I have been thinking about the labels I have woven around myself of late. And one in particular, that of gutter mage, may indeed take some deeper explanation. Yes, archetypes such as John Constantine or Willoughby Kipling, Harry Dresden and Milton from Urban Gothic are helpful, if hardly universally known. Masks that the current wears in the mass media perhaps, though sadly lacking the nuance which got me to claim the title. What I do may pay lip service to such pop culture sorcery, but an over reliance on the modern godforms that dance across the page can only carry the sorcerer so far.

It honestly never occurred to me during my neophyte years that there had to be a correct way to do anything as long as the results kept rolling in. Perhaps that is why I naturally gravitated towards chaos magick as a paradigm in the end, though I initially started as many modern occultists do somewhere between eclectic witch and wannabe grimoire conjurer. In hindsight being a chaote requires the kind of deep understanding that only comes with experience as well as a requirement to know the rules before trying to break them. It is not a call to excess, nor do particularly sloppy magickians do well in that sphere.

As a result it was a little while before I was finally able to properly stand beneath the eight pointed star, a declaration cemented by my becoming mired in the recommended reading from other occult disciplines such as Thelema and Wicca. I all too quickly found their reliance on folkloric checks and balances too restrictive to be of any real use in my day to day life. Straining against even the most sensible of fetters holding me back from desire I would go on to view much of the restraint demanded by those older traditions to be frankly galling. Simply give me the toys and let me play where I may.

There just always seemed to be something counter-intuitive about the call for lambskin and chalk circles, barbaric tongues and oblique hand gestures, even then. I could see the basic structure they were going for, how those correlated and contrasted across a myriad of different esoteric disciplines. I was far less interested in the user interface than the underlying programming language which made the manifestation happen, and downright disparaging of the customer support offered through initiatory orders or groups. Frankly, if I was going to brick my psyche through incorrect operation then so be it.

But being a gutter mage is about more than simply renaming a branch of chaos magick to disguise poor planning or a willingness to take risks in the service of results. As previously stated that will not work, and such failures tend to bring not only the sloppy adept down to earth with a bony crunch but anyone relying on them for help too. In truth the difference is one of reasoning. Mine is the sorcery of the slit writsted underclass, a product of my upbringing in one of the poorest areas of old London town. It is a refusal to lose, no matter the cost, but still requires the strength and skill to carry the load.

Yes, despite my somewhat bleak outlook on the current state of the occult diaspora I am well read and skilled enough to work within the ritual structures outlined in more rigid esoteric hierarchies. I even play well with others, when I have a reason to, so my reticence to join my peers is not born of a lack of social skills. I am just more comfortable falling back on the solo, ego driven, grimy, willpower fuelled urban sorcery of my former life when the need arises. More 1990’s grunge apathy than chaos magick’s 1970’s punk iconoclasm, it is the emotional numbness that typified the culture of my teens that helped set me on this path.

Requiring both secrecy and value for what little money I had when starting out, the various ritual implements described in the charity shop books that began to pile up in my bedroom were an unrealistic prospect. When specifically coloured pillar candles dressed with a cornucopia of different ingredients were impossible to find I fell back on tea lights and supermarket herbs. My first magickal knife was on a key chain and original Book of Shadows on a password protected floppy disk. I scratched sigils in trash piles, ran paint pens over brick walls. Walked vast incantations into the very streets using my feet as the wand.

More formally structured interests do draw my gaze too of course. I am a member of a necromantic priesthood, for example. A discipline of my own creation that has seen a surprising amount of traction since my book, The Accelerated Necromancer, was published in late 2024. But even though I can bring a deeply felt reverence to such endeavours there will always be a part of me that falls back into old, grungy habits when the situation requires it. And as the universe has found out more than once over the last twenty or so years, it is a very bad idea to back me into a corner unless you are willing to fight to the death.

This then is gutter magick. A bricolage based, almost autodidactic desire to use sorcery for the betterment of the adept’s situation while allowing very little to stand in their way. It requires a far deeper understanding of the occult than the flashy, potentially bombastic nature of the rituals undertaken would at first hint, and a willingness to rely more on individual willpower than talismans or external godforms to get the job done. Occult warfare of a kind, though one that casts the wider macrocosm as the target for relentless assault until the gates of consensus reality are finally breached and the treasure house picked clean.