What Is It That Is Ours To Do?
❦ In memory of our friend Gordon White.
I guess it had to start in a cocktail bar, in a long lost London. Media had entered its death spiral in 2011, and we were both writing magical texts in the empty hours of corporate collapse. The blog was in its ascendancy and the witty, combative and insightful Rune Soup was where the action was. Both highbrow and pop-savvy, you felt smarter for reading it. There are few magicians in any generation, and fewer still who have a talent for writing; let alone something new to say. This was thrilling stuff. I wrote to the author to introduce myself, sent him a copy of our recently published XVIas I thought it would jive with him. He replied to tell me he had read The Red Goddess, called it ‘revelatory.’ We struck up a conversation, talked about him writing for Scarlet Imprint, arranged to meet. Here was the new voice, hot with knowing, limpid with wisdom, diamond bright.
Gordon was urbane, charming, at the height of his much vaunted media drinking powers. If I remember correctly he had an eye for the talented mixologist. Alkistis wore a cloud of Fracas, intoxicating with notes of tuberose, and wore the best shoes. She was done with one drink, but we all had three on low sofas. It was natural, flowing, and an immediate friendship bloomed between the three of us like perfume on warm skin. We were the only people in the whole opulent place, the theatre entirely ours. He intuited that my next project would be Lucifer, whilst I encouraged him to write a book. We plotted. He had more work drinks to get to, whilst we staggered onto a train, elated that we had connected. We were all living beyond our means, magicians in the lustre and swag of a London only his corporate credit card could cover.
It can be lonely as the brightest person in the room, the one who sees the patterns beneath the surfaces, the one who sees the future. It wasn’t easy being a provincial Aussie growing up liking boys in a coal town with a tarot pack and his mother’s stolen cigarettes. He got out, studied film. And there is a cinematic quality to his life, because he dreamed it, enchanted, made the scenes happen.
Gordon was smart about finances, having blagged and performed his way up the ladder, able as a player, but never believing the lie. He was not some underachiever in a basement, the tired occult stereotype, he was a pro. He confidently knew his own value, shone in every crowded room.
Yes, there was the stress of shared housing, but there was doing magic on the sly, making offerings to the river and having pub lunches in charmed and leafy Chiswick. He could haunt the places that Spare and Crowley once did. He really loved London.
I know that a high point for him was the launch of Star.Ships at the storied Atlantis Bookshop. He just glowed that night. And you know, when people talk about Atlantis in the future, they will say in hushed tones, that Gordon White was once there. We toasted him, and so did a hubbub of London’s finest occultists. Those were his books in the window display, making history.
Gordon at the legendary Atlantis Bookshop for the launch of Star.Ships.
Star.Ships in the window of the Atlantis Bookshop.
The early RuneSoupers began to tentatively meet. Look, here he is with Jay in a packed Treadwell’s basement. Probably disagreeing about Enya, probably insisting that Nikki Minaj is the new Bowie. Maybe you came to see, exchanged a few words, saw who he was in action.
Gordon White and Jay Springett at Treadwell’s
Gordon was there for the magical revival, and central to it. His reputation steadily grew, he sought out his equals, and they embraced him. In particular he and Jake would regularly and (mostly!) constructively spar. We felt the urgency and excitement of a revolution taking place. It was ‘chaos’ in that there was no need to impose an orthodoxy or line up behind an idea. The future of magic was a pirate ship and we ran the skull and crossbones up the mast. We did not have to agree on every detail, we just had to do what was each ours to do.
What did we have?
What was missing?
And the answer to both was spirit.
It was Gordon White who put the animism back into modern magic, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. After the triumph of Star.Ships, Ani.Mystic went deeper. The book, a living animate thing.
He would hang onto his career and cash out, his money buying a permaculture farm in Tasmania with James, and we mourned a friend lost to another timezone.
Our last meeting in London was deserted, post-apocalyptic, the streets cleared by the lie of a virus that never was. A group of friends met in a London pub for the Avenging Angels event, and Gordon was at his charming best in the narrow aperture before global incarceration.
Avenging Angels at the Old Nick, London
The world closed, and for having the wrong opinions in the face of great evil he was attacked by the conformists and the jealous. If you misread him, his generous heart, his humanity, you are still living in darkness. A great shame rests on those who sided with the mob, the cowed podcasters and influencers, the craven bookshops. In an era of compliance, it costs to speak the truth. The magician has no choice, they must be impeccable. The prophet has no choice, they must speak the truth others cannot speak. And, oh my days, he was a sex realist, and none of our (mutual) trans friends ever burst into spontaneous flames as a result. If you want to call him controversial, as some no doubt will, you only demonstrate that you are still afraid. Instead, choose to become invincible, as he did.
We always stood by him, and defended his right to say whatever he chose.
No apologies, no fucks given.
You should carry a bright spear for your friends.
Australia had it bad, with the additional stress of wildfires that threatened to destroy his haven, a tragedy averted only through group magic. As a result of it all, he was admitted to hospital with a broken heart. They threatened immediate surgery, and he bravely refused the triple bypass and sought another path to healing. That journey was long and painful, and through all of which he showed great resolve. He made another adventure of it. We messaged him in his New Zealand hospital bed as the tides of fate swung in his favour once again.
The final stage of the healing journey was in the Amazon, and so we travelled deep into the jungle to be with him and James. We sat with him through night after night of ceremony. He purged with purpose, and we drank chamomile tea in the aftermath. How beautiful it was by the river, how calm beneath the stars. A jaguar coughs, a butterfly drifts by, and we are just friends together at the dawn of all creation. These were precious days spent in Eden, kept forever in our hearts.
Friend, we are looking back at you through the dappled light, see you standing there.
So he returned regularly to his beloved South America, and I always liked it when he was there because we could talk more. And he messaged me excitedly about triggering a prophecy in the Santa Muerte temple, and I wrote back to share a hoard of bronze socket axes and a picture of cunning woman Tammy Blee. I thanked him for the PJC obituary and told him sincerely that he was indeed the successor to that current; by which I meant modern magic. He replied knowingly, able to graciously accept it with a gif of Leo raising a martini glass. I wanted him to have that recognition, not have to wait for some fucking obituary. Then the messages stopped. I guessed he was travelling, and in a sense, he was.
Gordon was a bridge between the Old and New. We often discussed how he was making the journeys that Jake was never able to make. The project is one that is shared, but Gordon played his part to perfection. He was the best of us. If there is a viable tradition in the West in a hundred years time, it will in no small part be the result of the work of this man who walked between worlds.
We watched him grow over fifteen years of friendship. His octopus mind always sought out the new and the curious, but his ability to teach and communicate with true generosity of spirit was what made Rune Soup a true community of spirits. It went from the best blog to the best podcast, to the best place in which to find and master magic. He never took advantage of his students, never stopped improving and learning. In terms of connecting up the global community it was Gordon that hosted the conversations, drove the discourse. There are hundreds of hours of him you can watch. There are his books to read, and rediscover how fine he was with words. There are his courses on Rune Soup to work through. And I think you should. It is a mighty legacy.
What hurts for me is that he had solved the problem of that difficult third book in what he always called the dot trilogy, a global survey of cunning folk coming out of a series of fresh initiations, adventures and fully living life. We teased each other about it, because I had taken so long to finish Praxis ( I was so glad he liked it), but there was never any rush, we both knew that books take their own time. He was accepted by the traditions and practitioners, not as another gringo passing through, but as a shaman in his own right. I do not use that word frivolously. He had the key to what it is that needed to be said, what was essential to say. I thought there were more years ahead, but I knew that he was on borrowed time. He made use of every single moment. Attentive, present, open.
Alkistis would have made him another deservedly beautiful book, we would have thrown another party together, invited you all. Instead she performed a quiet dance for him last night as candles burned for him, and at dawn we cut a white rose wet with morning dew for the altar. How lucky we are to have known him.
I can imagine him being present in that last moment and asking his quizzical, really? really? And then, smiling into acceptance at the great cosmic joke of it all, moving into ceremony, being greeted on the other side. He was still young, called away to the spirit world whilst in full flower. Twenty-seven, as he often joked. Every time we spoke I told him how good he was looking, and meant it. And we, his friends left behind just have to get through the crying part and proclaim what a man we have lost, and what has been gained by so many.
We remember our brilliant and treasured friend, an adventurer, a magician, a man with a great mind and a yet greater heart.
What is it that is ours to do now?
Gordon showed the way.
Be fearless. Become invincible.
– Peter Grey
❦ First published on The Adder in the Churchyard Wall on 14th May. The comments there testify to the lives he inspired and the community of spirits he nurtured, and above all for the love we all feel for him.