Basil Leslie Wilby (3 April 1930 – 1 March 2022), known as Gareth Knight, was a British occultist, ritual magician, author, and publisher.

The group was known for its annual conventions at Greystone, a manor house in Wiltshire, where Knight hosted lectures and rituals for an occultist audience; it was a focus of Persuasions of the Witch's Craft, an anthropological study of contemporary magical practice by Tanya Luhrmann.

His areas of interest included Christian esotericism, tarot reading, Arthurian legends, Celtic mythology, and occult influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's works.

As a young man, he attempted to pursue a profession as a jazz musician, which led him to join the Royal Air Force at the age of eighteen as part of its ground crew.

He felt the financial security provided by the position would allow him to establish a music career; according to his autobiography, he came to regret the decision and the eight-year commitment it required.

[6] As Wilby's studies in teaching continued, he felt increasingly dissatisfied with the path and desired to instead become a poet, which led to him dropping out of the program.

Weschcke had recently purchased Llewellyn Publications, a publisher of mind, body, and spirit literature, and sought republication rights for Fortune's back catalogue.

[12] Knight aimed to feature a range of writers each issue; as the magazine's profile grew, it drew attention and submissions from major occultists of the day, including Gerald Gardner, Israel Regardie, W. E. Butler, and Patricia Crowther.

[2][13][14] Around the same time, Knight and Roma co-founded the Helios Book Service with fellow Society members John and Mary Hall.

He began working as a travelling bookseller in the West Country and soon after became part of the promotion team at Pergamon Press,[19] a scientific publishing house.

[1][21] In 1970, Knight and his growing family left Tewkesbury for Harlow after his employer, the publishing company Longman, relocated him to a stationary role.

In A History of the Occult Tarot, the scholars Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett contrasted the presentations of Christianity in A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism and Experience of the Inner Worlds.

Knight held annual conventions at Greystone, a manor house in Wiltshire, every May that became popular amongst a broad spectrum of English occultists.

She characterizes Knight in this period as a man of "lofty goals" who sought to "revitalize England [and] unite Christian and pagan spiritual currents" through his practice.

Others, particularly neopagan witches from a feminist background, were repulsed by it; two attendees at the 1984 Greystone ritual said they lost all interest after he introduced Christian symbolism.

[33] Knight published several books on these subjects throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including The Occult: An Introduction (1975), A History of White Magic (1979), The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend (1983), The Rose Cross and the Goddess (1985), and The Treasure House of Images (1986).

Decker and Dummett describe the tarot-reading philosophy of these works as "relaxed", with an eclectic reading of the cards and a willingness to draw imagery from disparate places.

The confluence of Tolkien and Lewis led Knight to write on The Inklings, a literary group that included both men along with Charles Williams and Owen Barfield.

Reviewing in Mythlore, David Llewellyn Dodds felt Knight considered magic and mythopoeia the same concept and argued that this was a form of "appropriation".

Though he found the book "make[s] some interesting points", he believed Knight was working backwards from the thesis that the Inklings were inspired by the esoteric, rather than exploring the subject without bias.

[41] Knight regained contact with the Society of the Inner Light in 1991, when he accepted their offer to edit a collection of Fortune's letters from the First World War.

[43] In the 2000s, Knight began to write about fairies within Celtic mythology, inspired by an analysis of Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian works.

[44] Knight became part of the burgeoning internet occult culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s, hosting a site dedicated to his works on Angelfire.

[2][45] A group including his daughter Rebecca "Rebsie" Fairholm organized the first annual Gareth Knight Conference on 26 March, focused around his work and impact on esotericism.