London Fortean Society

Dr. Thomas Waters, author of Magick: Decoding the Visual Culture of Spells, Illusions and Psychic Powers, uncovers key features of magic through stone age symbols, lavish spellbooks, twisted figurines, and enchanted weapons. Friday 4 September 2026 7 pm - 8.30 pm Book in advance: • £15 • £10 Student • £8 Living Support (plus booking fee). Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Getting to Conway Hall Explore the nature and history of magic through an illustrated talk by Imperial College historian Dr. Thomas Waters . Stone Age symbols. Lavish spellbooks. Twisted figurines. Enchanted weapons.  Using remarkable objects, Dr. Waters uncovers key features of magic and explains why it has enchanted people since the dawn of humanity. Spanning prehistory to the present, the talk is based on Dr. Waters’ new illustrated study, M agick: Decoding the Visual Culture of Spells, Illusions and Psychic Powers (Thames & Hudson, 2026).  This inclusive event aims to welcome, entert...

Art / Magic / Lore returns to Conway Hall this summer to explore the lesser-trodden paths of wild folklore and myth. From pagan counterculture, rebel folk, and roadside magic, we will discover the activism and resistance threading through occult history. Saturday, 26 April 2025 1.30 pm doors, 2 pm start.  £15/ £11 Concessions / Advance Booking Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn London Fortean Email List   Phil Hine – Delinquent Elementals A fascinating glimpse into the pagan counterculture, from the ‘Satanic Panic’ to ‘occulture.’ In Delinquent Elementals: The Very Best of Pagan News, Phil collects some of the finest articles, news reports, interviews, and humour that appeared in this singular publication, providing a fascinating glimpse into the pagan counterculture. He charts the historical timeline of the Satanic Panic scandal of the late 1980s, documents previously uncollected information, and provides a wide selection of practical knowledge a...

When the future is uncertain, people often turn to occult and cosmic guidance through methods such as astrology, Tarot cards and other forms of truth-seeking. Join us for an in-depth exploration of predicting the future through magic and not-quite-science. Saturday 16 November 2024 10.30 am doors. 11 am - 5 pm £18 / £13 Concessions Advance Booking Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn London Fortean Email List Confirmed talks. More to follow.  Kelly-Ann Maddox – Using The Tarot Kelly-Ann Maddox is an award-winning professional Tarot reader, witchcraft mentor, and author. Her approach to the Tarot focuses on enhancing mental well-being, encouraging spiritual evolution, and addressing real-world challenges. In her talk, she will explore the value of Tarot as a tool for navigating life’s obstacles and as a powerful magical instrument. Prepare to be inspired and motivated, with new ideas on how to use your Tarot deck to achieve personal growth. Jen Cownie – W...

This event is cancelled. John is not coming to the UK at this time. We wish him all the best. Here is a recording of a similar talk John did for us online in the very early days of the first Covid lockdown.  Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths and magic surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s compelling and original cultural history. Tuesday 10 September 2024 7 pm doors. 7.30 pm start.  £5 / £3 Concessions Advance Booking The Miller , 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS Tube and Rail: London Bridge Facebook Page  London Fortean Email List There is something about a shapeshifter – a person who can transform into an animal – that captures our imagination; and causes us to want to howl at the moon or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our dark side, and our desire to break free ...

Magical Art, Radical Folk Dance, Sacred Landscapes, and Women's Stories. Saturday 29 June 2024 Doors, coffee from 10.30 am Talks: 11 am - 6 pm (inc. breaks) £18 / £14 cons  Advance tickets Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions London Fortean's Mailing List Facebook event Art, magic, and folklore cross over and over again making new forms of creativity and lore. Join us at Conway Hall on 29 June 2024, for talks and discussions on making new traditions, art and magic, lost woman artists, radical Morris Dance, and much more. Talks and performance timings: 10:30 There should be coffee 11:00 Doors 11:15 Thomas Sharp, Marc Spicer & Rosey Trickett: Circling the Square Mile 11:45 Break 12:00 Jennifer Higgie: A Journey into Women, Art, and the Spirit World 12:30 Amy Hale - “This current drew you”: Ithell Colquhoun’s erotic energies and sacred landscapes 13:00 Lunch 14:00 Site-Specific Performance: Aliki Karveli 14:30 Break 14:...

Magic is a dark vein running through the history and practice of art. Join us for a selection of talks and discussions on artists and magic in art. Talks include occult art in the archives of Tate Britain and The College of Psychic Studies, the lives of Madge Gill and Austin Osman Spare, and the making of apotropaic genderqueer deities and how they ended up on walls across Britain .  Saturday 25 March 2023 Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Doors, books stall, and coffee from 10.30am Talks 11am - 5pm £18 / £15 concessions. Book in advance Visions of the Occult: An Untold Story of Art & Magic Archivist Victoria Jenkins presents her major survey of the occult collection of artworks, letters, objects, and ephemera in the Tate Archive. This talk offers an in-depth exploration of the occult and its relationship to art and culture including witchcraft, alchemy, secret societies, folklore and pagan rituals, demonology, spells and magic, para-sciences, astrology, and ta...

7.15pm Tuesday 16 November 2021 £8 Live / £5 live concessions & Live Stream ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page This event will be held with an in-person audience at Conway Hall *AND* online, via Zoom. Everyone wishing to join this event must register for a ticket in advance, using the “Book Now” link ** In 1749, a newspaper advertisement appeared declaring that a man would climb inside a bottle on the stage of a London theatre. Although the crowds turned up in their hundreds to witness the trick, the performer didn’t. Over the following decades, elaborate jokes and fanciful tales would continue to bamboozle people across England. In The Century of Deception , magician and historian Ian Keable tells the engrossing stories of these eighteenth-century hoaxes and those who were duped by them. The English public swallowed tales of rapping ghosts, a woman who gave birth to rabbits, a levitating Fren...

7.15pm Wednesday 11 September 2019 Sold out 7.15pm Wednesday 23 October 2019 £6 ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page This is the definitive history of how evil magic has survived into the present day from the largely rural world of Georgian Britain and the time of the British Empire to the multicultural present. In our age of technology and information, it is easy to imagine that black magic in Britain is dead. On the contrary, over recent centuries it has persisted, changed and returned. Spanning across the largely rural world of Georgian Britain and the time of the British Empire to the multicultural present, and drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, including, diaries, folklore reports and oral interviews, Thomas Waters explores the enduring power of ancient fears and desires. Through fascinating individual stories, he shows in his book how witchcraft is as diverse as modern Brita...

What do we see when we watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or read a person’s mind? We are captivated by an illusion; we applaud the fact that we have been fooled. Why do we enjoy experiencing what seems clearly impossible, or at least beyond our powers of explanation?  7.15pm Monday 10 June 2019 £5 ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page In this talk Dr Gustav Kuhn examines the psychological processes that underpin our experience of magic. Kuhn, a psychologist and a magician, reveals the intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the human mind that the scientific study of magic provides. Gustav will perform magic and then discuss how magician and magic creates a cognitive conflict between what we believe to be true (for example, a rabbit could not be in that hat) and what we experience (a rabbit has just come out of that hat!).  Drawing on the latest psychological, neurologic...

7.45pm Tuesday 2 April 2019 8pm (doors 7.45pm) £5 / £2 concessions  ( Advance tickets )  The Miller , 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS Tube and Rail: London Bridge Facebook page Professional magician-turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practiced and popularized by mesmerists, magicians, and psychics throughout history.  Matt, the author of The Spectacle of Illusion: Magic, the paranormal and the complicity of the mind , will discuss how illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings of our minds. And how modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic as tool for exploring human perception, memory, and belief.  Join Matt as he mixes historical stories with magical scientific demonstrations to reveal how our everyday cognitive processes can be much weirder than we imagine - and how comp...

Dr Matt Tompkins mixes storytelling and magical scientific demonstrations to explore how scientists, past and present, have approached the study of illusion.  7.45pm Thursday 31 January 2019 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East On Sunday November 18th 1877, at 3pm in the afternoon, Wilhelm Wundt, sometimes identified as the “Founder of Experimental Psychology”, joined hands with a group of academics and bore witness to a series of “miracles” in the presence of a visiting American spirit medium. Wundt was unconvinced by what he saw – but a number of his esteemed colleagues, including world-renowned physicist Johann Zöllner, believed that the events they had witnessed called for a complete revision of the fundamental laws of physics – a revision that could accommodate immortal fourth-dimensional spirit people.  The resulting debate was not it...