Rodney Orpheus
Encyclopedia
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the Thelemic
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
, Northern Ireland
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
and other occult
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
initiation
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
and Girls Under Glass
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Escape Velocity:
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
from Steve Jackson Games
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
in Gloucestershire
from 2008–2010.
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
scholar David Rankine.
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Thelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
Rodney Orpheus is a musician, record producer, author, lecturer, and a leading member of the ThelemicThelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
organization Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(O.T.O.). He is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra Complex (band)
The Cassandra Complex are an electronic rock group formed by Rodney Orpheus and Paul Dillon in 1980 in Leeds, England, later expanding to a trio with the addition of Andy Booth.-History:...
and for his book on Crowleyan magick, Abrahadabra.
Early life
Rodney Orpheus was born on 8 July 1960 in MoneymoreMoneymore
Moneymore is a village in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 1,369 in the 2001 Census.It is an example of a Plantation village in Mid-Ulster. It was the first town in Ulster to have piped water.-Geography:...
, Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, and attended Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School
Rainey Endowed School,known colloquially as "The Rainey", is a voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The school was founded in 1707 and currently has an enrolment of approximately 750 pupils. The school borders three counties and draws its students from each...
on a scholarship. He became interested in music during the punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
movement of the late 70s and led one of Ireland's first experimental punk bands, The Spare Mentals. In 1980 he migrated to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England where he formed The Cassandra Complex with Paul Dillon in 1984. The two, who met when Orpheus gatecrashed Dillon's 21st birthday party, originally financed the band by working at The Sorcerer's Apprentice occult store.
After the release of The Cassandra Complex's first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, and while living in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had studied the works of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and other occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
authors since his teenage years, and had previously founded and edited the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with author Phil Hine
Phil Hine
Philip M. Hine, more commonly known as Phil Hine, is a writer, book reviewer, and occultist. He became known internationally through his written works Pseudonomicon, Condensed Chaos, and Prime Chaos, as well as several essays on the topics of chaos magic and Cthulhu Mythos magick.-Biography:Growing...
. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published by Looking Glass Press in Sweden and later republished by Weiser Books. The Ashe Journal described the book as "a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick," and the Tree of Light journal said it was "one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick."
Hamburg
Orpheus moved to HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany in 1990 where he formed the Makhashanah Oasis (later Lodge) of O.T.O. During this period he also formed the band Sun God, based on Santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
he had received from Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares
Baba Raul Canizares was an Oba, a Santerían priest, an author, an artist, a musician and a professor of religion who founded the Orisha Consciousness Movement.-Lineage:...
on a visit to New York and inspired by the work of Vodou artist Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman
Sallie Ann Glassman is a Vodou practitioner, author, and artist, born in Maine of Jewish–Ukrainian heritage.-Vodou:Glassman has been practicing Vodou in New Orleans since 1977 and in 1995 became one of few White Americans to have been ordained via the traditional Haitian initiation...
. He set up a recording studio where The Cassandra Complex recorded their next albums, as well as producing and remixing several records for other German alternative artists, including Die Krupps
Rings of Steel
Rings of Steel is a compilation album by German industrial rock/EBM band Die Krupps. It was released in May 1995 via Cleopatra Records and targeted torwards the US markets....
and Girls Under Glass
Girls Under Glass
- Biography :1986Girls Under Glass were founded by Thomas Lücke , Hauke Harms and Zaphor aka Volker Zacharias as an offshoot of the gothic rock formation Calling Dead Red Roses.1987...
. Orpheus had a role in the German vampire movie Kiss My Blood, and toured with The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
. He was described as a "technopagan" in Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
's seminal 1996 overview of cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
Escape Velocity:
To Rodney Orpheus the ease with which such metaphors are turned upside down underscores his belief that there's nothing oxymoronic about the term technopagan in end-of-the-century cyberculture. "People say 'pagans sit in the forest worshipping nature; what are you doing drinking diet coke on front of a Macintosh?' " says Orpheus, who in addition to being a card-carrying Crowleyite is a hacker and a mind machineMind machineA mind machine uses pulsing rhythmic sound and/or flashing light to alter the brainwave frequency of the user...
aficionado. "But when you use a computer, you're using your imagination to manipulate the computer's reality. Well, that's exactly what sorcery is all about - changing the plastic quality of nature on a nuts-and-bolts level. And that's why magickal techniques dating back hundreds of years are totally valid in a cyberpunkCyberpunkCyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
age."
Los Angeles
Orpheus had used SteinbergSteinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's computer music software in the studio for some time, and soon after moving to Hamburg he joined the company to pioneer their Internet Services division. He became a well-known figure presenting the company's software at trade shows, and in 1999 relocated to Los Angeles, California, to design one of the first Web 2.0 community sites, Cubase.net. While based in L.A., Orpheus served as a member of the US Grand Lodge O.T.O. Supreme Grand Council. He was still writing literature as well as music during this period: his horror short story "Gothic Blood Dream" and his poem "Poison Butterflies" would be published in the Gothic II anthology in 2002.
Return to the UK
In Los Angeles Orpheus spent time working within the movie sound industry and became a strong supporter of surround soundSurround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
. This led to him moving to Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
and becoming Business Development Manager for the DTS Entertainment surround record label in 2004. During this period he produced the surround albums Planet Earth for LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem
LTJ Bukem is the stage name used by the drum and bass musician, producer and DJ Danny Williamson . He and his record labels Good Looking and Looking Good Records are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music....
and A Gigantic Globular Burst of Anti-Static for The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London
The Future Sound of London is a prolific British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. The duo are often credited with pushing the boundaries of electronic music experimentation and of pioneering a new era of dance music...
.
In 2007 he reformed the original line-up of The Cassandra Complex and was interviewed in TWF magazine about his attitude towards the music business:
I don’t believe in giving someone fifteen percent of my income just so they can be a dick to someone else, it's just stupid and lazy—most musicians are lazy, and stupid, that's why they’re musicians.
Orpheus has always been fascinated by games, and has written supplements for the tabletop game Car Wars
Car Wars
Car Wars is a vehicle combat simulation game developed by Steve Jackson Games. It was first published in late 1980 .-Game play:In Car Wars, players assume control of one or more automobiles, which may include any powered vehicle, from motorcycles to semi trucks. Optional rules include piloting...
from Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. During a long period of recuperation after an operation in 2001 he started designing modules for the computer game Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights , produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames , is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms rules. It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial...
, eventually running an online server called The Hidden Tradition and winning a Neverwinter Vault Hall of Fame award. This led him to spend time lecturing in games design at Stroud College
Stroud College
Stroud College is a sixth form and further educational establishment, located in Stroud, Gloucestershire.Stroud College started in the School of Art in 1860, which then renamed to The Technical College and located itself in various buildings in the town of Stroud...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
from 2008–2010.
Current work
Rodney Orpheus now lives in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. He was appointed Deputy National Grand Master General for UK Grand Lodge of O.T.O.. at the Spring equinox 2009, and appeared on the O.T.O. podcast Thelema NOW! in September of that year; where he would make a second appearance in the August 2011 edition.
He appeared with Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison
Nick Margerrison is a radio presenter who presents the weekend overnight show on LBC 97.3.-Early career:Nick Margerrison went to the University of Essex where he studied English Literature...
on Kerrang Radio representing O.T.O. in May 2009:
We're chatting to a bloke, Rodney Orpheus, who is part of the religion which Crowley left behind after he died, it's called O.T.O. I'm asking him what would happen if we were to play out Crowley's magical spell ritual designed to call out demons. He tells me probably nothing, "if demons were to come out of the radio I'd be very surprised, if they're going to come out of anywhere, they'll come out of people's heads". Awesome. Great bit of radio. Hit play on the song. Two minutes in the station has a major technical glitch. The consoles in all three studios stop working. The mic won't turn on and then won't turn off. We play three songs in a row as we try to sort it out. Chaos as broadcast assistants and producers run about like headless chickens trying to sort it out. Technical response team on the phone. Finally we're back on air. Not the most impressive bit of radio ever. An example of Crowley's curse?
His most recent book on magick, Grimoire of Aleister Crowley, was published by Abrahadabra Press in August 2011. It has been described as "the most significant Thelemic book written this century" by noted Goetia
Goetia
refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons, and usage of the term in English largely derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, which features an Ars Goetia as its first section...
scholar David Rankine.
Discography
1984- The Cassandra Complex - March (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1985
- The Cassandra Complex - Moscow, Idaho (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Third Circle - Last Night (Producer)
1986
- The Cassandra Complex - Datakill (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Grenade (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Hello America (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1987
- The Cassandra Complex - Feel The Width (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Kill Your Children (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1988
- The Cassandra Complex - Theomania (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Set Fatale (Producer)
1989
- The Cassandra Complex - 30 Minutes of Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Satan, Bugs Bunny & Me (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Penny Century (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1990
- The Cassandra Complex - Cyberpunx (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Finland (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Girls Under Glass - Positive (Producer)
1991
- The Cassandra Complex - The War Against Sleep (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
1992
- The Cassandra Complex - Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (Vocals, Producer, Songwriter)
1993
- The Cassandra Complex - Sex & Death (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Sisters of Mercy - Under The Gun (Keyboards/Top of the Pops appearance)
- Catastrophe Ballet - Transition (Producer)
1994
- Die Krupps - Fatherland (Remixer w/ Andrew Eldritch)
1995
- Sun God - Sun God (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- Asylum - Vent (Producer)
1996
- Aurora Sutra - Passing Over In Silence Unto Nuit (Producer)
- INRI - The Whole of Nature is Renewed by Fire (Producer)
- Still Silent (Vocals, Lyrics)
2000
- The Cassandra Complex - Wetware (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
- The Cassandra Complex - Twice As Good (Vocals, Instruments, Producer, Songwriter)
2001
- Faith & the Muse - Vera Causa (Remixer)
2002
- Soil & Eclipse - Purity (Remixer)
2003
- Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks (Technical Adviser)
2004
- LTJ Bukem - Planet Earth (Producer)
- Beborn Beton - Another World (Remixer)
2005
- London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Handel's Water Music (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Mozart Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Bach Classics (Creative Director)
- London Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky Classics (Creative Director)
2006
- Future Sound of London - A Gigantic Globular Burst Of Anti-Static (Producer)
External links
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