Brief Magical Biography
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Nick Farrell - MAGICIAN
Brief Magical Biography
Nick Farrell was born just as the sun was rising on August 4, 1965 in the "carpet capital" of the UK , Banbury http://www.banburytown.co.uk/ . Other than the nursery rhyme about riding horses and crosses in the town, Banbury's only claim to fame has been that it was the birth place of glam rocker and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter, so the least said about it the better.
When he was six months old his parents decided that New Zealand was the place to move too and they set up house beneath a smoking volcano http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_ngauruhoe.html in the centre of the North Island . His father, Peter's job was to make sure that government records were safely buried in the advent of a volcanic eruption. The New Zealand government believed it was vital that all documents were give a six foot head start when 20 feet of volcanic ash was about to be dumped on top of them. The volcano never erupted and the family moved to the Capital, Wellington http://www.wellingtonnz.com/
At the age of four Nick suffered from a series of night time terrors. He saw things that were particularly frightening. He knew they were not dreams but they appeared real. These visions lasted until he was 17.
At age ten he was convinced by fundamentalist Christians at a Christian holiday camp http://www.elrancho.co.nz/ that he was responsible for the death of a man 2000 years before he was born. Apparently their God said it was his fault because of something his ancestor had done involving an Apple, a snake and a woman. Taking responsibly for this, he read the Bible extensively because the fundamentalists said that it contained God's plan for him. Soon he knew it better than most of them and found that if God did have a plan for him based on this book, it would mean that God wanted him to be an arsehole. He worked out that the happiest fundamentalist Christians were not those who studied the Bible, but those who just did what another human told them were inside the bible. Many of the things that were Christian absolutes were not in the bible at all and were human traditions.
At age 17, Nick decided to have sex and when it was not the most important emotional experience he had, and angels didn't show up, it confirmed that established religion didn't hold any answers.
Nick went and bought a deck of Tarot cards. He was not sure why he did this. He had always wanted a deck of tarot cards. There was something in the symbols that he liked, along with the idea that you could somehow know the future. He went into a shop in Wellington called Mystic Manner which was owned by a former student of the self titled King of the Witches Alex Sanders http://www.controverscial.com/Alex%20Sanders.htm, a bloke called Murray Langham who would one day become one of New Zealand's foremost authorities on chocolate http://www.chocolatetherapy.com/. Langham was involved with a GD offshoot called Builders of the Adytum http://bota.sitebuilder.yodelaustralia.com.au/ and suggested Nick should become involved. Again Nick started to read everything he could find on the Golden Dawn and Magic.
But fortune was against Nick remaining too long in BOTA, despite being initiated into the outer order of the group, things were against him. In 1984 he had started to train as a Journalist. The head of the Order was Will Chesterman who had a number of bad experiences with journalists and believed that Nick was a plant by the yellow press to expose his Order's teaching. When Nick started writing papers based on BOTA teaching for internal distribution, Chesterman panicked.
BOTA's ritual work was carried out in Chapter, which was essentially the Golden Dawn's rituals with the Enochian removed. Chesterman made it clear that Nick was not going to get into Chapter and that was going to be the end of it. Fortunately Nick moved to Hawkes Bay where he hooked up with the former members of the last surviving temple of the Golden Dawn, Whare Ra http://www.templedarkmoon.com/nzoccult.htm . In particular he joined the Order of the Table Round which was a side order of the now defunct Whare Ra temple. The head of the order was Percy Wilkinson who, along with Jack Taylor, had implanted the Golden Dawn's initiatory formula over the top of the original ritual. This had made the rite extremely powerful and was an influence on Nick's later magical work. Percy and a few of the other Golden Dawn adepts shared a lot of ideas with Nick who at the time was not really that interested in the Golden Dawn and had signed up to join Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki's Servants of the Light School http://www.servantsofthelight.org/.
The School was a correspondence course but ran workshops in ritual magic. Nick moved to the UK to take part in these courses. Before he left he talked with Murray Langham who introduced him to a friend who was fast becoming a key player in SOL, David Goddard http://www.rpxf.org/index.htm.
Goddard's background was also Alexandrian Wicca, but he had also worked with the Liberal Catholic Church and trained under Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi http://www.kabbalahsociety.org/ , in traditional Jewish Kabbalah.
Nick went to every workshop run by Ashcroft-Nowicki and Goddard. He was also influenced by Marian Green and her approach to experimental magic
At that time Goddard was forming a trial group which was supposed to set up a lodge system within the Servants of the Light. The first group, Lodge Khamuast was established amongst David's friends and regular attendees. It had considerable power and formed the model for SOL's lodge network over the following five years. It was those years that Nick learned much about practical magic, in particular what could go wrong with group dynamics. Conflicts erupted in the group as psyches conflicted, rumours were spread and lies believed. Some left, others stayed, but ultimately it was doomed. David was too talented to stay in SOL, although he learnt much from it, and forces in that group conspired to throw him out. When he went, Nick went too. David formed his own group, called Priesthood of the Light, which later changed its name to Pharos http://www.thepharos.org/. Nick was initially involved in the initial development of that order but became clear that this was not to be his place either. David was interested in becoming a full time esoteric teacher and to do that he really needed to start afresh. It is never a good idea to know where the bodies are buried in a teacher's past, nor is it good to remember what they told you five years earlier either. One by one those in the old temple who left David join the new school were asked to leave, including Nick.
In 1997, Nick visited the US where he carried out a few workshops and renewed his friendship with Chic and Tabatha Cicero http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org. It was there that he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Returning to the UK he met another of Alex Sander's students and formed a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in England. http://www.hogd.co.uk
Around that time Nick wrote his first book Making Talismans. He moved to Sofia where he continued to attend HOGD meetings and wrote Magical Pathworking, The Druidic Order of Pendragon (with Colin Robertson), Gathering the Magic and Egyptian Shaman. He also began to work with the artist Harry Wendrich and his wife Nicola http://www.wendricharthouse.com/propheticinfo3.htm in creating the Horus Hathor Golden Dawn Tarot deck http://www.wendricharthouse.com/galleryT.htm
In 2007 he wrote his first novel When a Tree Falls, which is an occult, fantasy based on his silly and at times black sense of humour.
In 2008 he moved back to the UK contributing greatly to the correspondence course material for the Hermetic College of Magical Arts. Further details of the college available on this site or go direct to the website at http://www.hermetic-colege.com
Later that year he moved to Rome where he is finishing editing his book on Mather's Alpha et Omega order King over the Water which he co-wrote with Melissa Seims and is starting work on an as yet untitled Tarot book and a sequel for When a Tree Falls which will be called Kingdom Come.
He moved to Rome in September 2008 where he lives with Paola.
Visit my other biography sections:
Brief Journalistic Biography -
Nick Farrell the Hack!
Brief Material Biography
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