Interviewing Nevill Drury, a Noted Author, and Esotericist.

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Interview with Nevill Drury, Co-author of The Varieties of Magical Experience
Thursday, April 11, 2013

Why is the publication of The Varieties of Magical Experience important at this moment in history—that is, how does it relate to today's news headlines or connect to contemporary questions or issues?

With the rise of militant Islam in various regions around the world and also within the context of the recent media coverage given to Dr. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in the international "atheism versus fundamentalism" debates, I think we have to confront the inherent dangers associated with fixed belief systems. When a person adopts a religious belief system as an article of faith, they are basically drawing a boundary around how they perceive the world. If they embrace some sort of divine revelation or exclusive sacred text that defines their belief system, they are unlikely to consider other spiritual perspectives that may challenge their position. Nevertheless, I think we are now in a position to move forward to a situation where science and spirituality can begin to move closer together. The scientific study of near-death experiences is just one example where the medical monitoring of altered states of consciousness provides profound insights into the nature of spiritual experience. Understanding the experiential dimension in shamanism and visionary forms of magic can also help us with this type of understanding because in their own way, they too are pointing towards the sacred aspects of the human condition.
What drew you to the topic of The Varieties of Magical Experience? How does the topic relate to you personally?
I had long been aware that there was no magical equivalent to William James’ classic text The Varieties of Religious Experience, but I also doubted that writing such a text was something I could undertake by myself. With this in mind I asked Lynne if she would be interested in collaborating on such a project, and I was delighted when she agreed. We drew up a contents list and decided to write different chapters that reflected our interests and specializations. Because our writing styles are somewhat similar the fusion of texts is relatively seamless. I have been researching and writing about the Western esoteric tradition for around forty years, and I am pleased that Lynne and I were able to collaborate on a project that I think should have relevance for some time to come.
What did you learn in the course of your research; what discovery surprised you the most?
One of the things that is emphasized most in the Western magical tradition is the nature of human will—will is utilized in order to make things happen both in the physical world but also within the magical dimension—which in turn involves altered states of consciousness. Now that we know more about quantum physics, it is clear that intentionality itself is fundamental to the very nature of existence – from the sub-atomic level through to the physical realm in which we find ourselves. One discovery that has been important to me is that the emanationist principle in the Jewish Kabbalah—the idea that consciousness eventually produces form – is also an idea that is emerging as fundamental in quantum physics. The emanationist concept is discussed in The Varieties of Magical Experience in the Gnosis section of our book.
What challenges did you face in your research or writing?
I think our main challenge in writing this book was to present complex ideas simply and lucidly. I hope we have succeeded with that, but of course it is up to the reader to decide…
What do you want readers to learn from your book?
I’d like readers to realize that the study of magical experiences is not the same as the study of superstition. I can’t speak for Lynne here, but I am not at all interested in superstition, which in my view is based on misplaced information and false cues. High magic, on the other hand, is the experience of sacred realms of awareness, and poets and artists attracted to the magical traditions—especially in the West—have drawn on this dimension to inspire their creativity. How many university students studying Western literature are taught by their lecturers that William Butler Yeats was also a ceremonial magician?
If your book inspired one change in the world, what would you want it to be?
That the universe is essentially a place of mystery and the realities we consider tangible are not as solid as we think they are. Quantum physics teaches us that at the sub-atomic level matter consists mostly of space. If more people realized this they may have a different take on life.
Where might others focus their energies in following on your work in this area?
Some academics currently specializing in the study of magic and religion have begun to mount a concerted argument against the usefulness of "insider" (or "emic") accounts of spiritual and magical realms of awareness. Personally, I feel this approach is totally misguided, and readers of The Varieties of Magical Experience will soon appreciate that Lynne and I greatly value insider accounts. After all, where do authentic religious and magical experiences actually originate? The answer can be found by exploring the psyches, or "consciousness," of the practitioners and devotees themselves. If we move beyond the analysis of belief systems to the actual essence of religion and magic, we often find ourselves entering a domain characterized by profoundly transformative spiritual experiences. These are experiences associated with altered states of consciousness, not intellectual conceptual frameworks imposed by theoreticians at a distance. I think this debate will continue in academic circles for some time to come.
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A Londoner's musings on archaeology, history and Paganism Old and New...
An Interview with Dr. Nevill Drury
Saturday, 9 February 2013

Today I'm talking with Dr. Nevill Drury, a man who requires no introduction for those acquainted with the contemporary Pagan and esoteric scenes. The author of over sixty books dealing with all manner of subjects, from the artwork of contemporary Indigenous Australian communities to practical Neo-Shamanism, his works have been translated into eighteen languages and counting. Born in England, he has spent most of his life in Australia, receiving his BA from the University of Sydney in 1968, after which he briefly became a high school teacher before moving on to work in government administration, publishing and television, He also turned his hand to writing, resulting in his copious oeuvre. Nevill worked in the Australian book publishing industry from 1976-2000, also obtaining his MA Honours degree in anthropology from Macquarie University in 1980. After briefly returning to high school teaching in 2004 he began researching his PhD on the esoteric beliefs and practices of Rosaleen Norton in 2006 while still based in various country high schools. He received his doctorate from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, in 2008. Since then, he has published prolifically in peer-reviewed, academic journals and anthologies, and produced his own books and edited volumes dealing with the Western Esoteric Traditions. I ask him about the journey he took to get to where he is now, his latest projects, and the perils of publishing.
EDW: You have the distinction of having been born in Hastings, Southern England, in 1947, which I am sure you are aware was the very same town and year which witnessed the death of Aleister Crowley, the infamous “Great Beast” and founder of Thelema. Aged nine you moved all the way to Australia, where you have lived since, something which I can only imagine must have been a significant transition in your life. Did you feel that the environment of Australia affected your spiritual beliefs in any way, and how did you first come to develop your interest in the esoteric?

ND: I grew up in a family that had a Theosophical orientation. My father had been an officer in the Indian Army during World War Two and was deeply interested in Eastern mysticism and the 'perennial tradition', and my grandmother had several books by Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater – some of which later found their way onto our bookshelves in Australia. These books were part of the spiritual culture of my family, although I myself was never especially drawn to Theosophy per se and found the notions of ‘root races’ and discarnate Mahatmas quite ridiculous. As a family we migrated to Sydney in 1957 when I was nine years old and when I was still a teenager I came across The Dawn of Magic by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. I found this book inspirational, although I realize now that it contains many errors and is, in fact, quite unreliable. Nevertheless it was the first time I had heard of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the mystical fiction of the Welsh novelist Arthur Machen – and that, by itself, offered a pathway into the Western Esoteric Tradition. In 1968, at Sydney University, I met Stephen Skinner and he introduced me to the study of the Kabbalah. After we wrote our first book together – The Search for Abraxas, published in London in 1972 –Stephen moved to Britain and became well known in London esoteric circles – he now lives in Singapore and we have kept in touch over the years. At University we were both attracted to the emergent international counterculture and, I think, were deeply influenced by it. Stephen was much more attracted to Aleister Crowley than I was, however, and I should point out that although I was born in Hastings in 1947 I am definitely not Crowley’s reincarnation – he died in December that year, and I was born in October!
EDW: You are well known for your work in popularising and propagating Neo-Shamanic, or Western Shamanic ideas in such books as The Shaman and the Magician (1982), Elements of Shamanism (1989) and Sacred Encounters (2003) and you have also written a work of mythic fiction – The Shaman’s Quest (2004 / 2012). How did you first get involved in this particular spiritual practice and furthermore, what made you decide to start writing about it for a wider audience? What do you see as the benefits of shamanistic practices for people living in the Western world today, and how do you respond to critics who oppose the “appropriation” of shamanic practices from indigenous communities for Western usage ?
ND: During the 1970s several of my friends pushed me towards the sort of ceremonial magical practices associated with figures like Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie and Gareth Knight but although I appreciated their appeal, I am not really a ritualist and this approach didn’t work for me. For as long as I can remember I have been attracted to visionary states of awareness and the study of altered states of consciousness, and like many of my friends I had some transformative experiences in the late 1960s and 1970s using psychedelics. In 1980 I completed my Masters (honours) thesis at Macquarie University on shamanic aspects of modern Western magic, focusing especially on such magical techniques as ‘rising in the planes’ using the Kabbalistic Tree Life and the apparent parallel between visionary Western magic and states of trance in classical shamanism. American anthropologist Dr Michael Harner was the external reader for my Masters thesis and he recommended publication – that’s how The Shaman and the Magician came into existence, although I think I have written much better books since. I met Michael for the first time in person in 1980 at a Transpersonal conference in Melbourne and attended a workshop on shamanic drumming. I found his neo-shamanic techniques really effective and I continued this work on a regular basis with a small group of friends, for several years. Basically, we drummed for each other, made use of Michael’s visualizations (described in his book The Way of the Shaman), and wrote down our experiences after each session. I published my diary in a small book called Vision Quest, released by Prism Press in 1984.

Living at the time in a large modern city, I viewed the neo-shamanic visionary experience as an adjunct to creativity and psychosomatic healing and I still see it in those terms now. After all, Michael Harner’s approach in neo-shamanism was to present the core experiential concepts of indigenous shamanism to a modern Western audience and there were no illusions or deceptions around that. Personally I think the whole notion of appropriation has been greatly overstated – after all, can’t we learn from the traditions of other cultures? And I understand that members of some indigenous groups – specifically the Sami and Inuit – approached Michael Harner to ask for help in restoring shamanic awareness in their respective cultures after sacred knowledge was lost as a result of Christian missionary activity and European colonization. So these sharing processes can flow in both directions. It seems to me that the scholars who object to Michael Harner’s trans-cultural approach have mostly been post-modern deconstructionists who are obsessed with the supposedly unique characteristics of specific ‘shamanisms’ (a dreadful term, in my opinion) and who have lost the ability to think universally. I have little time for them and find both their academic pedantry and their convoluted writing totally boring and unhelpful. I have to admit that for many years, as you say, I was something of a populariser of shamanic themes but I see nothing wrong in writing for a general audience – you reach more people that way. My introductory overview book The Elements of Shamanism is a case in point. In terms of sales it sold over 30,000 copies and was published in ten languages. It remains one of my most successful books. My more recent fictional work – The Shaman’s Quest – is also aimed at the general reader, and I think it is one of my best books. It describes the experiences of four shamans, from North, East, South and West, who journey towards the mythical ‘centre of the world’ where a transformational healing process takes place.
EDW: Although not directly related to your scholarship or to the esoteric, I can't help but notice that you were an undergraduate at the University of Sydney in 1968, the year of the famous international student protests, something that resonates with my experiences in the 2010 student protests here in Britain. Did you experience any of the "Spirit of '68" over in Sydney at the time ?
ND: I was at Sydney University in from 1966 through to 1969 and it was a great time to be a university student. It was a period of political protests and wonderful parties. I wasn’t a student radical at the time although I remember several of my friends and I being involved in a large political rally against the visiting USA president, Lyndon B. Johnson and the State premier, Robert Askin, who wanted to go ‘all the way with LBJ’ in the Vietnam War. I was totally opposed to national conscription and regarded Australia’s attempts to prop up the corrupt regime in South Vietnam as totally misplaced. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t called up for military service.
EDW: For the documentary that you produced on The Occult Experience (1985), you met with and filmed some of the world's most significant figures then active in the Western Esoteric scene, including senior English Wiccans Alex Sanders, Janet Farrar and Stewart Farrar, the American Pagan Margot Adler, and Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Looking back on it now, what was this remarkable experience like ?
ND: This was a wonderful experience for me and came on the back of a television series on holistic health that I presented on ABC-TV in the early 1980s. I was approached by Sydney-based documentary-maker Frank Heimans to plan a 90-minute television programme on occult beliefs and practices around the world and Frank managed to raise $350,000 to finance it, which at the time was quite a lot of money. We filmed in Perth, Western Australia, where there were several Wiccan covens and also in the Yanchep caves north of Perth where a group of local enthusiasts carried out rituals based on ancient Egyptian magic – that made for some spectacular visual imagery. We also filmed a group of Sydney-based Christian fundamentalists ‘casting out demons’. However some of the most spectacular sequences took place overseas. We filmed well known American witch Selena Fox and her close associates conducting a ritual in the snow in Wisconsin; a wonderful, spontaneous ceremonial gathering of radical feminist Goddess worshippers in Oakland, California – including interviews with Z. Budapest and Luisah Teish – and a meeting with Dr Michael Aquino and his wife Lilith, key members of the Left-Hand path Temple of Set in San Francisco. We also filmed a shamanic workshop with Michael Harner and conducted an interview with Margot Adler in New York in the ritual space at the back of Herman Slater’s Magickal Childe bookshop. In Europe we visited visionary artist H.R. Giger at home in Zurich amidst his remarkable, hellish paintings. We also filmed an initiatory sequence with Janet and Stewart Farrar at their coven in Drogheda, north of Dublin, and visited the founders of the Fellowship of Isis at their Jacobite castle in Clonegal. Later we conducted an interview with Alex Sanders at home in Bexhill, Sussex and filmed him invoking an Aztec deity – a somewhat surprising variant on Wicca! – where he nearly set his pants alight with the flaming torches he was holding.
(Note to Ronald Hutton who tried to establish Sanders’ birth-date and writes about it in The Triumph of the Moon: Sanders told me he had frequently lied about his age in the past, understating it by ten years. He was born in 1916, not 1926, and his aged semi-naked body seemed to confirm this fact during filming.) American pagan scholar Chas S. Clifton, who appears not to have realised that the documentary was financed by a commercial television channel that in turn influenced the final film-edit, has described The Occult Experience on his blog-site as ‘thunderingly pretentious and … basically content-free’ but I feel this is both untrue and unfair: after all, many key esoteric figures feature in the film – they speak for themselves and often have very interesting things to say. The documentary won a Bronze Award in the 1985 International Film and Television Festival in New York, so someone must have liked it. Readers of Albion Calling can decide for themselves: it is freely available on my website: www.nevilldrury.com
EDW: You're probably the world's foremost authority on Rosaleen Norton (1917–1979), Australia's homegrown Pagan Witch and infamous occult artist, having first published a biography of her titled Pan's Daughter (1988) before devoting your PhD research to her, resulting in the expanded volume Homage to Pan (2003); a book that I very much enjoyed and would not hesitate to recommend. How did you first begin your investigations into this intriguing character, and what is it about Norton's work that fascinates you personally ? You also have another book out, Dark Spirits (2012), comparing Norton's work with that of London occult artist Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), whose work is definitely seeing a resurgence of interest, at least in Britain; what is it about his work that appeals ?
ND: I became interested in Austin Spare and Rosaleen Norton (Roie, as she liked to be known) in the 1970s. Both of them fascinated me because they were extraordinary visionary artists whose imagery was deeply grounded in the Western Esoteric tradition. Roie was always more accessible to me because she lived in Australia. I first met her in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Kings Cross in 1977, while researching my book Inner Visions: Explorations in Magical Consciousness. At the time Roie was living like a recluse in a dark basement flat at the end of a long corridor in an old building in Roslyn Gardens, just down from the centre of Kings Cross in the direction of Rushcutters Bay. She was somewhat frail but still extremely mentally alert, with expressive eyes and a hearty laugh. We talked at that meeting about the god-forms Roie encountered in trance, about her view that Pan was alive in the ‘back-to-Nature’ movement supported by the counterculture, and we also discussed her strong personal bond with animals. Roie told me that she believed most animals had much more integrity than human beings and she also felt that cats, especially, could operate both in the world of normal waking consciousness and in the inner psychic world at the same time. Roie was very much an adventurer – a free spirit – and she liked to fly through the worlds opened to her by her imagination. Her art, of course, reflected this.

Like Rosaleen Norton, Austin Spare was also an outsider who was substantially misunderstood by the public at large. My first contact with Spare’s visionary art came about in 1970, while I was working as a secondary school teacher in rural New South Wales. In the somewhat isolated country town of West Wyalong, 300 miles west of Sydney, I happened upon the first edition of a new part-work magazine titled Man, Myth and Magic and was immediately struck by its dramatic cover – which featured a painting of a supernatural entity by Austin Spare. Keen to find out more about this unfamiliar visionary artist I decided to research his background. At this stage there was no substantial information on him of any kind, with the exception of a very brief introductory essay by Kenneth and Steffi Grant, published in 1961 as one of the Carfax Monographs.
In 1971, having abandoned my brief career as a school-teacher to live instead in London, I obtained a reader’s ticket to the British Museum and was able to read Spare’s self-published books first-hand. As a young man Spare had won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art but his brilliant skills as a figurative artist would soon be overshadowed by his eccentric exploration of visionary trance states, sorcery and sigil magic. His major self-published works – Earth Inferno (1905), A Book of Satyrs (1907) and The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): the Psychology of Ecstasy (1909-1913) – were clearly not the work of a conventional artist and it was understandable, while also very regrettable, that his creative genius had not been acknowledged in any of the major British art histories.
Excited by the scope of Spare’s vision, I decided to seek out London publishers who might be interested in his art and ideas, and I eventually found my way to the office of occult publisher Neville Spearman Armstrong in Whitfield Street, not far from the Museum. Armstrong’s publishing company, Neville Spearman, was associated at the time with well-known occult writers like Francis King, Trevor Ravenscroft and Erika Cheetham and included publications on modern Western magic, the prophecies of Nostradamus, paranormal research and alchemy. I wasn’t really surprised that Neville Armstrong quickly warmed to the idea of a book describing the magical imagery of Austin Spare but it was equally clear that such a book would also have to be much broader in scope. I returned to Australia and after co-opting Stephen Skinner as my co-author we decided together to produce a book that would explore some of the major themes in the Western esoteric tradition and the philosophies and cosmologies underpinning them. The resulting volume, The Search for Abraxas (1972), included a substantial overview essay on Austin Spare and presented a concise profile of an artist-magician who was largely unknown among devotees of modern Western magic at that time. I think Spare is a major figure in the 20th century Western magical revival and one of its most original thinkers. He has also been acknowledged as a key influence on contemporary Chaos magick.
EDW: Although for years you have probably been better known for your work on practical esotericism and also for your books on magic and shamanism designed for a popular audience, in recent years you have brought out a number of tomes through academic publishing houses that are aimed at a more scholarly readership. What lay behind this decision to give up your job teaching high school kids about English and History, study for a PhD, and embrace the world of academia again ?
ND: Some time around 2006, when I was still teaching in rural New South Wales, I found out that Pan’s Daughter was a featured text in a Pagan Studies course that Dr Marguerite Johnson was teaching at the University of Newcastle. It occurred to me that maybe I could use my existing research on Rosaleen Norton and work it up into a PhD dissertation at Newcastle with Marguerite as my supervisor. That’s how it turned out. The university allowed me to work on my own, away from the campus – I was teaching in the rural town of Leeton at the time – and I completed the PhD in a little less than two years. I think the benefit of the extra study was that it helped me tighten my writing style and document references more specifically than I had in most of my general books. As a result, I think my most recent publications are among my best.
EDW: You are also known as an important figure in the wider popularisation of artwork produced in Australia, particularly that made by people from indigenous Australian communities. It's not an area that I know much about, although I have attended lectures and public talks on the archaeological study of Australian rock art, which I would assume often carries with it a cultural connection to the contemporary paintings. How did you first become involved in this fascinating area, and have you been involved in wider academic and/or esoteric engagement with the continent's Native peoples ?
ND: For most of my professional life I worked in the Australian book industry – initially as an editor for the local Australian branches of the American publishing houses Harper & Row and Doubleday. In 1981, together with book publisher Geoffrey King and graphic designer Judy Hungerford, I co-founded a publishing company dedicated specifically to Australian contemporary art. At the time Bay Books, an imprint owned by Rupert Murdoch, was the only major competition. However, Bay Books covered only the major artists – figures like Ian Fairweather, Brett Whiteley and Sid Nolan – and there was vast scope to publish the works of significant mid-career artists across the country. This is what we did – initially as limited editions and from 1985 onwards as standard hardcover publications. It soon became obvious, given that we were marketing our publications to schools as well as art collectors, that we should also publish significant Aboriginal artists. We released the first scholarly monograph on an Aboriginal artist – Dr Vivien Johnson’s Art of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri – in 1994, and followed it with publications on Michael Jagamara Nelson, Emily Kngwarreye and Gordon Bennett as well as books on the Aboriginal art of the Utopia and Balgo communities and a reference book on artists of the Western Desert. I visited the artists at Balgo in remote Western Australia, and Utopia, north-east of Alice Springs, and found this a very enriching experience. I would have liked to publish a major work on Rover Thomas – one of the true greats in Aboriginal art – but was unable to get this project off the ground.
EDW: One of your most recent works is Pathways in Modern Western Magic, an edited volume published by Concrescent Press, one of a number of new esoteric publishers to have appeared on the block in recent years. Last year I interviewed one of the contributors to the anthology, Dr. Dave Evans, while it also includes contributions from such notables as James R. Lewis, Nikki Bado, Thomas Karlsson, Lynne Hume, Robert J. Wallis, Amy Hale and Jenny Blain on topics as disparate as the Dragon Rouge, technoshamanism and emic approaches to fieldwork among magical communities. You of course also provide two essays in the volume, on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Thelemic sex magic respectively. I'd be interested in knowing how this particular project came together, and what role you see for volumes like this – filled with peer-reviewed contributions by academics but not produced through a conventional academic publisher – in the fields of Pagan and Esoteric Studies ? Do you see it as a part of the wider academic dissatisfaction with traditional avenues of publication ?
ND: In 2009 I signed a contract with the Dutch scholarly publisher Brill for a multi-authored volume titled A Handbook of Modern Western Magic and the well-known Swedish academic Henrik Bogdan was brought in as co-editor. In addition to the authors you have just mentioned we were also hoping to attract chapters from scholars like Gregory Tillett (writing on ‘Modern Western magic and Theosophy’), Susan Johnston Graf (‘Yeats, creativity and magic’), Thomas Hakl (‘The Fraternitas Saturni’), Jesper Petersen (‘Contemporary Satanic spirituality’), Kennet Granholm (‘Ophidian magick in the Scandinavian Dragon Rouge’), Carole M. Cusack ‘The Discordians’ ) and Stephen Skinner (‘Magical evocation and Goetia’). Henrik also committed to writing a chapter titled ‘Ritual initiations and spiritual transformation in modern esotericism’. You can imagine my surprise – and, frankly, anger – when the editorial board rejected the majority of chapters in the submitted anthology. Evidently several of the chapters were insufficiently post-modern and ‘etic’, lacked a critical analytical edge, or were simply ‘unsuitable’ (too ‘emic’). Several of the authors whose work was rejected had published in the past with university presses and a few even with Brill itself. Following a suggestion from Dr Amy Hale that a new American imprint, Concrescent Press, might be interested in publishing the anthology I wrote to all of the contributors and explained the situation. Some authors whom I have listed above wrote back and said that their university contracts precluded them from publishing with little-known publishers but many were willing to go ahead and publish with the small independent Californian publishing house. (Interestingly, the publisher at Concrescent is Sam Webster, who is currently studying under Ronald Hutton at the University of Bristol – so there is an Anglo-American connection.)
At Concrescent Press the manuscripts were peer-reviewed by a selection of American academics and a new anthology assembled. I felt that the revised selection was still reasonably coherent but there were a couple of obvious gaps so I requested a chapter on the Dragon Rouge from the Order’s founder, Thomas Karlsson, a chapter on cybermagic from Libuše Martínková, a Czech researcher whom I contacted via the Internet, and an ‘insider’ account of the Temple of Set from former High Priest, Don Webb. Concrescent Press published Pathways in Modern Western Magic in September 2012 and naturally I hope it goes well for them. I am sure this new press will attract a range of academic submissions in the future. The focus of Concrescent Press is on esoteric studies and the Western magical traditions.
EDW: In your introductory piece to Pathways in Modern Western Magic, you emphasise the importance of emic, or “insider” perspectives in the study of contemporary esotericism, and I'd be interested to hear if you had any thoughts on the recent attack on the over-reliance on emic approaches within Pagan Studies made by Danish Religious Studies scholar Markus Altena Davidsen in his 2012 paper published in the Method and Theory in the Study of Religion journal ? His critique primarily hinged on another edited volume that you had contributed to, the hefty Handbook of Contemporary Paganism (Brill, 2008), and this whole debate looks set to become a bit of a theoretical battleground in ensuing years.
ND: I have just read Markus Davidsen’s critique of ‘pagan scholarship’ – with all his references to the alleged shortcomings associated with so-called ‘insider perspectives’ – and I have to say I find his approach totally misguided. After all, where do authentic religious and magical experiences actually originate? The answer can be found by exploring the psyches, or ‘consciousness’ of the practitioners and devotees themselves. If we move beyond the analysis of belief systems to the actual essence of religion and magic we often find ourselves entering a domain characterised by profoundly transformative spiritual experiences. These are experiences associated with altered states of consciousness, not intellectual conceptual frameworks imposed by theoreticians at a distance. So is it not indeed fortunate that there are several notable practitioner-academics who are able to apply their scholarly knowledge in defining, describing and referencing these experiences? Isn’t that what ‘religious studies’ is fundamentally about? Davidsen’s insistence that religious studies as an academic discipline has to be defined by imposed theoretical frameworks and scientific perspectives seems to me to miss the point entirely. Here is a scholar who sounds like he is more in love with the footnote than the main narrative.
By way of contrast, as I made clear in my Introduction to Pathways in Modern Western Magic, I am all in favour of emically-oriented scholarly discourse and I think it is deeply insulting to describe it as ‘ignorant’. It comes as no surprise that many of the etically oriented publications that Davidsen is obviously in awe of so frequently come across as jargon-bound, ponderously analytical, and sterile. So often these publications are for scholars writing simply for their colleagues and, in my opinion, they are ultimately of little lasting value. As for my own chapter in the Brill Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, I have to no desire whatever to follow Davidsen’s advice and engage in ‘minimal reinterpretation’ in order to make it ‘commensurable with the critical-naturalist paradigm’ – as a historian (my PhD is in Humanities) 1 have simply presented the material as accurately and lucidly as I can, and I am sure many other writers contributing to the anthology would feel the same way.
EDW: Also of note are two other recent publications of yours. The first, Stealing Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic (2011) has been brought out by the prestigious Oxford University Press, and offers a scholarly overview and introduction to this particular area that I'm sure will prove to be of great utility to students and established scholars in coming years. The second is a volume you have co-authored with Dr Lynne Hume titled The Varieties of Magical Experience which has just been published in the United States by Praeger. Aside from these, are there any more academic projects on the horizon that we should be keeping our eyes out for ?
ND: I have no plans right now for any new publications on the scale of these two books. Stealing Fire from Heaven was my attempt at a concise historical overview of the modern magical revival, commencing effectively with the hugely influential late-19th century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and continuing through to present times. In the case of The Varieties of Magical Experience, I thought it would be a good idea to produce a book that in a sense was a counterpart to William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience although I didn’t feel I could do this all by myself. So I invited Professor Lynne Hume from the University of Queensland to be my co-author. Lynne is an anthropologist and has also studied paganism in some detail, so she wrote the chapters on indigenous magic, sensory awareness and Wicca and I wrote the others. We have never met in person but we managed to work well together on this project. I have to concede that this book is strongly emic and inevitably some scholars won’t like it for that reason. However two of the academics who provided endorsements for the book jacket (both of them scholars I have never met personally) have described it as a ‘classic’ – so that’s a good start.
EDW: And lastly, because of the many divergent views that arise, I like to ask all of my interviewees where they see the academic fields of Pagan and Esoteric Studies going in the next fifty years or so ? Do you share the concerns of another Australian Pagan Studies scholar whom I have interviewed, Caroline Tully, that there is a serious problem arising between academics involved in these fields and anti-intellectual elements within the wider esoteric community ?
ND: I don’t regard the division you mention – between scholars and anti-intellectual practitioners – as the main problem, although I acknowledge that it is somewhat problematical. I think the biggest issue we face is that some scholars will become increasingly fascinated by cross-referencing each other’s jargon – ‘occulture’ is one term that comes to mind – while forgetting that magic and religion are ultimately experiential in nature and should be treated as such.
EDW: Thank you for taking the time out to undertake this interview Nevill, and I wish you all the best in future!

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PAGAN PEOPLE    (Moon Books, UK)
Nimue Brown talks to Nevill Druryhttp://moon-books.net/blogs/moonbooks/pagan-people-nimue-brown-talks-to-nevill-drury/

23 January 2013

Dr Nevill Drury was born in Hastings, England, but has lived most of his life in Australia. A former editor of the holistic journal Nature & Health, he holds a PhD from the University of Newcastle and has written widely on the Western esoteric tradition, visionary consciousness and shamanism, as well as on contemporary art. He is the author of over sixty books, including Sacred Encounters; The Dictionary of the Esoteric; Magic and Witchcraft: From Shamanism to the Technopagans; Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, and a speculative work of fiction titled Second Coming 2012: The Mayan Revelation (O Books). His work has been published in 25 countries and 18 languages. He lives in New South Wales, Australia.

Some months ago I read Nevill Drury’s fictional piece The Shaman Quest. I found it deeply affecting, it’s a book that is like having an act of magic performed upon you, a journey into soulfulness and significance that has stayed with me. I read a lot of books, especially ones with spiritual content and very few turn out to be this memorable or to have such impact on me. I’ve also done a lot of interviewing and am usually fairly relaxed about it, but on this occasion had to make considerable effort not to get all ‘fan girl’. Nevill Drury is a longstanding author and this interview barely scrapes the surface, but I hope it will serve as an introduction.

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Nimue: You have obviously explored Shamanism from many cultures, is there one branch in particular that draws you or is ranging widely key to how you do things?

Nevill: I have always felt that if you are a modern-day urban dweller like I am that it is unrealistic to regard oneself as a shaman of any sort – after all, this tradition comes out of hunter-gatherer cultures around the world. However, I do believe that the sort of neo-shamanism developed by American anthropologist Dr Michael Harner specifically for a Western audience is a worthwhile approach.
I had been focusing on Golden Dawn magic through the 1970s but I have always found magical ceremonial a bit theatrical and this approach didn’t really work for me. I met Michael Harner in Australia in 1980 – we had already been in contact because he was one of the readers for my Master of Arts thesis – and I have kept in touch with him over the years. He taught me shamanic drumming and how to use magical visualization to attain significant altered states of consciousness. More recently he also offered me some useful feedback on The Shaman’s Quest. He has been an important influence on the way I respond to the shamanic realm. After 1980 I practised Harnerian neo-shamanism for several years. The results were published in my book Vision Quest (Prism Press, Dorset, 1984), which is a type of magical diary and one of my most personal publications. I no longer practise shamanic drumming on a regular basis but I do hold workshops from time to time when there is interest in the rural community where I live.

Nimue: That’s really interesting. Most modern Pagans tend towards the ‘anyone can’ attitude, which may well not be realistic. I’ve read plenty of books about Shamanism that do suggest anyone can do it from the comfort of their living room. I’m not much in favour of any kind of living room paganism myself… Is it the urbanism specifically, the modernity or the cultural heritage or something else that strikes you as being incompatible with Shamanism?

Nevill: Shamanism is the world’s most ancient spiritual tradition and it always has an indigenous context. In every country where it is found it is part of a hunter-gatherer society where people hunt for their food and where the shaman intercedes with the gods and/or goddesses of the tribe to maintain the balance of Nature. Most people I know hunt for their food in a supermarket. We have to be clear about the basics here – and not delude ourselves that we are practising authentic shamanism. On the other hand, the practice of neo-shamanism – whether it has a Celtic or Native American or Scandinavian orientation – is an approach specifically geared to the spiritual needs of modern Westerners, and I feel quite OK about that.

Nimue: Could someone from a hunter/gatherer shamanic background still be a shaman in a city? Or conversely, could someone be willing to move into a more primal lifestyle make those connections as well?
Nevill: I don’t think native hunter/gatherers would have an easy time living in a city. In Australia, where I live, Aborigines who come to the city lose their spiritual connection with specific tracts of land that are sacred to them, and that causes enormous emotional and spiritual problems – they feel they are ‘without country’.

Nimue: Have we made spaces that preclude or restrict the spiritual life? Could we change that at all, do you think?
Nevill: Many neo-pagans create their own sacred spaces – outside in the countryside or in the home around a sacred altar – and I think that is a good thing. I am not a ritualist myself but I derive considerable pleasure and inspiration watching plants I have sown in the garden, grow and flower. I live in a small country town, I have built a garden from scratch, and I find it just wonderful. It is up to us to connect with the Spirit in whatever way we can find.

Nimue: What inspires you most?
Nevill: For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the relationship between art, magic and visionary consciousness. I respond to art that has a deeply symbolic element (although I also like abstraction) and I really like Surrealism. My favourite Surrealist artists are Max Ernst (whom I regard as the greatest artist of the 20thcentury – much more imaginative than Picasso, for example) and the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam who included animistic and Santeria elements in his extraordinary compositions. Within the Western Esoteric Tradition I greatly admire Austin Osman Spare, who is for me a much more interesting magical practitioner than Aleister Crowley, and I also have a lot of time for the founding figures of the late 19th century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who laid the basis for the modern occult revival.
Other figures who inspire me include Carl Jung – who, of course charted the mythic unconscious – and fantasy writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany. Although I was born in England I have lived in Australia for most of my life and I was an art-book publisher for around 20 years. During that time I developed a keen interest in Aboriginal art. Much of that art – by major male and female artists alike – is an ongoing inspiration. The late Aboriginal painter Rover Thomas was one of the greatest, but there are too many to mention individually by name.

Nimue: If there’s one practice you could persuade everyone to take up, what would it be?
Nevill: To practise some form of creative visualization and to learn how to relax, in spite of life’s many pressures and adversities.

Nimue: Could you tell us a bit about the book you have with Moon Books?
Nevill: The only book I have with Moon Books is The Shaman’s Quest. This a work of mythic fiction based on authentic shamanic source-material and, in my opinion is one of my best books. People attuned to the shamanic realm seem to really like it. I also have two titles released through O Books:  Second Coming 2012: The Mayan Revelation , which is also a work of fiction set in England and Guatemala, and Wisdom Seekers: The Rise of the New Spirituality –  an overview of the rise of the New Age Movement and Transpersonal Psychology.

Nimue: Does writing come easily to you or are there challenges?
Nevill: Writing comes pretty easily to me and in a sense, by now, it should – I have been publishing books for forty years. Many of my books are on the Western Esoteric Tradition but others explore aspects of holistic health, music and contemporary art. The main challenge for me is to write accessibly. I enjoy writing and before I retired – I am 65 now – I used to be a book editor and publisher. I worked in this field for over twenty-five years. One of my main thrills as a writer is to get published in a language I can’t understand. I have been published in 25 countries and in 18 languages. Some of the more complex ones include Finnish, Bulgarian (Cyrillic?), Turkish, Greek and Serbo-Croat – I can’t read any of those…

Nimue: Who are writing for? Do you have a sense of who the reader is going to be when you’re working?
Nevill: When writers start off they are often writing for themselves rather than having an audience in mind. My first published book was a children’s book that I illustrated myself in coloured inks. It took me five years to find a publisher because it had a metaphysical theme and the main character dissolved into white light on the final page. I found out later it appealed mostly to Hippies. So obviously I was writing that particular book without having any idea about the conventional market for children’s books. But from the late 1970s onwards I became vary attuned to audiences and markets because I worked for various book publishers as an editor and had to be aware of the market potential for specific book titles. That knowledge helped me as an author.

Druid, author, bard and dreamer. Nimue Brown is OBOD trained, a founding member of Bards of The Lost Forest, a Druid Network member and previously a volunteer for The Pagan Federation.

(Reproduced here by kind permission of Nimue Brown and Moon Books – a division of John Hunt Publishing Pty Ltd.)

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This was an interview with other people as well as Nevill but only Nevill's comments are listed here. The complete transcript can be found on the ABC website http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s305080.htm
New Age Journey10 June 2001
Summary
Compass looks at the "The New Age Movement" and some of its many facets including mystical Christianity and Witchcraft.

Story
"The magical religions, the alternative paths in spirituality alert us to the fact that a great mystery defines and overrides our existence." says Nevill Drury author and long time observer of the New Age Movement.
"New Age Journey" looks beyond the commercialism and narcissism that critics often associate with the New Age movement. It explores it's recent history in Australia, and it's uneasy relationship with mainstream Christianity.
Hello, I'm Geraldine Doogue, welcome to Compass.
There are relatively few self proclaimed atheists in Australia and yet over the last 30 years, our participation in mainstream religious activity has been in steep decline. Traditional religious activity fell off dramatically during the 60's and 70's when the counter culture movement and New Age began to blossom. Nowadays people tend to avoid the new age label. It has developed a reputation for being shallow and a form of spiritual self indulgence. Could it though, be answering a set of modern needs for more individualised expressions in practise and beliefs.
Tonight we explore the recent history of the new age movement in Australia and its uneasy relationship with mainstream Christianity.
Nevill Drury
"I think a lot of people who use the term new-age now are strictly people that are critics of that movement; are using it in a dismissive way because they identify the new-age with narcissism, with weekend workshops that are supposed to lead to instant enlightenment. There's a lot of gimmickry, there's a lot of emphasis on crystals. You know the folksy sort of things that are all to do with consumerism, is what most people think the new-age is about."
NARR: Nevill Drury has been observing and writing about the New age movement for three decades. He understands the concerns of those who practice what he now prefers to call "New Spirituality" when the words "New Age" are used to define their beliefs. He feels we have to see beyond the outward trivia used by the critics to attack New Age beliefs and look at a bigger picture.
Nevill Drury
"I actually think that the new-age disguise is a much bigger phenomenon which has to do with the whole thrust of getting involved with a type of spirituality that has to do with tapping inner experience, inner potential, finding the sort of the sacred inner core of a person. That's what I think New Age is on about."
NARR: For over 20 years Nevill has tapped into this "sacred inner core" with a technique devised by American anthropologist Michael Harner. The drum beat is used as an access to visualisation and meditation.
Nevill Drury
"The idea here was to use the drum beat to propel you into a visionary state of consciousness. And what attracted me about that was that there was no belief system in that. It was just a way of getting you into what would otherwise be your unconscious self. I think that one of the things that I'm on about is to try and recapture the sense of enchantment in the everyday world. We carry on our lives as if we know what we're doing, that we're in control, but actually I think the whole of life is very much a mystery. And the magical religions, the alternative paths in spirituality alert us to the fact that a great mystery defines and overrides our existence."
NARR: If the New Age had a starting point in modern consciousness it was during the counter-culture revolution of the 60's and 70's.
Nevill Drury
"I think a lot of people in the counter culture began exploring altar states of consciousness, visionary states of consciousness through the use of psychedelic drugs. And then after the counter culture dissipated a bit, a lot of people got seriously interested in following different spiritual paths without using psychedelic drugs."
"There is a sort of an idea in the new-age that you have to work on yourself before you have the right to influence others. Which is different say from what the missionaries used to do in the old times. So I think there is the sense that you can go through processes of personal transformation to try and expand your own frontiers, and then the lessons that you learn from that sort of self exploration can be shared with other people, or taken into the community and into the world beyond. "
"Christianity is a religion of revelation. And eventually Christians do not believe that there are many paths up the mountain to the same sacred reality. In other words they wouldn't agree with the new-age perspective that there are many paths to enlightenment, all of which are equally valid. A Christian is obliged to believe that Jesus Christ shows an exclusive path to salvation."
"It's bringing the female energy back into the domain, whereas so many religions are dominated by men. And Wicca, of all the traditions is the reason for the revival of magical and occult paths in the turn of the millennium. And it's because of the idea of getting in touch with the cycles of the seasons, of revering the sacred elements of nature, getting in touch with the universe at large through that female energy.
NARR: In the end though, can the New Age really contribute to a deeper spiritual and religious life, or has the transition from its counter culture roots to mainstream consumer culture dissipated any religious significance it may have had.
Nevill Drury
"I actually think the new-age is the future of religion, not a phenomenon that's dissipating. I think what's going to happen in the future is that more and more people will find spiritual meaning in their own way. They'll find their own sense of inner knowing and their own intuitions will become important to them, their own experiences, their own sense of the sacred."






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Obituary Nevill Drury (1 October 1947 – 15 October 2013) Art publisher and writer Nevill in his library January 2013 Nevill Drury was born in Hastings, England and arrived in Sydney on S.S. Orcades in January 1957. After moving with his family to Adelaide for three years in 1960 the family returned to England for eighteen months and lived in the quaint Sussex village of Alfriston– his father, an art teacher and commercial illustrator, was very much an itinerant and was torn between the two countries for his entire life. The family returned to Sydney in 1964 and Nevill made Australia his home from this time onwards. He became an Australian citizen in 1997. Nevill was best known for two quite different areas of interest. One of these was his role as a leading Australian art-book publisher and the other was writing books on the magical and shamanic traditions for the international market. He made a brief foray into the world of television documentaries, presenting the ABC-TV series on alternative medicine, Healers, Quacks or Mystics?, in 1983, and researching and co-producing The Occult Experience with director Frank Heimans in 1984-85. He also edited the holistic journal Nature & Health (a sister publication to Geo) between 1983 and 1989. After working in the Australian book industry as an editor for Harper & Row and Doubleday between 1976 and 1982, Nevill co-founded Craftsman’s Press with Judy Hungerford and Geoffrey King. Craftsman’s Press specialized in limited edition monographs, including publications on such artists as Justin O’Brien, Brian Dunlop and Lloyd Rees. But in 1985 a decision was made to change the direction of the company, moving its orientation more broadly into the visual arts – including printing, ceramics, sculpture, graphic design, jewellery and architecture – and making the books substantially more accessible, both in price and style. Nevill proposed changing the name of the company to Craftsman House but the essential focus remained the same: the aim was to produce high quality books on the Australian visual arts and publish monographs on the emerging generation of mid-career artists who had not yet earned widespread recognition across the country – something no other publishing house was doing at the time. In due course Craftsman House would publish the first books on important Australian artists like Robert Juniper, Colin Lanceley, Roy de Maistre, Imants Tillers, Alun Leach-Jones, Kevin Connor, Margaret Olley, William Robinson, Tim Storrier, John Wolseley, Wendy Stavrianos, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Michael Jagamara Nelson, Gordon Bennett and Inge King, among many others. It also published major titles on Lloyd Rees, Grace Cossington Smith, John Olsen, John Coburn, Emily Kngwarreye, Leonard French, Garry Shead and James Gleeson. Craftsman House was widely regarded as Australia’s leading art-book imprint during the 1990s and its publications won numerous design awards. In 1989 Craftsman House became a division of the international Gordon and Breach publishing group and when this company acquired the prestigious art journal Art and Australia in 1991, the position and influence of Craftsman House in the Australian art-world was further consolidated. Having an international parent company to finance its growth, Craftsman House now went on to produce titles on American and European contemporary art as well as maintaining its Australian list. Its publications included overviews of contemporary Scottish painting and sculpture and the first title on contemporary Czechoslovakian painting published after the downfall of the Communist regime in 1989. Craftsman House also published works on Polish, German, Russian and New Zealand art. Nevill left the company in early 2000 and began concentrating more on his own writing. As a writer, Nevill’s driving interest was always associated with the relationship between art, visionary experience and the esoteric traditions. In 1971, during an eight-month visit to England, he worked in a London bookshop and acquired a reader’s ticket to the British Museum. Here he read the visionary texts of the neglected English artist Austin Osman Spare, who was both a trance artist and occultist. Nevill’s first book, The Search for Abraxas, co-authored with a university friend, Stephen Skinner, and published in 1972, delved further into this area. It was described by British author Colin Wilson, who contributed an introduction, as ‘the manifesto of a new generation’. Over a period of some forty years Nevill wrote and co-authored numerous books on shamanism, modern Western magic, contemporary art, ambient music, holistic health, paranormal consciousness research and esoteric thought. They included The Dictionary of Mysticism and the Esoteric (first published in the United States in 1988 and in-print in various editions ever since), an introductory text – The Elements of Shamanism – published in ten languages –  and Stealing Fire from Heaven: the Rise of Modern Western Magic released by Oxford University Press in 2011. His 2013 publication, The Varieties of Magical Experience – inspired by William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience and co-authored with Queensland-based anthropologist Professor Lynne Hume – was published in the United States by Praeger and described as ‘a classic’ by academic specialists working in the same field. Nevill’s art-book titles included the three-volume series Images in Contemporary Australian Painting, a co-authored title on Australian art and spirituality, Fire and Shadow, and the multi-authored volume Australian Painting Now, co-edited with Laura Murray Cree and published by Craftsman House in Australia and Thames & Hudson in the UK in 2000. Over a forty-year period Nevill wrote, co-authored or edited seventy book titles – and his work was published in 26 countries. He earned a Ph.D from the University of Newcastle in 2008 for an award-winning dissertation on the controversial ‘Witch of Kings Cross’, Rosaleen Norton and his biography of this colourful, bohemian artist, Pan’s Daughter(first published in 1988) was subsequently released in the UK in a revised and expanded edition in 2012. A companion volume – Homage to Pan, based on his Ph.D – was published by Creation Books in the UK in 2009 and by Edition Roter Drache in Germany in 2013. Nevill was married three times – to Susan Pinchin (with whom he had three children, Rebecca, Megan and Ben), to Anna Voigt, and to Lesley Andrews- Buffard. From 2008 onwards he lived in and around Milton, on the New South Wales south coast – a small rural town in which he felt totally at home. His interests in retirement included drawing in pastels, gardening, lecturing for the U3A organization, learning how to play slide guitar on a dobro, and singing in a local gospel choir. He is survived by his wife Lesley, his three children, Rebecca, Megan and Ben, and his grandchildren Jethro, Isabella, Madeleine, Archie and Zara.