Jake Stratton-Kent

Jake Stratton-Kent has been called the most notorious necromancer in England, and describes himself as a ‘very late Late Pagan.’ He previously edited and contributed to an influential eleven volume Journal The Equinox — British Journal of Thelema. This is nowadays superseded by Conjure Codex, a serial anthology of writings on spirit conjuring traditions from around the world, ancient and modern.

He has also written numerous pamphlets and articles for various publications from the mid 70s to the current day. Most relevant to this anthology, he is the author of the Encyclopaedia Goetica published by Scarlet Imprint. This comprises:

Volume One: a reconstructed and extensively commented edition of the Grimorium Verum under the title The True Grimoire.

Volume Two: Geosophia, an extensive two volume survey of the Greek origins and mythic background of goetia.

Volume Three: The Testament of Cyprian the Mage, an analysis of the roots of the grimoires and their spirit hierarchies in Late Antiquity.

A practical magician for four decades, his focus has increasingly embraced necromantic approaches from the grimoires, African Traditional Religions and the ancient Hellenic world. He provides impressive testimony that for Western Magic to become once more a Living Tradition it must recover a coherent Eschatology as its central mainspring. This can be readily achieved by dovetailing the grimoire traditions with the Classical past and the modern traditions of African descent in the New World.

A ‘senile delinquent,’ he has a background in the Youth Radicalisation and Free Festival Movement of the 1970s that has never entirely left him. He prefers the semi rural environment of the West Country to the urban centres of modern “Consumer Culture” and considers this definition of our current civilisation to be an oxymoron.

Features contributed to The Witches' Almanac:

Witch and the Devil, The, The Witches’ Almanac 2017, p. 74