The British Museum and Awakening English Magic Guided Tour – Caroline Wise (1)

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 deitiesthat inspired the magical people at the heart of the occult revival. You will be looking at selected exhibits from prehistoric Britain, Assyria, Ancient Egypt, the Roman World, and Anglo-Saxon and Elizabethan England, as your guide regales you with tales of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune, Florence Farr, Wallis Budge John Dee and Aleister Crowley.

Caroline Wise Wise is a longstanding 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 ‘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 of anecdotes of historical events and characters – with many adventures of her own, so we promise you a wonderful time. Max 15.