Bookings Paused - British Museum & Awakening English Magic

The British Museum is an icon in British occultism: from the 1880s on, magicians met in the reading room, studied and translated seminal texts, and saw pagan deities in the galleries. Inspired by manuscripts and finds from around the world and from Britain, they created systems of magic that flourished and grew. This tour highlights the pagan deities that inspired the magical people at the heart of the occult revivals. There are tales of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune, Florence Farr, Wallis Budge and John Dee. Exhibits visited include prehistoric Britain, Assyria, Ancient Egypt, the Roman world, and Elizabethan England. 

• Meeting place: Museum North Entrance, Montague Place, at start of walkway to the security tent
• Time: Tour sets out promptly at 11:00 am, and no latecomers can join once it has left
• Tour runs 2.5 hours with no break for sitting down. If you need a wheelchair, please tell us in advance
• Maximum 15 people per tour

Caroline Wise is a long-standing London esotericist whose speciality is the mythic London landscape. She started out in the late 1970s in the burgeoning earth mysteries movement. Then in the 1990s, with the idea of ‘landscape as grimoire’, she hosted the Wildwood conferences on English pagan folklore. Throughout her long career she has contributed to numerous books and journals. Wise compiled Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways and co-edited the acclaimed Secret Lore of London.  She is a consummate raconteur, full of anecdotes featuring historical events and characters.