Inside every Fat Git there's an Enchanter wildly signalling to be let out.
Alan Richardson is back with a ground-breaking esoteric satire, The Fat Git, with a cast of characters including Ambrose Hart, the Merlin of Strathnaddair; his reluctant nephew, Arthur; the mythical seductress, Vivienne, and the dastardly evil Vortig. Richardson takes no prisoners with his take on psychic pretentiousness, taking mythical simulacra and Arthurian archetypes to levels of absurdity, yet always displaying trenchant psychological insights and a sound background in the deeper aspects of occultism. This mix of mundane and fantastic, at wild odds with each other, is reminiscent of the work of Charles Williams, and perhaps one or two of his fellow Inklings. Richardson does not hold back from lambasting certain quarters with his iconoclastic wit but seems to be saying something that needs to be said. With great humour and panache, he provides a riveting burlesque of modern magic and the Arthurian Mysteries.
“If Strathnaddair exists in another realm, and yet is also a real place that we have all visited, then so are The Arthur, The Merlin and all the rest real people, with addresses, postcodes, mortgages, debts, and all the troubles and triumphs of modern life. You can find them in any phone book, just look under your own name. For there are moments when, if only for the blink of an eye and on the canvas behind its lid, we become them…”
Alan Richardson has been writing books on magic for longer than many of his readers have been alive. He has done biographies of such occult luminaries as Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley, Christine Hartley and William G. Gray. He is also an expert on Earth Mysteries, Mythology, Paganism, Celtic lore, Ancient Egypt and Newcastle United Football Club. He does not belong to any occult group or society, does not take pupils, and (until his retirement) insisted on holding down a full-time job in the real world like any other mortal. That, after all, is part and parcel of the real magical path. He is married with four daughters, and lives the life of a Happy Hermit in the south-west of England.
- ISBN: 978-1-908011-31-2
- 146 pages
- cover photograph by Naomi Banham
- perfect-bound paperback: 203mm x 131mm
- black and white text
- published 19th January 2012