The following article was written for the OTO monthly publication of the T.L.C. march 2000.

GAIA COMMUNICATIONS WORLD NETWORK

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fraternal greetings;
I am a member of the OTO based in Liverpool, England and since 1978 I have been working as a music(k)ian under the name of The Royal Family & The poor. Over the last 20 years under this name, I have produced numerous LP's, singles & video's, some on Manchester based Factory records and later on privately releasing material on our own Independent Label,Gaia Communications World Network.
The Royal Family & The Poor began in 1977 as a collaboration of two artists, myself, (Michael Keane) and a friend, Arthur Mcdonald, who was the original vocalist. The very first recordings the Royal Family & The Poor were done on a £15.00 cassette machine & were nothing more to the average listener than white noise and an electrical drone. Over this, Arthur would read Situationist text taken from some of his own writings coupled with exerts taken from Rauol Vanegiem's " leaving the 20th century" Our "sound" was created by my dismantling a radio receiver and wiring it up to a small analog synthesizer & connecting them both to an old stereo gram. This could then be manipulated by moving magnets around the receiver in the radio . The Royal Family & the Poor began as an Aural-Pychic-audio experimentation in transpersonal forms of communication between ourselves and the listener.
After the first year the other members, including Arthur left the group, I took this as a personal challenge to continue regardless as I had felt something profoundly moving in the musick we had made, the ideas behind it and the wave of energy which surged through our entire generation around these times, to say nothing of the wonderful music coming out of every dark corner in the UK . ( called by the gutter-press "punk rock")
To me, all these events were real life, radical, historical and Magickal, related directly to the Magical philosophy which was at the center of the Renaissance period and which helped to birth Western Art movements for centuries to come.
While creativity and love are exterminated while maintaining the outward appearance of a civilized society our entire generation seemed to be undergoing its own very particular initiatory experience, (as each generation does in their own way) and through the united energy,anger and creative intelligence of a generation frustrated with the mediocrity and banality of a materialistic society in which economics are valued above all life, it felt as if PAN had us all in his firm, loving, relentless grip.
It was specifically this relationship between magic(k), Art & the ability of sound to effect changes in consciousness that began to fascinate us and so we decided to call our music "musick" and remarkably, Factory records heard a tape of what we were doing invited us to contribute to a double LP sampler showcasing 4 of Factorys new acts, it was recorded live in one afternoon spontaneously,as were all of our early performances. The rehearsal room at home became our musickal alchemical lab & The Royal family & the Poor's Musick became something to explore consciousness with, after all, what is Music(k) other than the ability to articulate the incommunicable, the occult or hidden ? Music(k) can give insights of the Soul, It can teach us how to remain open and receptive to the new, the magical, it can move and inspire us to participate in creation, to mold,to draw,to etch,to carve, To Create, the creed of OZ, that "every man and woman is" an Artist or "a star."
1982 was the year that I had been studying a practical correspondence course on the Mystical Quabbala with S.O.L. after realizing that it was about time I did some serious magical work when out-of-the-blue I had a visit from a friend who just happened to be doing the photographs for a William Burroughs event in the town center that evening and he thought I might appreciate coming along to the hotel with him to meet W.B. and have a free meal in the hotel while we were there, I was hungry !
The subsequent meeting was like something strait out of "Interzone" and shocked me by its Psychic reality, it was as if he had been expecting me. Bill shook my hand and treated me as if I was an old friend even though we had never met before. It wasn't until I returned home that I realized that that love I had felt from him had not left me, it never did and continues to inspire me today.
" The great God Pan is dead, Pan, the God of Panic, the sudden awareness that everything is alive and significant. But Pan lives on in the realm of imagination, in writing,painting and Music." William Burrough's-from "Dead city radio" CD-Island records 1990.
It never ceases to amaze me that Musick, like all the arts,has the capacity to communicate directly to the deepest parts of ourselves, not only that but it can communicate the most profound ideas related to human existence itself. It does so because art true art, Inspired art, IS Magickal, and being Magickal means that the form of its expression has succeeded in translating the thoughts of another or others & making a connection with the watcher or listener . This produces what William Burroughs called the Third mind, a two way interchange of information and energy producing a third thing and bringing our awareness to that part of ourselves which stands outside the two major Identifiable forms of consciousness - the a Trinity of creative & most definitely spiritual/Magic(k)al consciousness, .
From 86 to 89 we formed our own record label, Gaia communications World Network and released 1 LP and a 12" single but in 98 our distribution company, (Red Rhino) collapsed, effectively wiping-out our label over night. During this period, with various members of the band coming and going, we did numerous performances in Europe & in the UK as well as 5 C90 cassette releases, contributed to various compilation LP's & publications,ritual workshops & lectures.
In 1995 the opportunity arose to procure a PC and phone-line as well as being able to raise enough capital to re-launch our beloved long-term project, " Gaia communications World Network",
( not to be confused with other fluffy-bunny "new age" groups of the same name!!).
Our first new release will be a project which has been some ten years in the making, The third audio release by Gaia records, a CD LP release titled , Songs For The Children Of Baphomet " A Musickal celebration on the Theme of Magick & A Tribute to The Life & Works Of Aleister Crowley,
( 1875 - 1947)" This LP CD contains a free 28 page full color booklet and over an hour of some of the best tracks the Royal Family & the Poor have done to date. Each copy will be individually numbered from 1 to 2000.
We would like to thank the OTO for the copyright permission granted to us to use the Aleister Crowley material contained on the tribute LP & we would also like to thank Frater A.M.T. and Frater H.B. for their invaluable support and encouragement with this project, we could not have done it without you, thanks !
In the meantime we would like to thank all of you who have supported us in the past by purchasing our records and for taking an interest in our work, we hope to continue to both produce and release new material and build upon our desire to continue to serve the Thelemic community through our work, releases & publications.
For all enquiries & further information regarding Gaia Communications & The Royal Family & the poor you can either E.mail us at directly or if you prefer you can go to our Web-site on-line at the addresses below.

Love is the law, Love under will

Brother Michael./ Fra: A.N.L. Liverpool, (near england.)
GAIA E.MAIL - MichaelKeane@compuserve.com.
GAIA Home-pages- http;//ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/michaelkeane/