An Interview With Donald Tyson

Posted by Horror Grinder on December 9, 2007

1 2 3 Tarot Alhazred Donald Tyson

By Steve Vernon

Donald Tyson lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Early in life he was drawn to science by an intense fascination with astronomy. He began university seeking a science degree but became disillusioned with the aridity of a mechanistic view of the universe and shifted his major to English. After graduating with honors he has pursued a writing career that embraces all aspects of the Western esoteric tradition. The author of two novels and more than a dozen nonfiction books on Western occult subjects such as divination, Kabbalah and ceremonial magic, he is also the creator of rune dice, power glyphs and a Necronomicon Tarot deck.

Tyson’s latest release is a study of the Necronomicon, written from the voice of the Mad Arab himself. This interview and the accompanying Necronomicon review was originally written for an online website but is reprinted here for your reading pleasure.

1. So tell us a bit about Donald Tyson.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by science, particularly astronomy. Lovecraft and I have that in common. It was only when I attended university that I came to realize that while science would always remain an interest, I was born with a natural gift to write, and I damn well better use it, or the gods would be annoyed with me.

About the time this shift of focus occurred, I experienced my Great Awakening, if I may so call it. The view of reality I had blindly accepted all my life was not inherent in human nature or in the fabric of the world, and was not anything I had arrived at by the use of my own intelligence – my reality had been imposed on my mind by other human beings.

I realized I was not seeing the world as it was, but as I had been taught to see it. Here I am not talking about social issues, or political issues, but about reality itself. I had never actually looked at anything in an original way in my entire life, because I had not known that any other way of viewing reality existed. This was a profound revelation. I spent the next several years freeing myself from my cultural indoctrination, while at the same time teaching myself how to write.

Occultism had always appealed to me, but I had regarded it as nothing more than a source of amusement, because it was unreal. When I started to see the world with original eyes, one of the things that became evident was that mysticism and magic were no less real than science. (more…)

Stabbed first by HELLNOTES