By that I don’t mean the mythical island, possibly shown here, I mean the shop in Bloomsbury where myself & Burd Ellen are performing on Saturday from 6.30-8.30pm for love. It’s a free event & will be magical.

Atlantis Bookshop is a stone’s throw from the British Museum & is a treasure trove of folkloric books & items, magical stuff & more. If I need to brush up on my Enochian this is where I head. Likewise if I need any advice on Gardner or Valiente it’s to Geraldine & Bali I turn. Crowley used to frequent this shop. I will be singing some of his poems set to music.

I will also be singing this little tune. It’s an old song from the Midlands that children would sing as they collected ingredients for Soul Cakes.

My favourite English Folk Revivalist A.L.Lloyd wrote “The end of October and start of November is the time of Hallowe’en, All Saints and All Souls, a time once thought full of magic, when the dead temporarily returned to the world of the living and roamed around the villages on the misty evenings. Till recently in parts of the Midlands and the Northwest, children went from door to door begging for soulcakes. [These] were food for the momentarily-returning dead, so that they would not feel rejected and thus be made angry. The little trichordal tune based simply on a scale of three adjacent notes within a minor third, is one of the most primitive we have.”

Old magic.

If you like that tune; it’s  from my most recent recording “Constant Companion” & you can hear more if you click on this link