At the age of 12, Joshua Free was officially initiated into the Pheryllt Druid tradition (based on the work of Douglas Monroe) and then began leading his own Gnostic Druid organization at 13. A year later he was initiated and quickly installed into the ‘third degree’ of Celtic Wicca. In the mid-1990′s, he was heralded the youngest initiate to join the “Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids” (OBOD), a large international organization based in England that New Age (Druidic) authors frequently cite.

While in high school during the late-1990′s, Joshua Free maintained leadership under the name Merlyn Stone of a small esoteric mystic-magical experimental research group, the “Elven Fellowship Circle of Magick” (EFCOM), which met both in private and publicly in Washington Park (Denver, Colorado) from 1998 through 2000. Considered a prodigious youth within the growing Rocky Mountain New Age Scene, he wrote many underground manifestos on various New Age topics using the pseudonym Merlyn Stone while still a teenager — one of the first and most famous being the “Sorcerer’s Handbook” that reached thousands of readers (The complete works of Merlyn Stone are now available in the NEW commemorative edition -- "Wizardry".)

Merlyn Stone (Joshua Free) quickly became a controversial underground occult figure that advocated radically diverse approaches to Druidic Philosophy & Metaphysics — including participation with the New Forest group led by his mentor, Douglas Monroe.

Subsequently he was unseated from all positions (particularly OBOD) and disappeared from public view. Although now best known for his work on Sumerians, the Anunnaki and Babylonian Tradition for the Mardukites, his work on the Secret Dragon (Elven) Legacy and modern Pheryllt Druid Tradition is also paramount. 

Before returning to mainstream view in 2008 (nearly a decade later) via the internet, Joshua Free had already spent fifteen years intensely exploring esoteric sects of society, underground counter-culture and contemporary academia. Following an individualized path, preferring personal apprenticeships over direct membership in certain groups and organizations, his all-encompassing Universalist pursuit is to unify the knowledge and potential of the human condition, experiencing life in the metaphysical universe.

[The literary cornerstone of this effort, consolidated and released in 2008 as "Arcanum", not only earned him an honorary position in the "Ordo Lapsit Exillis" from Tracy R. Twyman and then as a companionate to the "Dragon Court" of the late Nicholas de Vere, but also contributed to the rise of his own revolutionary 'Next Generation' (NexGen) underground movement...]

On the Summer Solstice of 2008, Joshua Free founded the inception of the modern Mardukite movement — currently in its fifth active year of operation, with extensive literary materials now in print. In Spring of 2011, he co-founded the Systemology division (Systemological Society) of the Mardukite Research Organization.