The Android's Dungeon

Finally, bringing Occult Week to a close, I have for you Delinquent Elementals (2025), from Strange Attractor Press (my publisher, so clearly, I am biased).

This massive tome is an anthology of the best material from Pagan News, an esoteric newsletter from the UK that ran 36 issues from 1988 to 1992, roughly concurrent to the height of the UK’s Satanic Panic. Phil Hine and Rodney Orpheus used the publication to do battle against the figures behind the Panic and Hine delivers a fantastic appendix devoted to the Panic’s history, growth and eventual collapse.

As much as that battle is central to the times, it would be a disservice to say that was all Pagan News was. PN was really a way for many types of esoteric sorts to communicate and coordinate, sort of a community hub, or even an early message board (just in published text rather than pixels). And this plays out against a backdrop of rapid social and cultural change. PN intersects willy-nilly with everything — punk, the new rave scene, “mature” comic books, queer rights and more (which, with the rise of Chaos Magick at the time and its correlation to pop culture archetypes, this perhaps makes an additional level of sense). The tone is combative, well-written and often hilarious. Even decades later!

The other day, I talked about The Occult Underground, and how James Webb argues that the esoteric set functions as an important mover and motivator for the counter culture by championing “discarded knowledge.” Delinquent Elementals certainly seems to be an example of Webb’s theory in action, bringing together pagans of varying occult interests and marshaling their energy toward common non-esoteric goals, like battling the Satanic Panic and spreading support for LGBTQ rights. And it got results.