The Duchess Accused of Witchcraft Against the King
Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, was accused in 1441 of using astrology and witchcraft to predict Henry VI's death. Her associates were tried and executed, while Eleanor was…
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2034 articlesNicholas Culpeper, Astrologer of Spitalfields
Nicholas Culpeper established a practice in Spitalfields and sought to make medicine available to people who could not read Latin or afford elite physicians. His English…
Isaac Newton's Alchemical London
Isaac Newton became Warden and then Master of the Mint at the Tower, directing the great recoinage and personally pursuing counterfeiters. At the same time his manuscripts reveal…
The Astrologer Who Predicted the Great Fire
Astrologer William Lilly published hieroglyphic images in 1651 that were interpreted after the Great Fire of 1666 as a prediction of a burning city. A parliamentary committee…
Aleister Crowley's Magical London
Aleister Crowley lived, worked and performed across London while constructing a public identity as magician, mountaineer, poet and moral transgressor. Newspapers called him “the…
Atlantis, London's Occult Bookshop
Atlantis Bookshop was founded in 1922 by Michael Houghton and his wife and became a meeting place for occultists, writers and artists in Bloomsbury. It is associated with Gerald…
The Amulets Hidden in the British Museum
The British Museum holds amulets from many cultures: protective pendants, magical gems, witch bottles, objects against the evil eye and images of deities. They are not literally…
Healing Magic at the Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection grew from the vast holdings of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, who gathered objects relating to medicine, bodies, ritual and belief around the…
Symbols Behind the Doors of Freemasons' Hall
Freemasons' Hall on Great Queen Street is the third Masonic building on the site, constructed between 1927 and 1933 as a memorial to members killed in the First World War. Its…
The Mystery of the Knights Templar
The round Temple Church was consecrated in 1185 for the English headquarters of the Knights Templar and echoed Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Stone effigies, the…
The Theosophists of Gloucester Place
The Theosophical Society popularised universal brotherhood, comparative religion and the study of supposedly hidden laws of nature in Britain. Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant and…
The House of the Man Who Spoke with Heaven
Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish engineer and scientist who later claimed access to the spiritual world and conversations with angels and the dead. His books described heaven and…
