Bio From an Upcoming Conference
01 June 2018
Toby Chappell is a musician and writer currently residing in Georgia. He has been enamored with the esoteric and the strange for as long as he can remember, pursuing these as gateways into unraveling the mysteries of existence and self-awareness.
Some of Toby’s interests include the connections between Starry Wisdom and the Left Hand Path, the study of how semiotics and language reflect and enhance effective thought and action, and the Northern European esoteric traditions including the Runes. Influenced by the treatment of the unusual, the esoteric, the imaginal and the mysterious by such authors as Fritz Leiber, Herman Hesse, Stefan Grabinski and H.P. Lovecraft, his quest is always to seek the deeper Mystery behind the things that capture his interest (knowing that the truth always remains partially hidden).
He is the author of the forthcoming Infernal Geometry and the Left Hand Path: The Magical System of the Nine Angles, which explores the history and development of angular magic within the early Church of Satan and then in the Temple of Set starting in 1975. Lovecraft, Pythagoras, geometry (sacred and otherwise), semiotics – all these influences and more come together in this system first outlined in “The Ceremony of the Nine Angles” (written by Michael Aquino for Anton LaVey’s 1972 book, The Satanic Rituals).
A member of the Temple of Set since 2000, Toby currently serves as the seventh Grand Master of the Order of the Trapezoid within the Temple. The Order, whose meaning and purpose reach far into the dim past, was formally consecrated as a Knighthood dedicated to the Prince of Darkness by Dr. Michael Aquino in 1982 at the Wewelsburg Castle in Westphalia, Germany. Toby has written numerous articles on Satanism, angular magic, the runes and H.P. Lovecraft in Runes, the private journal of the Order.
In the last decade he has given interviews on various magical and initiatory topics to the KHPR: The Voice of Darkness podcast, the Daimonosophy 2.0 podcast, and the Church of Mabus radio show.
Toby’s music and occult pursuits intersect in the solo projects Eyes of Ligeia (starry wisdom and ambient doom), and Misdreamt (found sounds, electo-acoustic experimentation, and apophenia). Over the last 13 years he has given various performances under the Eyes of Ligeia banner, both solo and with a group. In 2011 he created a new soundtrack for the silent film Faust (1926); this was commissioned by and performed at the German Cultural Center in Atlanta, along with other performances in the southeast and New York City.