David J., Moore and rituals

Excerpts from an interview with musician extraordinaire and Moore's collaborator David J. The complete interviews is available HERE. More is included in his book Who killed Mister Moonlight?

[...] David J.: As a kid, I was fascinated with the occult and being raised in a fairly non-religious home it was something which was not repressed by my parents, although my dad would often describe me as “most peculiar”! I was interested to learn that my great aunt on my mother’s side was a spiritualist. From an early age I loved to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe and a little later, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen. In my early twenties I got into Aleister Crowley, Bryon Gysin and William S. Burroughs which led to further investigations and then I met with Genesis P-Orridge and the genie was out of the bottle so to speak! Although, I believe that Gen’s direction was far more ‘left hand path’ than my own which was and is more Pantheistic and leaning towards high magick (white). When Alan Moore invited me into his cabal of magicians, my interest and practice deepened considerably. At one point, it started to take me over and I think I became a bit unhinged to tell you the truth. It’s the nature of the beast! These other dimensional forces that are at play are very wild and powerful and one can be completely consumed if one is not careful. I knew that I needed some spiritual grounding and was blessed to have found this through my discovery of Paramahnasa Yogananda, my true guru, although I still maintain a profound relationship with the goddess of the underworld and find nothing contradictory in that.

[...] It seems that you and Alan were operating through the lens of a classic set of archetypes based upon mythology and magick but that these same experiences could be interpreted in a wildly varied fashion based upon the veil we drape over them in both our projections and interpretations. Where you saw evidence of Hecate at play, some may have posited these happenings to anything from Aliens to Pixies to fragments and imprints that had crystalized in their subconscious for any number of reasons. Would you say that is fair and would you care to elaborate?

Well, yes, I do agree with you about projection, but you cite the example of Hecate and when I had my initial encounter with that particular entity, I was unaware of the known symbolic associations and yet they were all there, present and correct in my devastating dream that was somehow more than just a dream. As I describe in the book, it was Alan who immediately identified these and ‘Her’. I found that when I was immersed in the magickal realm and conducting rituals and experiments with Alan, the phenomena which you describe, especially synchronicity and magickal manifestation was intensified tremendously. It was somewhat overwhelming and I had to consciously pull back. Eventually I relinquished my magickal tools. This was done with great respect and reverence. I buried my exquisite athame (magickal dagger) in the desert. It was extremely strange, as when I returned home from the burial, I tried to bring up a photograph of the athame on my computer and it had mysteriously disappeared from my photo library! [...]

The complete interviews is available HERE.