Rapid Eye #2: Wheatley Vs. Alex Sanders!
Simon Dwyer (ed.) - Rapid Eye #2 (Annihilation, 1992)
Proving to be a far more stimulating read than I'd have suspected, and plenty of witchy/ black magic content to justify a mention here. Leroy Green provides an overview to Alex Sanders' career completely at odds with Stewart Farrar's hagiography (I've not read June Johns') and indicates that the 'King of the Witches' was both a fake and an amiable buffoon. Green gives a brief but insightful review of Sanders' flirtation with rock music, performing theatrical rituals on stage with heavy metal also-rans Black Widow. Of possibly more interest to certain of our readers, Green recalls Sanders' appearance on the
Simon Dee Show in 1970 alongside ... Dennis Wheatley.
"Predictably, Sanders swept on in a voluminous cape, wearing a crux ansata pendant and a pentagram ring, which he told me had once belonged to the 19th century French magus, Eliphas Levi.
One of the show's writers later told me that Wheatley was "terrified" of Sanders and had as little to do with him as possible, except for joining in the discussion on the show. During it, Sanders produced a wax image which he called a "fith-faith", and proceeded to stick pins in it. He announced that the image had been consecrated to represent a man named Charles Pace, with whom Sanders had some kind of dispute [Pace was a journalist on The News Of The World]. Twisting the pin around in the location of the image's heart, Sanders said: 'He will have a heart attack now.'
Questioned if he thought such a grotesque performance could actually work, Wheatley said he thought that it was highly possible.
It didn't ....." Buried amidst Simon Dwyer's sprawling, 190 page
The Plague Years, there's an even handed critique of Anton LaVey and the Church Of Satan, and other Occult personalities to come under the microscope include Lobsang 'Tibetan Monk' Rampa, Carlos Castenada and H. P. Lovecraft. There's also a rather amusing, if frightening, case-history of the
Lord Horror 'obscenity' bust.
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Baron VordenbergExcellent stuff Dem! Yes I think your summation of Sanders is about accurate - I get the impression that much of Sander's occult career was fuelled on chain-smoked ciggies and endless pints of Guinness. Definitely a bit of a huckster but as he was quite entertaining about it we can forgive him.
An aside - has anybody here read the Robert Irwin novel 'Satan Wants Me' which is set in the darker occult scene of 60s London - Dennis Wheatley comes into that in an unexpected and hilarious manner. Actually I thought the novel was great read, extremely entertaining stuff.
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demonikI don't know enough about Sanders to formulate an opinion on him one way or the other, Baron. Heard some ill of him, but that was from another incorrigible publicity-seeker with whom he'd had a falling out, so I tended to dismiss it as sour grapes.
Leafing through my scrapbooks of shame, I find that Charles Pace was probably not a
News Of The World reporter after all, but a self-styled 'Master Satanist' who spilled his all on the front page of that newspaper's 19th September 1976 edition (
We expose Satanism, black magic and sex orgies in the respectable suburbs of Britain screams the headline to Barry Ward's "special investigation". Photo's of tits & bums obligingly follow).
*Scratches Robert Irwin's 'Satan Wants Me' onto the never-ending wants list ....*
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Baron VordenbergAh yes Charles Pace, apparently an undertaker by profession and self-styled 'high priest of Anubis' - like Sanders another posturer on the 60's-70s occult scene. Called himself 'Hamart' I believe.
Your scrapbook of black magic newspaper cuttings sounds brill, Dem!
Oh if you've not read the Irwin novel you are in for a real treat - I think it would be right up your street.
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demonik What amazes me with these 'Master Satanists', 'High Priests', 'Kings Of Witches' & Co., is how comes they always end up talking to the journalists rather than turning them into toads, or slamming the door in their faces at the very least? They're not too hot on running "secret societies" either, are they? A cynic might even wonder if they're in the business of pestering journalists to interview them so they can have a good moan about being set up and it's all a return to the 'Burning Times' etc.
The scrapbooks came about when I was fairly obsessively researching 'vampires' in the mid-nineties. I'd hit the National Newspaper Library in Colindale and get photocopies of just about everything I could find relating to a certain '70's case - you know the one, but please don't mention
it! Turned out there was such an abundance of material on Toytown Satanists, people dressing up in Nazi uniforms, voodoo dolls, alleged body-snatching, etc. Somehow, I've obtained quite a few yellowing newspapers from the period too.
The stuff fascinates me. I wish the
News Of The Screws would get their arse in gear and start 'exposing' all these amusing kinky devil-worshipping types again.
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Baron VordenbergHave no fear, Dem, 'They' shall remain unnamed.
I quite agree, exposes of kinky devil-worshippers, swinging suburban covens, naked midnight prancings, orgiastic rites and the 'shameful kiss' is exactly what the nation needs and it's high time the Sunday papers revived this good old British tradition complete with grainy photos of buxom witches leaping and frolicking in their infernal rites.
Those exposes always fascinated me back then and they make for compelling reading still: the whiff of brimstone is irresistible!
My own enduring fascination for all aspects of the Occult began around 1974, initially fuelled on a heady brew of Hammer, Amicus and Tigon films, a steady diet of the kind of lurid paperbacks discussed on this site and such satanic flaps in the press of the day.
