Apology

The project which this website is to host has been gestating in my mind for at least the last twelve years. I feel that I must explain my choice of mythos in order not to deter those who may benefit from or enjoy my work.

At age ten I first read the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. As a young boy I was taken by them, given their simplistic style, easiness to read and general subject matter, that of a mysterious hidden world running alongside our own, into which a seemingly ordinary boy suddenly finds himself. The books then went on to become a massive worldwide phenomenon, as is well known.

Retrospectively, I suppose their success (amongst adults as well as just children) comes down to their very archetypal nature (in Jungian terms). Rowling is actually a rather mediocre writer, and her characters are rather one-dimensional and bland (Harry, the reluctant hero; Dumbledore, the usual wise mentor; Voldemort, the standard bad guy etc.). However, this archetypal nature of the characters is perhaps why the books were so successful – readers could flesh out the characters for themselves in their minds, which is perhaps what led to the endless speculation as to what-would-happen-next that took place amongst the large fan-base the books had amassed. The blandness of the characters made it so that anything could conceivably happen to them. Perhaps being a poor writer is better in terms of becoming a successful one…

The interesting thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon was that its massive fan base became a large community online. The internet had become a massive worldwide phenomenon at approximately the same time, and, as such, Harry Potter fans created a large online community for themselves.

One particularly interesting aspect of this online community (for me, personally, as a teenager) was the phenomenon of online Fan-Fiction). Fan-Fiction was certainly not a new idea, but it became something more with Harry Potter. Probably because of the bland one-dimensionality of Rowling’s characters, Harry Potter seemed to lend itself to Fan-Fiction far better than other popular works of fiction, as Fan-Fiction authors could very easily flesh out the characters in whatever way they wished.

At this point (my teenage years) I had, in fact, moved on from Harry Potter, on to Tolkien and more advanced literature which revealed to me the mediocrity of Harry Potter. Nonetheless, perhaps due to some kind of nostalgia, I kept up with Harry Potter as new books were released, but also I became fascinated with the Fan-Fiction that I was discovering.

As I said above, there was endless speculation amongst Harry Potter fans after the publication of each book as to what might happen next in the story. One form that this took was that Fan-Fiction authors would write their own novel-length works giving their own ideas. They would copy the form of Rowling’s books as if they were writing their own next-book-in-the-series.

It must be said that the vast majority of the Fan-Fiction I read was just silly stuff written by kids lacking in any kind of literary quality. However, occasionally I would stumble across something that was a little more. There were a surprising number of adult authors who seemed to actually possess a modicum of writing talent, matching or even surpassing that of Rowling herself (we’re not talking Dostoevsky or Joyce but certainly matching the level of many professional authors). These authors were writing works of Fan-Fiction that entertained me just as much, if not more than Rowling’s books had done, to the extent that when Rowling actually published her next book, it wasn’t ever as good as some of the Fan-Fiction I had read.

As I was getting older, I was delving more and more deeply into my own quest for knowledge, reading more and more advanced literature and philosophy whilst also delving into art, music (in particular), film etc. A couple of the Harry Potter Fan-Fictions I had discovered seemed to resonate with me more than Rowling’s official books. In particular, there were two that interested me – the ‘Slytherin Rising’ series by J.L. Matthews and the ‘Two To Lead’ series by Missile Envy.

Both of these works began with the intention of creating a series of novel-length Fan-Fictions which told, in the case of the former, an alternate version of the Harry Potter story but from the Slytherin perspective (the bad guys in Rowling’s series), and, in the case of the latter, an alternate continuation of the story from where Rowling’s fifth book leaves off. Unfortunately, both of these works were left unfinished by their authors despite both gaining a small following of fans. Given that I had been sucked into the world of Fan-Fiction, I couldn’t help but give these works of Fan-Fiction the same treatment that the official Harry Potter books had received i.e. to speculate for myself about what would happen next in them, and invent my own scenarios.

The author of the ‘Slytherin Rising’ series was not particularly good, but what intrigued me here was that she delved into the dark side of the Harry Potter world (the Slytherin side) and showed the story from that alternate point-of-view. Again, Rowling’s characters were so basic and one-dimensional that it was easy to separate her characters into good and evil. What this series did was show that there could be an alternative kind of “goodness”, one that was less traditional and that had its origins in the darker side of life. This idea resonated with me as I had come to regard myself as a good person, but not in any traditional sense…

The author of the ‘Two To Lead’ series was much better, and better (in my opinion) than Rowling. Her characters (both the ones she stole from Rowling as well as her original characters) were much more real, more fleshed out and human and her style was much more adult, delving deeply into the psychology of each major character showing all the various points of view and blurring the lines between good and evil, which had been rather black and white in Rowling’s work (with the exception of the Snape character, admittedly one of Rowling’s better creations). This Fan-Fiction also provided a far more interesting back-story to the whole idea of Harry Potter than the one in Rowling’s work. Reading this Fan-Fiction became more entertaining than reading Rowling’s work, although elsewhere I was reading far more advanced and intelligent things – these Fan-Fictions were my guilty pleasure, so to speak.

For some reason, I began to formulate my own, slightly alternate history of the ‘Two To Lead’ story, based on an original character I inserted into it. I also stole a few characters from the ‘Slytherin Rising’ series, the ones that had most interested me. I was essentially coming up with a Fan-Fiction of a Fan-Fiction!

At that stage I didn’t have any interest in writing down these ideas, or publishing them online on Fan-Fiction websites. It was just my own private ideas in my mind, but ideas that wouldn’t go away, and continued to develop and grow into a long, complicated narrative that became more and more my own as time went by, despite being so very heavily based on characters, plots and worlds created by others, namely J.K. Rowling and these two Fan-Fiction authors.

As I grew older and intensified my own studies, I couldn’t help but begin to imagine what my story might be like as some kind of grand artistic project. After studying Music Composition to Masters level at university, I knew for certain that my own musical compositions would play a major role in such a project. I began to think of it as a kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk incorporating music as well as the written word.

At this point I was reading more elevated literature than teenage fantasy works (although I still had an interest in those as well) developing an obsession with experiencing the works that were considered the greatest works of all time. This completely altered my own scope of what was possible in a written work, as well as a musical one. I knew that, if ever I decided to realise my ideas, I would have to have the highest of ambitions for it, despite its rather childish origins.

Then, in my mid-twenties, my obsessions led my to stumble across something incredible online, although at first I knew not what I had found. Being so obsessed with learning things as I was, I had always had an interest in things of an esoteric nature and this, in the online world, often led to various conspiracy theory websites, most of which were admittedly absurd. I was always healthily skeptical of such things but something about the word ‘Illuminati’ created a feeling within me of a great secret that I must uncover. I certainly didn’t believe in alien lizards bent on world domination, such things belonging to teenage fantasy literature, but I knew that there must be some truth to be found about this mysterious ‘Illuminati’.

One day (around late-2014), an innocuous google search for the word ‘Illuminati’ led me to a website called armageddonconspiracy. Initially this appeared to me to be yet another conspiracy theory website aimed at describing the nature of this mysterious secret organisation. However, this time something was different. This website seemed to be presenting the Illuminati as a force for good in the world, and the writers of the content of the website claimed to be actual members of the society! Initially I was skeptical, as ever, and at first dismissed the whole thing as just more nonsense. However, something about it wouldn’t go away in my mind and some weeks later I went back to the site and began reading from the beginning.

I then discovered just how much material was on there, and far from the usual rambling conspiracy nonsense. Rather, this was highly complicated, intellectual content discussing philosophy, religion, science, mathematics, psychology, politics, history, art and all manner of other subjects and bringing them all together into an amazingly coherent whole, which certainly struck a chord with me, this being exactly what I had been seeking my whole adult life. The work on the website was extended in a series of ebooks available from amazon known as the ‘God Series’, written by Mike Hockney (an alias).

Initially, many of the extraordinary claims made by these writers seemed unbelievable and I maintained my skepticism. But I couldn’t stop reading. So on I went. The more I read, the more the pieces of the puzzle began to all fit together and the more of the bigger picture I could see. Once I had read everything, and seen the bigger picture in full, that which at first had seemed unbelievable could now only be considered the truth. Everything fit together perfectly and the sheer wealth of material could not possibly have just been made up by some random internet writers. This was clearly the culmination of centuries of work by a group of very intelligent people, and I realised that I had stumbled upon arguably the most significant and important intellectual work in the history of mankind!

Having read what I had read, I knew that this had been no mere accident, and that this work had been placed online specifically for people like me to find, people who shared my own Faustian thirst for knowledge. I also knew that this work was a call to arms for like-minded individuals, a platform from which we others could unleash what we had in us to create. I realised that I had been right in thinking that only the highest ambitions would do if ever I was to realise my great project, and now, I also realised, I had more of a purpose, more of a reason to realise that work, although now I knew that it would need to incorporate the ideas and knowledge I had acquired in the reading of this material.

It was surprisingly easy to turn my Harry Potter Fan-Fiction of a Fan-Fiction into an grand Illuminist project in my mind, but it was not easy, in fact it became impossible for it to cease being about the world of Harry Potter, and I began to fear how seriously I would ever be taken by fellow Illuminists if the great work I presented to the world was a Harry Potter Fan-Fiction. However, upon analysis I knew that my work had far more value than that, and that I wasn’t writing a story just for amusement and entertainment purposes, but that I was projecting my own understanding of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind into a mythos which had struck a chord with me at an early age. In fact, the very fact that Harry Potter had become such a huge global phenomenon suggested to me that using the same mythos might actually help me to attract readers.

Knowing that my silly, childish ideas had grown (over twelve years) into a project of this nature and importance (to me at least), I began to formulate exactly how it was all planned to go. I had already written a long, detailed synopsis of my story, and realised that to tell this story (which is not really my story as it is based on the work of other authors) I would need a series of novel length works to incorporate all of the details of a story which took place over a period of at least twenty five years in the lives of the characters in it.

Knowing that the story wasn’t really my own I realised the merits of my project would have to be all of the non-plot elements. I knew that with my writing style my work would be more involved with the psychological development of the characters than the plot anyway, and this aspect of the work would certainly be my own original work.

I also knew that I wasn’t going to be just writing a long story. I am a musician first and foremost, and I knew that music would play a big part in my work. I realised that the best way to present my story would be online on a website and that I would have videos embedded within the text containing the music. I would be composing my own music as well as making great use of existing music that would be appropriate to certain parts of the story.

I also realised that I wanted to write more intellectual, non-fiction work as part of the project as well. I realised that I could undermine the whole notion of my project being just a story by accompanying each chapter with a corresponding non-fiction article in which various subjects were tackled. But these articles would also follow their own narrative, working as a series which would help its readers to undergo the same kind of journey that I had gone on, a quest for knowledge and truth, an ongoing adventure to seek the ultimate truth, the grail itself! For part of our individual journey is turning back around and providing ways for others to join us, if they have the strength of will to embark on such a quest. Thus, my work would not be mere storytelling, but would constitute a tool which would aid others in finding their own way on to the path of truth.

I do not intend to ever make any money from my work. This is not a vocational endeavour, and I have long ago acknowledged that I do not live in a world which rewards the talents I possess. Nonetheless I feel compelled to undergo this project regardless. I hope to set an example to other artists that our work must always be bequeathed to humanity in order for it to be worthy of the name of art. Few things are so upsetting to me than when artists withhold their work unless they are receiving payment for it. True, an artist should be able to make a living, but, in the meritocratic future, artists will be rewarded for their hard work itself, and not by selling the end products of that work. As such, my work will be entirely available online free for anyone who wishes to experience it. As I said, this is not a vocational endeavour, this is my life’s work, my contribution to William Blake’s Golgonooza, the city of imagination, where all of humanity’s works of art are contained.

I must then trust that those who read my work will possess the intelligence to see its true value, Harry Potter Fan-Fiction notwithstanding!

 

 

[Interesting aside: The ‘Two To Lead’ series actually makes direct references to the ‘Principia Discordia’, the main text of the pseudo-philosophy known as Discordianism. Whether or not the author was a Discordian herself is unclear, but it was very interesting to me when the armageddonconspiracy writers began to attack Discordianism as the phislophy which had inspired the so-called ‘Cypher Gang’ of trolls who had attacked their work. At that stage I made it my goal to take the ‘Two To Lead’ story and place it firmly on the Illuminist side of the spectrum and eliminate any parts of it which espouse Discordianism, something which I had been aware of prior to the Cypher Gang’s appearance, but had never taken seriously and had only been amused by.]

 

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