Thanks to my lifelong love of Avebury stone circle, I've been a fan of John Aubrey, the seventeenth century antiquarian who first put it on the map. Natural philosopher, lover of magick and the unexplained, gossip and wit, it's hard not to like this disorganised polymath. There's a small but rather wonderful exhibition about Aubrey at Oxford's Bodleian library at the moment and I went to see it this afternoon.
Highlights were: a handwritten grimoire, containing a spell for trapping a spirit in a crystal; a camera obscura, with a fine view of the Bodleian quadrangle; some of Aubrey's original drawings of Avebury; and an edition of the first ever science fiction novel, Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638), in which the hero flies to the moon using a kite pulled by geese!
It's free and runs till the 31st October.
Popular Posts
-
One of the more persistent myths about the fly-agaric mushroom , Amanita muscaria , the familiar red and white-spotted mushrooms of fairy-ta... -
By any standard, this year's Sunrise Celebration ought to have been a disaster . We awoke on the first night to find someone had... -
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that my name, and my face, are attached to a new tarot deck, the English Magic Tarot . The Fo... -
More neatly than marmite, bagpipes or the EU referendum, the question of Morris dancing divides the nation. For many it is, as folk musician...
-
Over the Christmas period I made one of the hardest decisions I've had to face and I chose to leave both my treasured bands, Wod and Tel... -
Rumours that the Green Scythe Fair has lost its edge have been greatly exaggerated. You'll be hard pressed to find a more bucolic and ... -
I find it hard to believe but it's exactly ten years since my book Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom was published. Thou...
Featured post
Shroom: ten years on
I find it hard to believe but it's exactly ten years since my book Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom was published. Thou...
Popular Posts
-
By any standard, this year's Sunrise Celebration ought to have been a disaster . We awoke on the first night to find someone had...
-
One of the more persistent myths about the fly-agaric mushroom , Amanita muscaria , the familiar red and white-spotted mushrooms of fairy-ta...
-
Just lately I've been listening online to what's been emerging from Newcastle University's Folk Music degree course . Here's...
-
2013 has begun in the worst possible way imaginable with the loss of our unborn baby at 19 weeks. She was beautiful and perfect and we were ...
-
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that my name, and my face, are attached to a new tarot deck, the English Magic Tarot . The Fo...
-
Last weekend saw our third, for once long-expected but for the time-being final, encounter with the World Drum (it's gone to Belgium). ... -
Over the Christmas period I made one of the hardest decisions I've had to face and I chose to leave both my treasured bands, Wod and Tel...
0 comments:
Post a Comment