Tony Cummings reports on British musician KEVIN WILSON whose musical Into The Light explores the very real dangers of occult involvement.

Kevin Wilson with Russell Boulter (photo by The Music Mill)

When The Son newspaper were looking for a way to describe the recently released CD 'Into The Light' they settled for "War of The Worlds meets The Exorcist meets Godspell." Suffice to say that the album, the brainchild of composer/instrumentalist Kevin Wilson and starring actor Russell Boulter (Casualty, The Bill, Eastenders) as the Devil and Louise Key as Nanoushka isn't your average Christian CD. Rather this album of songs and drama is a stark warning to those dabbling with the occult. 'Into The Light' chronicles the story of Nanoushka who is drawn into ever-deepening occult involvement. The psychic gift she thought she was blessed with turns out to be a curse. Then, as she contemplates suicide, she discovers the One who can release her from her ghastly spiritual prison.

'Into The Light' is based largely on the experiences of its creator, Kevin Wilson. On Cross Rhythms radio Kevin told Jonathan Bellamy how he had become aware of his psychic abilities as a teenager when playing guessing games with friends. Then in his 20s he bought some Tarot cards. "I became obsessed with it. It becomes very ritualistic - I mean meditations, that sort of thing - I just had to do it all of the time and that becomes paramount in your life. I remember doing a meditation once and came out of it and I just couldn't remember anything that had happened - I was completely void of all memory for hours and I hadn't been asleep, you know, it wasn't that kind of experience. I didn't know what was happening to me so I stopped doing it. As soon as I stopped doing it I realised how addictive it was. I'd realised that I wasn't happy any more - I wasn't in control of it and so I stopped doing it. I started getting quite bad nightmares, I started getting physical things happening in the house. You do get things moving - these things really do happen - and I was so scared of it.

"You get really confused. We started going through months and months of trauma at home. The business was having problems, things totally beyond normal explanation were happening. Then one day somebody that I know was having a child christened and asked if I'd be the God father! I'd never been to church apart from the wedding and certainly had no thoughts of church being a spiritual place at all. I just thought that it was like a Derby And Joan Club. I went along and it was a very high Anglican church ceremony. It was very ritualistic, lots of things on the altar and I thought, 'Blimey, this is just like an occult ritual!' There were certain things that took place in the christening that reminded me a lot of stuff that I'd done with the occult. I thought that I needed to get the kids christened 'cos the kids were having problems as well as what was happening to me. I said to my wife that we'd go and see the local vicar and get the kids christened. Unfortunately the vicar where we went, which was different from where we went for the christening, wouldn't do a christening without us going through a course - a bit like an Alpha course today - that explained what Christianity was all about. It was during this that he became aware that I had spiritual problems. Immediately after that this vicar came to see me and we got talking. As an occultist you have an anarchistic view of spiritual things - anything goes, sort of thing. So now that I had accepted that church was a spiritual thing I had no problems talking to him about what I had done. Then he started showing me things in the Bible. The first thing that he showed me, which is actually the opening Scripture in the musical, was Deuteronomy 18 verse 10 which basically says that you don't do any of this stuff! I can't quote it now off the top of my head but it said don't do astrology, don't do divination, don't do any of these things because you're not meant to! The Bible was saying yes they exist but you shouldn't do them. To cut a long story short I went through an experience which most people would say was an exorcism. I was freed from the power that was affecting me. It was quite a dramatic experience. I asked to be baptised there and then. I was and I was born again and I was completely freed of it - the power over me was gone. It was like I'd had an operation - it was like I'd had my appendix out and I was completely healed."

After his dramatic conversion and deliverance Kevin found, to his amazement, that various songs began to lodge in his mind. He explained, "Songs started to come into my mind over the next three days. I'd never written words before - I had a recording studio at the time, I used to compose advertising music so I'd written lots of tunes but I'd not written lyrics before. Over three days 12 songs - words kept coming to me, Scriptural references. The vicar had loaned me a Bible and I would just get these references and look them up and I'd write them down and words would come at all times through the night. In three days I'd written a whole musical! That was a spiritual experience from God."

Kevin went on to explain how, faced with the enormous task of recording 'Into The Light', things gradually fell into place. "I used to be involved in quite a few Christian events - I've been a Christian now for about 17 years. Music is my business so I've run The New Eden Festival and various Christian artists have worked with me on various other projects. I thought that Russell Boulter would be ideal for the role of the Devil so I just got in touch with him and asked him if he wanted to do it. I sent him the script and he said that he'd love to! He was absolutely perfect for it. It's taken a couple of years actually to put the 'Into The Light' CD together. I mean, people wonder why it takes so long to do recordings but this is an immensely complex recording. Actually about a year of solid recording and production has gone into it and it's now gone out for sale on our web site - it's up on MySpace. There are amazing things happening in response to it. Recently a lady in Alabama, who was a witch, bought one of the CDs over the internet. She started emailing me asking questions. I emailed back saying, 'You're probably experiencing these things' and told her the things that I had experienced. She came back and said, 'How do you know that?' I said, 'Because it's the truth, this is what happens!' She's now about to make a commitment to Christ! Which is absolutely fantastic because within days of the CD being available it has had that effect on somebody's life, someone I've never even met, several thousand miles away."

Things are still happening for the production. The ITL singers have been booked to appear as part of the biggest Christmas TV show in India, Gloria Deo. The show featuring Into The Light will be filmed at the Trivandrum Amphitheatre, South India before 3,500 people and will be broadcast in the Middle East, Asia, Australia, the USA and Europe on Christmas Eve. Also an Into The Light book, containing Kevin's testimony and the story of the musical, is available for free download from www.ebook.into-the-light.info/index.html.

Kevin is encouraged how an independent CD, without the aid of any record company, is making an impact around the world. His final comment to Jonathan Bellamy summed up his feelings. "Everybody who hears it is just amazed. It doesn't feel like it's mine - I just feel as though I've produced it for someone else and done a beginner's job! It's an amazing piece of work - it tells the whole story, you can't not take the subject of the occult seriously. And you can't miss the fact that the only way out of it is Jesus Christ."