I've been switching back and forth between two writing projects for the last four years! The follow-up to Avalonian Aeon, Aquarian Phoenix and Dion Fortune and the Age of Michael, the complementary work to Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus, are both substantially advanced. I have nearly a thousand pages of material and some massive editing is in order considering lots more still needs to be written.
An event at the end of 2013 overrode both and set something else in motion. Colin Wilson died.
The first Colin Wilson book I read was The Occult in 1978 when I was nineteen
years old. It introduced me to an enormous range of extraordinary people and
subjects, many of which I followed through on with further reading, and in some
cases developed an abiding passion for. Looking back on where those interests
led, and seeing the clear point from which they began, is enough for me to feel
an eternal gratitude for that book alone. Although I appreciated that it was
wonderfully well written I didn’t particularly have a clear sense of the author
himself in the narrative at that time.
In 1980 I came to the follow-up, Mysteries, which had quite a strong
autobiographical theme as well as the same encyclopaedic density of material as
its predecessor. I started to get a definite sense of Colin Wilson himself and
the feeling that he seemed a mighty fine fellow.
During the next few years, during time at
university, I took the almost obligatory student step of reading Wilson’s first
book The Outsider and started to
appreciate just how wide his subject matter really was and how many books he
had already written. A few more titles followed.
I keep one-line diaries on A4 paper on which I
record the most basic daily activities such as, for example, when I might start
and finish reading a book or watching a movie. I also have separate sheets just
for listing books read. I have always found it interesting to look back and
note the particular flavour of various years, to ponder on why I might read an
enormous number of books in one year and what seems like hardly any during
another. These details reveal the mysterious rhythms of one’s inner life.
At the end of 1982 I read Poltergeist and found it such tremendous entertainment that I
started the following year with a voracious enthusiasm for all things Wilson.
It still gives me a warm glow of nostalgia and satisfaction to see that I read
21 Colin Wilson books in 1983, followed by a further 10 in ’84. During my final
terms at university, when I should have been focusing on course work, I was
giving far more energy and attention to Wilson. I vividly remember one morning,
when I had arrived on campus and was sitting in a coffee bar awaiting the first
lecture of the day, when someone told me that the latest edition of the music
newspaper Sounds featured a large
piece on Colin Wilson. I leapt out of my chair and ran off to the campus
newsagent and bought it to read immediately with no further thought for the
lecture timetable. A week before my final exams I started reading New Pathways in Psychology and I wasn’t
even taking the subject. At that
point Colin Wilson books were like drugs to me. They got me high and expanded
my consciousness. And there was no comedown. The after-effects lasted forever.
I ordered books that were in print and got great pleasure from finding
second-hand items on market stalls and suchlike. I loved the Grafton Panther
paperbacks that always had Wilson’s name in the same font style. Some weird
association of the physical feel of those books and the anticipated pleasure
that reading them would bring came together.
Eventually I came to meet people who knew Wilson and it was heartening to hear him universally lauded as a fabulous bloke. Andrew Collins got to know him during the mid-nineties Alternative Egyptology era of From Atlantis to the Sphinx. He loved the way that Wilson would hold court in his local pub, staking out an area and getting the drinks and sandwiches in for small groups of people who wanted to talk to him, being fantastically generous with his time and attention, showing a definite sense of responsibility to inspire the next generation.
I only met him a few times and spoke to him briefly
but one of those occasions impacted very strongly on me. It was at the 2005
Questing Conference in London hosted by Andrew Collins. The autobiographical Dreaming to Some Purpose had recently
been released and copies were in evidence. Wilson was there with his family
sitting in the audience. Son Damon was clearly a chip off the old block. I had
a first edition of New Existentialism which
I was very happy that he autographed. I sat down to enjoy the conference
lectures in his vicinity and found myself getting increasingly moved. It was so
marvellous, so cool, that he had escaped the London scene to make a home in
Cornwall and successfully raise a family and produce a truly gigantic corpus of
work over a period of decades. I was in the process of writing my first book
then and here was the inspirational template.
When he died in December 2013 I was profoundly
moved, rapidly recapitulating the immense extent of the inspiration he had
provided for me. When someone dies it seems obvious to me that, unless they’re
a serial killer or genocidal dictator, it is appropriate to praise that person
for their best achievements and generally bid farewell with some love and
respect.
I was shocked to see some of the material that
appeared in the British press amidst the obituaries. One piece in particular
used a photo of Wilson that must have had a humorous intent when taken but was
now opted in to a snide cynical put-down suggesting he was a failure and in
some respects a bit of a joke. This was a matter of days after his death and
was met with a barrage of angry comments. The author later back-pedalled
slightly and acknowledged a possible error of judgement. I have to say that if
I had met him at the time I think there is a good chance I would have
physically attacked him. The extent of my anger and contempt towards him would
be difficult to express.
I know that Colin Wilson was a bit naughty in not
checking details of quotations used in The
Outsider. I’ve caught him getting facts wrong here and there in his
enormous output. Some of the paranormal material doesn’t look too good these
days. Maybe, in his great enthusiasm, he believed a few too many impossible
things before breakfast. I get that. These can be considered to be entries in
the minus column. To imply that this is sufficient to negate his entire work seems
beyond absurd to me.
I’ve noted comment threads where people have said
that The Outsider was the only
important book he ever wrote but it was in fact rubbish, a mess. I also saw a
few remarks by people who said they had read Wilson in their younger days but
had now grown out of all that nonsense, or words to that effect. People I knew
sneered at the idea that Wilson was a philosopher, and that any answers to
life’s problems could be found with him. Hadn’t I read Karl Marx yet? It was
about time I did. Grow up Paul!
It wasn’t enough for me to heartily laugh at such
manifestations. I still feel the same way about Colin Wilson as I did when I
read 21 of his books in a year. I am totally unrepentant. In fact, seeing the
extent of his inspiration on me over decades and where that has tangibly led, I
can sing his praises even more. Within a few days of the scathing newspaper
piece I had arranged to present a tribute to him in my home-town of Glastonbury.
The earliest date I could get was at the end of March. As the time approached I
prepared to read a few Wilson books in preparation. I got a bit carried away,
completing The Occult and Mysteries back-to-back in a week,
steaming through the likes of New
Existentialism and Order of Assassins
in a day each. It was like 1983 again. I
started to feel like it would be a great idea to try and write a short book
about Wilson like the ones he had produced on Gurdjieff, Jung, Steiner, and
Crowley. To do so would mean I would have to bring forth in myself the very
qualities of which Wilson wrote. And it would justify me reading lots more of
his books. It would be great to do this for a lot of reasons.
I commit myself to this undertaking and I affirm it using a photo of Colin Wilson dating from the time of his overnight fame in 1956 following the publication of The Outsider.
