Dangerous Dabbling with Diabolism

Some of David Farrant’s history, eg his “witch orgy” scandal in The Sun newspaper, has done little to help relations with the public and has only served to confirm the worst fears of just about everybody. Few took the interview and article seriously; particularly witches and pagans who view him as a sick joke and the joker the sickest of all. The Sun newspaper's Virginia Wheeler interviewed Farrant for the newspaper and reported:  

Farrant in The Sun  © News Group Newspapers Ltd, 31 October 2006.

"A sex-mad witch and a 200-strong coven plan to celebrate Hallowe'en tonight - by deflowering a teenage virgin. Creepy David Farrant boasted yesterday how he will oversee the orgy to initiate the girl into his cult. The 19-year-old trainee accountant will have full sex with a 30-year-old High Priest chosen by Farrant. As the teen writhes naked with the stranger on the floor, the rest of the priest’s coven drop their robes to watch the display in the nude. The 200 onlookers then take part in a mass-orgy at a property in Barnet, North London. Farrant, 56 [sic], is High Priest of the British Psychic and Occult Society. He claims to have bedded 2,000 women in similar Wicca religious ceremonies. He said last night: 'Initiating a virgin on Halloween is very important for Wiccans in serious covens. After the girl has had full sex people are then free to have sex with one another. But it’s not an excuse for a mass orgy - sex is regarded as an essential life force. It’s all done in a private meeting place in Barnet with magical signs on the walls. This sort of thing has to be done behind closed doors because it is not understood by the modern day public.' Farrant, from Muswell Hill, was jailed for nearly five years in the 1970s for damaging graves and sending voodoo dolls to police officers. His society now boasts 374 members [sic] and more than 200 are expected at tonight’s bash. Farrant, who also describes himself as a Vampire Hunter [sic], said in past years up to three women were initiated at the same time. He added: 'These girls are mainly students or people who have left school and are disillusioned with life. They are all over 18 and we don’t initiate them if we believe they are just coming along for the sex'.” (“Witch Orgy To Take Virginity” by Virginia Wheeler, The Sun, 31 October 2006).

Farrant (born on 23 January 1946, so he could not have been 56 in October 2006 when the interview was published) claimed eleven years earlier in an interview given to his associate Robert Brautigam: "I am in fact no longer a Wiccan as such - although it is true that not so long ago, I underwent initiations into the Wiccan belief. ... But now I tend to work alone." (Farrant quoted in Robert Brautigam's International Vampire #18, August 1995).

Moreover, Farrant's "374 members" are peculiarly unwilling (and unable, as they do not exist) to join the plethora of internet forums and message boards he creates in the name of the "British Psychic and Occult Society" and the "Highgate Vampire Society." Both of these imaginary "societies" apparently claim "374 members" (a number of some apparent significance to him), yet neither reveal anyone beyond Farrant and the usual two or three culprits like John Pope et al.

David Farrant with John Pope in December 1973.

In order to achieve the publicity he so desperately craves, Farrant is obliged to resort to the sort of extravagant claims which bear no resemblance to the truth he was making back in the early 1970s. Subsequent to his interview in The Sun, his then girlfriend commented on that newspaper's online website that she actually telephoned and spoke to Farrant three times on the night in question and that she was also aware he could "hardly walk down the stairs" due to a "damaged foot."  

Someone with the pseudonym "Illgrace" on the Pagan Network commented: "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about Master Farrant. This dude will crawl on his knees and drag his tongue along the tarmac of the M6 for 100 miles for 4 inches of print. He's a publicity junkie of the first water. Anybody that has had the misfortune to have read his 'essays' on pagan forums (any that will let him on) if he can't 'shock you (oh, puleese) he will bang on and on and on and on about whatever fantasy trip he's on at the time."

Farrant's lackeys who collude in his schemes. 

The cancer of malice had eaten away and consumed Farrant by the time these latter-day events unfolded. How did it happen? Why did it happen? All along a situation of contradiction existed where the dark side finally succeeded in taking full possession. The David Farrant I knew in 1970, despite his fraudulent intent, did not deny the existence of supernatural evil when interviewed by the media or myself. Even after he first “converted” to witchcraft and occultism in the early 1970s, he still upheld a belief in the existence of the Devil. The following report appeared in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 21 June 1974: "Conducting his own defence, [Farrant] told the jury from the witness box on Friday: 'From time to time witchcraft, black magic, Satanism and necromancy have been mentioned in this case. I must start by trying to explain to you exactly what I am - a follower of the religion known as wicca and commonly known in the press as witchcraft. It is a religion which we believe dates back thousands of years. It is not a religion which denies the existence of God or the Devil'."

On UK Living’s Michael Cole Show, however, Farrant told the audience: "I do not believe in the existence of the Devil." He followed this by saying that he believed in God. What he did not reveal on this occasion is that the "god" he worships is Lucifer. Click on the image at the foot of this page for confirmation from Farrant's own mouth, as he performs a ritual in the company of self-proclaimed Luciferian Jean-Paul Bourre and the woman whom he married when he was released from a prison in the latter-half of the 1970s. They divorced after short period, but remained in contact for a while.

It could be argued that Farrant, like so many, was merely following a general trend of wavering traditional religious belief and observance in which the Devil and demons no longer feature. The Roman Catholic Church’s ex cathedra pronouncements over the same period reveal a distinct reluctance to uphold older statements, eg at the turn of the nineteenth century, which implied an unswerving belief in the reality of demon possession. Since 1970 the Roman Catholic Church has put more emphasis on psychiatric interpretation than demonic possession. Present-day arrogance has dictated a mood that denies the actions and testimony of Jesus Christ when He was addressing personal beings who were demonising people of His time. The prevailing attitude of moral relativism repudiates the existence of real evil in the world and is in direct conflict with the teachings of Jesus Himself. For Christ and His apostles the Devil was never a metaphor for evil, as so many who profess to be Christians now claim. This metaphor robs Christianity of any meaningful tradition and definition. The idea of the Devil is implicit in Christianity which is the religion instituted by Jesus about whose existence there is no doubt. A consequence of denying the existence of the Devil and his legion is the trivialising of evil itself, relegating it to a minor force. To believe in the Devil’s existence, of course, can be an honourable thing. Belief in Luciferianism, or Satanism as it is frequently described, is always a depravity. Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening. Nowadays evil has been relegated to something altogether more abstract by the modern church which shies from any mention of the Devil, demons, diabolical possession and supernatural evil.

When I first met Farrant in his coal bunker refuge at Archway Road he was little more than a scruffy individual with a penchant for the limelight. He betrayed no knowledge or even interest in the occult, but was aware that I investigated such things. Something persuaded him at first to try and mimic me, later parody me, and then vehemently oppose me. We were photographed together in Highgate Cemetery around the time of filming for the Today programme and a photograph of us together appeared in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970, accompanied by: “Mr Farrant and Mr Manchester met in the cemetery at the weekend. They are pictured [below], Mr Farrant pointing out the spot where he saw a spectre and Mr Manchester with prayer book in hand.”

The following year found Farrant suddenly adopting a bow tie for publicity purposes. He also wore a borrowed jacket that was not crumpled and scruffy. His mimicry would not last. The bow tie was slowly discarded and the jacket returned to its owner (his landlord in whose coal bunker he resided).

Soon he would adopt his version of ceremonial robes for newspaper photographs, but not before he had exhausted every angle of being a man who sought out vampires to rid the world of them using the age-old remedy of impalement. During this period he adorned himself with a rosary and was photographed holding a Christian cross and a wooden stake in his hands. This would swiftly be eclipsed by his claim that in September 1971 with a naked Martine de Sacy he raised a satanic force in Highgate Cemetery. In thirteen months he had transformed from someone arrested in August 1970 who was discovered “vampire hunting” by police to an “occultist” whose intent was not to impale and exorcise the vampire but rather to raise it and have its demonic force and powers fill him. This was the point when enveloping darkness suffocated the light in him; enhanced when he engaged in further attempts to raise demons in the company of John Pope at the very derelict house where the force he attempted to invoke in Highgate Cemetery had now relocated. He was drawn to this source because he had been contaminated by it in September 1971. Thus he became evil by his own doing.    

Farrant became preoccupied with the very thing he had tried to manipulate for his own ends. His fascination led to dabbling with diabolism until he served the demon that took possession of him. In the midst of today’s materialism, his story is a warning of the inherent dangers of the occult, whether disingenuously practiced or not, and the existence of manifestations of evil that flourish out of a void in the modern psyche which itself arises from the modern system of values where God is marginalised.