London, Dee & Kelly, Bookshops and Wonder Cabinets!

I have a weird place in my soul for the area around the British Museum. In fact, my A-Z of London needs replacing, as the page on which this area is mapped is falling to pieces. I don’t know if it’s the museum itself that evokes figments of esoteric memories of previous lives, or the names of the streets; Coptic Street, Museum Street, Russell Street, all resonate within me, or the presence of Atlantis Bookshop, which served as a Shangri-La to me when I first set off on this occult way. Perhaps it was first embedded in my pagan heart when I read the opening pages of ‘The Winged Bull,’ by Dion Fortune, where she describes the hero’s chance meeting with an esoteric teacher in the foggy courtyard, after being spellbound by the human-headed bull guardians of Ninevah? Whatever, I love the area, the museum and the bookshop, and so it was wonderful to be staying at a hotel in Bloomsbury right on the corner of the museum, for four days whilst my son, R, attended dance auditions ahead of finishing his A-Levels later this year.

My wife, B, was equally bemused by the sight of Oxford Street in January Sales season, stretching on as far as the eye could see or the wallet could stretch. She’s by no means an avid shopper, to be sure, I’m blessed in that, but she did determine to find a new top and pair of boots to match a skirt that had so far proved impossible to ensemble. And, after two brave but rather foolhardy expeditions, we did indeed find the perfect matches! But suffice to say, I *never* want to see another Top Shop, Next or UniQlo ever again. Ever. Really.

Now, meanwhile, I got to loaf around the museum, and not only adore my favourite statue, of Sekhmet, which emanates more than any other statue I’ve personally encountered (including those still in Egypt), but there was also an exhibition of Dee & Kelly’s scrying paraphernalia, including the original Wax ‘Seal of God’ and the shewstone crystal, black mirror, and gold ‘four castles’ plate. Hmmmm! A round trip then followed to Atlantis, Watkins and Treadwell’s bookshops, where my bibliophilia was addressed for some months to come; I purchased some titles on Alchemy, the Western Esoteric Tradition, and Tobias Churton’s ‘The Golden Builders’ which is a splendid overview of some interesting personages in the development of Freemasonary and Rosicrucianism!

Sadly, one of the books on Alchemy I purchased, second-hand, at Atlantis, I was told had come from the library of Peter Redgrove, author of “The Wise Wound” with his second wife, Penelope Shuttle, and “The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense,” both of which were formative titles for me when I was developing my Witchcraft. He died a couple of years ago, and it was odd to be holding a book annotated by a ‘removed teacher’ whom I had never met. Interestingly, he had marked out a couple of passages which spoke to me and illuminated some of my recent studies on the subject, so it is wyrd how these webs are wound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Redgrove

I vowed to catch up with Shuttle’s poetry, and found this http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1532.


What else? Well, I love the idea of “WunderKammer” or ‘Wonder Cabinets’ which were a sort of precursor to modern museums, where renaissance travellers collected curiousities, both man-mind and natural, in cabinets, or sometimes in shelved rooms, to display to other admirers. Quite often, these would contain trinkets, amulets, medals, coins and stones. One of the cabinets on display in the V&A Museum had mythic scenes painted on each drawer which made it look like a Alcehmical/Mythic/Tarot puzzle-box! Neat.