Crowley, Creativity & Cosmic Horror: Julian Simpson’s Occult Audioverse

Tarot Interviews. Welcome to Tarot Interviews, If you haven't joined us before. My name is Fin and today's guest is Julian Simpson, a screenwriter, director and audio storyteller known for his groundbreaking audio dramas like the Lovecraft Investigations and Mythos. With a background in television and a sharp instinct for serialised storytelling, Julian has carved out a unique space in British audio fiction. I caught up with Julian about his exciting Kickstarter Lovecraft Investigations Crowley. This project will be a purely factual account of Alistair Crowley's life and adventures, presented by fictional characters that you might recognise from Julian's earlier stories. In this conversation, Julian reflects on the themes that run through his work, his beliefs, the mysteries he's created and the cosmic unknown, all through three chosen tarot cards. Julian, how the devil are you?

Hello

I can see you're sitting comfortably, so let us begin your tarot interview. What have you got there?

So I've got all my tarot decks here, but I don't obviously need them because you've got a special tarot camera.

And I've got two special decks. So do you have a preference between Pamela Coleman-Smith's Classic Rider-Waite?

Yes, nice.

Or we've got Mr Crowley and Frida Harris's Thoth deck.

I think we have to go Crowley.

Crowley.

I think we have to. That's this one, absolutely, oh, very nice. The other one I've got this Deviant Moon tarot, which is amazing, and the Hexen 2.0 Tarot. Have you seen this?

I have. Did you go to the Tarot Exhibition in London? I did. Ah, that was the first time I'd seen that particular deck Same here.

And that's why I bought it there. Yeah, I went with my wife, who's doing a PhD, who plays Kennedy Fisher in Lovecraft. Yeah, I went with my wife, who's doing a PhD, who plays Kennedy Fisher in Lovecraft, and we discovered while we were there that the Warburg Institute has Crowley's archive, which is kind of interesting because you're only allowed in. They've got notebooks, they've got letters, they've got everything and he bequeathed it to someone who then bequeathed it to Warburg, and you're only allowed in with the kind of serious academic credentials that my wife has. So when we do crowley, we're going to be in the weird position where kennedy fish is actually going to be doing her own research did you have to?

I'm just wondering if there's any particular scanner that you would go through that detects bad vibes or even good vibes. I'm not sure which ones would be least welcome in that space.

I don't know. The Warburg Institute is apparently quite weird. I was talking to a couple of academics about it recently and I said, oh, the Crowley archive is at Warburg. And they both went yeah, of course it is. So I don't know what that says about the Warburg Institute, but it's interesting.

So, as I was walking around and looking at the various cards that are on display, when I saw the Thoth cards that they had, were they the original ones? I mean, they looked stunning, they were. They were yes, yeah, they were very good. Yes, I'm just looking at the Kickstarter right now. I mean you must be glancing back to this every so often and I can see. I mean you've utterly smashed your goal here. You're on what's it? 87,000 now and rising.

Yes, I am, I am. It's become a full-time job, obviously, and I can't take my eyes off that ticker on Kickstarter, which is stupid, because I actually have a day job that I should be doing and I'm not doing it, I'm just staring at that going.

How do I make the numbers move faster? And it's amazing that we hit the target inside 24 hours, because it was a big target. It's a, you know, audio shows normally Kickstarter for like 15, 20 grand. We went for 70 and we hit it under in under 24 hours, which is amazing. And yet immediately we hit it I was like, well, now I want the stretch goals, now I want to do an episode of Mythos, now I want to do this new show that I've got in my head. So now we're creeping towards stretch goals and I'm just desperately trying to kind of juice the action. Somehow we're doing a proper factual deep dive into Crowley across five episodes. I don't think anyone's done a Crowley documentary that extensive before.

Good, you've got so much to cover as well. I mean, I was just having a quick glance into his background myself. I mean, first of all, the idea that he used to send anti-Christmas cards to people is something that delights me, and he was a show producer at one point in 1913.

He was with a group called the Ragged Ragtime Girls and I think it was something like nine violinists who went around the world and they actually had revolvers and secreted on their persons in case of vagabonds and assassins and he managed them just because he was at alistair crowley yeah, it's, it's a, it's the this is kind of the problem with him actually of going we're going to do five episodes is a deep dive on in our into alistair crowley and you wonder whether five is enough, because there's a lot to cover and also there's a lot to uncover.

I think there's. I'm doing it with Richard Mclean Smith, who makes the Unexplained Podcast, and we were talking about it the other day and just saying actually we think we're going to end up coming out of the end of episode five with a kind of well, that was that like hero, villain, I don't think you can possibly know, and I think we're going to try and present him in as objective a way as possible. But I'm pretty sure we're going to uncover some stuff that probably wasn't okay at the time and definitely wouldn't be okay now, and I think you kind of can't shy away from it. But the same time, 72 years of a man's life doing incredibly varied and extraordinary things, and some of them are going to be amazing and some of them are going to be probably despicable did you ever?

You may already know this, and I'm sure that you do. Did you read up about the battle of blithe road?

Yo, no, this is just a podcast where I'm going to look stupid.

No, no, no. I mean this is just from a cursory glance around the internet, just the juicy stuff. There was an event called the Battle of Blythe Road, and I won't be doing this justice and I will be receiving messages from people saying, no, none of that happened. According to popular belief, crowley staged an occult drama at the second order temple of the hermetic order of the golden dawn on 36 Blythe road in London right, and he was dressed as the Egyptian goddess Cyrus, except he was also wearing a black mask, a cross and a kilt, I believe, and his partner who was with him. She was topless and carrying a large sword and her name was Elaine Simpson.

So she's no relation. I take it no, except Elaine is my mother's middle name.

It's quite bizarre. Okay, and yeah, she's said to be part of the ceremonial attempt to take over the temple, but the mad thing is I mean that is pretty insane. But the mad thing is WB Yeats the poet, was part of the rival faction and, it's believed, pushed Crowley down the stairs at one point.

Oh, that's a nice factoid because Yeats was very involved in all of that stuff. There were lots of I mean, we covered this a little bit in Haunter of the Dark that there was people like Yates, but there was also some really nasty, you know, early members of the fascist movement knocking around. Jfc Fuller who was knocking around and fortunately they all ran a mile when Crowley started really kind of trumpeting his bisexuality because it was scandalous and he loved that. But luckily the fascists all ran a mile and we don't want anything to do with this guy. Excellent, excellent.

Right, I think it's card time, so it is. Let me get the first one ready. So it's a slightly cat-candid way of doing it, but I will basically shuffle these in front of the camera. I want you to reach out across the ether and just tell me when to stop shuffling and we'll pick one.

Are you doing the whole deck or just the major arcana?

Oh, this is the whole deck. Oh, okay, so we might even end up with one of the weird ones, who knows? Can you see that it's sorrow? It is sorrow, yeah.

Oh. So, that is.

Oh no, that is as it should be this is what would normally be considered to be the three of swords. It's pretty stark and honest, isn't it? Sorrow, yes brilliant. That sense of spiritual and intellectual suffering piercing through the veils of illusion. I believe it's linked to Saturn in Libra and it's forces that bring focus on balance, responsibility and restriction.

So these are the things. It's not a fun card, is it?

Not the most fun? No, when you look at it, what's jumping out at you?

if you can actually see the illustration, Well, I am struggling a little to see, but I think it's. Is it like? Is the sword lying on? Is it meant to be?

I don't know if that's a cloth or just a swirling void.

Swirling void. Seems reasonable, doesn't it?

Yeah, although there's something almost like flower-like or organic about that shape isn't there, it is. It looks a bit like a black lettuce, black lettuce. There we go. You've now defined that card for me from here on Right. So the black lettuce card, all right. So the question I'm going to pose is let's go with heartache and disappointment. So heartache and disappointment are part of the creative path. So how do you process personal or professional setbacks?

That's a good question. We've had a discussion. I have a social media kind of private social media thing with a bunch of people on it and some writers recently were talking about exactly that question, how long they were. They were asking the flip side how long do you celebrate when you finish a product project? Or you know, how long do you celebrate for rest?

On those? My answer how long do you rest on those laurels for? Exactly yeah.

And my answer was that I kind of don't ever. So I want something. Once I finish a script and it leaves my desk, I move on to the next thing as quickly as possible. I may stop and watch some TV or something. I'm not inhuman, but I tend not to get overly pleased with myself. I tend not to get overly pleased with myself, and I think that is a corollary to a defense against disappointment. So I don't get overly celebratory when good things happen. I mean, if you do what I do, if you work in film and television not so much audio actually, but if you work in film and television, 90 to 95, maybe even going up to 99% of the things that you really care about and the things that you really want to make don't happen so easily. Nine out of 10 things that I write don't ever see the light of day. So to then allow yourself to get disappointed each time that happens would not make for a very fun day job.

I'm boggling at how much you must actually produce, because I mean, just let me guide you through. So, with the Lovecraft investigations, which I loved, the case of Charles Dexter Ward, the Whisper in Darkness and the Shadow over Innsmouth, which was my personal favourite, but I still haven't managed to catch up with the Haunter of the Dark. Yet I'm getting around to it, but to you that's almost like a blink of an eye. You've moved on to other things and other things. How much time do you devote, say, on a night, to your work?

well, today was on a regular day. So I would say I I think you get four decent hours right. I don't think it's a solid four hours, but I think across the course of a reasonable day where you're uninterrupted and you can just get down to stuff you manage. For that's like there's science about this four hours is pretty much the most anyone can really focus for they can't do it in one go, but two two hour spurts or four one hour spurts. But you you can kind of get it and you know after a while what your rhythm is like.

When in the day that happens, you know the lack. It's very unlikely that one of those hours is going to be straight after lunch, it's it's very likely it'll be first thing in the morning. It's very likely it'll be late afternoon. So, yeah, you're kind of churning stuff out. I mean, I'm I've been doing this for 30 odd years, so when my nine out of ten statistic is, you know, know, over time, if I wrote nine things a week, I would probably be devastated. Yeah, it would be ridiculous, but I think it's to the point about disappointment.

I think that in order to do and this is advice I give to writers who are starting out or who are less experienced and who struggle with this, is that you have to find the fulfillment in the work itself. If I finish a script that I think is good, that has to be enough, the process of writing it being enjoyable, the finished product being a thing that I'm proud of, because the industry is not judging that. The industry is judging whether they can attach Brad Pitt to it and whether someone will make it and whether they can sell it to France, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and those things are nothing to do with the work that you did. So the fact of things not being made if it's disappointing, that suggests that somehow you failed in a way, and I don't think you have. I think you fail if you do subpar work. But as long as the work is good, then it goes out there and as long as there's enough of it, your hit rate will pay the rent.

Superb. Okay, well, we're going from heartache and disappointment to the next card, hopefully up.

That would be good it's going to be death or the hanged man or something isn't it.

Maybe something nice like the tower, who knows? Right, let me give these a little shuffle here and, as before, tell me when to start.

Now.

Aha, we have Major Arcana. We have card number nine, we have the Hermit. How's that looking to you?

I like the Hermit. It's a nice design, that one actually on this doth deck. Yeah, the hermit brings lots of bells for me in a very literal way. It not like I'm probably you. You know more about the meaning of the cards than I do and it's probably going to be an awful lot deeper. But I was thinking about this earlier today actually I, I I think when I used to be out, like when I was in, like a lot of people when I was in my 20s, when I was in my 30s, even a night where you weren't going out was some kind of terrible social catastrophe. Oh indeed, yeah, it was like what on earth has happened that I'm watching telly? Why has this gone so badly wrong? Why aren't there at least 10 people in my flat if I'm not going?

Yeah, why haven't you? Gone to a nightclub and ended up at some party talking to people that you'll probably never see again. Yeah exactly.

That was just de rigueur and um, and I do not miss that at all. I enjoyed it at the time, but I do not miss it at all. Now you have to have a. There has to be a staggeringly good reason to get me to leave the house in the evening. Now, um, and, and even then it's kind of reluctant. You know, and I think that kind of got slightly exacerbated during covid. I really liked lockdown obviously not the stuff, not the reasons for lockdown but I enjoyed being at home and having no no going. Can you come to a boring, pointless meeting? I didn't realize until a few years later actually a couple of years later that it had changed behavior for me, that I was now someone who just didn't want to go to meetings, not in any kind of a shut-in way, but just in a kind of. I really enjoy being in my own space with books and movies and work and I don't need to be out there as much as I used to be. So I think that's why this card rings a bell.

Exactly that I mean. The whole meaning of this particular card is it's self-containment preserves, gestates and refines inner truth. In those periods of introspection, and the creative breakthroughs that would come with that, how did solitude inform your writing?

So in 2016, 2016, 2017, so we're pre-lockdown. Obviously I felt like I'd reached a kind of glass ceiling working in British television. I'd done all of the big shows as a writer and as a director.

This is the time to bring out those laurels again. Could you just talk me through some of those shows you worked on?

I did God. I've done Inspector Linley, which was a big deal at the time, but I don't think it's still made. Spooks, Hustle, Doctor Who loads of episodes of new tricks. Yeah, I did Hotel Babylon. I did a show called Superstorm. I did a show called Murder. It was a lot of shows and the the run ended with like 16 episodes of New Tricks, which was much harder to make than than people probably imagine and incredibly popular.

So there's a lot of pressure on it and I was out. You know that's when you're out there, that's when you're constantly working and directing stuff and you're out five o'clock in the morning. You know every day going to set and you're dealing with hundreds of people and it's a lot and I really like it. But around 2016, 2017, I kind of went there's nowhere to go from here and I don't feel like I've ever written something for me. Since when I started, I've been writing what people wanted, and so that's when I sat down and I wrote a TV script called Kaleidoscope, which was never in a million years going to get made here. It was a spy-fi, secret agent kind of 1960s style show out of which came Aldrich Kemp. American agents read it and I got picked up in the States and that was a completely new lease on life for me because the Americans really liked what I wanted to write and were very happy to pay me to write it and I ended up working with movie stars and doing a whole bunch of stuff which I'm still kind of doing, which was much, much, much more. What would you like to write today rather than? Here's an assignment out of that same period and it was partly born out of doing audio.

It was partly born out of working with sweet talk and Karen Rose at Sweet Talk, who kind of brought me into the audio space and doing earlier stuff like Bad Memories and then few state and stuff like Kokomo. Just Karen would always let me write whatever the hell I wanted and with no kind of adult supervision apart from Karen's. You know I over it going. Is this exactly what you want it to be? So I wanted that in TV and film and the Americans kind of gave it to me.

That coincided with me not directing, not going out, not being part of the British industry anymore, and I haven't worked in Britain on anything since then, apart from audio obviously. So I'm not part of that industry. I don't know anyone in that industry anymore. I don't have anything to do with it at all. There's a movie, I think a movie filming on the street outside today and there's loads of people as big as I don't know what it is, but there's loads of people and I I knew the stunt guy, but I recognized him and but I didn't recognize. It was like weird I'm. I I'm walking past a big movie or TV set and I no longer know any of the people here. So there's a kind of hermitage. That's a word, isn't it? I don't know if it relates to hermits, to that. I got to close the world out. I got to work for people on the other side of the world who are on a different time zone, who never bother me, and I get to just imagine stuff now.

So the hermitings really worked out actually, it sounds like you've been given that creative freedom to explore countless numbers of worlds. I mean, I'm just looking at the Kickstarter that you've got for Crowley here and looking through the stretch goals, as you were saying previously, of all of the additional things that you want to do from here on. It's almost like you're thinking five, ten moves ahead.

Yes, or being greedy, but it's um, it's well actually kind of the opposite actually, because the smart thing to do would have just been to have the goal and then keep the change, but it didn't, because I I imagined that I was like what if we get to double? What if we get to 150 000 pounds on this kickstarter? And I was like I could pocket a bunch of money, which would be really handy. But I was like, actually, I'd rather make two more shows though. Yeah, I've got those ideas and I'd rather do that. Otherwise, I'm just going to spend money on stuff I don't need and then dream about shows I never made.

And looking through the cast list of people that you work with, it's clear that you have this marvellous rapport with the. The cast list of people that you work with, it's clear that you have this marvelous rapport with the same cast again and again and keep knocking it out the park again and again. So very lazy at casting. I don't like new people. Fair enough, right. Last card. Oh, are we there already? We're there already wow, okay oh, a fabulous one to end on.

A very positive one. I never quite know what it means and it's always a strength, we should probably say for people listening at home. I'm never quite. It's a card I always drift across when I'm looking through my decks because I've always seen it as a slightly toxic attribute, if that makes sense, but strength I'm not sure. I think, yeah, it's weird. I've always I've been ambivalent about it. I've always found it to be. It's probably a good trait and it's probably got an awful lot of good aspects to it, but it always feels like a slightly toxic one.

I'm just going to have another look at this card, because this may be the first time I've ever pulled this one from the Thoth. Just bear with me. Interesting, yeah, because Mr Crowley, the trickster, the mischievous scamp that he is, has switched out Because this is what confused me, because I was thinking, hang on on the Thoth deck. Switched out because this is what confused me, because I was thinking, hang on on the thoth deck. Strength has been changed to lust, so sadly, you didn't get the lust card today. So what you have here is a minor arcana that now takes the strength role. Oh, that is a very interesting turn of events, okay, so what is the? What should the? What would it be on the minor arcana? So the major arcana represents spirit, and then you have, say, the wands that represent fire and you've got the swords that represent air and this strength card of unabashed power, the nine of wands. This is a card of it's like energy, rapid motion, it's vivacity in all of its forms okay it's okay, I quite like that.

That's how I've been feeling at the moment with the kickstarter. Actually, it feels like you're. It's a very different pace of working to me from writing doing a kickstarter, where you're just, especially when you're doing it solo. It's a completely solo effort. So it's apart from I've got artists and people working on things, but uh, the the running of the kick Kickstarter and the setting up of it has been a completely solo effort and it's a very different job than what I normally do and it feels a lot faster than I'm used to work, in the sense of I don't mean fast, as in I write quite quickly, but I mean it's much faster moving.

There's not much time to think. Once you hit start, you're just counting down and you're trying to get the money in while the time is running out and you're doing everything you can to kind of keep the balls in the air and to keep it going. And it's a very different mindset to writing, which is quite kind of sedate, and so that kind of vivacity thing does kind of feel like where I am at the moment.

Yeah, I mean, you've got this geometric lattice, so I'm applying direction and purpose, so there's no confusion there. My question for you is going to be when inspiration strikes, how do you capture and act upon it swiftly? How do you bottle that lightning?

Oh, do you mean physically, Like, literally like, because I use a whole bunch of different note techniques and notebooks and stuff like that. But that's all kind of boring. I think lightning doesn't ever, very rarely does lightning strike in a usefully complete way.

Is it more like a bit torrent of lightning? Is it more like a bit torrent of?

Lightning. So what you're really looking for is kind of three separate lightning strikes over a period of time that carve something out Because a single lightning strike? So, for the example, I wrote down an idea the other day what if there was an occult or a wicker group that works like the Hacker Collective Anonymous? I like it as a what if I really like it, but I have nothing to do with it until at least another one or two lightning strikes comes. That makes you go. Oh, that's the context for that. I mean, I have, you know, I had a lightning strike a while back and wrote a movie in eight days, which is a feat I've been desperately trying to replicate ever since but haven't been able to, and that just kind of came to me kind of fully formed. But most of the time you're getting bits and pieces of ideas and so I tend to write them all down or put them all somewhere, so that when another one goes in it might connect up something that's already there and kind of you know, form some kind of a matrix that you can work with, because otherwise, you know, you don't tend to go.

I mean, I wrote a piece about the three episodes of a show called Mythos that we made prior to the Lovecraft Investigations. Within mythos there was Nicola walker played Mary Lair who was a, the ghost of a french nun. Uh and uh, there was in the first episode. She was accompanied by a guy called Jonathan Hicks who was a podcaster. Now Jonathan hicks as a podcaster was a very good character. That for that first episode. But when the BBC said can we get a couple more? Didn't have any real skill set for him to carry him through two more episodes. So I at the beginning of episode two sent him back in time and killed him in the 17th century. But Jonathan Hicks became Matthew Hayward in the Lovecraft investigations because the idea of a podcaster in that world was really useful but it wasn't right for mythos. But it became the Lovecraft investigations and then in episode three of Mythos, parker Phoebe Fox's character who replaced Jonathan Hicks in episode two, takes on the personality of a secret agent, of a Modesty Blaze style secret agent.

She's a chaos witch and she always brings on a new personality when she's going to a mission and she brought on the Modesty Blaze personality. I'd always had a slight thing about wanting to do Modesty Blaze for audio. It's been done. But I wanted to do it because other people doing it's not interesting. And I always wanted Phoebe to play that part but we were never going to get it off the ground. But when I heard her do that in Mythos 3, that's what led to Clara Page and the Aldrich Kemp stories. The ideas build and come out of each other if you let them.

It's not so much lightning strikes, as you know, a kind of flow of associations I mean you rattling through all of those connections there is, uh is quite the thing.

And to retain all of that came from.

So going on to the, the technical way that you put all this down. I'm always, always up for tips on techniques or if there's any particular software that you use. So how do you capture?

These. Well, I've actually I've just upgraded my software to a notebook, which I've now realized I prefer to any kind of software.

Well, I mean it's ultra HD, it's always on.

Always on, it's really easy. I had a remarkable tablet which I have somewhere on, if always on, it's really easy. I had a remarkable tablet which I have somewhere which seemed like a really good hybrid version of a notebook and a piece of software slash hardware, yeah, but you open it up and then you have to turn it on and then you have to enter your passcode and then you have to find the notebook that you were writing on, by which point the moment's gone yeah moment's gone, so I use obsidian a lot, I use a lot and I never quite know which I prefer.

And that is really my problem is that my problem with my productivity tools at the moment on the computer is very much one of. I remember typing that. Where did I put it Actually?

Now I like notebooks and I like my manual typewriters sorry, a manual typewriter, manual typewriters 1950s, specifically 1950s, 1960s manual typewriters I mean great for photo shoots and I know that you're very partial to taking the very, very good snap but an actual typewriter, just to be working typewriter. I'll tell you why?

Because when you, it's a technique I use when I'm stuck, one of the on a script or audio thing or whatever. One of the techniques I use is to wind a sheet of blank paper into a manual typewriter, get the computer keyboard out of the way, yeah, and usually start with the words I'm stuck. Stuck because and keep going. You can't backspace with a typewriter. I mean you can, but it's nonsense and you can't delete, you can't go backwards, so you have to move forwards. There's no point in analyzing what you've written because you're just bashing it out, and a manual typewriter requires much more physical effort than a Mac keyboard. So it's actually becomes quite a different form of working. It's slower because you're pecking away at keys, they're heavier and you can't go backwards.

So everything's intentional.

Everything's intentional and I find that the stuff that spills out there on a sheet of paper that you know full well you're just going to screw up and throw away when you've got what you need out of it, can be really useful. You stumble onto things. It's the typing of going for a run or something. It's a change of state.

We've reached the end of our time. Julian Simpson, it's been an absolute pleasure and a delight having on Tarot Interviews. I wish you luck thank you very much.

I wish you luck with crowley and um, what you're going to be doing for the rest of the evening haven't decided yet daughter's gone to the pub because she's older than yours, and I think my wife's just come back from some kind of PhD gathering, so I'm not sure there's a decent chance that I'll be watching Elementary.

Excellent, good choice.

Thank you

That was Julian Simpson on Tarot Interviews, a revealing conversation with one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary audio drama. From the shadowy corners of the Lovecraft investigations to his ongoing explorations of myth and belief, Julian's storytelling invites us to question what we think we know, to explore more of his work, including updates on upcoming projects, visit pleasantgreencouk and, as always, you can find the full transcript, guest links and today's episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and tarotinterviews. com. Thanks for listening.