Who is the Bard of Ely? Find out in his Wizzography

I am the author of Herbs of the Northern Shaman - A Guide to Mind-altering Plants of the Northern Hemisphere, which was published first by Loompanics Unlimited in 2000 and again, with some next text and all new colour photos by Katrinia Rindsberg, in 2010 by O-Books.

Loompanics was in America and this caused problems because it cost a lot to ship the books over to the UK. At one point Howard Marks, aka Mr Nice, really did volunteer to help me sell it by stocking my book along with his own at dates on his tours. Sadly I was not able to accept his very kind offer due to the costs of getting the books from the US.

The new edition of Herbs of the Northern Shaman is available from Amazon and Blackwells and Waterstone's, among other stockists.

I also have an Amazon Kindle title which is an autobiographical account of all my spiritual and paranormal experiences and entitled Hummadruz and a Life of High Strangeness.

I have been fascinated by animals and plants since I was a toddler and started keeping all sorts of small creatures when I was a boy. My interest in wildlife and botany has stayed with me all my life, and although I have no formal qualifications in any academic subjects such as zoology, I am widely recognised as a naturalist and botanist with a very good knowledge of many species of flora and fauna and the environment.

In 1998, I worked for a while as a TV presenter for two series of the magazine In Full View on BBC Choice. In this role I was out and about in the South Wales countryside seeing what plants and animals I could find.

Of course I had dreams of becoming a TV natural history presenter and following in the footsteps of David Attenborough but it was not to be.

I first started being a public speaker when I was doing all I could to sell my book Herbs of the Northern Shaman. I found that I was good at it and that books sold easily after I had finished speaking. I remember doing a talk on the Herbs of Witchcraft at a Pagan Federation event in London and a couple of people in the audience actually bought two copies each.

In 2004, I failed to get a booking as a performer or as an MC at Glastonbury Festival but I still got in as a guest speaker. Once again my subject was herbs and witchcraft.

Fast forwarding to 2012 and I have given two sell-out talks at the English Library in Puerto de la Cruz. The first of these was on the Flora and Fauna of Tenerife and the second on the Floral Magic of the island.

In my life I have had a great deal of paranormal experiences including UFO sightings and ghostly encounters. As a child and teenager I underwent a series of bizarre awakenings at night caused by a loud humming sound. The UFO author Jenny Randles told me years later that this was probably "Hummadruz", which she said was a "psychic training exercise" and the word was made up of "Hum", "Drone" and "Buzz."

These early experiences caused me to be really interested in investigating the mysteries of life and the spiritual side of things.  I also spent years researching conspiracy theories and have written on these subjects for Chris Everard's Feed Your Brain magazine and elsewhere. 

I was once a member of the Gurdjieff Work for two years before I joined Scientology and I stayed in it for four years.

I have been hypnotically regressed for the HTV series Weird Wales and my hypnotist thought I may well be an abductee. I simply do not know about that but my sightings and experiences were real enough.

Back in the '90s, I joined the Loyal Arthurian Warband Druid Order after becoming friends with its titular head, King Arthur Pendragon. I am a Quest Knight and Bard of his order.

In recent years I have been involved in investigating the mysterious pyramids of Tenerife.

I first visited Tenerife in the Canary Islands back in 2002 and immediately fell in love with the island. It had plenty of wildlife, including bees and lizards, as well as lots of wild flowers and strange exotic flora such as the Dragon Trees.

At the end of 2004, I moved to the island and have been based there ever since. I have lived in Costa del Silencio in the hot and dry south of the island for the first year but in May 2006 I moved to San Marcos in the north of Tenerife. I live with a cat called Tiggy in a 2-bedroomed apartment with a balcony that looks out over the sea and down the coast to Garachico, a seaport that was once almost destroyed by a volcanic eruption. 

As already explained I live with cat called Tiggy. She was originally my landlady Cindy's cat but she gave her to me when she moved back to Guernsey back in 2005.

Tiggy is a tabby and I am totally devoted to her. I will not leave the island unless I can find someone to come and stay here to look after her while I am away. 

I have also been rearing caterpillars of the Monarch Butterfly and feeding them on Milkweed I have grown in pots on my balcony. A couple of years back I managed to have as many as 50 adults emerge in one week. It was a real joy watching them fly away.

Besides my own books I am am featured in depth in many books by other authors. I am in C.J. Stone's Fierce Dancing - Adventures in the Underground and The Last of the Hippies, both published by Faber and Faber, as well as his Housing Benefit Hill (AK Press), in his collaboration as Christopher James Stone with Arthur Pendragon, The Trials of Arthur (Element), in Peter Finch's Real Cardiff (Seren), in The Remarkable Life of Leonard Cohen (Omnibus Press) by Anthony Reynolds, and The World's Most Mysterious People (Hounslow) by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe.

The Trials of Arthur is now out as a revised Kindle edition, and  I am also going in a book by Philip Coppens about pyramids. 

Like so many people I have lost work and regular income due to the ongoing financial crisis and so have very seriously considered going back to the UK.  I might have a better chance there of getting work and money:

 But moving back is not that simple because I need to pay around £1,000 just for Tiggy's flight and treatments by a vet that are mandatory.

I need somewhere for us to move into when we get there and preferably a regular job for myself.

I don't really want to move but it might happen. The future is an open book for me! 

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Wikipedia entry for Steve Andrews aka the Bard of Ely

The Green Bard blog

Bard of Ely's music on the Spotlight Zone

Tenerife Islander