On April 16th, 2015 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review the

new semi-biographical novel by fantasy grandmaster Michael Moorcock "The

Whispering Swarm." This remarkable book should be of special interest to

magicians and Hermetic students. Moorcock is the modern heir to the mantles

of J.R.R. Tolkien, and Robert E.Howard. His fiction is deeply magical and

steeped in Hermetic lore. The Whispering Swarm is somewhat experimental. His

protagonist is himself and he tells his life story up to his passage from

adolescence into adulthood through the entrance into a secret enclave in the

multiverse, inhabited by historical and fictional characters he has read

about. Raised in London during and after WWll, he discovers an ancient

hidden medieval village called the Alsacia, or The Sanctuary, inhabited by

magical monks in an old Abbey, a tavern full of swashbuckling cavaliers,

including the Musketeers from Dumas and a glamorous Hughwaywoman called

Molly Midnight. He also lives in the real world, having a wife and children

and a job as an editor, but is driven to escape into The Sanctuary by the

tumult of Whispering voices in his head (the Swarm). Most importantly it

explores Moorcock's two warring personalities in emotional spiritual and

political conflict. He is a romantic at heart and an agnostic socialist in

intellect -- so he fights to save King Charles from Cromwell's Ax because

his cavalier heroes need his abilities to walk between the worlds. One

wonders all through the book, just how much of the fantasy is real, or a

metaphor for reality. So, if you want to visit an adult's Land of Oz then

follow us through the London fog to the hidden gates of the Sanctuary and

we'll find the Swan with Two Necks tavern for a shant of ale and an hour of

High Magical Adventure.