On the morning of July 12, 2024, Tony “Doc” Shiels, the so-called “Wizard of the West” died, in line with phrase handed alongside by Jon Downes of the Middle of Fortean Zoology and Loch Ness Monster investigator Ian Squibbs. Shiels was 85 or 86.
Tony Shiels was born 1938 in Salford, Lancashire, England. Impressed as a younger lad seeing Dante, Cecil Lyle, Galli Galli, and different magi on the Blackpool Palace Theatre, he grew to become a wizard and magician, being an artist by career.
Within the early Nineteen Sixties, a brand new Publish-Battle Era of artists had been taking over the established center aged ‘Center Era’ of British Artwork. Tony Shiels’ portray advanced from his native Salford to London, Paris and St Ives. His work typically focuses on folklore and magic seen by means of the lens of the St Ives Scene.
After attending the Heatherley College of Tremendous Artwork in London, he moved to St Ives, Cornwall the place in 1961, following the resignation of Barbara Hepworth, he was made a member of the committee of the influential Penwith Society of Arts. In St Ives he ran the progressive ‘Steps Gallery’, the place he confirmed artists like Brian Wall and Bob Legislation. He had a number of solo exhibitions in London.
Tony noticed himself as a part-time skilled magician since about 1963. He labored through an expert tent present with psychological magic and mentalism. Inside Fortean and occult circles, he pioneered in weird magick.
Within the late Nineteen Sixties, after transferring to stay in Ponsanooth close to Falmouth, he rediscovered stage magic – one thing he had been taught as a boy by his father and grandfather – and wrote articles for The Linking Ring and The Price range magazines. This included interviews with Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury. He additionally revealed a trio of magic books: 13, One thing Unusual and Daemons Darklings and Doppelgangers which had been offered in each the UK and the US and led to him being related to Seventies weird magick.
Between 1970 and 1974, he carried out as ‘Doc Shiels: Wizard of the West’ at festivals and faires in Cornwall, UK. This, offered with the assistance of pal Vernon Rose and the remainder of the Shiels household, was a magic present that included illusions such because the headless lady, the sub-trunk and the buzz-saw.
In 1975, he arrange ‘Tom Idiot’s Theatre of Tom Foolery’, which began as a troupe of ‘mummers’, earlier than labored carefully with the Footsbarn theatre.
He was concerned in a sequence of ‘monster-raising’ exploits in 1976, which gave him appreciable media consideration, notably when he started ‘invoking’ the monsters with assistance from a coven of sky-cade (bare) witches. His makes an attempt to ‘elevate’ Morgawr the Cornish sea monster, had been coated by BBC TV, Fortean Instances, native newspapers, and appeared in nationwide newspapers such because the Reveille and Information of the World.
At across the similar time he reported on sightings of the ‘Owlman’ of Mawnan. In 1977 he obtained pictures claimed to be of the Loch Ness Monster which appeared on the entrance web page of the Day by day Mirror newspaper. This and his related ‘Monstermind Experiment’ appeared in different media retailers together with The Day by day Telegraph and Radio One’s Newsbeat.
Alongside the monster-raising, Shiels continued to carry out each as Doc Shiels and as a member of Tom Fools Theatre, and he wrote a number of performs together with Spooks, The Gallavant Variations, Nightjars, Fabric Owl the Winking Curtain and Dr Beak Hides his Arms. One in all his performs, Distant Humps, was co-produced by Ken Campbell and co-starred Christopher Fairbank. He additionally had different magic books revealed, together with The Shiels Impact, Weird and The Cantrip Codex.
The occasions of the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties had been coated in his personal ebook, Monstrum, and within the 1996 ebook Owlman and Others by Jon Downes.
Throughout this era and within the years since he continued to color and have exhibitions. He considers himself an artist in the beginning, and his life’s work to be a type of surrealism that he refers to as ‘surrealchemy’.
Exploring Muckross Abbey, Eire, November 2015
Doc Shiels in one of many “early bars:” John Reidy’s in Killarney, Eire, November 2015
His daughter, “Cait Sidh,” additionally participated along with his tent exhibits, as a witch. His partner was Chris Shiels.
Shiels’ most celebrated revealed work was Monstrum! A Wizards Story (2011). That is the background on that work.
“A WIZARD’S TALE…. The extraordinary and entertaining inside story of 1 man’s relationship with the mysterious monsters of our historic waters and different unusual phenomena, set towards a vibrant background of Gaelic folklore, pagan magic, surrealism, worldwide monster-hunting, and psychic backlash. Who’s ‘Doc’ Shiels? Doc is a contemporary monster-hunter, an writer of a number of books on stage magic, a founder-editor of the surrealist journal Nnidnid, a poet, playwrite and artist, a Punch and Judy professor, and one time Wizard of the Western world. In 1977 Doc initiated the ‘Monstermind’ mission, organising a world group of psychics and magicians to boost up the denizens of darkish lakes world wide. Filled with Alice-in-Wonderland coincidences, that is his story: telling how he got here to take the most effective {photograph} but of the Loch Ness Monster (proper), and snapped Morgawr, the monster of Falmouth Bay. Alongside the best way he crosses the tracks of the Little Individuals, the frightful winged Owlman of Cornwall, big squids, sky-clad witches, UFOs and the Irish Pooka.”