The Secret Chiefs is Britain’s longest running pagan & Occult talk Forum.
It is a friendly fortnightly gathering run by Michael Bingas for the past 6 years! Founded by Caroline Roberston under the name of `Talking Stick,’ it began at The Plough on 14th February 1990, moving through the years to The Marquis Cornwallis, The Dog & Trumpet, the Black Horse to the Princess Louise, there becoming Secret Chiefs on 15th March 2000. Now at the Devereux).

The Secret Chiefs meet fortnightly on Wednesday evenings upstairs at the Devereux public house (20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, London WC2). Nearest tube is Temple. Meet from 7.30pm and the talk starts at 8.30pm. Admission is £2 (£1 concs). All are welcome. 

Address: Devereux Pub, 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, London WC2. Nearest tube is Temple.

Wednesday 11th June – Caroline Wise
"Tangential Tantrums of Diana, the Horned Goddess"
Caroline Wise is a priestess in the Fellowship of Isis and trains priestesses in the Way of the Oracle. She is a former owner of The Atlantis Bookshop, and runs popular Goddess events. She was a founder member of ASSAP, London Earth Mysteries Circle, and worked with Paul Devereux from the late 70s and 80s with The Ley Hunter and the Dragon Project. This illustrated talk is an update of the lecture Caroline did at Talking Stick in 1997. From the Golden Bough to the Alma Tunnel, this is mythic-history of the goddess Diana and her influences ancient, modern, local and geomantic.
 
Wednesday 25th June – Philena Bruce
"Healing Houses and Offices"
Philena has been practicing Spirit Release since 1992 and will talk about the positive benefits brought into people's lives through the clearing of ghosts and negatives energies from their properties. She trained as a healer in the late 1980s and went on to develop her own method of healing using sound. Philena has been clairaudient all her life and has been taught much of what she knows about healing from "her voices". She spent many years travelling in India and neighbouring countries and it was in Sri Lanka that Philena learned a method of removing spirits from people, known as Devil Dancing. (www.spacehealers.com & www.philena.co.uk)
 
Wednesday 9th July – Lucya Szachnowski
"A Bad Witch's A to Z"
A bad witch isn't a wicked witch, it is anyone who feels magic in their heart, but doesn't keep a book of shadows, belong to a coven or do anything complicated. They don't know the herbal use of every plant in their garden, but know a web forum that does. They cast spells without elaborate rituals and tell fortunes without learning difficult systems. Inspired by the book "How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher", bad witch Lucya Szachnowski, author of A Bad Witch's Blog (www.badwitch.co.uk), offers an A-Z of easy witchcraft.
 
Wednesday 23rd July – John Rimmer
"40 Years On Board A Flying Saucer"
From skywatches on freezing hilltops, hoaxes, panics, extremely sensible abductees and barking mad investigators, government cover-ups, kites and lights, Men in Black and the occasional threat of a libel writ, UFO editor John Rimmer reveals what he's learned from a forty year obsession with UFOs and associated weirdness.
 

SELFS: South East London Folklore Society

Possibly south-east London’s largest moot is SELFS, the South East London Folklore Society.

Website: www.selfs.org.uk.  The contact e-mail is: scott@selfs.org.uk.

Update: December 2006- SELF now has a new venue. For details please see their website. Talks start at 8.00pm and costs £2.50 / £1.50 concessions. The room has recently become non-smoking, to the relief of many and the consternation of, well, one so far!
 

   THE LONDON EARTH MYSTERIES CIRCLE
The group was formed in 1986. It holds twice-monthly lectures on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. EARTH MYSTERIES is a diverse sphere of study that centres on an investigation of the enigmatic sites of prehistory and stuff.

Date & Time:  These meetings take place every fortnight. 7.00pm Tuesdays (2nd & 4th Tuesdays of every month).

Venue:   DIORAMA CENTRE, 34 Osnaburgh Street, London NW1 (no correspondence to this address please).  Tubes: Great Portland Street, Warren Street & Regents Park.

Admission: £4.00 (Conc. £3.50). Members: £2.50.

Contact LEMC via: P.O.Box 1035, London W2 6ZX. web: www.lemc.ic24.net.

Treadwell's, which opened in June of this year, is a bookshop selling second-hand and out-of print books. They specialise in cultural history and esoteric beliefs of the world [see `Occult Bookshops’ in our website for more details]..Treadwell's follows the traditions of old-fashioned book selling - a warm welcome for book lovers, hourly rounds of tea, friendly conversation, and regular events. He we provide a quick summary of events. Please either go to their website or join their e-mail list for full details. 

Please book in advance on info@treadwells-london.com, tel. 0207 240 8906.
Address: 34, Tavistock St, Covent Garden, London. http://www.treadwells-london.com. Note: all events start promptly and latecomers are not normally able to be admitted.

The Dark Arts Society holds talks, social events, rituals and workshops on a wide variety of occult subjects, with a particular focus on links between art and the occult. Regular monthly talks are held at the Devereux public house, 20 Devereux Court, WC2, usually on the last Tues of the month, but check website for details. Info on workshops, rituals and other events can also be found on the website www.darkartsociety.com

About the organiser:
Shaun Aston is a published composer who has written for theatre, contemporary dance, and has several albums commercially released within the meditation/relaxation music genre. He has more than 20 years experience in Occultism, Witchcraft and other forms of alternative spirituality.
 

• Uxbridge Moot - Last Tuesday of the month at The Swan and Bottle, Oxford Road, Uxbridge, from 8.30 onwards, headed by Karina. For further information contact K@kcjb.fsnet.co.uk.
• Ealing Moot: (update- june’07) The Ealing Moot is now on the second Tuesday of the month. It has also moved to The Drayton Court Hotel, 2 The Avenue, West Ealing . W13 8PH. This is currently headed by Gina – (contact tel: 07856 693 273 ). 8pm onwards.
• London Witches: Moot ongoing for 3+ years! Third Tuesday of the month at The Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8ND from 8pm onwards. (Leave Old Street tube station via Exit 6, walk up Old Street turning left at "The Masque Haunt " pub into Bunhill Row, the pub is a one minute walk on your right). Meeting monthly since 2003, join us for an informal, social gathering providing talks / workshops / discussions,
  please contact rue@londonwitch.org or see www.londonwitch.org for more details.
  All are welcome.<more details soon>.

These moots run on alternative Wednesdays, with various renown speakers giving talks and presentations each time. Normal admission is £2.

Normal Venue: The Moot with No Name meets Alternate Wednesdays, 7.30 for 8pm. Upstairs, Devereux pub (Templars Restaurant upstairs) near Temple tube station. 
Opposite the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand (near Aldwych) is
a Tudor-style pub, the George. The Devereux is down the alley next to this. See map at http://tinyurl. com/cp7u2 <http://tinyurl. com/cp7u2>

Organiser: Steve Wilson- who is an author, broadcaster, journalist, Magician, Druid, Pagan, Thelemite, previous MC of Talking Stick, Taror & Rune reader and a lecturer. His published books are: Robin Hood, Spirit of the Forest (1992), Chaos Rituals (1993). One of the 32 Arch priest Hierophants who run the Fellowship of Isis, founder of both IOU Chaos Magic groups & Lovecraftin WIO. He has appeared on most major UK TV & radio channels, written for The Guardian and The Independent.

Talks: May-June-july 2008

May 7 - Jeremy Morgan - Creating a Ritual

Jeremy Morgan is a well-known ritualist, having created his own ceremonies & rituals for many years & participated in many others. He performs a full Ogdoadal Cycle on Wormwood Scrubs on the actual dates of the Ritual Year, & regularly performs Publick Open, Inter-Faith & Ecumenical Rituals on the top of Primrose Hill on the Sunday nearest. Tonight's talk, based on his own experience, takes you from the Beginning, thro' the Middle, to the End; what should be done before you start, & what should happen afterwards. Even a MWNN, he says, has a certain element of ritual to it, altho' some might call it "a structure".

May 21 - Mani Navasothy - Quantum-Spiritualit y: Paganism in the new centuries
What's our constant need for recycling past spiritual paths? Are we empowering ourselves by looking within, or existing in a state of disempowerment by living in the past? How long must we go backwards in order to go forward? Are we clutching to history a little too much for comfort and validation? Mani will dig his claws into our pagan ways, facilitate a thought-provoking debate, and offer some personal views of the ways forward. Come to this talk, and be ready to talk!

Jun 4 Dr Rupert Sheldrake The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence  Φ We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head.  But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is much too limited.  Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them.  And people’s intentions can be detected by animals from miles away – and by people. The commonest kind of telepathy in the modern world, telephone telepathy, has now been investigated experimentally, with significant positive results. New online tests make research accessible to anyone interested.  Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 75 scientific papers and six books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. His website is www.sheldrake.org.

Jun 18 Steve Wilson UFOs – The Occult Connection. Nowadays the world of UFOlogy seems a world away, or several, from the realms that the modern witch, pagan or ceremonial magician inhabit. But when UFOs first crashed into the headlines there was intense interest, with the founders of modern Druidry, Witchcraft and even the Typhonian OTO commenting. Tonight Steve Wilson explores the occult side of the saucers even if he does insist that the truth probably isn’t out there!

** NOTE: Change from previously advertised talk. **

Jul 2 Boz Temple-Morris The Assassins and the End of Time. On a sunny afternoon in 1164 Hasan II, grandson of the “Old man of the Mountain”, gathered his followers at the fortress of Alamut in Iran. There was food and wine although it was the middle of the month of Ramadan. It was here that Hasan declared the end of time. All laws and all rules were dispensed with and a new phase of understanding began, lasting for thirty years. Boz Temple-Morris explores these extraordinary events and attempts to unlock the secrets of the Assassins that have so beguiled poets, writers and painters through the ages.

Jul 16 Dr John Callow Infidelity, Impotence, & Innocence Lost:   Robert Devereux’s Encounter with Jacobean Witchcraft. Above the entrance to the Devereux is the bust of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, Parliament’s first great general in the Civil War. In 1613, his acrimonious divorce case with Frances Howard was the talk of the town, as allegations of poisoning, meetings with sorcerers and darkly woven spells convulsed the courtroom. Tonight’s talk looks at Devereux’s position as the alleged victim of witchcraft, how his life and reputation were blighted by the evidence presented in court; and how he struggled to shake off his “bewitchment” at the hands of his former wife.