The Book of English Magic - Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate - 19/06/09
Magic runs through the veins of English history and yet how many of us now know how to read a Tarot card, cast the runes or dowse for water?
Our ancestors would have been adept at finding ley lines and even making a Philosopher's Stone but today we know little of the extraordinary world that lies just beneath the surface of our everyday lives.
Carr-Gomm and Heygate have been digging deep into our magical history to unearth some of the rituals that have been part of English inheritance from the earliest Arthurian legends to the novels of Tolkein and CS Lewis.
From the Druids and their extraordinary legacy, Stonehenge, to the predictions of Queen Elizabeth I's amazing astrologer Dr Dee, magic has played a central role in our past.
The image of the magician has long tantalised and excited us ... the names Merlin and Gandulf conjure up visions of mystery and adventure but what about the real magicians who practised the kind of magic that for centuries was a forbidden art?
England has been home to generations of eccentrics and scholars who have researched and explored every conceivable kind of occult art and some of these 'magicians' have also played significant roles in the development of the arts and sciences.
In fact, the authors reveal that there are now more practising wizards in England than at any other time in our history ... an example of the triumph of irrationality or evidence of a new understanding of the world previously only touched upon?
Whatever your beliefs on this ancient art, you don't have to be a physicist, a cosmologist or a stargazer to enjoy this introduction to some of the most interesting contemporary practitioners of magic and the most important figures from the past.
And you can have a go at making ancient herbal remedies, performing candle magic, casting an Anglo Saxon rune and plotting that ley line!
There is also plenty of information on magical sites to visit like Mother Shipton's cave at Knaresborough in Yorkshire and the lesser known King's Arms Tavern in London and Brickett Wood in Hertfordshire.
A positive cornucopia of magic that's sure to cast a spell over you!
(John Murray, hardback, 20)
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