Hidden London Secrets of the City Revealed
By aNDreW GoUGh
American by birth, I have lived in London for fifteen years and consider it my home. During that time I have explored many of the city’s esoteric sites and have concluded that this remarkable metropolis is only just beginning to reveal its true occult significance. London has been inhabited for thousands of years and the diversity of its settlements has resulted in a rich, if not peculiar, collection of occult traditions. The earliest humans hunted here over four hundred thousand years ago. While a rich abundance of wildlife and a strategic riverside base would have attracted many different colonies of people, one wonders how the ancients truly saw their landscape, and how many were drawn here due to the distinctive snake-likecurvature of the River Thames. The serpent is one of the oldest occult symbols, representing many esoteric concepts, including duality, good and evil, and harmony with the earth. Thanks to the wonders of technology, an image of the serpent in the form of the winding Thames has been broadcast daily to millions of viewers across the globe for nearly three decades, courtesy of the television programme Eastenders, whose opening credits feature the unique landscape from the air.Like other ancient settlements in Europe, London was inhabited by megalithic societies who constructed stone circles and burial mounds. The Iron Age introduced more sophisticated settlements and hill forts which, sadly, can only really be appreciated today by aerial photography. These include settlements at Wimbledon Common, Heathrow and the present-day Houses of Parliament, to name a few. Urbanisation has all but erased the megalithic footprint of London, but some remnants, such as Primrose Hill, with its curious burial mound and breathtaking views of London, remain. In fact, Primrose Hill would become a haunt of occultists William Blake and Dion Fortune, amongst others, and plans, albeit later aborted, would be made to construct a colossal pyramid burial complex on top of the hill, complete with over five million honeycomb-shaped tombs.
There is considerable evidence for occult practices having occurred in London in ancient times: beeswax effigies, thought to be five thousand years old, have been found in the Thames, representing man’s attempt at harnessing occult powers via shamanism and many stylised Bronze Age swords have also been discovered in the Thames, suggestive of votive offerings to Celtic deities. Similarly, albeit over a thousand years later, a golden-horned, apparently ceremonial Viking helmet was discovered in the Thames, near Waterloo. The amazing artefact is unique in Europe and appears to reinforce the occult tradition of London’s ancestors and their reverence for the serpentine river.
The Trojan leader Brutus established a city here in 1100 BCE and named it Troia Nova, or Trinovantum. Later, the 1st-century BCE King Lud renamed it Caer Lud, which
evolved into Caerlundein, Londinium and finally London. It is said that giants lived in London in
Brutus’s day and that he captured two, Gog and Magog, and employed them as porters at the gate of his palace. Brutus is also associated with another legend, the London Stone, a curious rock of which little is known for certain. Some say it came from Troy, others believe it was a druid stone or even the stone from which Arthur extracted Excalibur. A medieval proverb states, “So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” William Shakespeare wrote about the stone and,intriguingly, many believe that his plays were actually written by Francis Bacon or
Christopher Marlowe, both of whom were esoterically connected. Another London occultist, William Blake, wrote of the London Stone in his poem, Jerusalem (1820): “At length he sat on London Stone and heard Jerusalem’s voice.” Clearly, the relic once cast a magical spell on the city. Sadly, it is now embedded in an abandoned building across from Cannon Street Tube Station, its former glory but a distant memory.
American by birth, I have lived in London for fifteen years and consider it my home. During that time I have explored many of the city’s esoteric sites and have concluded that this remarkable metropolis is only just beginning to reveal its true occult significance. London has been inhabited for thousands of years and the diversity of its settlements has resulted in a rich, if not peculiar, collection of occult traditions. The earliest humans hunted here over four hundred thousand years ago. While a rich abundance of wildlife and a strategic riverside base would have attracted many different colonies of people, one wonders how the ancients truly saw their landscape, and how many were drawn here due to the distinctive snake-likecurvature of the River Thames. The serpent is one of the oldest occult symbols, representing many esoteric concepts, including duality, good and evil, and harmony with the earth. Thanks to the wonders of technology, an image of the serpent in the form of the winding Thames has been broadcast daily to millions of viewers across the globe for nearly three decades, courtesy of the television programme Eastenders, whose opening credits feature the unique landscape from the air.Like other ancient settlements in Europe, London was inhabited by megalithic societies who constructed stone circles and burial mounds. The Iron Age introduced more sophisticated settlements and hill forts which, sadly, can only really be appreciated today by aerial photography. These include settlements at Wimbledon Common, Heathrow and the present-day Houses of Parliament, to name a few. Urbanisation has all but erased the megalithic footprint of London, but some remnants, such as Primrose Hill, with its curious burial mound and breathtaking views of London, remain. In fact, Primrose Hill would become a haunt of occultists William Blake and Dion Fortune, amongst others, and plans, albeit later aborted, would be made to construct a colossal pyramid burial complex on top of the hill, complete with over five million honeycomb-shaped tombs.
There is considerable evidence for occult practices having occurred in London in ancient times: beeswax effigies, thought to be five thousand years old, have been found in the Thames, representing man’s attempt at harnessing occult powers via shamanism and many stylised Bronze Age swords have also been discovered in the Thames, suggestive of votive offerings to Celtic deities. Similarly, albeit over a thousand years later, a golden-horned, apparently ceremonial Viking helmet was discovered in the Thames, near Waterloo. The amazing artefact is unique in Europe and appears to reinforce the occult tradition of London’s ancestors and their reverence for the serpentine river.
The Trojan leader Brutus established a city here in 1100 BCE and named it Troia Nova, or Trinovantum. Later, the 1st-century BCE King Lud renamed it Caer Lud, which
evolved into Caerlundein, Londinium and finally London. It is said that giants lived in London in
Brutus’s day and that he captured two, Gog and Magog, and employed them as porters at the gate of his palace. Brutus is also associated with another legend, the London Stone, a curious rock of which little is known for certain. Some say it came from Troy, others believe it was a druid stone or even the stone from which Arthur extracted Excalibur. A medieval proverb states, “So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” William Shakespeare wrote about the stone and,intriguingly, many believe that his plays were actually written by Francis Bacon or
Christopher Marlowe, both of whom were esoterically connected. Another London occultist, William Blake, wrote of the London Stone in his poem, Jerusalem (1820): “At length he sat on London Stone and heard Jerusalem’s voice.” Clearly, the relic once cast a magical spell on the city. Sadly, it is now embedded in an abandoned building across from Cannon Street Tube Station, its former glory but a distant memory.
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