Opening the imagination - expressing the heart

This is the Web Page of Alan Richardson. I’m not the American fella who writes those excellent books on Christian Mysticism, nor am I the Alan Richardson who writes what I’m sure are superb supernatural Horror Stories. No, I’m the Alan Richardson who writes books on Pagan Magick, and who lives in a small flat in a large town on the edge of Wiltshire, somewhat equidistant between Avebury and Glastonbury. 

Despite this ‘Other Self’ of mine which writes odd books, at very heart I can only - proudly - describe myself as a miner’s son from Ashington. You can’t have inflated ideas about yourself when you come from a place like that. They wouldn’t let you. I’ve traveled all over the world but the people of that town are the toughest, gentlest, funniest, kindest I’ve ever known, or ever will know, with a wonderful sense of self-mockery and an instinctive talent for smelling bullshit. I haven’t lived there for 30 years, but a large part of me has never left, and never will. If the concept of ‘Spirit of Place’ has ever figured in my writing, then it’s because of where I grew up, and first grew inward.

 And that’s true enough, too. At present I’m working on a biography of the late William G. Gray, the noted Kabbalist and magician, co-writing it with Marcus Claridge, his godson. I first started writing to WGG in my mid-teens, and have since amassed a correspondence going back over nearly 30 years. He terrified me, in some ways, but he taught me more than anyone. He was real magician - and I’ve met enough in my time to know. The book will be published by Ignotus Press, and called The Old Sod.

In between writing on Magick, I press on as ever with my weird little novels which get me rave rejections, but no publisher willing to take the chance. That's not a complaint (well I suppose it is, really) because a decent life in the real world doing a job where I have many friends and a lot of laughs. 

So that’s me, more or less. I’m a lucky old bastard, really I am.

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Last modified: November 09, 2003