help out at a church fete than they were to burn a
church down (I think this ‘softness’ is characteristic of the city. Sheffield
Skinheads in the mid to late 1980s were certainly far less fierce than their
counterparts in other towns and cities). I started to buy ‘Terrorizer’, which
proved helpful in enabling me to differentiate between the plethora of sub-genres
that had proliferated since I last paid any attention to this type of music.
The most striking events at the Classic Rock Bar were promoted by Steel City
Music. The most striking bands to play at these events were Nyasiforte and
Behemoth and Leviathan. Nyasiforte are a promising act, although I have not seen
them since their first gig after recruiting a new singer in the latter part of 2005.
Behemoth and Leviathan held a deeper attraction and I took to seeing them
whenever I noticed they were playing around town.
One of the virtues of computers is that they store information in one easily
reachable place. This means that one does not have to rummage forlornly through
ancient boxes to achieve the objective of travelling through time. My engagement
54

with the music of Behemoth and Leviathan in particular and Metal in general
enabled me to write about the band for the first time in September 2005. I have
seen the group twice since then and reported on what I witnessed on both
occasions. These three reviews follow. The end of the final review has made the
point I want to make about the band and it is a final review, for I shall not see
them again. And the reason I shall not see them again is clearly stated in the final
paragraph of this piece.
Behemoth and Leviathan
The Boardwalk
September 2005
We only live once. We are eternal. We are occupying eternity now. The
woodlands and moors around Sheffield speak of the fundamentally pagan nature of
the place. John Wesley preaching in Paradise Square does not gainsay this. The
coming and going of heavy industry is but a covering of this fundamental nature.
Ecclesall Woods is a forest of mystery in which I rebuild the Temple of Ing.
Notions of the left-hand path and the right hand path miss the point that all paths
tend to join up.
I walk to the Boardwalk from Crookes. I see a man and a woman embracing in the
brightly lit entrance of the cancer hospital. The man has no hair. He is attached to
a travelling drip. Hail, bright Luna! Heil, bricht Licht!
Behemoth and Leviathan offers us a maelstrom born of fury. There is beauty in
this music’s refusal of fear. These are the wild sounds of pagan Sheffield. A spike
haired giant music promoter from Buxton now studying English in Aberystwyth
proclaims this is a middling set. I say if this is middling then greatness awaits
them.
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I first saw the band at the Classic Rock Bar in the company of Varg Vaporub in his
guise as resplendent corpse painted moody teenager. I saw the band for the
second time at the top of the bill at a Boardwalk Metal Fest a couple of years ago
but I had to leave before they really got going. As the singer announces,
Behemoth and Leviathan is ‘a professional band now’ and it shows in the
performance.
The band has retained its shambolic edge but it now exerts a degree of control
over the expansive wildness of its sound. I consciously think: ‘This is the best I
have seen since Coil Live Ocean Hackney July 2004’ and that Coil performance
was so powerful it opened up doors to another world.
The singer possesses the nature of Loki, a trickster, a ruffian and a bringer of
light. He butts long hairs. He rubs bald heads. He makes his ribs available for
tickling as he embraces each member of the crowd. He leers at the girls at the
front of the stage, out for fucking. The venerable bass player is the most likely
candidate I have seen for the Odin Brotherhood since moving to this city almost
20 years ago. The guitarist is a blur of hair and Thor’s Hammer. The drummer is
a dashing stylist.
I am a blank receiver so I know that this is music of perfect poise. I stand without
moving. I am able to travel with the music, to experience where it separates and
joins. Behemoth and Leviathan moves from and regains the centre in accordance
with the theory and doctrine of the music of the spheres. At the heart of their
fury, they are still. You really need to see them.
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Death Note Death Metal Thursday
Behemoth and Leviathan
D’n’R Live
November 2005
Rare death note
Sweet enduring harmonic
Born of a screech owl
At death metal show
Three quid in
Some kind of
Nordic Rastafari
Born of a death note
And a dead eye
That mirror
Will take you somewhere
Beyond the ear
And out of the eye
Resistance and refusal
Acclaimed non-futile
By shaking heads
By dreadlocks
By the thick and oily
Sweat of the work
By fucking librarians
Masquerading
57

As Chaos Magickians
Daughters of Lilith
And sons of Amos Brearley
In the new eye
Behold! In a vision I saw
Five string bass player come before
Last show to lurk down
Sheffield dream streets
Steep fantastic
To be here
Called by the death note
And death hole
Of death metal Thursday
Black Sun
Fun from no fun
Joy through denial of joy
Gives rise to
Raising serpent
The serpent thus raised
Gives rise to phantom sound
To join the main sound
A darkness
With darkness behind it
A voice of one not there
The birth and summary
Of death note death metal Thursday
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Behemoth and Leviathan
The Boardwalk
January 2006
The new housing project in Crookes has taken its final shape. The earth movers
and ugly wire fences have departed and the buildings stand in mute oversight of
the playing fields, awaiting their inhabitants. An inaccessible green space has been
transformed into a small part of 21 st century suburbia. The lane between
Crookesmoor Road and Northumberland Road exhibits the beauty of lamp lit
stone towers beckoning from a different time space zone. The proprietors of the
Wig & Pen will be grateful when the apartment buildings opposite the pub throng
with the presence of new buyers.
I arrive at the Boardwalk in time for the last half of the set by the band that
precedes Behemoth and Leviathan. There are 35 people in attendance; the
majority sitting at the tables that line the sides of the venue. A small gathering of
the band’s friends moves semi-enthusiastically around the tall tables in front of the
centre of the stage. The band produces some head-nodding, toe tapping riffs.
They are a well-practised group. They exhibit an energy typical of everyday MOR
Metal bands. The music becomes tedious and the uninspired mannerisms of the
singer become a source of irritation. I don’t take up the offer of a free demo and
I’m not disappointed about missing the first half of their performance.
I first developed a casual interest in Behemoth and Leviathan because of the band’s
name. I enjoyed a brief conversation with the bass player at the Classic Rock Bar
at one of the Steel City Metal shows and went to see the band for the first time at
the same venue a few weeks later. Something in the performance piqued my
deeper interest, so I generally go to see them whenever they play around town. I
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know from experience that Behemoth and Leviathan are capable of transcending
limiting Metal genres (they’re a self-styled Death Metal band) to produce music
of great virtue, monolithic slabs of sound glimmering with light catching shards of
something jewel like and enticing. They can reach great heights and it can be
illuminating to behold the band members in performance, like emissaries from
another world.
The crowd at the Boardwalk diminishes from 35 to 25. These events certainly
aren’t notable commercial propositions. Everyone in the audience sits on a chair
or leans their elbows against a tall standing table. No-one ventures in front of the
stage until the final song of the evening, which sees a desultory gathering of long
hairs emerge from their beer-induced ennui to shake their heads at the singer.
Varg Vaporub, one of the small B.A.L Legion, sits on the table before me,
looking across the room, refusing to look to the stage, wrapped up in the
appearance of ‘thought’, waiting for the last song. A member of the band’s
entourage films proceedings on a small DVD camera. I was looking forward to
this but I witnessed what followed with a growing sense of dismay. The notes I
took during the show give an indication of something going horribly wrong:
It is a rock show. It is 1970s rock style. It has three singers. It is improvised, or lacking
practice. The serpent rises and has its head chopped off with a spade. It is swift and rapid,
like gunfire. It improves when the Strongbow is supped. It is a deranged fairground ride in
the quickening.
It is not together. It is the threat of dissolution. It is a battle between bass and guitar. It is a
battle between the guitar and the rest. It is boredom showing. It is lack of focus. It falls
apart. It is waste of talent. The waste lies in a lazy refusal to develop the riches of the
[occasional] merging and blending.
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It is ‘Viking’. It is anti-homosexual. It is anti-vegetarian. It is against the weak. It is anti-
Semitic. It is goose stepping and Nazi salutes. Brendan the singer should know that an Irish
Nazi is a contradiction in terms, although, as Christy Moore informs us:
“ The bishops blessed the Blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain…”
It is worse to be a Jew than it is to be a queer.
There is no great problem with a band that plays poorly or fails to meet its
potential. This can be seen as an intrinsic thrill as far as live music is concerned –
will the band deliver or won’t they? The problem with Behemoth and Leviathan
lies in the attitudes expressed in-between songs and during the performance by
Brendan. The singer uses the word ‘Jew’ as an insult. He goose steps on stage and
makes Nazi salutes, smilingly turning the final salute into the sign of the Horned
God. To characterise these actions as a joke is the act of a wilful moron. These
public proclamations of anti-Semitism are not acceptable. Sheffield’s Neo-Nazi
Death Metal Underground is not a worthy place to be.
61

MAGIC IN TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND SONG
The folk music of Britain and Ireland deserves our attention because it is about
sex, death, magic and betrayal. Folk music deserves our attention because it treats
its themes with simplicity and depth and retains its authenticity; thereby enabling
us to reconnect with the forces that shaped us and shape us still.
Sly Bold Reynardine
A number of traditional songs are storehouses of ancient wisdom. The disruptive
actions of oppressive agencies might have worked some changes to them but the
best of these songs possess a deep-rooted significance that cannot be wholly
disguised by later accretions. The degree to which they have retained their
meaning varies. One of the purest manifestations of ancient wisdom resides in the
tale of the meeting between the mysterious Reynardine and the pretty fair maiden
of a thousand songs.
Some authorities are content to report that Reynardine ‘was reputed to be able to
turn into a fox, a sort of werewolf legend’ but a cursory examination of the lyrics
reveals this to be an insufficient definition of the nature of the song’s hero.
Reynardine is a form of Celtic demigod. The popular reference to Reynardine as
‘half man, half fox’ is an impudent joke designed to strip the Celtic pagan deity of
his power. The significance of the fox lies in its colour. The fox is red and in this
context red is the colour of the Celts.
Reynardine is encountered in the wilderness of the mountains, the refuge of the
self-determining Celtic tribes displaced by the coming of the Anglo-Saxons. The
beautiful young woman who encounters Reynardine can be taken as an
embodiment of the people who remained under the yoke of their conquerors and
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a representation of the Roman church established in Britain at the behest of
church authorities that were happy to encourage the vanity of kings. Heathen
Anglo-Saxon Britain was confounded in its beliefs through the cunning of the
Roman church.
The fate of the young woman can be taken as an indication of the appeal of ancient
ways in a succeeding age and as a representation of the people’s abandonment of
the church for a system of beliefs that was grounded in the wisdom of the
perceivable realities of their homeland.
The fact that the meeting takes place on the high mountains is revealing. The
mountains represent the refuge of the old people, the old ways, the old religion.
The mountains separate the action from the everyday reality of settlement, of
simple homestead, of hamlet, village and town. The old gods were worshipped
and encountered in high places. The mountains are a representation of the spirit
land.
Reynardine recognises the beautiful young woman as one of his people. The
young woman sees the demigod as a young man. She is somewhat wary of
Reynardine’s company and she fears the reactions of her father and mother should
they learn of the encounter. Perhaps the young woman is a priestess who
communes with the old gods through magic. Her mother and father can be taken
as the Roman church. Her parents are also the ‘judge’s men’ that seek the blood
of Reynardine. The young woman might be fearful in the presence of the demigod
but she does not fly.
Reynardine offers the young woman a place of refuge and she willingly accepts.
This is representative of the union between a god and his people. The young
woman is uncertain of the identity of her beloved. In revealing his name,
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Reynardine also reveals his great age. He has been in existence for longer than
anyone can remember. In truth, Reynardine is a presence in eternity manifested
in time. He can appear and disappear at will. His castle is a temple or a shrine.
The warning coda that is tacked on to some versions of the song can be taken as an
illustration of the consequences of abandoning slavery for freedom, which include
exclusion from the people of the homeland that has been left behind. Reynardine
will do you no harm but if you embrace what Reynardine represents, your family
will disown you. The young woman is fully confirmed as Reynardine’s consort
and follower before the end of the story. Reynardine smiles in delight at
possessing the qualities that have won another devotee to his cause.
The attributes of Tam Lin
Tam Lin is a spirit being from another world. He is said by his enemies to be a
thief and a threat to sexual propriety. He is said to be untrustworthy. He occupies
a wild place. He represents the old ways, the old religion, the remembrance of
which poses a threat to the later community that has occupied or stolen the land.
He is a memory in the collective mind of the people and a reality to be invoked by
a priestess.
Tam Lin is a sacrifice to a goddess. He inhabits the land of the dead. He abides by
the healing well. He longs for the water of life from the land of the dead, which is
the world of fading memory. He is generative potential. He comes to the land of
the living from the land of the dead. He enters the land of the living through the
passion of the priestess, a passion born of purity. He is a god of love and a
guardian of the land. He is a servant of the rose. He communes with the priestess
in the form of a Green Man. He is ever young. The spirits of the other world are
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ever young, even if they abide in the land of the dead. He is not confined. He
roams freely in a bright land.
Tam Lin is marked by the pallor of death, a kind of glimmering insubstantiality.
Elfin grey is a brightness like the brightness of the moon. His steed is the universe,
the constellations, the sun and the moon. Tam Lin has entered the mystery of
understanding through passing into the underworld. He adventures in a land that
lacks the substance of the earth. He is a sun god, which is a man elevated through
sacrifice to the goddess of the moon.
Tam Lin possesses foreknowledge. He knows that the priestess is pregnant with
his child and that she seeks to destroy the unborn babe. He is no longer part of
Christendom. The kingdom of the dead, the underworld and the elfin lands are
lands set apart. He comes from ancient times. He was born without a father and
without a mother. He is self-generating. He once occupied a place upon the
common ground.
Tam Lin was hunting for knowledge when his strength and vitality failed him. He
died in falling from his steed. He fell into the arms of the goddess of death to
know that the goddess of death brings renewal of life. He is happy in the land of
the dead, which is a resting place and an indeterminate realm of existence. He
knows that the journey from the realm of the senses to the land of memory can
lead to oblivion.
Samhain provides an opportunity for eternity to merge with time. The people of
the underworld enter the land of the living through the portal of Samhain. They
take on a substance they do not usually possess. Tam Lin will become spiritualised
matter through union with the goddess represented by the priestess; he is
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divorced from the other inhabitants of the underworld through his relationship
with her.
Tam Lin comes from a land that has been lost to memory. He stands for death and
obscurity. He is the first and oldest of the horsemen. Tam Lin comes from the
time of the origins of the earth. He stands for mortality. He is the second of the
horsemen, a passing along the way. Tam Lin rides in glory and honour. He stands
for enlightenment and elevation. He is the third and final horseman, the
summation and transformation of what has gone before. The riding of the horse
represents the passing of time. There is one horse and one rider changing.
Tam Lin as the rider of the white horse rides nearest the town because he is
nearer to the present time than the manifestations of eternity that ride upon the
darker horses. He rides nearest the town because he remains in the memory of
the people of the land. His right hand is gloved as a sign that he contains a
mystery. His left hand is bare as a sign of his strength. His strength resolves that
the mystery will be unveiled. He shows that a time of regeneration will come, a
time of remembering. The union between the god of the underworld and the
priestess as representation of the goddess will take place on the material plane. He
has prepared himself for the ritual. He instructs the priestess. He prepares the
priestess to receive him as he has received the goddess.
Tam Lin’s shape shifting journey through different orders of being represents the
summoning of the god of the underworld through the ritual performed by the
priestess. It is a journey from non-being into being and a journey from a land of
spirit to a land of substance. It is a rite of purification, the casting off of beastly
qualities, the casting off of earthly accomplishments, and the casting off of
unnecessary encumbrances.
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Tam Lin is a newt, which is the vanity of earthly wisdom. He is a bear, which is
the vanity of earthly strength. He is a lion, which is the vanity of kings. He is iron,
which is the vanity of earthly weapons. He is the father of the child of the priestess
as goddess. He is gold, which is for purity. Burning gold is the product of
purification.
Tam Lin’s journey of transformation is an alchemist’s journey. When Tam Lin as
burning gold is immersed in the water of the healing well, his transformation will
be sealed and his being will be sanctified. His immersion in holy water is the final
act confirming the knowledge arising from his journey in the underworld, which
is a rite of initiation.
Tam Lin is reflected as burning gold in the well as a lake reflects the sun. His
transformation into burning gold takes place in the dark hours of early morning,
so his brightness is all the more apparent. His brightness transforms the darkness
completely and turns it into light. If one person passes from death into life the
whole world is transformed.
Tam Lin was less powerful than the Queen of the Fairies in the underworld. The
Queen gave him life after he died. He is more powerful than the Queen in the
land of the living. The Queen regrets that she did not replace Tam Lin’s eyes with
eyes of wood. Tam Lin’s eyes are his resolve and his vitality. His eyes retained
their light in the land of the dead. Their undimmed silver light is the light of the
moon. His journey from death to life has turned him into a shining sun. The light
of the moon and the light of the sun are joined in him. Tam Lin is the sun and the
moon.
The magic of Ireland does not reside in its songs
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There are few tales of magic in the repertoire of Irish traditional song. The
common themes of Irish folk music include the struggle against oppression, the
sorrow of the oppressed and the plucky common man getting the better of those
who would seek to exploit him. There is no Irish equivalent to the repository of
ancient wisdom that can be found in ‘Reynardine’ or ‘Tam Lin’.
This apparent refusal of magic can be attributed to the influence of perfidious
Rome and the bitter enmity of the Irish towards a mythical perfidious Albion.
Ireland was a priest-ridden nation for centuries. The power of the clerics
resembled the power of kings and their authority forbade the outward flourishing
of pagan lore. The real and imagined indignities inflicted on the population of
Ireland by the Saxon hordes turned the minds of the people from so-called flights
of fancy to the stern stuff of the politics of opposition.
The reality of magic cannot be done away with. Magic has entered the political
landscape of Ireland in sublimated form. The IRA in its 1970s / 1980s heyday can
be viewed as a Romantic death cult, with Bobby Sands as a hero like the heroes of
old. England seen through the eyes of the Irish becomes an ogre, a kind of evil
supernatural force intent on rapine and destruction. The legends of St. Patrick tell
of the actions of an accomplished mage.
Perhaps the composers of Irish song were reluctant to reveal the secrets of the
spirits that inhabit the land. The Irish rural landscape is littered with strange and
sacred places and the qualities of these places are well known to the people who
live in close proximity to them. The ancient sites of Ireland do not tend to be
fenced off as they are in England; they are open to all. When everyone knows,
there is no need to say.
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Donal Og
The most commonly known version of ‘Donal Og’ is Lady Gregory’s English
translation of an Irish song, versions of which are known from Ulster, Munster
and Aran. The origins of the song are not known. Verses have been added and lost
over the years. It is a tale of a young woman’s loss, ‘the grief of a girl’s heart’, her
fury, humiliation and despair. Everything that she knows disappears with her
lover and even God can offer no comfort. ‘Donal Og’ is a lament with an
undercurrent of curse. It is a ballad and a prayer.
Lady Gregory’s version is modelled on the English speech patterns of a rural Irish
peasantry, its syntax and grammar directly translated from the Irish. Lady
Gregory subjects the Irish version of the song to a process of gentrification. She
feels somewhat ill at ease with the sexual frankness of her model. She is socially
removed from the manners of the people she steals the song from, like fairy
hunting William Butler Yeats, who would talk to no-one he encountered during
his outings in the countryside and was held to be mad by the workers of the land.
Her opening verse is particularly prudish when seen in the light of later
translations, which do not seek to detract our attention from the girl’s
enthusiastic lustiness.
It does not do to credulously accept the interpretations of scholars, some of
whom have suggested that Donal is a pirate. Neglecting to take account of the
Irish tendency to florid overstatement, other commentators speculate on whether
Donal is real or a fantasy figure, a model of the Fairy King who promises all to his
lover. It is true that the young girl provides a description of Donal that evokes his
beauty, but she does not play down her own physical attributes, likening herself
to Helen, ‘the daughter of the King of Greece’, the epitome of female
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comeliness. Donal is not an impossible object of desire. The couple are well
matched.
There are many extant versions of ‘Donal Og’ in song form. They are linked by a
sense of earthbound enchantment, mystery, and unity with the natural world.
They contribute to the sense of the lyric serving as a ‘word hoard for future
generations of poets’. The journey of Donal Og continues, although he is
nowhere to be seen.
The embourgeoisement of a rural tradition
The lust and violence inherent in the lyrics of some traditional songs is tempered
by the false Puritanism and limiting moral virtues proclaimed by hypocritical
societies, and by the cowardice of performers and record companies willing to
comply with these constraints for misguided commercial reasons.
English folk music in the 1960s and 1970s was blighted by foolhardy musical
settings. The tendency to introduce rock music instrumentation, particularly the
electric bass guitar, worked to the ruination of much of Fairport Convention’s
recorded output (although it wasn’t always a disaster – Fairport Convention’s
version of ‘Tam Lin’ has much to recommend it).
Shirley and Dolly Collins provide evidence of an opposing tendency on ‘The
Power of the True Love Knot’ and ‘Anthems in Eden’, which can result in music
that sounds like it should accompany a television programme for children. The
notes to ‘Anthems in Eden’ state: “It was obvious that the sounds Dolly needed
could not be found in either conventional orchestral or pop music voicings; it was
the new young breed of professional players of pre-classical instruments who
seemed to offer the most rewarding possibilities.” Unfortunately, the music does
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not seem timeless, but of its time, antique instruments in a 60s style. The first
track on ‘Anthems in Eden’ is a 28-minute medley of 9 tunes and songs, another
symptom of the era, although it must be allowed that medleys are common
parlance in traditional music circles.
Despite these reservations, the voice of Shirley Collins transcends the limitations
of time and fashion. She possesses an extraordinary ability to sound in tune and
out of tune at the same time. She matches Sandy Denny for beauty of voice but
arguably excels her by virtue of her singing style’s strangeness. Shirley Collins
embodies the magical trend in traditional music in the way that she sings rather
than what she sings.
Folk music deserves our attention because it speaks to us in voices that are simple
and direct and yet possessed of richness and depth:
Young Polly she was a-walkin’ in a shower of rain
And she hid by the bushes, her beauty to maintain.
Young Jimmy he was a-fowlin’, a-fowlin’ all alone
And he shot his own true love in the place of a swan.
I would have preferred ‘Johnny’ to ‘Jimmy’ but let’s not quibble over minor
details. I smile despite the sadness of poor Polly’s fate. I smile with gratitude that
such a dainty expression exists to enliven the consciousness of the world. At times
like this it seems easy to remember that every act is a magical act and that magic
arises from a longing for remembrance. Folk music deserves our attention
because it helps us to remember.
71

AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE: ‘ANATHEMA OF ZOS’
Austin Osman Spare (AOS) occupies a land of his own invention. He pays no heed
to fashion. He stands against the dictates of time. He stands against society. He
seeks to go beyond the limitations of space. The illustrations that accompany the
text of ‘Anathema of Zos’ resemble the work of a decadent symbolist from an
earlier generation, although the designs of AOS transcend the morbid fantasies
that characterise the art of the so-called Symbolist movement. If AOS were not
beyond time, he would be 50 years behind the times. The teaching of AOS is
there is no teaching and no teacher worthy to teach. Despite this, AOS teaches
hatred of life, hatred of civilisation and a (cynical?) transcendence that is based on
feeling rather than reason.
‘Anathema of Zos: The Sermon to the Hypocrites’ purports to be an automatic
writing, written in 1924 and published in 1927 in an edition of 100 copies. AOS
was bound to produce his work in the form of obscure or special editions; such
was the rarefied nature of his interests. Despite the profoundly anti-Christian
nature of his proclamations, AOS demonstrates a considerable knowledge of the
books of the Old and New Testaments. One could argue that the suspicion of
anti-Christ reveals a coincidental or affected rather than a fundamental antipathy.
The work of AOS should be seen as a contribution to the European Christian
Tradition despite its opposition to orthodoxies, institutions and social and cultural
norms.
AOS has a serious interest in religion. This interest informs his main task, which is
to build an understanding of the beyond based on personal experience and taking
into account the fundamental realities embedded within the bestial common man.
‘Anathema of Zos: A Sermon to the Hypocrites’ confirms that AOS recognises
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Heaven. ‘Anathema’ and ‘Sermon’ are well-defined religious concepts.
‘Anathema of Zos’ can be seen as a book from the dark Bible of AOS.
This is what we can learn from ‘Anathema of Zos’:
We are born into a state of illusion. Despair and chaos define our experience. Life
is a nightmare. We submit to the illusion of death. This process is circular. In a
sense, birth and death are the same thing; they are products of the same illusion,
which allows being as we commonly understand it to arise.
A priest rubs his hands together lasciviously as he looks upon a naked young
woman. A symbol of the setting or rising sun is inscribed on his hand. Earth lies in
the realm of the sun. Three rays emanate from the sun: the triple sun, the triple
goddess, and the threefold state of illusory life (birth, being, death).
Zos is opposed to the vain practices of the self-appointed arbiters of conventional
morality. He is wholly concerned with himself. He speaks to himself and is
perturbed to find that others listen to what he is saying. The crowd of hypocrites
that presses upon him is a cause of great discomfort to Zos. They present
themselves as respectable citizens, thirsting for knowledge, but Zos knows them
as vain wanderers, fierce haters of each other, the maimed products of a
contemptible but all pervading civilisation. They know that Zos is not like them,
so they accord him the title of Master and ask to be taught religion. Their
ignorance is so great that they beseech favours of one who despises them. This is
their way in the world.
Zos offers no comfort to the people who call upon him to impart his wisdom. He
is set against his followers. He castigates them because their future lies in the
hands of others. He views them as blind worms, caught up in a hopeless cycle of
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odily processes and urges. Zos presents himself as the saviour of himself. This is
what sets him apart from the worms that call upon him.
The misguided auditors do not know what they think they know. They live in a
world of abundance acquired through greed. They adorn the filth of the world
they have created through their baseness with sparkling diversions and obscene
luxuries. A Roman slouches on a throne, wearing a medallion depicting snake
locked Medusa. The people of the world are self-absorbed in fear, intent on
manufacturing vain hope to excuse the futility of their actions.
The mission of Zos is to transcend the ego, ‘the sorry righteousness called I’.
Until this transcendence is accomplished, a man cannot truly be called a man but
remains a base and ridiculous creature, a worthless selfhood and the enemy of
truth. The followers of Zos exemplify this degraded worthlessness. They are liars,
flatterers, thieves and dupes. They feed on the corpses of their kind.
People are motivated by hatred and act from a foundation of hatred. They are
fundamentally murderous. Their society is ‘a veneered barbarity’. This being so,
Zos treats his listeners to a scornful reactionary version of the Beatitudes. The
merciful have departed. The pure in heart are no longer to be found. The meek
are governed on earth and despised in Heaven for submitting to corrupt
government.
A man casts the shadow of the Horned God through the configuration of his raised
right hand. He wears a medallion of mysterious device, like a sleeping bird, or the
head of a goat. The table before him gives evidence of his workings. The mask
that hangs beneath the table is an indication of the nature of the work.
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Zos is no respecter of tradition. The vainglorious prophets are nauseating and
deserve to be persecuted. He states firmly and plainly that love is cursed. He is
given to psychedelic conundrums.
Zos promotes self-sufficiency for the self beyond self. He is concerned with the
principle of self beyond all. His way is not the way of others. Anyone who follows
Zos becomes his own enemy. He recognises that becoming oneself is a disgusting
task. It might require cruelty. It is born of messy desire. It calls upon one’s
reserve of courage in a very demanding way. He is not above recourse to
witticism.
Some people obviously delight in their bondage. The central tenet of Zos can be
plainly stated: freedom lies in lawlessness. Necessity and time are conventional
phenomena. Convention does not lead to freedom. One should neither resist nor
exploit evil. This is the way to a true Heaven.
Human behaviour is supremely vicious. There is nothing in the world that is
worse than human behaviour. Humanity cannot differentiate between the actual
and the dream. Belief will be confounded. One should believe symbolically or
with caution. Desire cannot accomplish anything unless it is acted upon.
The lusts of the body should not be ignored or denied as shameful but acted on as
a matter of course to allow being to pass on. It is ‘better to communicate by the
living act than by the word’. The God of the Church of England is a mad and vain
projection of the stupidity of the people. Self-love is defined as an ultimate state
or aim. AOS defines self-love in ‘The Book of Pleasure’:“ A mental state, mood
or condition caused by the emotion of laughter becoming the principle that allows
the Ego appreciation or universal association in permitting inclusion before
conception.”
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Zos is opposed to the limiting nature of the word. The masked fool with a
dripping pen is ungainly and can hardly stand. The truth of the past is wisely
forgotten. Zos exists beyond words, beyond time, beyond becoming. From
puberty until death he is engaged on a mission to realise Self in all. There is a
sacred alphabet of powerful symbols, which is beyond words. Zos has knowledge
of this alphabet.
Zos is a true outsider, a willing outcast from human society, living in the waste
places, beyond civilisation, beyond reach of the corrupted and corrupting power
of the word of law. His prayer, for those who pray, is translated from the Sacred
Alphabet: “ Hidden in the labyrinth of the Alphabet is my sacred name, the SIGIL
of all things unknown…On Earth my kingdom is Eternity of DESIRE.” We see
the head of a horned goat and a woman’s breast with a flaming nipple. Is this a
devil or an embodiment of desire?
The prayer for those who pray becomes a form of inverted Lord’s Prayer with
trills and flourishes. Zos prays for self-sufficiency. He prays for the death of his
soul. He sees a pair of lovers rooted in the earth. Their arms transform into the
branches and leaves of a tree. They are innocent and bestial. Their legs fuse into a
tree trunk. The male has a small tail and a pointed ear.
Zos illustrates the confusion and perplexity of the people. They believe one thing
and desire another. They speak of things that have little to do with belief and
desire. They do not act as they speak. From this ridiculous process, the people
obtain the values by which they live. Ecstasy transcends this process. Ecstasy
transcends thought. AOS is very much anti-ceremonial magic, because it is false in
its supposed workings. He defines its practitioners as misguided and insane, and
worthy of disgust and pity.
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We see an image representing ecstasy and death. The image contains symbolic
devices beneath a mirror, a form of architecture brought into this world from
another world.
Zos salutes all suicides. Zos is still uncertain: he does not know men from swine
or dreams from reality. He knows that no man shall follow him. He is not their
preservation. The crowd was once eager for sensation but their interest in Zos
does not last. The crowd deserts Zos when he falls asleep.
Zos continues to speak to himself as he sleeps. He has not cast away the flesh of
dreams. He knows that all has been paid. He longs for deeper rest.
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UNEASY LISTENING: COIL
One comes to an awareness of Christ in many ways. I had the good fortune to
behold Christ in the form of a dove on a lane that led to a farm in Sidlesham,
West Sussex, in the summer of 1986. A few months later I came face to face with
Christ on the threshold of the house I was living in on Terminus Road in
Chichester and shortly afterwards I saw the form of the Holy Spirit shrouded in
stone coloured robes on a platform at Chichester train station. This kind of
engagement leads to fundamental change.
In time I came to devise my own Christian rituals. The fruits of the performance
of these rituals sustained me. This purity could not last unchanged. Desperation
distorted it. It was destiny that did it. I was overwhelmed by the common agonies
of humanity and I became spiritually blind. In my blindness I called upon the
name of the Lord and in my blindness I could not see him.
I was in a bad way. I was looking to engage in a process of recovery. I wanted to
go beyond the arid desert. My memories of former times were returning. I could
pretend that my mind was clearing. My blindness had left me weak and in my
weakness I fell prey to a form of perverted orthodoxy. And this perverted
orthodoxy made me cling to notions of good and evil that had been born in other
minds.
One comes to an awareness of anything laden with preconceptions. I had done
some reading. I was taking an interest in music. I heard Coil’s version of ‘A Cold
Cell’ on a free CD given away by ‘The Wire’. I wanted to hear more. I had been
told that Coil were pagans. I knew pagans were painted fools. I approached them
lightly. I held out little hope. I was more or less convinced that Coil would prove
a joke based on comic book evil.
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‘The Angelic Conversations’ was the first full length Coil recording that I chanced
upon. I can’t remember how it came into my possession. ‘The Angelic
Conversations’ is not typical of either of the two major strands marked in Coil’s
work. It demonstrates the deep, gentle sounds that can be found in many of Coil’s
compositions but it combines these with straight readings from Shakespeare’s
sonnets that continually remind the listener that this is music to accompany a film.
It’s true that I did find the record unsettling but that’s more to do with my
extreme fragility and hypersensitive suggestibility at the time I first heard it than it
is to any qualities inherent in the sound.
Six months passed. My rehabilitation continued. Prolonged abstinence from drink
and drugs was beginning to bear fruit. My dislocated selves were merging. I was
more attached to the earth. I was eating well and my strength was growing. Coil
became uneasy listening when ‘Coil Live Four’ became mine.
Coil embrace graceful extended circular codas and harsh exciting dissonance in
equal measure to instantly transport the listener through fractured time space
zones and offer the opportunity to inhabit other worlds through sound. Jhonn
Balance struggles with spirits for possession of his body. A black sun reigns above
the scene of the struggle. It is a conflict unto death. It is a vortex of madness.
Jhonn Balance invites the spirits of animals to occupy his body and he gives voice
to them though yelps, howls, growls and groans. ‘Never turn a light on in a
darkened room’.
‘Are You Still Shivering?’ is a work of alchemy. The gold of the sun and the silver
of the moon. Piss and spunk. Matt Howden characterised the films of Coil as ‘too
much blood and spunk for me’. Who are the Amethyst Deceivers? They would
welcome us if they could. The matter and the struggle is plain:
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The sun is coming
The dragon flies
His breath will drown
This earth with astral fire
These are the end days, full of violence and pain. There is little we can trust in.
‘Whistle and I’ll come to you my lad’ becomes ‘Whistle and I’ll fuck you with a
knife’ through a few related shifts and changes.
‘I Don’t Want To Be the One’. Who or what is the One and what will happen to
him? A sacrificial victim, a person embarking on a journey into a dark and
overwhelming madness, a scapegoat, the personification of trauma, a soul beyond
redemption. The song is a desperate refusal.
I was listening to ‘An Unearthly Red’ on my Walkman on the bus to Crookes.
Two unruly ten-year-old boys paused from riotous mischief to commend me on
my choice of music. They asked me the name of the band. They laughed at my
reply, assuming I meant the stuff that you put on a fire. ‘An Unearthly Red’ is 12
minutes of concentrated fury, an exorcism of rage. Electronic wolf howl
introducing messages from God. My father is God but my mother is a whore. The
President of America is dripping blood. He’s a liar. ‘Tear every page out and
swallow the Bible’. My mother is my father. This is not pop music in the
commonly accepted sense of the term.
‘Coil Live Four’ was recorded at Palac Akropolis, Prague, October 27 and Flex
Club Vienna, October 29, 2002. Samhain fast approaching.
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I was inspired. ‘A year’ passed. My recovery was complete. I had the good
fortune to see Coil perform live and I wrote about the experience in these terms:
Coil
Ocean, Hackney
Sunday 25 July 2004
Coil inhabit a different world because there is little in the world of cheapened
substance to recommend it. The world that Coil inhabit proceeds from the world
of substance and transforms it. They promote cruciform fractals that play on the
screen behind the performers like a welcoming of flowers.
Jhonn Balance has a fine beard and a fine moustache to go with it, although the
moustache has been grown in error, seeing it must catch snot and food and all
other manner of decaying matter if it is to remain. It is the beard of MacGregor
Mathers. He moves about the stage with purpose, a ritual of welcome and a ritual
of banishing. He stares so intensely that I suspect he is having us on but time
confirms him in his sincerity. He wears green socks of silk from eastern lands. He
wears bandages and rags that resemble an extended straitjacket. It is an arse
revealer. It makes a headdress and a covering. It makes a shade and a revelation. A
handy garment to hang yourself with.
Beards will be all the rage in a year or two. In Western lands, in Europe, the fire
is coming and the beards will stand against them. They will do for now as a rage
and a sign. In years to come we shall see women with deliberately cultivated
beards but they will come to themselves and shave them off right quickly.
Jhonn Balance has poor eyesight and a nappy against forgetfulness. He has a turn
to the side from childhood. His beard would not get him into Mecca. What is the
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way & what is the sign? Three coins. ‘There are footsteps between the tavern &
the mosque’. There are no mountains to climb in London save for boasted hills
only.
I can report that a young woman serving behind the bar covered her ears with a
look of pain on her face. I can report that a group of young people with TOPY
markings on their arms swallowed PILLS to prepare for the performance. I can
report that a speed freak with a broad Cockney accent and the look of a minor
league football hooligan c. 1979 summed up the show as 'tasty'.
It is a long bus journey from Hackney to Euston. My eyes are blue suns, set above
red mountains.
Jhonn Balance died a few months after I witnessed this performance. I was moved
to journey to Thee Temple of Ing in Ecclesall Woods and burn incense on the
rocks to mark his passing. David Tibet would have it that Jhonn Balance is with us
still. One imagines that Jhonn Balance should be able to travel to the land of the
living from the land of the dead if such a feat is possible. We should all know it
could happen.
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