Knight, Gareth (1930-)

Gareth Knight, a contemporary ritual magician, was born in Colchester, England. As a young man he became interested in the occult and began studying with the Fraternity of the Inner Light, the organization founded by Dion Forture (1890-1946) after her break with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Over the next six years he worked his way through the curriculum and was initiated into the higher mysteries in 1959. He also worked as the fraternity's librarian. In 1962 he launched a periodical, New Dimensions, and began work on his first book, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (1965).

Through the mid-1960s he became dissatisfied with the Society of the Inner Light, now in the hands of Fortune's students, and he resigned. He relocated to Gloucestershire and along with another former fraternity member, William E. Butler, started a publishing house, Helios Books, and to launch a new course of study in magic, the Helios Course. Knight also became friends with a Christian priest whose reflections on Christianity highly influenced Knight's next book, Experience of the Inner World (1975).

In 1972, Butler and Knight went their separate ways. Under Butler's care, the Helios Course developed into the curriculum of the Servants of the Inner Light. In 1973 Knight founded a new esoteric school, informally known as the Gareth Knight Group, also based on the Society of the Inner Light, and began again to issue New Dimensions, which three years later transformed into Quadriga, a periodical primarily circulated among Knight's students. New students were trained through a correspondence course. After some years, as the core of the group began work at an increasingly advanced level, the teaching work was closed and it transformed into a working magical group now known as the Avalon Group.

Knight returned to teaching in 1987 with a tarot correspondence course, later published as a book, The Magical World of the Tarot (1996). In 1991 he accepted the invitation of the Society of the Inner Light to edit Dion Fortune's letters from the World War II era. He followed with work on a unique volume, An Introduction to Ritual Magic (1997). The volume consists of chapters written by Fortune (drawn from previously unpublished material) and an equal number of chapters written by Knight. He rejoined the Society of the Inner Light in 1998 and has been participating in its reorganization.

Knight has his own home page on the Internet, http://www.angelfire.com/az/garethknight/.

Sources:

Gareth Knight's Homepage. http://www.angelfire.com/az/garethknight/. April 25, 2000.

Knight, Gareth. Experience of the Inner World. Chetenham, Glos., UK: Helios Book Service, 1975.

——. Magic and the Western Mind. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1990.

——. The Magical World of the Tarot. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1996.

——. A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism. N.p., 1965. Reprint. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1978.