We Heard this Week That Gordon White has Died.

Some of you won’t have heard of him - but this guy was one of the biggest influences in my life in the past 15 years. That would be the whole entire life of my child and that part of my life that became my reality when I became a mother… and became ill with a chronic disease, survived the impending 2012 apocalypse and my own hormonal post-pregnancy, no-sleep-for-years mania.

That portal between being my own autonomous Self and suddenly being beholden to another for the rest of my life was excruciating.. even though I also fiercely loved my child like no-one I had ever loved before. (They don’t tell you this part about motherhood - the dichotomy of it that can tear you apart).

I found at that time in my life, some voices in the ether that helped me - whether it was through inspiration, comfort or direct revelation. I started studying shamanism with a teacher who made it very easy for me to step on to the path, as a new mom with few resources. That course of study, gently at times and more violently at others, showed me the way back to my Self - that crooked  path that I had fallen off of in the previous ten years of my life of DJing, late nights and debauchery in the rave scene in Vancouver.

And then there was Gordon White. Somewhere in my convalescing years when I had to lie down for months at a time, I started listening to podcasts and found his Rune Soup. I was instantly taken by him - he was funny and witty, with that kind of sharp intelligence that is so fearless it’s mesmerizing. And his guests! From traditional witches and shaman, herbalists and permaculturists to parapsychologists, physicists, indigenous leaders, occultists, animists, scientists, culture jammers and more, Rune Soup was a smorgasbord of the weird and wondrous, and precisely my jam.

I remember a time when for several months I was doing physio every morning for an hour - and part of that ritual of healing was to listen to Rune Soup. I still have my journal from then, where my exercise reps and sets are catalogued somewhere in the midst of clouds of notes and mind maps and excursions to sticky notes, feverishly jotted down from whatever episode I was listening to that day. There was this huge archive and so much to digest and I never wanted to forget any of it. Gordon sent me down many paths to knowledge, to other speakers, to books, to ideas and cultural movements. I think I discovered the famous UK magician Jake Stratton Kent, now also passed alas, and his work on the grimoire tradition (grimoire? wtf is a grimoire?) on Rune Soup. This magical world was like a kingdom and I was its long lost princess who had finally come home after years of being asleep behind the brambles. And man, after all those years I was hungry.

So who was Gordon White? From his bio:

Gordon White (London) runs one of the leading chaos magic blogs, Rune Soup. He has worked nationally and internationally for some of the world's largest digital and social media companies, including BBC Worldwide, Discovery Channel, and Yelp. Gordon has presented at media events across Europe on social strategy and the changing behaviors and priorities of Generation Y. During this time, he has partied with princes, dined in castles, been mentored by a former director of a private spy agency, and even had a billionaire knight buy him bottles of champagne.

He was a writer, blogger, teacher, magician and occultist at the start who later migrated to shamanic studies. That’s where he died this week, in a rural town somewhere in the depths of Peru, in his studies, doing what he loved the most and where a lot of us watched for his latest escapades, dreaming of our own escape (well, at least I was).

Gordon introduced me to real magical study as an intellectual pursuit. I have always had an itch to understand the true nature of this reality we find ourselves in when we come to the age of awareness in these bodies, on this earth, in this life. For me there was always more than just that: a body, an earth, a life. Gordon gave voice to that gossamer veil that hung between me and the Otherworlds… he helped me define it, live with it. He helped me know how to let it define me.

And what a voice! He was so smart - like scary smart. He reminded me of a raven or a magpie, that sharp unwavering eye on something shiny (or maybe an eagle eyeing its prey). He’s one of those people that you think of when someone asks, if you could do brunch with anyone living or dying, who would it be? And I think “Gordon White!” and then feel a little intimidated at the prospect. He was a generous interviewer but he didn’t suffer fools. You’d need to have your shit together for that covo! I know I’m not the only listener who imagined themselves on Rune Soup one day answering his famous intro question: “Were you a weird kid?” Well yes Gordon, yes I was. Yes we all were. You said “find the others”… and we did, at your hearthside, week after week, for years.

I learned to trust Gordon’s opinions on things because they were usually on point with my own. He was a bit of a compass for me in my journey through the weird and wonderful lands of the esoteric. I would often consult his interviews and archives for his thoughts on this teacher or that movement. I regularly built my year around his annual astrological forecast show with Austin Coppock (and found Austin Coppock there too!). I told myself so many times that I needed to join the community and study with him. Next year! I said. There’s still time to come to Gordon. I will do it one day. We always think we have more time, don’t we?

And that’s just it. You’d have to be living under a pretty big rock to not be aware of the mild yet ever present anxiety of living in a time of collapsing Empire. At times, if I give it my full attention (a thing that is rare these days) it can be terrifying. I always took comfort that Gordon was out there speaking truth to power. I thought, even if/when everything collapses, hopefully we will still have some kind of internet or radio and hopefully we can still hear the voices of loved ones from far away. Hopefully Gordon will still be there too, broadcasting from Tasmania or somewhere, telling us how it is, reminding us to do more magic in the face of it all and to find each other if we were lost.

What will we do now? We all are still here. It was built and we came (I’m way over in Canada) but the builder has gone. It’s funny how sometimes it quite literally takes only one person to change something - a community, a movement.. the world. Who will step up and take his place? Who will be our piper now? Who will be the black star?

I honestly.. I felt this way when Bowie died too.. the world will not be the same without this voice in it.

Thank you Gordon. Even though I did not get the chance to study with you, I actually did I guess, in the end - and you changed the course of my life.

There’s been so many tributes to him this week online and I have read many of them. There were two in particular that really stood out.

From Peter Grey of Scarlet Imprint Publishers and Pseudo Agrippa on Substack.

I quote Pseudo here with thanks:

“Gordon kept the stories.

He kept the stories of the sky people and the old gods. Of saints and devils. Of the South Pacific and the star roads. Of grimoires and grocery stores. Of finance demons and fairy queens. Of UFOs, psi, empire, collapse, enchantment, and the stubborn fact that the world is not what we were told.

There is a passage in Pieces of Eight where Gordon writes that from the first act of practical enchantment, you enter “a conspiracy to re-enchant the world.” You find co-conspirators who may become allies for life, but you will still be fighting for re-enchantment with your dying breath.

In doing so Gordon found the Others, and I was one of them.”

Bless. Hold your loved ones tight. 

You can find Gordon’s books in the shop! Just click, click away. ↡