Richard Heygate

Quite an eclectic read. This is a whistle stop tour of all areas of magic in England which the authors make the case of being the most magical of countries. There are chapters on various aspects of magic including divination, numerology, Druidry, Wicca, etc, and boxes giving potted biographies of various characters important in the history of English magic. There are also personal accounts by various living practitioners, although the practice of putting these into faint grey print makes them a bit tricky to read depending on light levels.

Each chapter has suggestions for further study and practical exercises which the reader can carry out if they wish. I did try out some of those on numerology which were interesting. This is probably more of a book to dip into than to read cover-to-cover as it does become a bit ‘dry’ if you attempt to do that. Overall, a 3 star rating from me.… (mehr)

What a lovely, informative tome this was! It is 509 pages but it's such an unassuming read that it felt much shorter! It covers a whole range of topics, from the Anglo-Saxons to Arthurian Legend to Druids to Wicca to Freemasons to Occultism. The chapters also include little how-tos and plenty of folklore. For instance, you can learn dowsing, Ogham, charms, reading runes and finding your gateway to the Other-World. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Merlin, Sir Percival, John Dee and Roger Bacon can all be found here. They also include interviews with modern practitioners and specialists. And at the end of every chapter are “Resources” or “Things to Do,” and book recommendations. But since it is written more like a reference, I’m going to list some things you’ll find in this book!

✨Ley lines! The term was first coined by Alfred Watkins and refers to old routes connecting ancient sites!
✨ There are 3 classes in Druidry: Bards (the birch tree), Ovates (the yew tree) and Druids (the oak tree.) The first are obvious in their role, the second are prophets and healers, and the third are the elite teachers.
✨The Lucky Hand is an amulet made from bracken and crafted thru Midsummer Eve. It is kept in the house for protection.
✨In 1190, the Glastonbury Abbey monks announced they had discovered the remains of King Arthur and Guinevere! King Edward I and Queen Eleanor attended the reburial.
✨Wicca was created by Gerald Gardner who was also a historian of Eastern weaponry!
✨Brighid is goddess of the forge, fire and water. Also of healing, midwifery and poetry, all of which emerge from the “forge” of the body and soul.
✨Spagyrics is the art of producing plant elixirs. Natural alcohols the Mercury, plant oils the Sulphur, and ashes the Salt.… (mehr)

The Book of English Magic has languished for several years on my shelves, I picked it up once and began and put it down, who knows why. This time I persevered and I'm glad I did. Nowhere does this book plumb the depths, but that is not their purpose. The authors visit every kind of magic ever practiced in England (this is exclusively England, not Wales, not Scotland). Gradually one begins to see a country that has only ever uneasily accepted either pure religion or science (and the never the twain shall meet mentality). (Neighboring Wales and Scotland and Ireland too are similar, but they have their own traditions and histories re magic.) From pre-history to the Middle Ages the authors lay out the progression, from the scant leavings of the first residents, then Druids, Anglo-Saxons, the Arthur legends (which begin as a slender shoot, hardly more than a suggestion and grow and grow and grow until you have an immense many-limbed tree of myth and story). Around then practices of magic begin to take shape, black and white, herbal, alchemy, the quest for power, scrying, dowsing and on until you get to the late nineteenth century which blossomed with societies and factions and dramatic characters like Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley and ending with mention of some of the modern societies and some of their own words from practitioners, living or long gone. After each chapter the authors offer further reading, often fiction, and also places you can visit, things you can do, a way to make a charm, or the first steps of tarot reading . . . tastes. They make the point that magic as it is practiced today, attempts to (or seems to) fill the void (chasm?) between the bloody-mindedness of the pure scientific method and the rigidity that plagues (most) religions (I'm the right one, all you others have it wrong). Magic, too, offers so many choices to the person who is looking for a route to transformation -- there is no one right way, indeed, some are gifted in one area, not another, and for some of us there is choosing to be an armchair magician -- that is the person (like me!) who, while interested, is not drawn to any practice or any one mode but fascinated nonetheless, particularly by magic as a spiritual practice and route to transformation and to explore the dimensions of the human mind. For us, there is a huge bibliography. So this will be a reference work for me. Anyone interested in writing fantasy should avail themselves of the book and get busy reading the book and then the books in the bibliography. You can bet your booties that J.K. Rowling and Susannah Clarke did their homework.

I'll be back to tidy up, but for now, here you go!… (mehr)