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The English Heretic Collection: Ritual Histories, Magickal Geography
Andy Sharp delivers a visionary field report based on fifteen years of deep vein creative research expeditions to England's strangest landscapes with a host of tragic players.
From its inaugural Black Plaque in honour of Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves, this unique collection follows a veridical trajectory to the frontiers of belief. Reeves' film becomes a conspiratorial cauldron drawing in a host of tragic players in the end game of the Sixties. The Cornwall of Du Maurier's The Birds is ploughed to reveal the hidden psychic codes of our Blitz spirit.
In a powerfully relevant occult rendering of a bruised Island, the myth of Churchill is dissected and re-animalised. New maps of hell are drawn by colliding the forensic vision of JG Ballard and Lovecraftian magic. Actors, witches and psychopaths maraud across a nightmare terrain of murderous henges and abandoned military bases; conflating creative research into a surreal documentary, history as hallucination. Geography becomes an alchemical alembic, a vale of soul-making distilled by the lysergic psychobiology of Stanislav Grof, the alcoholic lyricism of Malcolm Lowry, and the convulsive travelogues of the Marquis de Sade.
If history is revealed as paranoid ritual, how do we escape its time traps to wild new imaginative geographies? The English Heretic collection is a darkly comical, urgently lyrical, mental escape hatch from the hells of our own making.
From its inaugural Black Plaque in honour of Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves, this unique collection follows a veridical trajectory to the frontiers of belief. Reeves' film becomes a conspiratorial cauldron drawing in a host of tragic players in the end game of the Sixties. The Cornwall of Du Maurier's The Birds is ploughed to reveal the hidden psychic codes of our Blitz spirit.
In a powerfully relevant occult rendering of a bruised Island, the myth of Churchill is dissected and re-animalised. New maps of hell are drawn by colliding the forensic vision of JG Ballard and Lovecraftian magic. Actors, witches and psychopaths maraud across a nightmare terrain of murderous henges and abandoned military bases; conflating creative research into a surreal documentary, history as hallucination. Geography becomes an alchemical alembic, a vale of soul-making distilled by the lysergic psychobiology of Stanislav Grof, the alcoholic lyricism of Malcolm Lowry, and the convulsive travelogues of the Marquis de Sade.
If history is revealed as paranoid ritual, how do we escape its time traps to wild new imaginative geographies? The English Heretic collection is a darkly comical, urgently lyrical, mental escape hatch from the hells of our own making.
427 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 26, 2021
Finding "the" starting point for this review is impossible. Though the book is contained in space, its ideas expand out in a herky-jerky supernova of stochasticity. The omphalos here is present, one can sense it, but to define it is to understand the entire work at once, an impossible task (I suspect, impossible even for the author, Andy Sharp himself). One can discern layers on the surface of the navel-of-the-world such as the grand trifecta of folk horror movies The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan's Claw, and Witchfinder General, or the earth-shattering pop-tragedies of Hiroshima and November 22nd, 1963, or the creepier-than-is-proper-for-"good"-English-folk television of the 1970s (Robin Redbreast, Children of the Stones, Doctor Who, et al). There are feverish spikes into the occult underground and dives into the deep chambers of haunted Britain.
But to identify a "theme"? Practically impossible here.
Which is to say, I loved it. Like De Santillana's Hamlet's Mill or Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, we have her a work that is absolutely recognizable for its coherence, yet absolutely unexplainable in its breadth and diversity. These layers upon layers of seemingly-unrelated bits of academia, psychedelia, and cinemania churn in a veritable stew of potential conspiracy theories. But where the Q folk might take themselves far too seriously for the rest of the world, Sharp is fully aware that as he points one finger at the strange phenomena of the world, there are three other fingers pointing back at him in abject self-mockery. The humor saves us from what might otherwise turn into a panicked revelation of a Grand Conspiracy concocted from the paranoid dreams of those who would make too many connections where they should not, "seeing" "reality" for what "it is". No, Sharp is clear (and, pardon the pun, sharp) that while this work can be seen as a Working (in the esoteric magical sense of the word), it is not ritualistic, in that no one is expected to take an oath of fealty or secrecy or even to take any of this seriously.
But the connections are intriguing. And this Working is one of seeding the imaginal, of altering consciousness by pointing out the threads that at least seem to tie the strange underworld of the English isles (and, to a more limited extent, their distant American cousins) into a cohesive, meaningful whole. I use the word "seem" carefully. Because it's not these fallacious connections that stir the imagination, it is the possibility of such that calls on the reader to make their own connections, to carry on the Working into their own sphere of intellect, spirituality, and, yes, even their sense of humor about the ridiculousness of the cosmos and our self-important place in it.
So, welcome to the Working. Don't worry about when or where it will start. As you will see, in the stratums psychogeography, between Kennedy, Stonehenge, Baphomet and Brighton, peeking out from behind Fulcanelli and Manson, between the pages of the Necronomicon and and the astral-drenched walls of The House on the Borderland, there is no beginning, there is no end. Careful where you step - that rabbit hole might go down to forever, or never.
But to identify a "theme"? Practically impossible here.
Which is to say, I loved it. Like De Santillana's Hamlet's Mill or Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, we have her a work that is absolutely recognizable for its coherence, yet absolutely unexplainable in its breadth and diversity. These layers upon layers of seemingly-unrelated bits of academia, psychedelia, and cinemania churn in a veritable stew of potential conspiracy theories. But where the Q folk might take themselves far too seriously for the rest of the world, Sharp is fully aware that as he points one finger at the strange phenomena of the world, there are three other fingers pointing back at him in abject self-mockery. The humor saves us from what might otherwise turn into a panicked revelation of a Grand Conspiracy concocted from the paranoid dreams of those who would make too many connections where they should not, "seeing" "reality" for what "it is". No, Sharp is clear (and, pardon the pun, sharp) that while this work can be seen as a Working (in the esoteric magical sense of the word), it is not ritualistic, in that no one is expected to take an oath of fealty or secrecy or even to take any of this seriously.
But the connections are intriguing. And this Working is one of seeding the imaginal, of altering consciousness by pointing out the threads that at least seem to tie the strange underworld of the English isles (and, to a more limited extent, their distant American cousins) into a cohesive, meaningful whole. I use the word "seem" carefully. Because it's not these fallacious connections that stir the imagination, it is the possibility of such that calls on the reader to make their own connections, to carry on the Working into their own sphere of intellect, spirituality, and, yes, even their sense of humor about the ridiculousness of the cosmos and our self-important place in it.
So, welcome to the Working. Don't worry about when or where it will start. As you will see, in the stratums psychogeography, between Kennedy, Stonehenge, Baphomet and Brighton, peeking out from behind Fulcanelli and Manson, between the pages of the Necronomicon and and the astral-drenched walls of The House on the Borderland, there is no beginning, there is no end. Careful where you step - that rabbit hole might go down to forever, or never.
October 26, 2020
You ever feel as if your mind had started to erode?
You will.
This is nothing other than "a weirdly coherent though essentially hallucinatory dispatch, relayed from dream time and terrain". Archetypes of (mainly) last-quarter-20th-century-Britain, as mediated through tabloid, and celluloid, and tv come together in a psychedelic swirl of connection, disconnection, and re-connection, not in a spider's web of conspiracy theory but in an ecstatic hundred and twenty eight-some reel of fleeting touches and dizzying synchronicity.
If ever a book was a "garden of bright images" this is it, though some are the brightness of reflections in utter darkness and all careen away from you the second you think you've worked out their form.
Want to have a book provoke vertigo? Read on.
You will.
This is nothing other than "a weirdly coherent though essentially hallucinatory dispatch, relayed from dream time and terrain". Archetypes of (mainly) last-quarter-20th-century-Britain, as mediated through tabloid, and celluloid, and tv come together in a psychedelic swirl of connection, disconnection, and re-connection, not in a spider's web of conspiracy theory but in an ecstatic hundred and twenty eight-some reel of fleeting touches and dizzying synchronicity.
If ever a book was a "garden of bright images" this is it, though some are the brightness of reflections in utter darkness and all careen away from you the second you think you've worked out their form.
Want to have a book provoke vertigo? Read on.
November 30, 2020
If you're already aware of the work of English Heretic, particularly if you have read the blog and/or the pamphlets accompanying the CDs, you will be familiar with quite a lot of this material. However, I found having it collated into a single volume enabled a total immersion in the weird and wonderful world of landscape mythos, folk horror and occult history which is the hallmark of English Heretic. If, on the other hand, this is all new to you, the collection provides a perfect introduction. You can explore further at the English Heretic blog and on Bandcamp.
December 5, 2020
I read this on recommendation, having not engaged with any of the authors projects previously. An absolutely fascinating work of imaginative psychogeography. It’s a wonder that he’d not come up on my radar previously, since many of the characters, stories & places that are ingredients in the work have been significant interests of mine over the years. I really love the way he weaves all these ostensibly disparate elements together into something fantastic & utterly fascinating. Despite some minor political points I’d contest that pop up infrequently I was completely impressed, inspired & engaged.
May 22, 2021
This book is a bit like having an animated conversation with a loquacious, erudite friend, free-ranging, speculative, maybe a trifle substance-tinged. Overall though, it's an inspirational and very entertaining attempt to make sense of a great many things that don't lend themselves to structure and logic. I have the benefit of knowing well most of the literary and cinematic subjects but the local English history and home-grown UK eccentrics who fill the chapters are largely new to me. And, of course, like much of what I'm reading these days, this book infects me with a travel itch that -- please the eldritch powers -- will soon be scratchable.
Read
March 12, 2021A fascinating, infuriating volume of psychogeographical interventions and musings on hidden history, which is packed with good stuff but could seriously have done with an editor. Sometimes it's just a little overwritten in that trying-too-hard way, at least a few instances of which can arguably be excused by certain pieces being composed in character, as the English Heritage-spoofing organisational alias suggests. Elsewhere, though...put it this way, Dion Fortune's line "I draw attention to these things not because I wish to boast, than which I dislike nothing more", gets a rather impertinent [sic] despite being a perfectly cromulent formulation. Which is all the more eyebrow-raising when in the same book one finds references to TS Eliot's 'The Wasteland' or, more egregiously, 'Malcolm Gladwell's Witchfinders', rather than Malcolm Gaskill's – though the former does seem like the sort of book, or indeed organisation, the 2020s could all too plausibly produce. The solicitor David Napley is a noteworthy figure with all sorts of suggestive connections, but proposing him as the ideal lawyer for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen misses the whole point of everyone in LoEG comics being fictional - you'd need a veiled version of Napsley instead, as with the appearances by analogues of a frequent touchstone in this book, Aleister Crowley. When Sharp contrasts "the laser-toy, interplanetary skirmishes of Blake's 7" with "the running battles on Belfast streets, all bricks and tear gas", it's not entirely clear whether he realises or remembers how much B7 was precisely about the tensions of the age. rebels losing all trace of moral high ground while fighting a ruthless regime. And so on. This may seem like nitpicking, but at its worst it undermines all trust in the project, as with the reference trying to map a suicide as ritual sacrifice because it took place "at Midsummer, the 23rd of July 1966". When you're over a month out with the date of a festival, and not even one of the obscure ones, it can't help but shake the reader's confidence in any broader points you're trying to make.
Which is a shame, because the wider points are often the best bits. The project exists on a fruitful sort of tightrope, drawing the kind of questionable connections which, more than ever, people nowadays seem willing to reshape their lives around – but unlike yer QAnon types, English Heretic is careful to stay just the right side of Ken Campbell's believe/suppose dichotomy. Or, as it's phrased here, "There might be no conspiratorial truth, but there is an aesthetic truth". If the effect can sometimes suggest Adam Curtis working with green ink instead of stock footage, well, I'm not sure you could write a book like this which came across as entirely sane, and one certainly gets less impression here of a cult leader making fuckboy-esque protestations that he's not like all the other cult leaders, he loves you for your mind. Yes, some of the frequent reference points are familiar, verging on overfamiliar – JG Ballard, the Qliphoth, Kenneth Grant, Doctor Who, Blood On Satan's Claw. Although in fairness, his piece on that folk horror mainstay came out before it was quite the genre centrepiece it's since become. Between which, and being written in a somewhat tweedy persona, maybe I can forgive it talking about the sexual character of the rites, tying back to The White Goddess and related speculations, and yet mentioning but not making anything of the film's cinematographer going by the splendid name Dick Bush.
At its best, the book can sum things up in a single line, as when Sharp says of Howard Brenton "more sledgehammer polemic than sickle sharp insight, with its "cor blimey" dialogue and defiant homosexuality, The Romans in Britain feels like A-Level syllabus outrage: a mash up of Journey's End and Coil's Horse Rotovator. It's also a bit Legs Akimbo Theatre Company." That should be 'Legz', of course, but we've gone over the editing. Which yes, does mean one has to double-check the more eye-catching stuff here, but there's enough of it that's sufficiently eye-catching for that to feel worth it. I knew about Joe Kennedy Jr being the favoured son and dying in the war, thus clearing the way for JFK – but not about the sheer foolhardiness of the fatal mission, a sort of nightmare Heath Robinson early attempt at a drone strike. Did Disney's Haunted Mansion ride really open on the same day as the Manson murders were discovered? I've not checked yet, but it should have done. Sometimes it's just a lovely line which is almost better without its context: "If earth is the alien planet, then Uxbridge is a forsaken colony, a breeding ground for assassins''. Sometimes it's an emblematic image summing up a particular aspect of the fuckedness of our national psychic life, as when John Smyth QC, who acted for the odious Mary Whitehouse against Gay News, and attempted to proseute the National Theatre over The Romans In Britain, is revealed as having also taken an interest in a hideous educational establishment where he used to beat boys on their bare buttocks, then "lie down in bed with the boy, following the beating, kissing him and weeping as if taken in religious ecstasy". True, it's debatable whether that sentence really needs 'religious', though I suppose if religion means anything, pederasty does seem to be a very big part of it. More topically, there's a section on ghost villages such as Tyneham and Imber, whose inhabitants temporarily sacrificed them during the war and then never got them back from the MoD – a handy reminder of what tends to happen in Britain when people agree to give things up for the duration of an emergency. And beyond Ballard, Crowley and the rest of the usual suspects, its rogues' gallery includes some more novel figures, not least sausage fraudster Dennis Lorraine, subject of his son's biography Fucking On Fridays: My Old Man And The Great Sausage Scam. There's also a mesmerising section on Ian Ball, who ineptly attempted to kidnap Princess Anne but subsequently claimed, with apparent sincerity but minimal sanity, that the whole business was in fact a hoax because he was unstuck in time. It's as a bridge between the reader and someone this far gone that the slightly crabbed and unsound approach of the project finds one of its greatest successes.
So, you know, plenty of good stuff – but excavating it isn't always easy. There were times when the best summary I could give was that it was like the footnote to a Grant Morrison comic from when Grant Morrison comics were worth footnoting. But I can forgive a lot for anything which comes out with lines like "Wheatley succeeds, completely inadvertently, in revealing the true secret of magic: that its Maginot lines are non-existent borders; there is no Group-soul, no blood or soil, just packets of delicious information awaiting psychedelic piracy on the high seas of history." Verbose compared to John Constantine's summary, true – but then sometimes you need a few more pointers, without wanting to go full ritualist about it. And hell, for all its flaws, when better to read something like English Heretic than after a year as thoroughly Qliphothic as the one we've just had?
Which is a shame, because the wider points are often the best bits. The project exists on a fruitful sort of tightrope, drawing the kind of questionable connections which, more than ever, people nowadays seem willing to reshape their lives around – but unlike yer QAnon types, English Heretic is careful to stay just the right side of Ken Campbell's believe/suppose dichotomy. Or, as it's phrased here, "There might be no conspiratorial truth, but there is an aesthetic truth". If the effect can sometimes suggest Adam Curtis working with green ink instead of stock footage, well, I'm not sure you could write a book like this which came across as entirely sane, and one certainly gets less impression here of a cult leader making fuckboy-esque protestations that he's not like all the other cult leaders, he loves you for your mind. Yes, some of the frequent reference points are familiar, verging on overfamiliar – JG Ballard, the Qliphoth, Kenneth Grant, Doctor Who, Blood On Satan's Claw. Although in fairness, his piece on that folk horror mainstay came out before it was quite the genre centrepiece it's since become. Between which, and being written in a somewhat tweedy persona, maybe I can forgive it talking about the sexual character of the rites, tying back to The White Goddess and related speculations, and yet mentioning but not making anything of the film's cinematographer going by the splendid name Dick Bush.
At its best, the book can sum things up in a single line, as when Sharp says of Howard Brenton "more sledgehammer polemic than sickle sharp insight, with its "cor blimey" dialogue and defiant homosexuality, The Romans in Britain feels like A-Level syllabus outrage: a mash up of Journey's End and Coil's Horse Rotovator. It's also a bit Legs Akimbo Theatre Company." That should be 'Legz', of course, but we've gone over the editing. Which yes, does mean one has to double-check the more eye-catching stuff here, but there's enough of it that's sufficiently eye-catching for that to feel worth it. I knew about Joe Kennedy Jr being the favoured son and dying in the war, thus clearing the way for JFK – but not about the sheer foolhardiness of the fatal mission, a sort of nightmare Heath Robinson early attempt at a drone strike. Did Disney's Haunted Mansion ride really open on the same day as the Manson murders were discovered? I've not checked yet, but it should have done. Sometimes it's just a lovely line which is almost better without its context: "If earth is the alien planet, then Uxbridge is a forsaken colony, a breeding ground for assassins''. Sometimes it's an emblematic image summing up a particular aspect of the fuckedness of our national psychic life, as when John Smyth QC, who acted for the odious Mary Whitehouse against Gay News, and attempted to proseute the National Theatre over The Romans In Britain, is revealed as having also taken an interest in a hideous educational establishment where he used to beat boys on their bare buttocks, then "lie down in bed with the boy, following the beating, kissing him and weeping as if taken in religious ecstasy". True, it's debatable whether that sentence really needs 'religious', though I suppose if religion means anything, pederasty does seem to be a very big part of it. More topically, there's a section on ghost villages such as Tyneham and Imber, whose inhabitants temporarily sacrificed them during the war and then never got them back from the MoD – a handy reminder of what tends to happen in Britain when people agree to give things up for the duration of an emergency. And beyond Ballard, Crowley and the rest of the usual suspects, its rogues' gallery includes some more novel figures, not least sausage fraudster Dennis Lorraine, subject of his son's biography Fucking On Fridays: My Old Man And The Great Sausage Scam. There's also a mesmerising section on Ian Ball, who ineptly attempted to kidnap Princess Anne but subsequently claimed, with apparent sincerity but minimal sanity, that the whole business was in fact a hoax because he was unstuck in time. It's as a bridge between the reader and someone this far gone that the slightly crabbed and unsound approach of the project finds one of its greatest successes.
So, you know, plenty of good stuff – but excavating it isn't always easy. There were times when the best summary I could give was that it was like the footnote to a Grant Morrison comic from when Grant Morrison comics were worth footnoting. But I can forgive a lot for anything which comes out with lines like "Wheatley succeeds, completely inadvertently, in revealing the true secret of magic: that its Maginot lines are non-existent borders; there is no Group-soul, no blood or soil, just packets of delicious information awaiting psychedelic piracy on the high seas of history." Verbose compared to John Constantine's summary, true – but then sometimes you need a few more pointers, without wanting to go full ritualist about it. And hell, for all its flaws, when better to read something like English Heretic than after a year as thoroughly Qliphothic as the one we've just had?
March 15, 2021
As a recent history grad, this was the perfect psychedelic trip to a recent dream of England and beyond. Beyond being the key. I’ll be keen to use this When I start teaching a way to open up the minds of students.
From a thematic point of view you have:
The shifting landscape of witchcraft in the post nuclear age. The geographic drift of superstition from Suffolk to Salem, and the import back of hallucinatory paranoia from the US during the Cold War.
British Bunker mentality and “our”
fetishism for war, kind of extending and playing with Hillman’s Terrible Love Of War. I use our In parenthesis because it also challenges the notion of “our” - the myth of race myth if you like. Hot topic particularly relevant today
Academic zealotry for Folk Horror (Blood on Satan’s Claw) / Pulp mythology
The Death Drive - Anti Heroes.
Descent narratives after WW2 (The Underworld Service)
Occult and Alchemical misuse of Technology (Qliphoth / Lunar research chapter)
Acid Geography (Volcano Adventures) this is one of the most original chapters, and I’ve noticed along with the lovely discussion of the Shell Grottos speculative Astarte cult one that many male reviewers overlook. The volcanic phase of the birth process and its attendant traumas are too feminine for the blokes quibbling over Blake’s 7 or too much Ballard. There’s obviously territorial but leaving the “haunted generation type” blindsighted to these rather elegant chapters. Amusing quite Lacanian really eh guys?
Darker more real hauntology. (Video Anxieties/The execution of hTV kids presenter)
I just read a review here, fuming with indignation that author was downplaying Blake’s 7 hauntological power compared to the Troubles. Iam guessing they weren’t raised in Belfast. I read that bit to my dad who grew up in Belfast (he’s 51) and he has no recollection of Blake’s 7, but still has Nightmares about the execution he witnessed. Sharp is spot on calling out the Usborne Ghosts nostalgia. Proper haunting PTSD my dad has.
Houses on the Borderland:The House as recidivist impulse in Horror / Magick and counter culture
Modern History and synchronicity (Mondo Paranoia)
What’s really affecting is that the potential for dry discourse jettisoned for a more imaginatove approach. I guess he’s trying to get the reader to discover the myth or is showing how it might be possible to unearth a myth? A book that the more you reflect on reveals new shapes, now that’s what I call living history!
From a thematic point of view you have:
The shifting landscape of witchcraft in the post nuclear age. The geographic drift of superstition from Suffolk to Salem, and the import back of hallucinatory paranoia from the US during the Cold War.
British Bunker mentality and “our”
fetishism for war, kind of extending and playing with Hillman’s Terrible Love Of War. I use our In parenthesis because it also challenges the notion of “our” - the myth of race myth if you like. Hot topic particularly relevant today
Academic zealotry for Folk Horror (Blood on Satan’s Claw) / Pulp mythology
The Death Drive - Anti Heroes.
Descent narratives after WW2 (The Underworld Service)
Occult and Alchemical misuse of Technology (Qliphoth / Lunar research chapter)
Acid Geography (Volcano Adventures) this is one of the most original chapters, and I’ve noticed along with the lovely discussion of the Shell Grottos speculative Astarte cult one that many male reviewers overlook. The volcanic phase of the birth process and its attendant traumas are too feminine for the blokes quibbling over Blake’s 7 or too much Ballard. There’s obviously territorial but leaving the “haunted generation type” blindsighted to these rather elegant chapters. Amusing quite Lacanian really eh guys?
Darker more real hauntology. (Video Anxieties/The execution of hTV kids presenter)
I just read a review here, fuming with indignation that author was downplaying Blake’s 7 hauntological power compared to the Troubles. Iam guessing they weren’t raised in Belfast. I read that bit to my dad who grew up in Belfast (he’s 51) and he has no recollection of Blake’s 7, but still has Nightmares about the execution he witnessed. Sharp is spot on calling out the Usborne Ghosts nostalgia. Proper haunting PTSD my dad has.
Houses on the Borderland:The House as recidivist impulse in Horror / Magick and counter culture
Modern History and synchronicity (Mondo Paranoia)
What’s really affecting is that the potential for dry discourse jettisoned for a more imaginatove approach. I guess he’s trying to get the reader to discover the myth or is showing how it might be possible to unearth a myth? A book that the more you reflect on reveals new shapes, now that’s what I call living history!
March 15, 2021
First saw Sharp speak online a few years ago, Volcano Adventures. Since then have been a keen follower of his writings. To have it collated in one bound entity is a treat. I love the way his work speaks to me both within my frame of reference and beyond it. Blurring the boundaries between what I know, what I feel and that which has never occurred to me before. Druids, black dogs, wombs, space exploration and so much more.
May 11, 2021
This one is a little hard to explain-- the basic idea is that this collects the zines that initially made up the Sharp's English Heretic project, which spoofed the "English Heritage" tourist and chamber of commerce commemorations by focusing on England's history of black magic and tragedy, "Wicker Man" ritual enacted on the site of a nuclear research station, etc. The idea is to create a kind of shadow history that in its darkness is as powerful as the sanitized version presented as "English Heritage."
Sharp's prose is something you need to read slowly-- I learned A LOT of words reading this book-- and he has a style that is equal parts grad seminar and the scene setting for a Hammer film. But it's fun. There's a definite punk culture jamming energy here, and I liked it a lot. Surprisingly, the weakest part of the book was the coda at the end, which sums everything up but which felt kind of deflated, like Sharp has already moved on. It happens. But I think the book would have been stronger without that last entry.
Sharp's prose is something you need to read slowly-- I learned A LOT of words reading this book-- and he has a style that is equal parts grad seminar and the scene setting for a Hammer film. But it's fun. There's a definite punk culture jamming energy here, and I liked it a lot. Surprisingly, the weakest part of the book was the coda at the end, which sums everything up but which felt kind of deflated, like Sharp has already moved on. It happens. But I think the book would have been stronger without that last entry.
Read
August 25, 2023I'm done. 150 pages in and so disappointed that i can't stand this way of writing. all these topics are very much My Shit (and the music is occasionally great!) but i just can't. I'll pick it up in a year and flip through and hopefully not have to see kennedy churchill or any of that
January 18, 2024
This is a very difficult book to characterize—at once a parody of the English Heritage but also an occult-infused derive of rural England that describes a literally haunted landscape. I believe the material was originally published in zine form; collected together in a single volume, it can become a little overwhelming, but even the sections I did not follow provided numerous rabbit holes for future research.
May 6, 2021
Visionary, Dark humour like a cross between Gordon Burn’s Born Yesterday and John Keel. History and culture is turned inside out and put back together in a more poetic way. Writing style is rich, reminding me of Alan Moore’s spoken word recordings. Highly recommended, unique and surreal.
April 2, 2022
Utterly fantastic fusion of psychogeographical derives and marvellously undisciplined streams of consciousness.
Only when the author consciously tries to impose some type of shape on his speculations does he come a little unstuck: this is in the Wyrd Aesthetics section. This is seemingly an academic paper delivered at some or other symposium at Goldsmiths College, possibly at the invitation of Mark Fisher (who did a much better job of this topic in The Weird and the Eerie)? It's about the only bum note, though I would have preferred captions with the photos rather than hidden at the back. The chapter on Margate's Shell Grotto was disappointingly short, if I was really looking for criticisms... and maybe there's a bit too much Ballard and Lovecraft, neither of whom I've ever appreciated very much. But I'm cavilling.
Best bit: Volcano Adventures, which resonated, for me, with the justly famous Part Eight of Twin Peaks, The Return. ("Gotta light?"... that one... the White Sands sequence. The notion that the atomic bomb ripped the cosmos somehow.)
As I said: fantastic.
Only when the author consciously tries to impose some type of shape on his speculations does he come a little unstuck: this is in the Wyrd Aesthetics section. This is seemingly an academic paper delivered at some or other symposium at Goldsmiths College, possibly at the invitation of Mark Fisher (who did a much better job of this topic in The Weird and the Eerie)? It's about the only bum note, though I would have preferred captions with the photos rather than hidden at the back. The chapter on Margate's Shell Grotto was disappointingly short, if I was really looking for criticisms... and maybe there's a bit too much Ballard and Lovecraft, neither of whom I've ever appreciated very much. But I'm cavilling.
Best bit: Volcano Adventures, which resonated, for me, with the justly famous Part Eight of Twin Peaks, The Return. ("Gotta light?"... that one... the White Sands sequence. The notion that the atomic bomb ripped the cosmos somehow.)
As I said: fantastic.
March 16, 2023
A hallucination in written format using aspects of psychogeography, occult thinking, 1970s horror movies, Churchill the works of Ballard. Not an easy read.
Read
August 30, 2023DNF. This was seriously hard work. It sapped the joy of reading well and truly out of me. Never mind DNF I don't think I really got started. Definitely not for me.
August 15, 2025
Mark Fisher for people who know what Qlippoth means
September 20, 2025
lots of interesting threads of thought but they seem to get hopelessly tangled and lost more often than not.......or maybe it was just me
June 16, 2022
I bought this book on a whim and didn't put it down. Impossible to describe. Read it.
February 4, 2024
The English Heretic Collection: Ritual Histories, Magickal Geography, is a captivating journey into the esoteric and mysterious realms of ritual history. The author's meticulous research and poetic prose weave a tapestry of magical landscapes that are both intriguing and thought-provoking.
This collection is a testament to the author's deep knowledge and passion for the subject matter. Each exploration into ritual histories is like stepping into a hidden world, where the lines between reality and the mystical blur. The book takes readers on a spellbinding tour, unveiling the rich tapestry of magickal practices and their geographical significance.
One of the standout features of this collection is its ability to engage readers in a way that is both intellectually stimulating and spiritually enriching. The author's writing style is evocative and immersive, making the exploration of these magickal landscapes an enchanting experience.
For those with an interest in the esoteric, this collection offers a refreshing and insightful perspective. It is a celebration of the diverse traditions that have shaped magickal practices throughout history, presented in a way that feels both reverent and modern. "The English Heretic Collection" is a gem for enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of ritual histories and magickal geography, and it truly stands out as a compelling and enriching read.
This collection is a testament to the author's deep knowledge and passion for the subject matter. Each exploration into ritual histories is like stepping into a hidden world, where the lines between reality and the mystical blur. The book takes readers on a spellbinding tour, unveiling the rich tapestry of magickal practices and their geographical significance.
One of the standout features of this collection is its ability to engage readers in a way that is both intellectually stimulating and spiritually enriching. The author's writing style is evocative and immersive, making the exploration of these magickal landscapes an enchanting experience.
For those with an interest in the esoteric, this collection offers a refreshing and insightful perspective. It is a celebration of the diverse traditions that have shaped magickal practices throughout history, presented in a way that feels both reverent and modern. "The English Heretic Collection" is a gem for enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of ritual histories and magickal geography, and it truly stands out as a compelling and enriching read.
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