What's on

This workshop provides a working introduction to magic, mediumship and urban shamanism, and practical information for anyone interested in conducting a contemporary ritual.

We focus on the monthly Crossbones Vigil as a model ceremony, exploring its ritual forms and how to balance these fixed points with a freedom that allows the unexpected to happen.

The day will Include:

• preparation (practical and magical)
• creating an altar and devising ceremonial forms
• presentation and performance of rituals
• connecting with the 'spirit of place' and holding the space

We draw on theatre games and shamanistic techniques to evoke heightened states of 'shining emptiness' and to help us 'get out of the way' allowing the spirits and powers to safely work through us.

Crossbones: On Redcross Way, an old narrow street near London Bridge, you will find rusted iron gates festooned with ribbons, feathers, flowers and other tokens of remembrance. On the other side of the gates lies a once-forgotten burial ground for the outcasts of society. This is Crossbones graveyard. The bodies of 15,000 paupers and sex workers were believed to have been buried there. It was first known as the “single women’s burial ground” where the Winchester Geese, medieval sex workers licensed by the Church to work inside the Liberty of the Clink in Southwark were buried - Christian doctrine prevented them from being buried in consecrated ground. But it was also a burial ground for children and the very poor people of London until its closure in 1853. The site was largely forgotten until the 1990s and today is a place of pilgrimage and monthly vigil to honour the dead and celebrate the people nobody remembers.