The Farrant Cycle

David Farrant's modus operandi has always been to set into motion a circular set of circumstances and then step back as it gathers momentum under the steam of others who buy into it. Those contributing to the Symposium are some of these others who, wittingly or not, have entered into a pact with Farrant. The reward is publicity for what ever it is they want to be disseminated. Even though a pagan/witchcraft/occult bias can influence the more naive, it is largely the desire to step onto a publicity bandwagon which draws these people towards Farrant. What else could it be? You would have to be exceptionally dim to actually believe his paranormal claims, which he revises and contradicts from one year to the next, and those seriously engaged in witchcraft or the occult found him an extreme embarrassment during the period prior to 1982 when Farrant claimed to be both a "high priest of witchcraft" and an occultist in the sense that he emulated each in a theatrical way.

People are generally fascinated by the Highgate Vampire case, but some want to take their interest to another level. Seán Manchester, who wrote his book The Highgate Vampire thirty years ago, is definitely not a publicity-seeker, avoids generating unnecessary sensation, and certainly provides no merry-go-round for obsessives and attention-seekers to board. Also, those who have exploited or written about the case in a book of their own will get no mileage out of Seán Manchester in the publicity stakes. He helped Paul Adams as a favour to Peter Underwood who pulled out of the project (Written in Blood). That, at least, prevented the work being less inaccurate as it might otherwise have been, and, as Seán Manchester has noted, there was nothing malicious in Adams' book, even though the final manuscript arrived too late for crucial corrections to be made. Adams eventually threw in his lot with Farrant largely because he wanted the sort of sensationalist attention for his product that Farrant appears to offer. Paul Adams has been chosen to compère the Symposium.

Apparent straight away is the hostility every one of the invited contributors harbour towards Seán Manchester. Some, eg Farrant lackey Redmond McWilliams, stalk and troll Seán Manchester daily.

David Farrant lights the fuse and then runs away when the sensationalism explodes, having achieved the publicity he craves. He acted like a vampire hunter during the months from March to October in 1970, which brough him coverage in local and national newspapers, television programmes and other people's books. This was largely due to his orchestrated arrest in August of that year. After which he disclaimed ever having believed in or hunted vampires. Two years later, he performed necromancy in a Barnet churchyard with Victoria Jervis and, again, arranged to be arrested with a local newspaper journalist at hand to take photographs of the arrest. Even the prosecution stated that he probably had the police alerted. The following year he raised demons with John Pope, pictured below with Farrant, and was arrested while in the process of summoning Pan alongside a naked Pope.

The incongruousness of John Pope standing in the altogether while Farrant, attired in an old mackintosh, waves a ritual dagger about in the air was completely lost on him. Police had nevertheless been alerted and the pair of them ended up in court with the guarantee of massive press coverage. By now Farrant had overstretched himself and the police had realised they were being used to bring him the sort of publicity only an arrest and court appearance would achieve. 

While in prison on even more serious charges, including threatening people with black magic (something Farrant did not deny), he wrote an article in 1975 for New Witchcraft magazine, issue 4, in which he boasted of summoning Satan in the dead of night at Highgate Cemetery. The naked girl assistant, believed to be Martine de Sacy, was never properly identified. A brief extract from Farrant's article follows:

"The intrinsic details regarding this part of the ceremony however, must remain secret; suffice it is to say here that the entity (in its now omniscient form) was to be magically induced by the ritual act of blood-letting, then brought to visible appearance through the use of the sex act. ... I disrobed the Priestess and myself and, with the consecrated blood, made the secret sigils of the Deity on her mouth, breast, and all the openings of her body. We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could - temporarily - take possession of our bodies."

Today Farrant denies he ever partook in Satanism, necromancy, black magic, and Left-hand Path occultism. Even so, it is interesting to examine the Symposium participants. Among them is someone who describes himself as a chaos magician (he spells it the Aleister Crowley way, ie "magickian") and necromancer; someone who describes himself as a monster-hunter and folklorist; someone else who describes himself as a Theosophist and initiated Gardnerian witch who lectures on shamanism and esoteric studies; an assortment of spiritualists who believe they are in touch with the dead; and somebody else who apparently researches and writes about The Friends of Hecate.*

* (In September 1981, the body of Jillian Matthew, a homeless schizophrenic was discovered, having been raped and strangled. In their 1987 book The Demonic Connection, authors Toyne Newton, Charles Walker and Alan Brown claimed the woods were used for rituals by a satanic cult calling itself The Friends of Hecate.)

It is difficult to imagine that anyone actually takes David Farrant seriously, but some obviously find him useful in a perverse sort of way, a sinister catalyst for getting ripples to appear on an erstwhile tranquil pond; thus enabling their own project to have a publicity platform. However, the very fact that Farrant is involved invariably acts as a double-edged sword and the damage his name will inflict on a project far outweights any potential benefit.