My personal situation learning about spirit was never easy. Money was tight, and I was assailed by enemies from all directions. Walking down the road with Punditt during a particularly difficult time, I burst into tears. He swore, and threatened to abandon me there and then. That was my lesson on stoicism, as if I needed one.

The Work between the Master and the Student is also Silent. It took many years before I realised that I had to talk about some of my experiences, and then only with a few selected friends who were on a similar Path. Eventually I began to see that I have to talk to a wider audience, knowing that I have no way of providing ‘proof’. Naturally, he was silent on whether I had permission to divulge certain experiences. The pact we had between us was as always tacit and unspoken.

Paradoxically, the Goetia have been the most vocal of the spirits I work with. Certainly, they were almost always the easiest to recognise

The Goetic Journey

There are formative moments on the Goetic journey. Mine happened in my early twenties on a bright sunny, but cool late morning in Brighton, so it was probably in the autumn. We were walking slowly down Western Road. My teacher was in his fifties, he was barely five feet high, round face, and dark lustrous hair. We rarely had ‘conversations’ – even at this early stage I knew I was never going to write a book on the “Discourses with my Master”. The long silences were profound, but my mind rarely penetrated the depths. We walked slowly past an empty bus stop; nobody was there. Suddenly my head swivelled, but I saw nothing. He smiled, “A spirit said ‘good morning’”. I grunted.

One evening we were in his small flat. Once again I was sitting there wondering what I was doing. I still had no idea who he really was, and what he was doing. I was considering saying something about making a move, returning to my flat to sleep or watch TV. He looked at me intently; he pointed, “This spirit sitting next to me is teaching you…” I was too nonplussed to say anything coherent. Besides, I already knew my questions would not elicit anything.

Systematically, my old life (I was barely into my twenties) was being dismantled. Every belief, tenet, career, friendships, social, thoughts and ideas were ruthlessly, and sometimes brutally destroyed. Occasionally, something made sense, but generally I was in a nihilistic state. Punditt smiled enigmatically. When I met him, I was vegetarian, teetotal, and meditating 3 hours twice a day while holding down a poorly paid office job. Later I would see that I was heading for a nervous breakdown. I was regularly trying to sup as many lagers as him before Closing Time when the pubs would close at 3pm. I never did manage to keep up with him. In the evening we would cook a very hot chicken curry while we worked through a bottle of Black Label or vodka. By now I had been evicted from the Meditation Centre on trumped-up charges. I was past caring.