Hello! Thank you for visiting my website.
Here, I hope to outline and share my passion for working as an anthropologist studying alternative modes of consciousness. It’s passion that drives me, hoping for a better world more in touch with nature, ourselves and the other beings that share our planet.
My aim is to create a bridge of communication between western and indigenous or small scale people’s worldviews. No small task, but we need to start somewhere. I think we can learn much about other cultures by removing our ‘mind forged manacles’, as western shaman William Blake (1757-1827) would say. In the work that you will find here, there are some of my explorations. I hope there’s something that catches your attention or maybe inspires you.
I’m a past Lecturer and Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I completed my PhD on British magic in 1997. I’ve also been a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, where I taught courses and workshops on Shamanic Consciousness and Altered States of Consciousness for many years.
My anthropological fieldwork with British witches, druids, and shamanic practitioners resulted in many articles and publications including Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld Magical-Consciousness, and The Nature of Magic.
Perhaps I’m best known for my writing on consciousness and magic, including The Anthropology of Magic, which I wrote as an academic introduction to understanding the experience of magic, and my collaborative work with neuroscientist Erik Goodwyn, Magical Consciousness.
For my personal journey in academia and magic please see The Owl, the Dragon, and the Magician: reflections on being an Anthropologist studying Magic, originally written for a seminar on the Paranormal at Esalen, California and published in the Pomegranate 2015: