From DNA to Demons

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Good morning, Bishop. I have some queries for you: 1. Have you ever had DNA testing to verify your claim that you are descended from Lord Byron? 2. Can you name any other members of the World Union of Vampirologists? 3. Did you receive any payment for your article, "The Kirklees Vampire" for "The Unexplained"? 4. Do you use any other usernames online? If so, what are they? 5. How many vampires have you dispatched in the "ancient and approved manner"? 6. Have you given anyone any authorisation to talk on your behalf, on the Internet? If so, who? 7. What are your thoughts on Matthew 5: 39-44? 8. Do you disapprove of my username, "The Overseer", and, if so, do you approve of its use by a VRS member who appropriated it "in protest"? 9. In the first edition of "The Highgate Vampire" (1985), why was there no disclosure that the photographic depictions of Luisa were actually those of a model? And, why did you choose to employ a model to recreate "scenes" with Luisa, in the first place? 10. In 1973, you founded the Ordo Sancti Graal. Yet, in the first edition of "The Highgate Vampire" (1985), you refer to yourself as "not pre-eminently religious" and "a secular person handling consecrated material as a protection against hostile psychic forces, I am practicing 'white magic'." What happened in the gap between you founding a Christian order and engaging in the occult (like the necromantic summoning of Luisa, as detailed in the same book)? - Anthony Hogg.

1) The claim that I am connected to the poet by blood is not mine; it is that of my forebears, supported by Byron scholars, chief among whom is Professor Leslie A Marchand (see Acknowledgements in Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know). Their claim is my legacy. Quite obviously I have not had DNA testing carried out because when last Lord Byron was exhumed for inspection I was not yet born, coupled with the fact that the seventh Lord Byron (successor to the title upon the death of the poet), George Anson Byron, while a cousin, is not the sixth Lord's progeny and George Anson Byron's successors, therefore, are not directly descended from the poet.

2) It is not my place to publicly identify members of any group or organisation. It is for members to identify themselves if they so wish. I will not take that choice away from them.

3) I was commissioned to write the article in The Unexplained by Orbis Publishing. Like any article, it was edited and amended for reasons of space and impact by those at Orbis. A fee would have been offered, as is customary when a commission is made. I was not the beneficiery. Any sum would have been donated to Ecclesia Apostolica Jesu Christi.

4) Not so as to appear anonymous. My identity would always be clear even if I employ a title which does not include my name in it. One username, for example, is "Apostle of Jesus Christ."

5) I would not want to get involved in just how many have been encountered by me and my colleagues for obvious reasons. Avoiding wherever possible the media in all its forms to ensure confidentiality to those who need help and whose help and co-operation is sought has allowed the ministry for dealing with such demonic molestation to become increasingly effective over the decades. Suffice that a world famous case was written about over the last four decades where media intrusion was impossible to prevent. Innumerable film documentaries have been made about it and there have been televised dramatisations in countries other than my own. The film rights to my bestselling book The Highgate Vampire are optioned for a cinema movie with a British cast (not to be confused with a small budget, unrelated project currently in pre-production with an American cast, which has hijacked and exploited the title of my book). Surely that is enough to satisfy most aficionados? There would have been no justification in repeating the unavoidable process of media co-operation applicable in the Highgate case over and again. By not discussing subsequent cases and by not exposing private people to a limelight they would certainly not welcome, my colleagues and I have been able to continue to operate with a reputation which precedes us for keeping confidences and not compromising people and places. Almost forty years after that first case was both reported and sensationalised by the media, I am still being asked to discuss it. While remaining open to debating the topic generally, I try to avoid the particular when it comes to unpublicised incidents and cases; having resolved not to allow investigations in the wake of Highgate to become similarly blighted. Mention of Kirklees Park and Abney Park in subsequent years was academic due to these already being in the public domain owing to the discussion of vampire-like spectres by others. Had that talk not already been made public, nothing would have been heard from me on the matter.

6) Nobody is authorised to speak in my stead. This does not preclude friends and associates coming to my defence, which choice is theirs to make and not mine to deny.

7) Without wanting to take this passage out of context from the entirety of what Jesus Christ is recorded as having said, I feel it nonetheless crucial for those who follow Him. It is one of the reasons I have always opposed the just war theory and have found myself unable to countenance its adoption by the overwhelming majority of church denominations since its formulation by Augustine and development by Thomas Aquinas (see pages 84-86 and 112-113 of The Grail Church).

8) No.

9) Given the outcome, it would have been inappropriate to have done anything else. That particular edition was published just three years after the case had been finally closed. It is made clear in the text that "Lusia" is a pseudonym.

10) This is what I actually wrote: "Although not pre-eminently religious, I have been left in no doubt by the course of events that evil is not just an abstract force and, most important of all, that such demonic molestation as I have encountered is no match for divine power once invoked." I stand by what I wrote. I find it neither incompatible with my founding Ordo Sancti Graal, nor my later taking holy orders; though, of course, I was not in holy orders at the time. I have known many pre-eminently religious people throughout my life and do not count myself among them. I neither belong to a monastic order, nor am I imbued with the ideals of churchianity (see From Satan To Christ and The Grail Church). If I am to be pre-eminently anything it would be "spiritual," not "religious." I identify with early Christians more than I do with their successors and have more in common with Christian mystics than the establishment. "All attempts to present Jesus Christ as a pillar of law and order, or of the establishment, have failed. He was the outsider, the social deviant, in conflict with state, temple and social order; holding them in disregard or combating their demands (The Grail Church, page 84)." The Catholic Church is frequently described as practising white magic when transusbstantiation takes place during Mass. The word "magic" means using the supernatural to cause an effect, or, at least, that is the definition I was applying when I talk in my book about "handling consecrated material as a protection against hostile psychic forces" to form a "ritualised barrier." In the same paragraph I make abundantly clear: "I am not a witch in any sense of the word" and "The set of symbols I work with are predominantly Christian." A protective circle is not a Christian symbol per se, but I nevertheless liken it to a church which, too, offers sanctuary. Every exorcist engages in the summoning of demons. Vampires/demons are not the dead. They might masquerade as such, but they are not God's true dead. Hence the act of summoning a demonic manifestation for the purpose of its banishment is not the occult art of necromancy, but rather the Christian practice of exorcism. Necromancy is divination by raising the spirits of the dead. The word derives from the Greek necros (“dead”) and manteia (“divination”). Strabo referred to necromancy as the principal form of divination among the people of Persia, specifically widespread amongst the Sabians. The Babylonian necromancers were called Manzazuu or Sha’etemmu and the spirits they raised were called Etemmu. Some might argue that Jesus Christ's raising of Lazarus from the dead is a prima facie case of necromancy; though I would postulate no such argument; and He, too, was accused by his detractors of being a magician for engaging the supernatural to cause effects, ie miracles, especially exorcisms.