Magical Realism
I believe in Magic, and I hope you do too. A lot of slightly crazed people think it should be spelled (ha ha) Magick, but they are just a little too serious. It’s a hidden history within literature, but it’s been there for a while – notable examples are The Magician by Somerset Maugham, and Gravity’s Rainbow, where Pynchon’s magical learning is disguised somewhat by his extraordinary erudition in every other area as well. Magic is also the primary occupation of some of London’s best little bookshops (and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which of those two adjectives is dominant, and how they interbreed).
Watkins Books (19 Cecil Court, off Charing X Road) is a seriously estimable proposition, a sort of Hatchards for esoterica. They hold a wide range of occult stuff, excellent resources on the weirder side of every religion from here to the Northwest Gate, and staff who know what they’re talking about. They recently got me into the Corpus Hermeticum and the books of Wei Wu Wei, one of the greatest spiritual teachers I’ve come across – if you don’t mind your spiritual teacher laughing at you behind his hand occasionally. My only gripe is that they’ve recently degraded themselves by opening (mercifully two doors down) ‘Watkins’ Esoteric Centre’, a crystals and incense emporium for the credulous, which brings us neatly to…
Mysteries (9-11 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden) is designed for die-hard New Agers, but fight your way past the patchouli and whalesong and it has a great books section, heavy on high-gloss magick and witchcraft for Buffy-watching teens. There are often some unexpected gems, such as Aleister Crowley’s autohagiography (£10 second-hand last time I visited). Crowley, a name that should become extremely familiar (if it isn’t already) through future readings of this column, details his journey from young Mountaineer, including his disastrous attempt on Kanchenjunga, through young buck ripping up the magical establishment (his apartment on Jermyn Street contained two rooms, one painted entirely white with an altar at the centre, the other entirely black, with a skeleton; unsurprisingly, his friends didn’t come round very often), to aged, drug-addled goatfucker in the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. Ripping stuff. And in turn, we get to…
Atlantis Books (49 Museum Street, between New Oxford Street and the British Museum). Atlantis has been around since the turn of the last century, and was indeed a regular haunt of the above Mr. Crowley. Some say it still is… It’s run by a witch (and I mean that literally and lovingly) who’s possibly the best bookstore owner in London. Two years ago I was living in a block of flats called Shipton House in Chalk Farm. When I found out that the pub on the corner (now the Fiddler’s Elbow) used to be named the Mother Shipton I started researching the old lady. A Yorkshire Prophetess who lived sometime in the 15th-16th Centuries, she was an English Nostradamus, and widely known and read for centuries. When I asked in Atlantis for any books on her, the proprietor couldn’t help, but took my details and promised to call if anything came in. Two years later, out of the blue, I got the call, and there it was: Mother Shipton: Witch and Prophetess by Arnold Kellett (George Mann Books, 2002). When Amazon has that kind of service I’ll buy online. Until that moment, I’m sticking to the backstreets.
Watkins Books (19 Cecil Court, off Charing X Road) is a seriously estimable proposition, a sort of Hatchards for esoterica. They hold a wide range of occult stuff, excellent resources on the weirder side of every religion from here to the Northwest Gate, and staff who know what they’re talking about. They recently got me into the Corpus Hermeticum and the books of Wei Wu Wei, one of the greatest spiritual teachers I’ve come across – if you don’t mind your spiritual teacher laughing at you behind his hand occasionally. My only gripe is that they’ve recently degraded themselves by opening (mercifully two doors down) ‘Watkins’ Esoteric Centre’, a crystals and incense emporium for the credulous, which brings us neatly to…
Mysteries (9-11 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden) is designed for die-hard New Agers, but fight your way past the patchouli and whalesong and it has a great books section, heavy on high-gloss magick and witchcraft for Buffy-watching teens. There are often some unexpected gems, such as Aleister Crowley’s autohagiography (£10 second-hand last time I visited). Crowley, a name that should become extremely familiar (if it isn’t already) through future readings of this column, details his journey from young Mountaineer, including his disastrous attempt on Kanchenjunga, through young buck ripping up the magical establishment (his apartment on Jermyn Street contained two rooms, one painted entirely white with an altar at the centre, the other entirely black, with a skeleton; unsurprisingly, his friends didn’t come round very often), to aged, drug-addled goatfucker in the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. Ripping stuff. And in turn, we get to…
Atlantis Books (49 Museum Street, between New Oxford Street and the British Museum). Atlantis has been around since the turn of the last century, and was indeed a regular haunt of the above Mr. Crowley. Some say it still is… It’s run by a witch (and I mean that literally and lovingly) who’s possibly the best bookstore owner in London. Two years ago I was living in a block of flats called Shipton House in Chalk Farm. When I found out that the pub on the corner (now the Fiddler’s Elbow) used to be named the Mother Shipton I started researching the old lady. A Yorkshire Prophetess who lived sometime in the 15th-16th Centuries, she was an English Nostradamus, and widely known and read for centuries. When I asked in Atlantis for any books on her, the proprietor couldn’t help, but took my details and promised to call if anything came in. Two years later, out of the blue, I got the call, and there it was: Mother Shipton: Witch and Prophetess by Arnold Kellett (George Mann Books, 2002). When Amazon has that kind of service I’ll buy online. Until that moment, I’m sticking to the backstreets.
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