The most surprising thing about being a wizard has been the slow, dawning realisation that I was pushing against an open door. People at large REALLY wanted there to be wizards. But they didn’t want failed ones. Nor did they want to be ripped off. I found I had little trouble being accepted as a wizard by the world at large. Which was gratifying. But I had a considerably more famous predecessor. Here’s how it all began:
The Sixties ™ came fashionably late to Australia in the pre-internet age. What appears to have got a bit lost with blurred (and possibly drug-affected) memories of that turbulent epoch is that there were two contrasting strains which didn’t exactly play well together. There was the California Dreaming bit (the Neptune in Libra strain): love, peace, flowers in your hair and all that stuff. And there was the Left Bank-style insurgency following hot-foot and breathless on its tail (the Pluto in Leo bit). Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Seizing Control of the Means of Production and all that stuff.
As a naïve teenage science student I saw both strains in my own life. As a first-year I attended two demonstrations organised by the students’ union. The first was overwhelmingly light-hearted, peaceful, and science-based. Concorde was visiting Tullamarine airport and we wanted it banished. There was no violence, and consequently no arrests. Time has justified the demonstrators. Concorde really was a tragedy of scientific hubris. It is now as one with Nineveh and Tyre. The second demonstration was a street march in a doomed attempt to save Lake Pedder from Tasmania’s autocratic Hydro scheme. As we marched, the chant went up about smashing the bosses’ army and building a workers’ state. I got off at the next tram stop and went home.
Meanwhile, on campus I could not help noticing that my chosen university had its own official wizard, in pointy hat, black robes, staff and a windup gramophone. He was available for comment, and a wonderfully fluent speaker. He made fun of the increasingly violent and dictatorial student politicians. And they didn’t like it one bit. Time and again they attempted to whip up the mob into violent protests about anything and everything. And every time he was there, turning the mood of the crowd back towards sanity and fun.
Well, said I. THAT is what I want to be when I grow up. I made friends with him, and learned a great many things. He had already been the official wizard of the University of NSW, thanks to the Vice-Chancellor Sir Phillip Baxter:
Prior to that, he had been appointed the official wizard of the World University Service in the earlier days when the agitators had not yet gained ascendancy over that august body. Alas, the insurgency – inspired by the French riots of 1968 and the Indo-Chinese war – seized control of WUS and expelled him. What he wanted was a fun revolution. All that was good in the Sixties Revolution was right here:
He also became a Living Work of Art, recognised as such by the National Gallery of Victoria: an astonishing feat in itself. As a former student of psychology and sociology he developed his own cosmology. Refined and remodelled, it may be found here:
He taught that we could rise above successive levels of fixations and eventually become non-fixated shamans: answerable not to bureaucrats and totalitarian nightmares, but to Higher Things. He spoke of homo ludens: mankind as gentle, playful beings answerable only to a semi-mythical Heaven. And he made people laugh:
All of this was gall and wormwood to the student radicals, who wanted him banished from the campus. Several attempts were made to expel and thwart him, but he managed to outwit them. Students liked him because he made them laugh. He produced the world’s first upside-down world map. Not only that, he declared that the universe was not merely South Up, but actually inside out. It works, too, as long as you’re not fussed about 3D asymptotes. At one point, he proclaimed his ambition to disappear:
Eventually he left Melbourne and went to Christchurch, who had no idea what a phenomenon was about to descend upon their quiet provincial city. He began preaching in Cathedral Square:
The City Council objected, and forbade him to speak. He gave orations in French instead of English. That too did not meet with their approval, so he gave addresses in mime. One delighted bystander remarked that his silent oration made more sense than most speeches. Eventually the City Council realised they were losing the battle, and allowed him to speak at last. Finally he became the official wizard of Christchurch, and a major tourist attraction.
His battles with bureaucracy were by no means over. The NZ census bureau insisted that he be counted. As he had no officially recognised status as a citizen, he gave cogent reasons why he should not be. When this failed to meet with bureaucratic approval he set sail in a small boat with some loyal followers outside NZ territorial waters. On his return he proclaimed that he had officially Disappeared on Census Night and cannot be enumerated with the other sheep and goats. There were T-shirts distributed proclaiming the Glad Tidings:
I BELIEVE THE WIZARD VANISHED!
In 1990 he was appointed Official Wizard of New Zealand by Mike Moore, the Prime Minister of the day. Yes, really:
Mike was probably the best PM New Zealand ever had. I met him once in the street in Christchurch, in company with my august master. He made a few jokes and passed the time of day before heading off to meet a public meeting of his enraged constituents. He promised he would take up their concerns in the Beehive (NZ’s Parliament House) tomorrow. At which point the meeting dispersed. Their local MP had given his word, and everyone knew it would be kept. This man – an ex-PM! – had been walking the streets by himself, with no government car, and an entire absence of minders. He didn’t need them.
The Archwizardly rainmaking spells are a story in itself:
Five times he has been asked, by civil authorities, to break droughts and bring rain. Score? 5/5. In Waimate it had not rained for eight months. The drought broke within twenty minutes. This rather speaks for itself, does it not?
He was also awarded the Queen’s Medal for services to cosmology in 2009. Very few have given the world such a cerebral shake-up; and yet remained kindly, generous of heart, and untainted by scandal. He gave me my wizard’s staff in 1985. I am honoured to be his wizardly colleague. Let this anecdote serve as illustration:
During the Christchurch earthquake, with rising panic on all sides, he had set forth to visit his fiancée Alice’s mother in her nursing home. Arriving at the residence, he discovered that a whirlpool had opened up. The beloved canine companion of the residents was swirling around in the whirlpool, barking for help. Many would have fled, or at the very least hesitated on the threshold of an unknown peril such as a seismic eruption. Not our intrepid Archwizard, who strode fearlessly into the maelstrom, rescued the dog, and restored him to the delighted residents. Of course he did. Let him be named in honour!