He was also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.

There, they married Jacqueline Breyer, later known as Lady Jaye, in 1995, and together they embarked on the Pandrogeny Project, an attempt to unite as a "pandrogyne", or single entity, through the use of surgical body modification to physically resemble one another.

[6] After their father became the Midlands area manager of a cleaning and maintenance business, they were sent to the privately run Solihull School in Warwickshire between 1964 and 1968; a period they would refer to as "basically four years of being mentally and physically tortured", but also a time when they developed an interest in art, occultism and the avant-garde.

[6] They befriended Ian "Spydeee" Evetts, Barry "Little Baz" Hermon and Paul Wolfson, three fellow pupils who shared their interest in art, literature, and poetry.

Taking place in Mell Square, Solihull, it involved the three students handing out cards to passersby that had a series of words written onto them; "fleece", "rainbow", "silken", "white", "flower" and "dewdrops".

[20] In 1969, P-Orridge dropped out of university and moved to London,[21] and joined the Transmedia Explorations commune, who were then living in a large run-down house in Islington Park Street.

[28] P-Orridge designed a logo for the group, consisting of a semi-erect penis formed out of the word COUM with a drip of semen coming out of the end, while the motto "Your Local Dirty Banned" (a pun on "band") was emblazoned underneath.

[28] Another logo designed by P-Orridge consisted of a hand-drawn seal accompanied by the statement "COUM guarantee disappointment"; from their early foundation, the group made use of wordplay in their artworks and adverts.

[28] The latter combined the names of Anthony Burgess' dystopian science-fiction novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) with Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), a work of literary journalism devoted to the Merry Pranksters, a US communal counter-cultural group who advocated the use of psychedelic drugs.

[30] Named the Ho-Ho Funhouse by P-Orridge, the warehouse became the communal home to an assortment of counter-cultural figures, including artists, musicians, fashion designers and underground magazine producers.

[36] As they gained coverage in the music press, interest in the band grew, and they supported Hawkwind at St. George's Hall in Bradford in October 1971, where they performed a piece called Edna and the Great Surfers, where they led the crowd in shouting "Off, Off, Off".

[49] 1973 saw COUM take part in the Fluxshoe retrospective that toured Britain exhibiting the work of the Fluxus artists; it was organised by David Mayor, who befriended P-Orridge.

Exhibiting alongside the Viennese Actionists, P-Orridge came under increasing influence from these Austrian performance artists, adopting their emphasis on using shock tactics to combat conventional morality.

In February 1975, P-Orridge gained their first full-time job, working as an assistant editor at St. James Press, in which they helped to compile the Contemporary Artists reference book.

[68] At Southampton's Nuffield Festival in July 1975, COUM performed Studio of Lust, where P-Orridge publicly masturbated and all of the members undressed and adopted sexual poses.

[70] Together, Carter, Christopherson, Cosey and P-Orridge founded a musical band, Throbbing Gristle, on 3 September 1975; they had deliberately chosen that date for it was the 36th anniversary of the United Kingdom joining the Second World War.

[73] COUM continued to operate alongside TG, and in October 1975 they performed Jusquà la balle crystal at the Ninth Paris Biennale at the Musée d'art modern.

[74] COUM's mail art had taken on an increasingly pornographic dimension, and in November 1975 the police charged P-Orridge with distributing obscene material via in the postal system under the 1953 Post Office Act; this trial was set for February 1976.

In the House of Commons, Scottish Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn demanded an explanation from Arts Minister Harold Lever and proclaimed P-Orridge and Tutti as "wreckers of civilisation".

[81] Throbbing Gristle was formed in late 1975[82] as a four-piece band, consisting of P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter.

Instead, it was a video artwork titled First Transmissions that had been made in the early 1980s, partially funded by Channel 4 itself; the footage depicted sex-magic rites between adults, bloodletting performances, and scenes of the filmmaker Derek Jarman reading passages from the work of Geoffrey Chaucer.

[115] Here, they embarked on the "Pandrogeny Project"; influenced by the cut-up technique, the duo underwent body modification to resemble one another, thus coming to identify themselves as a single pandrogynous being named "Breyer P-Orridge".

In December 2003, P-Orridge, using the alias Djinn, unveiled PTV3, a new act drawing upon the early "Hyperdelic" work of Psychic TV with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff among its members.

[citation needed] In June 2010, P-Orridge sold the Ridgewood property, holding a garage sale in the basement of a local art gallery to sell off a range of personal items, in addition to an array of dildos.

[152] "Fusing esoteric ideas with the subversive methods of people like Burroughs and Gysin, P-Orridge and other musicians explored taboo areas and forbidden knowledge in an attempt to create a free-thinking occult culture in which individuals were the resources with which they might be able to carve out their own future[...] What they tried to do with music was wreck the civilization that had rejected and oppressed them.

[154] The religious studies scholar Christopher Partridge characterised P-Orridge's work as being a "confluence of pornography, violence, death, degradation, the confrontation of taboo subjects, noise and Paganism", deliberately courting controversy and expressing an anti-establishment stance.

[155] Partridge suggested that this intent to shock emerged both out of a serious attempt to highlight the mechanisms of social control in Western society and also out of "a juvenile delight gained from extreme behaviour and the offence caused".

[154] P-Orridge's work was particularly influenced by the early 20th-century English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, who shared their disdain for mainstream morality and fascination with sexuality and the human body.

[162] P-Orridge also stated disbelief in the literal existence of gods, deeming such entities to instead be "early attempts at psychology, trying to understand the light and dark side of human nature".

[158] P-Orridge vociferously criticised contemporary Christianity, describing it as "an incredibly sick social pseudo-religion", and arguing that it was based upon the tenet of "Be good now, agree, or else we will punish you forever and ever when you're dead.