summoning the spirit World

A belief in the occult appears to have helped London achieve prosperity during periods of pending adversity. Dr. John Dee (1527-1608), who used a crystal ball and scrying mirror to guide Queen Elizabeth through one of the most challenging eras in British history, is perhaps the most renowned example ,But there are many other examples of occult traditions in the court of the king and queen. Take, for example, the peculiar tale of King Charles II (1630-1685), who presented his mistress, a resident of West London, with a griffin. The dog-like figure with wings fell into a local river, survived and ended up in the Thames, near the point at which Caesar had crossed. It was later paired with a second griffin that Joseph Banks, a scientist who accompanied Captain Cook on his voyages, had brought back from an exotic island in the Pacific Ocean. The account leads us to believe that the griffin may have been a real animal, which multiplied before fading from history, only to be seen once more in the 1980s, and on multiple occasions by various upstanding citizens of West London. Charles II also domesticated the ravens at the Tower of London, a tradition summed up as follows: “If the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it.” The belief appears to stem from the legend of the Celtic god, Brân the Blessed, whose name means
‘Blessed Raven’ in Welsh and who was killed in an otherwise successful battle against an adversary, the Irish King, Matholwch. Brân’s head was buried beneath the spot where the Tower now stands, facing France as a talisman against further foreign invaders. Could the legend of the griffin and the raven somehow be related?Henry VIII (1491-1547) created a religious revolt with great consequence when he severed ties from Rome in an act known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Given the many cathedrals and orders that were subsequently transformed into ruins, any number of different sects could have been culpable of the act of desecration that awaited the king after his death. On his way from London to Windsor, where he would be buried, the King’s funeral procession rested overnight at Syon Abbey in West London. In the morning it was discovered that wild dogs had ripped open his casket and ravaged his body, leading some to speculate that the attack was a deliberate act of revenge enacted by a member or group of individuals from one of the aggrieved monastic orders he had defied.