Black magic in Great Britain

[Richard]

(CBS) This grand old country of ours is steeped in history and legend. But you Americans always assume we're a sensible race - a bit quiet, slow to change maybe, not given to absurd flights of fancy. How wrong you are.

In fact England is positively crawling with witches, warlocks, wizards and water diviners. There is a hardly a village in the Kingdom where you will fail to find someone gazing into a crystal ball, offering to tell your fortune, or getting involved in close encounters with aliens.

Forget Salem, when it comes to the occult, we've cornered the market. Harry Potter isn't just a best seller and an international movie hit - it is real life for many of us. There are parts of England where one in ten of the people believe they have the power to teleport their neighbors - pick them up and spirit them away, literally.

The northern county of Yorkshire, for example, is packed with telepathists, time-travelers, enchanters, mediums and astrologers. Essex - to the east of London - contains the highest number of people subscribing to ancient pagan customs and rituals, and my own home county, Kent - just south of the capital - has three times the national average of psychic healers.

This isn't just mumbo jumbo. It is the result of detailed academic research overseen by a leading cleric of the Church of England which normally has a vested interest in playing such things down. But even the Church can't disguise the extent of this occult revival. The survey found only two places in the land where it fails to flourish - the industrial Midlands of England - which is a bit short of the open green spaces most witches prefer (nowhere safe to land your broomstick), and parts of Western Scotland, which is far too cold and bleak for anything.

Everywhere else the paranormal is booming. Ancient spells are available on every sidewalk. It may seem peculiar but please don't mock. They might turn you into a toad.  

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/1...9213.shtml

[Get Boldened]

wow! I didn't know that. I assumed brits as a whole were "sensible." I wish they focused more on spiritual growth and using the mind to attract opportunities instead of relying on superstition and dangerous ancient rituals. That way, some best-selling books on spiritual healing might have been available for me.

[Richard]

It sounds like the Christian religion isn’t faring well over there and they’re finding the occult more exciting.

[bookish]

I think there is a sense that all this never really went away.  It was illegal to be a witch until, I think c. 1953, when a Fraudulent Mediums Act replaced the old anti-witchcraft legislation, but the Victorians and earlier people were really into the occult with a national veneer of pious church-going.  I think a lot of people feel that these beliefs are rooted in our landscape, which is full of prehistoric ritual monuments.  We also do not have a strong right-wing Christian element, and complaints made by any religious group are usually dismissed as being extremist.

[Trinity]

There is a general increasing of spiritual awareness here in my opinion but it is being started and/or fueled by an interest in the paranormal. People want to see ghosts etc and then they wonder why and how it happens.

 

People are rejecting organised religion easier now as it becomes the normal.  

[Hambone]

Thats all very interesting Richard, thanks for sharing.

I must say, however, that I did not for a moment think that the UK was as you described. I tended to picture it more like how you said later...witches, warlocks etc.

To me, England is a beautiful but mysterious land. This may be the wrong forum for it, but I think that I had a past life in England...at least 2 of them actually...and am quite drawn to it.

more details in other, more appropriate forums here :)

[Trinity]

If you look closer at the inside of any big church, cathedral or many of the castles here there are countless Pagan symbols. Most of them have been covered as the Church removed them-but over time are resurfacing.

I am sure the only reason we gained a reputation for being "sensible" was the grip of the church.

Ask any pub landlord here what makes for a more profitable evening....a karaoke night or pyschic night and he wont say it's the singing! :lol: 

[Hambone]

:ninja:

I was watchin some TV show while I was in Illinois recently and they were showing gargoyles, i guess you'd call them...carvings anyway on the wall....on English churches (England English) from way back when, of men and women bumping uglies in various positions.

 

GO ENGLAND!!

 

:big grin:

[Trinity]

Those are the exact ones I was talking about..inside and usually in the corners and on ceilings.

There is a special name for them which I can't remember. I will have to ask my Pagan friend.

[Hambone]

these were on the OUTside Trinity ;)