Who we are

The people behind Alice in Deep

A journal is its editors as much as its writers. Here is who we are, what we believe, and why we made this.

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Editor

Portrait of an Old Man — Thomas Rowlandson

Keith Idell Founder & Editor

Keith Idell was born in 1948 in Camden, New Jersey, and raised in California. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a Master's in Therapeutic Recreation from Brigham Young University — disciplines rooted in a holistic understanding of the human being: mental, physical, and spiritual. It was a formation that pointed, in time, toward deeper ground. Now retired and living in Dallas, he has spent six years as a Freemason and currently serves as Worshipful Master of Mercury Lodge No. 950 in Farmers Branch, Texas. His research moves through the esoteric, mystical, and alchemical traditions, with a particular focus on initiation — its spiritual architecture, its historical forms, and its continuing relevance to those who take the examined life seriously. Alice in Deep is the place where that inquiry found its proper home.

Portrait of an Old Man — Thomas Rowlandson (public domain)

Our philosophy

Why Alice in Deep exists

There is a tradition of inquiry that runs beneath the surface of Western thought — Hermetic, Neoplatonic, Kabbalistic, Masonic — that has never been comfortable in either the academy or the popular press. Too serious for one, too unfashionable for the other. Alice in Deep was made to give that tradition a home.

We are not a magazine of belief. We do not ask our readers to accept any particular doctrine or adopt any particular practice. We ask only for the quality of attention that serious inquiry requires — the willingness to sit with a difficult idea long enough to understand it before deciding what to make of it.

Stanisław Osostowicz, Stara wieśniaczka (Old Country Woman), 1932 — Stara wieśniaczka — Stanisław Osostowicz, 1932 (public domain)

The name comes from Lewis Carroll, whose Alice crossed a threshold into a world that ran on different rules — not chaotic rules, but deeper ones. What looks like chaos from this side of a threshold is usually just order without the handrails you're used to, and nobody gets through it by staying polite. Carroll's Alice is a curious girl in a strange land. Ours is a country woman: not delicate, not easily impressed, the kind who has raised five children and handled her own livestock and has no patience left for standing at an edge deciding whether to jump. She doesn't wonder at the unknown. She goes into it, and whatever is in her way had better move. When a piece in these pages carries no other byline, it is presented by her.

Contributing editors

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Contributing editor — position open

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Contributing editor — position open

Contributing writers

The voices behind this issue — Vol I, Issue II. Each entry names the writer, the section they contributed to, the article they wrote, and a short note about them.

Vol I · Issue II · Fall 2026

Dennis Alan Yates II, PM Reflection “The Cable Tow”

Dennis Alan Yates II, PM, writes “The White Rabbit,” a recurring column of Masonic reflection. He serves the Craft across several Texas lodges and Scottish Rite bodies, and is a member of the Texas Lodge of Research and the Scottish Rite Research Society. He is a contributor to Alice in Deep.

John Woodcock Consciousness “Threshold”

John Woodcock, born 1950, holds a Ph.D. in Consciousness Studies from Union Institute & University and an M.A. in Counselling Psychology from CSUN. He is the author of twenty-two self-published books exploring the emergence of a new structure of consciousness from within our present one. He lives and works in Sydney, Australia. He is a contributor to Alice in Deep.

William Harvey, J.P., F.S.A. (Scot.) History “The Story of Hiram Abiff”

William Harvey, J.P., F.S.A. (Scot.) (1874–1936), was Provincial Grand Master of Forfarshire from 1934 to 1936. Trained as a law clerk, he moved into journalism, becoming assistant editor of the People’s Journal and, from 1908 to 1912, literary editor of the Dundee Advertiser. He wrote extensively on Masonic subjects, including the Harvey Manual of Degrees, still used within the Lodges of Forfarshire. This essay, first published in 1919, is reprinted here as a primary document in Craft literature.

Alice in Deep Cosmology “Barzakh”

Barzakh is a video and transcript from the YouTube channel SpiritualRelief, closely following a Substack essay by James Fleming. We present it as an evocative synthesis of Sufi cosmology, not a scholarly source to cite a particular Sufi master’s exact words from — see the piece itself for full sourcing.