My family name goes back to at least the 11 th century to the Irish clan of Cearbhall, later anglicised to Carroll. The name originally meant 'fierce in battle'. The clan's heraldic arms depict the magic sword of Ely supported by two lions rampant.

My clan stood at the right hand of the High King of Ireland at the battle of Clontarf, AD1014, where we defeated a combined Danish and Norwegian Viking army that had ravished our lands. To emphasise our displeasure at their incursion we wound the entrails of the Vikings we had slain about the trees of Clontarf.

Things then go rather quiet for nine centuries until my nativity on the south coast of England in AD1953. A great grandfather appears to have moved to England rather than to America.

I later discover that my nativity marks an exact conjunction of Sol and Uranus and that this apparently explains it all. However I decline to invest belief in astrology.

I spend much of my childhood with the Knights Templar to whom I feel oddly drawn. My father made the wooden castle and I collected hundreds of the little armoured figures in the white robes with the red crosses.

I spend my early adolescence making rockets and explosions without loosing any fingers or eyes, despite some close calls. I spend my late adolescence reading up everything on the occult in the library. Books cost a lot more money then and we had little to spare.

As I grow up I come to realise that I have a very intelligent but frustrated mother and an underachieving but amiable drunk for a father.

At school I tend to come out bottom in most subjects except chemistry where I come top. I open my own private laboratory at home and the explosions get more impressive. The lab technician at school has very poor inventory control. I disdain team sports but excel in individual sports such as javelin and swimming.

Somehow despite my humble origins and the distractions of late adolescence I win a place to study science at London University. In those days the government paid the whole bill for the tiny minority that qualified for college.

At college I find the wonders of science reduced to mind numbing dullness by academics whose talent for tedium surpasses even that of my schoolteachers.

Soon I start doing this stuff for real, I get my own black robes and together with the London Illuminati of the day, start conjuring in gothic graveyards and luridly decorated bedsits.   I scrape through college with a precisely calculated minimum pass, 'a gentleman's degree' as we call it.

After college, having no real profession, I do a bit of schoolteaching to save some money and to enjoy the long holidays, and then set off for the mystic east with my girlfriend. The backpacker groove has yet to become well established, so we stand on the outskirts of London with our thumbs out holding a piece of cardboard saying India.

Several months later we arrive, having crossed Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and having lost a fair bit of weight to dysentery.

We spend the next four years wandering in India and the Himalayas, with occasional excursions to Australia and Britain to earn some money. Down in India we build a boat and survive inadvertently sailing it through a typhoon   During all this time I write and meditate furiously and debate with the adepts and mountebanks from dozens of traditions. Wherever I go I tend to fall in with the local wizards for some practical metaphysics.

Upon returning finally to the land of my birth, I decide to have a go at fortune, family, and a discreet amount of fame.

Accordingly we hitch hike to an agreeable provincial English city (London having passed its best) to give it a go.

I marry my girlfriend and start a business in a rented shed. My booksales get me an invitation to a lecture tour in Europe, out of this I develop the IOT Pact. The business thrives. I write more and lecture in the USA where the order now has temples. Disagreeably messy and noisy babies arrive, but they grow into utterly delightful children.

I look back on it all with some satisfaction; the business now has its own fine premises and trades internationally. I had the privilege of leading a radical and innovative magical order for five years. I shall not forget those riotous, scandalous, and notorious annual general meetings held in fantasy castles in central Europe. The order continues to flourish but I retired as grandmaster to pursue many other commitments.

I particularly wanted to conduct a research project into an intuition that had developed from my magical quest, that time has several dimensions. This quest has taken me into some strange realms indeed. I practise magic mainly for my own needs now and rarely accept invitations to teach, research has become my main priority.

Current findings appear on my website: www.specularium.org