English Magic: Jung, Mysticism & the Occult Imagination

John Dee put the signs for the Sun and Moon into a single figure and wrote a book about it. What did he think it could tell him? I’ll bring the image along so we can have a look for ourselves.

I’m trying something new with ***The Ghostlights Collective***. For the first ***English Esoteric Circle***, I’d like to get a few people round a table to talk about English magic and the occult, and see how far into the esoteric we can go. Can we ever hope to understand the ineffable?

We’ll follow Dee and Kelley’s story through Kraków and Prague, from their occult investigations to Kelley’s claims about making gold. I’d like to talk about where English magical traditions came from (including how thinkers like Dee tapped into the ancient Greek Platonic idea of a living, ensouled cosmos), what people hoped to learn or change through magic, and what people still practise in England today. There’s room to get into ritual, folk charms, mysticism and the search for the philosopher’s stone.

I’ll bri