The Rest of the Questions, Answered

In "Questions Answered...Mostly!", I noted that the Bishop had left a couple of questions unanswered.

Well, he has since gotten around to answering them...by editing them into the same post.

In regards to whether he takes offense to my username, "The Overseer", and to one who has "appropriated" it (i.e., ripped it off from me), he simply says, "No".

As to why no disclosure is made in the first edition of The Highgate Vampire: The Infernal World of the Undead Unearthed at London’s Famous Highgate Cemetery and Environs (London: British Occult Society, 1985), that the woman labeled "Luisa" in several photographs is actually a model (and why he even included such representations of her in the first place), he writes:

Given the outcome [i.e. Luisa's death and return as a vampire, later to be staked by Manchester -ed.], 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.

Yes, it is made clear that Luisa is a pseudonym. On pages 45-46 of The Highgate Vampire (1985), he wrote:

Among the many people who contacted me as a direct result of this public pronouncement [i.e. his claim that dead foxes, found drained of blood in Highgate Cemetery, were killed by a vampire -ed.] was the sister of a beautiful twenty-two-year old woman, whom I shall call Luisa.

However, that side-steps the actual question I asked:

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?

That's right: the "photographic depictions".

As I noted in "The Mystery of Luisa, Pt. 1", there are several pictures of a woman clearly referred to as "Luisa".

That is where the next part of the question comes in: if the woman in the picture isn't Luisa, then why go to the trouble of hiring (presumably) a model to "recreate" her, and then insert her in "scenes" supposed to have taken place? This even includes having a picture of her on the cover.

Especially when no disclosure was made in the book, that a model had been used in the first place.

Either way, he has since included a picture of the actual "Luisa" in an entry for his blog, Metaphysical Meanderings:

Lusia has never been identified by her real name and, until now, a photograph at the time of my knowing her has not been published. Sufficient decades have perhaps passed to permit one.

Now, in question 10, I asked him:

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)?

The quotes are from page 18 of The Highgate Vampire (1985) (not page 12, as I mistakenly cited in "An Open Query on Religious Belief").

His direct response to these citations was:

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."

That's fair enough, except here's more from page 18, which draws on more of an occultic/pagan/new age parallel:

The set of symbols I work with are predominantly Christian, yet you will find in the text that I cast a circle, what some might call a Magic Circle. While I am not a witch in any sense of the word, I suppose as a secular person handling consecrated material as a protection against hostile psychic forces, I am practicing "white magic". The Circle once cast is a ritualised barrier, a consecrated sanctuary; like a church, a mosque or synagogue - like Avebury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury.

Now, in regards to my question about him engaging in necromantic acts (specifically as an occultic practice), he says:

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.

He is correct in asserting that necromancy, by definition, is used for this purpose (i.e. divination).

However, when he describes his intent to summon the undead Luisa through an invocation on page 134 of The Highgate Vampire (1985), one must wonder about such semantics:

But what I was about to do fell under a shadowy category whose purpose was usually more sinister. Did not the Encyclopedia of Occultism state: "There is no doubt that Necromancy is the touch-stone of the dark arts for if, after careful preparation, the adept can carry through to a successful issue the raising of the dead from the other world, he has proved the power of his art."

Indeed, the incantations used on pages 143-144 are modified versions of necromantic spells cited in such works as Arthur Edward Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911).