Jason Horsley

Jason Horsley (born 1967), also formerly known as Jake Horsley, Aeolus Kephas, Jason Kephas, and Jasun Horsley, is an English author, filmmaker, podcaster, and transmedia storyteller.

Background

Jason Horsley is the youngest child of Valerie Walmsley-Hunter[1] and Nicholas Horsley, the chairman of Northern Foods from 1970 until the role was assumed by Christopher Haskins;[2] the company had been founded by Nicholas's father, Alec Horsley. Jason Horsley had an older brother, painter and author Sebastian Horsley, who died of a suspected heroin overdose in June 2010, and an older sister, a psychotherapist named Ashley.[3]

In 1991, Horsley disinherited his personal fortune and travelled to Morocco to live on the streets.[4]

In 1999, Horsley published his first book, a two-volume study of violence in cinema, entitled The Blood Poets, from Scarecrow Press. The book was dedicated in part to the retired New Yorker film critic, Pauline Kael, who praised the book.[5] In 2003, Horsley published Matrix Warrior: Being the One (Orion Publishing Group), in which he combined the plot of the 1999 movie The Matrix with the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, and argued that reality is an illusory construct designed to enslave humans and drain their life-force as food for "inorganic beings".[6]

In 2002, he made a six-part digital film series called The God Game: An Investigation Into the Illusory Nature of Reality, and in 2008 a short film, Being the One: Document of a Delusion, followed. These are viewable on YouTube.

More recently, in 2008, Horsley began a series of weekly podcasts called "Stormy Weather: News from the Front Line in the End Times,"[7] under the pseudonym of Aeolus Kephas, the name under which he also published The Lucid View: Investigations into Occultism, Ufology, and Paranoid Awareness, in 2003 (Adventures Unlimited Press). After the first run of podcasts (which ended in March 2009), he revealed his actual identity and soon after, in August 2009, began a second series of podcasts, "Warty Theorems: Identity Deconstruction & Pattern Recognition in the End Times."[8] In the interim, Horsley started a "Stormy Weather" forum, where he posted as "Ghost of Elvis," and began SWEDA, or "Stormy Weather Existential Detective Agency." SWEDA was a private, paid subscriber area of the forum. It ended in late 2010.

He currently does a weekly podcast called "The Liminalist: The Podcast/Between."[9]

Writing

Horsley's film analyses have appeared in various publications, including New Dawn magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal[10] Film & Festivals Magazine,Cineaste[11] and The Guardian.[12] He worked as a contributing editor and film reviewer for Oaxaca Times in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2004, and wrote film reviews for The List, an Edinburgh-based publication, in 2007-8.[13]

His first work, The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery 1958–1999, was well reviewed by Salon.[14] In 2005, Horsley published Dogville Vs. Hollywood: the War Between Mainstream Movies and Independent Cinema[15] from Marion Boyars, UK.

Homo Serpiens: An Occult History of DNA from Eden to Armageddon, under the name of Aeolus Kephas (Adventures Unlimited Press), and The Secret Life of Movies: Shamanic and Schizophrenic Journeys in American Movies, published under his given name, by McFarland & Company, were both released in 2009. Also as Aeolus Kephas, he wrote a controversial article on Whitley Strieber in 2008 which appeared in Alien Worlds Magazine and Paranoia. "The Perils of the Literary Shaman" appeared in The Anomalist, the 2010 issue titled "Electricity of the Mind"[16] In 2012, also as Aeolus Kephas, he published a revised and expanded article on Strieber at the website Reality Sandwich.[17] He also published several articles at Reality Sandwich in 2011, including pieces on Carlos Castaneda[18] and the pitfalls of entheogen use.[19]

In 2010, he self-published a short illustrated book called Paper Tiger: A Mythic Narrative, under the name of Jason Kephas. The book apparently recounts Horsley's experiences of growing up with his brother, Sebastian Horsley, and the effects of his brother's tell-all autobiography Dandy in the Underworld. This work appears almost entire in Mythosmedia's anthology Immanence of Myth which was published in 2011 by Weaponized Press. He has also written regularly for the Spanish language site Pijamasurf.[20] He recently made a short film about gold prospecting, Beyond Dirt: The Enlightenment Prospect, and an online exploration into social engineering, alien abductions, and the writings of Whitley Strieber.[21] His new book, Seen & Not Seen, is published by Zero Books. He currently runs a forum,[22] called "Kubrickon."

References

  1. ↑ "I said yes to marriage the first time we met" by Valerie Walmsley-Hunter, The Guardian, Saturday 10 December 2005
  2. ↑ Northern Foods plc – Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, background Information
  3. ↑ "Relative Values..." by Ria Higgins The Sunday Times 9 September 2007
  4. ↑ "I gave up my £500,000 inheritance" by Jake Horsley The Guardian, Saturday 25 February 2006
  5. ↑ See Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Kael was retired at the time and provided a quote for Horsley via Salon film critic Charles Taylor, which appears at the publisher's website
  6. ↑ Review of Matrix Warrior
  7. ↑ Stormy Weather Podcast
  8. ↑ Warty Theorems Podcast
  9. ↑ The Liminalist Podcast
  10. ↑ Woody Allen, Misanthropy, and Match Point, Or How Death Got the Last Laugh, from Bright Lights Film Journal, August 2006 (Issue 53)
  11. ↑ Obsessions with Light: An Interview with Guy Maddin, Cineaste 22 September 2008
  12. ↑ "Films in narrow-screen: Mobile movie for the little horrors", The Guardian, Friday 30 March 2007
  13. ↑ Film Reviews for The List by Jake Horsley
  14. ↑ "Good Blood", by Charles Taylor, 11 December 2000
  15. ↑ Review of Dogville Vs. Hollywood, Scope # 8
  16. ↑ The Anomalist # 14
  17. ↑ "Through a Fractured Glass, Darkly: The Facts in the Strange Case of Whitley Strieber"
  18. ↑ "A Sorcerer's Corner: Carlos Castaneda's Doomed Romance with Knowledge"
  19. ↑ "The Serpent's Promise: The Oldest Exchange of All"
  20. ↑ "PijamaSurf website
  21. ↑ Crucial Fictions
  22. ↑ Kubrickon Forum

External links