Sybarite Among the Shadows Richard McNeff

dylan thomas, aleister crowley and victor neuburg caught in a surrealist web

What if the Beast returned and you were not sure if he were the best or worst thing that had ever happened to you?

It is June 1936, and DylanThomas surprises Victor Neuburg, his former editor, with a visit. Dylan has had a sinister encounter in a West End pub. This launches an adventure whose backdrops are the Surrealist Exhibition, the pubs of Fitzrovia and clubs of Soho, and whose characters, some of the most celebrated of the period. The foreground is a fatal reunion. In walking again in the shadow of the Beast, however, Neuburg not only has to confront the actual demons of his past, but also Aleister Crowley's current links with MI5 and the plot that would change history.

If Jesus had Peter, Aleister Crowley had Victor Neuburg. A quarter of a century after the end of a partnership that saw them share hallucinogens in Victoria Street and invoke the most fearsome demon of the Cabbala in the Algerian desert, they are reunited through the agencies of Dylan Thomas - Neuburg's protégée. Against the backdrop of bohemian London of the Thirties, Neuburg walks again in the shadow of the Beast.

He is not alone. Many are connected to Crowley; some famous like Augustus John and Tom Driberg; some less so like Brilliant Chang, the drug king of Chinatown, and the mysterious captain who visits the Beast. It is the latter's cryptic instructions that lead them to a nightclub in Soho and the table of Edward and Wallis Simpson.

Neuburg has to confront a past that is much more with him than he has realised. However, the demon he has to exorcise is the same that fills the present with omens of war. Finally, he may be free of it, but the world never. Crowley, meanwhile, hopes to make his fortune from his work for MI5. All climaxes by the Thames at dawn - Neuburg's exorcism, the dedication of the Book of the Law, and the plot that would change history.

Richard McNeff was born in London. He is a published poet and short story writer who has worked internationally in education and the art world. Early contact with associates of the Beast sparked his interest in Crowley.

Forteana: The Tunguska Incident

Tunguska is a region which possesses the beginning of Lake Baikal, approximately five hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide, the greatest quantity of fresh water on the whole of the planet Earth. The incident which happened eight kilometres above Tunguska River, flattening 2,150 square kilometres of forest, affecting eighty million trees, and lighting up London in 1908....Russian scientists now believe pieces of a craft they have found at the locale of the devastation must have been an extra-terrestrial craft....very recently in the news media....

soooooo . . .

It was roundabout six in the evening, and Gully, the six foot two inch barman was preparing for the insane onslaught of Edinburgh nightlife which would beleagure him within three hours.

The barfly caught sight of sheets of paper I was carrying, and in particular a certain acronym typed there. "So you're into UFOs, are you?" he drawled out in a thick Scottish accent.
"It's one of the subjects I'm interested in."
He was about five feet seven inches, black-haired stocky, muscley. He was drinking a lager while Gully slid over an orange juice thing for me.
"I did get told a few things about that while I was in the military."
"Why did you leave?"
"Injury. And I'm not happy about what they gave me."
"What type of injury?"
"Not very easy to tell you. But bad enough to make me leave."
"What were you?"
"A top secret weapons technician. For eight years from 1984 to 1992." The point in time of this conversation was January 1993.

Readers can not know what went through my mind at that statement. John Grace is the secret real name of the American trainer in the use of American-developed electro-magnetic beam weapons which were sent over during the Autumn of 1979, and he trained British troops in their use from 1980 to 1984. That latter fact can cause a quite frightened look to come upon a soldier's face, as long as, of course, it is what he has been confidentially informed of. There's something really scary about that 1979 thing.....the diseases induceable by these 'directed energy weapons' range from polycaemia, a leukaemia variant, to Crohn's Disease, which warps the large intestine, but most especially dangerous is the raising of the temperature of the brain by two or three degrees.....so the date of the induction of this man into top secret weaponry was instantly intriguing.

He went on, "....but their attitude to what it did to me makes me feel like sayin' 'Fuck your secrecy, pal.' So I could tell you somethin', like...."
His heavy vibe made me feel I was in for a heavy bit of disclosure, and if you, dear reader, would like some idea of what is meant by 'a heavy vibe' (let's call him Sean and respect some need for confidentiality) the fellow tried to commit suicide two days after this conversation, and had shown Gully the scars on his wrist to convey how low he had felt.
Deducing he couldn't have been all that long out of the military, maybe even a matter of weeks, I urged him.
"O.K. Fire away. Not with one of your weapons of course."
"Aw right, I've got to - got to - be really careful about this - they might - you know - "

"Take you out, obviously." (Yes, I did ponder the corniness of Sean's actual utterance, but when something really happens, people just do sound like a Hollywood B-film....they don't come out with a spontaneous Hegellian pontification....the very first story I got told that set me off on all this invloved the witness having to apologise for claiming a bunch of Germans had exclaimed "It can't be!! It vood haff to be rrreading ourr minds!!") Sean also conveys what was on most people's minds at the time, the recent publication of Tony Collins' '25 Mysterious Deaths In The Defence Industry' in January 1990, detailing strange deaths of British scientists in Britain, often visiting the Clifton Suspension Bridge, for a more scenic fling of themselves over it, possibly....a Sunday Times journalist had discovered they all had been electro-magnetic wavelength spectrum analysts, whilst a musical backdrop jangled in my brainwaves provided by The Sundays, whose beautiful blonde lead singer would exercise before every performance...when asked why, she'd answered some NME interviewer by saying

"Because I'd worked in such a heavy area of the civil service, I needed to know such hellish state secrets I'm scared they're gonna come along and top me, so I like to think I'm gonna put up a fight if they do..." "Here's Where The Story Ends" is their most famous song, if you're having trouble placing them....

Sean spurted on - "It was, it was that...toon...toon...what's the name of it....it happened in 1908 in Russia....a fuckin' massive explosion."

"The Tunguska explosion in 1908."

"Aye! That was it. I had had to be told that that was an incoming extra-terrestrial craft. As part of my job they'd HAD to tell me. I'm not sure I can say any more than that. They'll go really crazy if I say any more."
"What's the reason for the secrecy?"
"It's difficult....I can't...."
"Is it to do with money....aliens are from money-free societies and the West doesn't want that morale boost to go to the Soviets?"
"Well, somthin' like that....listen, if you want to do somethin' big for your ufology, I'll tell you one more thing, and I'm not tellin' you anymore....do your ufo investigatin' around Rosyth, aroundabout that area there.....man, if you bastards knew what was happenin' there...it's massive.....just investigate around there, where I was based...."

I'll stop the anecdote there. I didn't investigate "aroundabout there", so totally convinced was I that an electro-magnetic beam weapon incident in Kent was the biggest story I'd come upon, and that kept me visiting Kent, partly psychologically unwilling to believe that near to me the biggest events were happening....to my eternal regret.

The biggest incident I've ever heard of was to happen on the 23rd of September 1996, when four witnesses out together claimed they'd seen hundreds of alien beings swarming around the fields just by the nothing-ever-happens-here village called Newton-of Falkland, centrally within the shire of Fife. Nevertheless, I feel I may have made up for that by finding out more about that incident than anyone else (For instance, one of the two women had stated "I'm not masturbating with the sheets off again. Not after all those funny wee men suddenly appearing round my bed.") and now possess quite a fund of fascinating details in relation to what these people said they experienced that have not yet been written down, by other than me.

And just one other thing.....a woman called Brenda Butler claims that in 1984 she accompanied an extra-terrestrial (reptilian) to the house of Lord Hill-Norton, Admiral of the Fleet, and watched the being beg for water to be gifted to his parched planet, partly water in far lesser proportion than ours, as if Lord Hill-Norton was the presumed interface for such requests....it had to be fresh water, not salt, which these reptoids are very much more afraid of than we are.....and so one's mind thinks back to Lake Baikal.....

Nuff said.

David Moncoeur, I've lectured a lot in England, and most gratifying was, a friend called Robert Hutton returning from visiting the paranormal crowds I'd lectured to, and telling my friend Sharron Coull "They were all going on about how Davey Moncoeur was their favourite speaker of all the speakers they've put on." Robert is a park ranger in Scotland, and he always goes to England for breaks because he gets so sick of seeing Scottish scenery.

I've also been flattered by a local Scottish TV company (Lanarkshire TV, which used to broadcast to Glasgow, not Edinburgh) who, in broadcasting me a third time, said I was the best thing they'd aired, and would I like to be a resident TV personality? I was just too shocked and embarrassed, and also found it too awkward to change careers just like that...another, internet, TV company stated I was the best thing they'd filmed (Pharo.com or something) and I am working with an independent film maker in Fife who is also very taken with me, called Sarah Macleod.

Just a couple of weeks ago I appeared on the front page of a local newspaper, the 'Musselborough News', in a colour photograph showing me beside a gravestone which had been claimed by a few people to have suddenly seemed to have Latin writing on it, which then changed back to English before their very eyes, and am developing my own personal slant on why these things happen. Yours truly, David Moncoeur

21st Century Grail or JC's Eggcup

I've been reading Andy Collins' latest - a rather lucid account of the modern day quest for the grail. In it Andy returns with some panache to the old psychic questing stomping ground - part psychic part literary detective. All across the English speaking world there are those who still believe that the King James Version of the Bible was actually translated by God himself. To those same people, the idea that 'Jesus was not divine, he was married to Mary Magdalen and had a child with her, his bloodline survived in France and the Holy Grail was not a chalice but a woman is a bit of a revelation. Hence the success of the tale's many retellings, including the multimillion copy best seller,"The Da Vinci Code". It makes for a good novel but as magical history it covers too vast a range of times and cultures for my taste - the papering over of the cracks a little too blatant. But remember the Surrealist golden rule - 'people prefer the preposterous.'

Andy's take on this differs slightly in that he also wants to write himself into the story - to be one of those questing grail knights - and why not I hear you say? Why not indeed? The first half is better than the second. The excursus into early Christian history is interesting if maybe a bit unreliable. I think there were more than one 'Mary' in the New Testament. The C4 programme Who Wrote the Bible was in a way much more enlightening where it uncovered the evidence that Mary Magdalen was probably one of the leaders of the first Christians - a fact that needed to be edited out by Constantine's Roman spin doctors. A heretical medieval sect, inspired by the 'eastern' Gospel of Mary is a real possibility.

After the promise of the first half of Andy's book most of this material is put to one side as everything moved off into the realm of farce. There are too many false trails and loose ends that don't quite get tied up.

The ideas of Aleister Crowley are given an airing but it all seems a bit unconvincing. Indeed the idea that the grail is a women not a cup ought to fit well with Crowley's cult of Babalon and Oriental Templarism. But Andy seems to prefer artefact to the reality of magick. At what should be the climax of the quest, there is a blinding flash of light but nothing thereafter. Enter Graham Philips, one of Andy's many friends who back in the 1980s also wrote a 'best selling book' on the grail culminating in its discovery! Only we're now told he is depressed because power, fame and fortune didn't follow. And he now wants to destroy the precious object and is persuaded to give it to Andy so he can complete his book - maybe he will do better. Is it a good sign that members of this coterie of authors are beginning to reference each other? Or is it just another grail castle in the air?

Trouble is that the Grail, (or should it be THe GRAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIILLLLLL) is only one and half inches high - JC's Eggcup!! It impresses no-one in particular, certainly not the keeper of Roman antiquities at the British Museum. Perhaps not even the authors who are soon off on yet another quest, leading to yet another artefact - is this product placement for the next book?

Right on cue comes the following story concerning material discussed at length but inconclusively in Andy's book:

Code traced to religious sect From correspondents in London November 26, 2004

A MYSTERIOUS carved code at a British manor house, which has defied understanding for hundreds of years, is thought to be a cryptic message from an 18th century Christian sect, experts said today.

The series of apparently random letters inscribed on a monument at the Shugborough Estate in Staffordshire, central England, were analysed for months by veterans of Britain's World War II code-breaking service.

The experts said today that a US researcher had now come up with a likely explanation for the code on the Shepherd's Monument.

The marble tablet, commissioned in 1748, features a carved image of a painting by French 17th century artist Nicolas Poussin, with the letters "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M." underneath.

According to popular legend, the code revealed the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, in Christian teaching the cup used by Jesus to drink from at the Last Supper.

In May, managers at Shugborough decided to invite experts from the famous World War II Bletchley Park code-breaking centre, along with their modern counterparts, to tackle the code.

The experts said that the US researcher, using a mixture of normal code-breaking systems and historical context, thought the letters stood for "Jesus (As Deity) Defy", a message from the Priory of Sion.

The Priory, a mysterious organisation perennially linked by conspiracy theorists to the Holy Grail, viewed Jesus as an earthly prophet rather than a son of god.

Such a message insisting on Jesus's mortal status would have to have been put into hard-to-decipher code because it defied conventional Christian thinking, the experts said.

The new theory is buoyed by the fact that the Priory of Sion was a spiritual successor to the Knights Templar, an organisation which Poussin reputedly once headed.

The painting from which the carving is drawn, "Les Bergers d'Arcadie", is housed in Paris's Louvre Museum, and has long been subject to speculation about its supposed Masonic symbolism.

Poussin, the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion are frequently invoked by groups convinced that the Holy Grail is at the centre of some grand mystery concerning the Roman Catholic Church.

Such theories have acquired massive popular exposure through "The Da Vinci Code", a best-selling novel by US author Dan Brown which expounds the theory that Jesus had a number of descendants, a fact that was covered up by the Church.

The book has been so successful that France, where much of the action takes place, has benefitted from a mini-boom of US tourists visiting sites mentioned in the novel such as the Louvre and the church of Saint Sulpice on Paris's Left Bank.

All of the above must count as a significant synchronicity coming as it does on the tails of Andy's fascinating and very readable book. Check it out for yourself - Mogg

DESCENT TO THE GODDESS

(Memories of the Grand Banishment.)

Dis-enchanted i lay on the Island of Love.
Memories of flames and triumphs,
Scorching, twisted bones...
Sober, wide awake, wiser for the pain,
I shall darn small blessings
on the tattered rags of our dreams.

I loathe you, the Righteous,
That baptized your crippleness: Virtue-
Your bodies, rigid in their self -imposed stocks-
Iron hips, Hearts of stone-
Having forsaken the magik of touch
From the depth of your frozen despair
You shoot arrows of Contempt.

Surely you must be right,
And She must be Banished.
She of the swaying hips with Her girdle of Charms,
Her soft flesh, which answers the caress of the Winds,
Her playful inviting eyes...
Shame!
Shame on She that helps us remember
Snakes rising in glorious sunsets,
Arched bodies, shivering, ecstatic,
Triumphant moans amist soft red rose petals,
The endless shimering of wet nights!

Ignore her, blank Her out, -
She might yet just vanish like some bad dream,
Melt away into the arid, remote desert
of your sensorial deprivation-
Banished!
Her feet bleeding upon the Thorns of Judgment,
Her silk robes soiled, tattered, ripped,
She rages!
She does not look so proud now-
Hardly a threat!- as,confused by the standards
Of your senseless crusades,
She sings softly to herself
Meaningless lullabies of Love.

Her Children are still-born.
Tears of crystal, long dried and sullied,
Have clouded her Vision.
The implacable Sun of your endless days
Forever has parched Her Waters-
In Her dead eyes,- a ghostly mirage-
Long gone cities of dreams...

I saw her, delicately shelling a golden green scarab
With her long translucent fingers,
Kneeling in the dust as to some altar,
Clad in her mantle of Derision...
She re-members not who She was,
As, triumphant, you erect over her Chastised Body
An Empire of Deadened Senses, of Disciplined Flesh,
Which you named: Moral Order!-
And I raged!

At Dawn, the wind blew at my feet
The tattered remnants of Her Shimmering Veils...
And I wept.

Brigitte Ariel

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Groups

Bath Omphalos, a Moot for LHP magicos in Bath area. For more details contact omphalospaganmoot@.... Essentially a discussion group at the moment, open to all. The first speaker meeting is

Conferences

Witchcraft seminar - review

Gale force winds whipped around the battlements, rain lashed the windows. Marion Green was heard to say, 'if you really want to understand the elements go into the carpark.' Well that didn't really come out right but we knew what she meant.

Many were there to hear what turned out to be Maxine Sanders engaging description of the genesis of the Alexandrian movement. But first - in heavy chiaroscuro, choking clouds of incense rose from half a dozen censors, then Ralph Harvey's voice cut through the gloom - a voice straight from the hammer house of horror and long john silver - WITCHCRAFT!!!!! - the OOOOOLLLLLLLLDDDDDD religion.

Lots of hocum and wiccan foundation myth, of course, but all done with great panache and a final crescendo of passion that had many, myself included, in tears.

Was it that or Diane Firmin's earlier amazing talk about the magick of cats, where the speaker conjured a pathetic image of the witches on the gibbet, the family pet hanging and sharing their fate to the last. Its a very sad image that - and in the news this week it was confirmed -

LONDON, England (AP) -- A Scottish township plans to mark Halloween by officially pardoning 81 people -- and their cats -- executed centuries ago for being witches.

Well what a wonderful conference - perhaps the last to be held at that spooky venue - above is just a smattering of the many excellent speakers - some maybe a bit worse for wear from the demon drink on the evening before but otherwise as good as . . .

Star of the show i'd say the very understated but thought provoking piece from JSM editor Dave Evans which can be viewed at:

Well done Adrian and everyone involved

Omphalos

Bath is to play host to a Magickal Fair from the 25th of April to the 1st of May, 2005. This event is basically about having a platform to express magickal creativity. Part of this involves the creation of a magickal picture book. A key word is being sent to magicians from diverse cultural, geograpical and philosophical perspectives... This word will be interpreted and illustrated in either one image or a triptych. These examples of a linking of a collective magickal unconscious will then be assembled (in a simplistic format) and sold at the fair.

We cannot give any financial recompense for this, just a chance to be involved in something interesting and a copy of the resultant magazine. The deadline for submissions is the end of January. We'll need your name, the name you use to sign your work ,and a contact address...

The key word is Omphalos.

If you are interested in contributing and want further details please contact me at charlottejane2002@... Many thanks, and look forward to hearing from you! Charlotte