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Custodia Borealis:
MEET THE TEAM!
Everybody behind Custodia Borealis is a volunteer
Some of our team prefer to stay in the shadows, but Custodia Borealis could not have asked for a better conclave to come together to make this vision a reality.
Riaz Ahmed
Riaz Ahmed is Bradford born & bred, and is a proud Bradfordian. Apart from working in IT, he has many many hobbies & interests.
He is a former professional photographer & his main interest is capturing real life street photography. He likes filming and photographing quirky things in life. He is also a founder of a YouTube channel called "Bradford Through The Lens". The channel focuses on lost stories of the Bradford District. On a weekend, he restores Victorian graves with a team of grave restorers, that helps preserve our local history.
Maggie Blake-Reece
Maggie Blake-Reece is an esoteric author and artist from the Midlands of the UK. She is the founder and editor of Coire Ansic magazine and a public workshop facilitator at various pagan events and circles. Her work focuses mainly on the links between psyche and spirituality with a particular interest in the links between neurodiversity, the subconscious, and divine connection within Theology and Mythos.
She is the author of the 2025 book A Dream of the Seraphim: Guides, Ethereal Messengers and Celestial Beings Drawn from the Psyche, a visionary exploration of inner cosmology and the numinous architecture of the mind. Her forthcoming book, Unveiling Eve: The Serpent’s Bride and the Lost Light of the Goddess, continues her commitment to reclaiming suppressed feminine mythologies through rigorous scholarship and mythopoetic insight.
Darren Hill
Dr Darren Hill is an academic and researcher in higher education whose work explores the intersections of mental health, culture, and community work. With a strong record of scholarship and a commitment to widening participation, he brings a reflective and values‑driven approach to both teaching and research.
Beyond academia, Darren has extensive experience in the charity and third‑sector landscape, having served as a trustee and director for organisations focused on mental health, social support, culture and community wellbeing. His governance expertise is grounded in compassionate leadership, operational insight, and a deep belief in the transformative power of collective action.
Darren also has a rich esoteric background. Drawing on many years of study and practice within Freemasonry and Gardnerian Wicca, he brings a nuanced understanding of symbolism, folklore, ritual, and the role of myth in shaping personal and communal identities. This unique perspective informs both his academic lens and his public engagement work.
As part of his commitment to open, accessible dialogue about alternative spiritualities, Darren facilitates Folk, Myth and Magick, a public Moot based in Shipley, Bradford. The group offers a welcoming space for discussion, exploration, and learning across a wide spectrum of pagan, occult, and folkloric traditions, attracting individuals from all backgrounds with an interest in the mystical and the mythic.
Toby Norman-Wright
Former ballet dancer and choreographer and retrained in arts management, Toby has experience in a range of senior management roles in the arts and cultural sector, including dance houses, arts and culture funding bodies with a focus on regional strategy development, regional and city portfolio funding of artists, arts organisations, museums and libraries, and the development of cross sector partnerships to support the arts.
Engaged in The Great Work, which can be limiting to even begin to describe. However, Toby’s personal and scholarly interests include the esoteric traditions, Rosicrucian and Hermetic ceremonial ritual, the creation and manifestation of Egregores, contemplative mysticism and theurgical practices.
Mordecai Ravenschilde
Mordecai Ravenschilde is a magical practitioner born in Leeds, with over forty years of engagement in the esoteric arts, specialising in necromancy, sorcery and qabalah. After three decades wandering what he jokingly calls “the wilderness” - in truth the initiatory labyrinth of London - he is now firmly established in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. His work concerns the living relationship between the Dead, the Divine and the Damned, approaching occult practice as a disciplined cultural inheritance rather than spectacle.
His interests span symbolic grammar, ritual history and the preservation of magical material culture. He is the author of the recent lecture 'The Veiled North, an exploration of the North of England’s magical legacy', and continues to work at the intersection of practice, history and cultural memory.
Melissa Seims
Literary Necromancer, moon-shadow dancer and half-hippy, Melissa is an independent researcher, historian, and writer specialising in the history of the Golden Dawn, related magical Orders and modern witchcraft — particularly the post-war British revival and the early development of Gardnerian witchcraft.
A long-time magical practitioner, she pairs lived experience with historical research, following the people, documents, and material culture that shaped twentieth-century occult practice.
She is the author of Here Be Magick: The People and Practices of the Coven of Atho, a detailed study of the enigmatic Coven of Atho and its place within Britain’s wider occult landscape. She has also written Light in Extension: A History of Bradford’s 1888 Golden Dawn Temple Horus No. 5, exploring for the first time, a significant and previously overlooked chapter in the late-Victorian occult revival.
Beyond her writing, she runs a dedicated history website focused on Gardnerian witchcraft and is a key figure behind Liminal Gate Press. She also appears in interviews and podcasts discussing her research process and the communities behind the sources — always with an eye for the forgotten details that reshape the bigger story.
She is passionate about capturing new stories from Britain's rich Occult past and curious about the intersection and interplay between magic, science and psychology.
Along with some troublesome muses, she brings unbridled enthusiasm, knowledge, and IT skills to Custodia Borealis.
Fleur Shearman
Fleur Shearman is an independent art researcher and restorer who has given art-based lectures and tours in museums, galleries, and public sculpture settings for many years. She is a published author and retired museum professional, working in an interdisciplinary and enabling way at the boundaries between history, art, creative expression, and magical reality.
Alexandra Stockdale-Haley
Alexandra is a museum and archive professional with a background in curation, collections management, exhibitions and engagement. Her experience includes assessing options and feasibility for the development of a new museum, and working on diverse contemporary collecting projects.
She is on the management team for an ever-growing local Pagan Circle and is a practitioner of witchcraft, divination and energy magick. Her esoteric interests and research lie in various occult sciences, mythology and folklore, and local magical movements (including the Golden Dawn, Vampyrism and Chaos Magick).
Sue Terry
Dr Sue Terry is an independent scholar and writer, with a long professional career in public service. Her PhD research was in literary occult modernism and the magical novels of four women authors 1890-1940. She has held a portfolio of non-Executive Directorships and Board Chair positions, including Chair of Board of Trustees for a national housing/social care charity, responsible for a charitable foundation of over £2m. She is an Independent Person for a London Borough’s Standards Committee, part of the Council’s governance arrangements. Sue is a local Town Councillor in Hungerford, following her recent relocation to Berkshire from Manchester.
An experienced lecturer, consultant, conference organiser and events host, Sue’s research interests include weird fiction; the UFO phenomenon’s intersection of high strangeness and the occult; the continuing cultural impact of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Sue founded Owl House Seminars in 2023, offering open access seminars in literature and the weird. She is co-producer of the Annual Florence Farr & The Magical Imagination Conference, London, in honour of Florence Farr (1860-1917), actress, author, campaigner for women’s rights and Golden Dawn magician.
Sue produced The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Study Day for University of Surrey at The Museum of Freemasonry, Covent Garden, a programme of lectures and display of original Golden Dawn artefacts from the Museum’s collection.
Sue was Founder and Director of Magickal Women and Company Ltd (2018-23), focusing on women’s achievements and expertise in esoteric research and practice; built an international community of female academics and independent scholars. Planned and hosted The Magickal Women Conference 2019 in London and subsequent extensive programme of live and online events.
Sue is a Priestess in the Fellowship of Isis and a Reiki Master Teacher.
Sue is currently writing a book on magical friendships between Golden Dawn members Florence Farr and Dorothea and Edmund Hunter, which is due to be published in 2026. She has a second Golden Dawn project in development to follow on, as she believes that a clear desk is anathema to an interesting life. Meeting people to talk about weird stuff is one of Sue’s most favourite things.
Sue Terry
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