London, England
THE OCCULT IS INSEPARABLE FROM the landscape of London. Aged, ornate buildings, churches, and monuments bear visible links to ancient mythology and secret societies. Symbols scratched into walls and containers filled with nails, urine, human hair, and other ephemera to ward off malicious magic—“witch marks” and “witch bottles”—are still unearthed during routine renovations. Esoteric iconoclasts are memorialized by plaques and numerous walking tours around town. There are even faux hieroglyphs at Harrods.
Compared to the puritanical avoidance of anything Pagan in the US, it's a breath of fresh air to land in Heathrow and take the Underground directly to an occult destination. Within a single mile radius is the Atlantis Bookshop, where modern Wicca bloomed in the basement; the British Museum, a haven for ancient artifacts that shaped conceptions of the witch; Treadwell's Books, where esotericism and feminism commingle on the shelves; and the Mandrake, what Fodor's Travel calls “the most mysteriously magical hotel in all of London.” I couldn't help but stay.
The Mandrake's namesake is Mandragora officinarum, a plant with many medicinal and magical tricks up its hoary sleeves. Legend has it that the mandrake root—with its uncanny, humanlike shape—will scream when pulled up out of the ground and immediately kill the culprit. In witchcraft practices, this peculiar perennial “is a powerful example of where a plant's actual spirit is directly invoked in order to get results,” discloses Corinne Boyer in Plants of the Devil. “It is one of the very few plants where its historical magical use has survived into modern times.”
Golden, dagger-spiked leaves fan out around a watchful eye above the Mandrake's entrance. I walked past the shadows of shapes cast on the floor leading up to a sacred geometry skull mural. Inside the lobby, the lighting is dim, the decor animalistic and opulent. Doors blend interiors into hidden enclaves for ritual and revelry. It's a heathen feast for the senses.
Upon reaching my room, I was greeted by a panorama of jasmine and passion flowers out on the terrace framed by burgundy, tiger-striped curtains. Mixed into the usual hotel materials, I spied a menu for the Mandrake's “Spiritual Wellbeing Concierge Service,” which offers an array of syncretic, witchy experiences for guests. The hotel espouses the belief that “hedonism and spirituality should live side by side to inspire, to tantalise, and to heal.” They had my attention.
That night, I signed up for one of the Mandrake's programs combining elements of breathwork, meditation, and ancestor veneration. Not sure what to expect, I arrived at the hotel's basement club-cum-healing space in my cheerful New York City uniform of black monochrome. Before the opening ritual, some of the participants shared life-changing experiences they had had at prior events led by the leader of the workshop. They chatted gamely with one another as I sat quietly in the corner, reapplying my fuchsia lipstick with a shaky hand. (Naturally, I wanted to look my best for my lineage.)
The facilitator began with a discussion of Samhain as the witches’ New Year and a time to shed old skins and honor the dead. Then, in front of an altar piled high with pumpkins and squashes, I lay down in the dark surrounded by a dozen strangers. Breathing in and out in unison, I could hear the rasp of deep inhalations and exhalations around me. Some sounded pained, cathartic; others blissful. Ever wary of falling into spiritual dilettantism or appropriation territory, I was pleasantly surprised at how the evening played out.
The guide led us deeper into ourselves. She asked us to thank those who came before and fixate on what guidance we might need from our lineage. She asked what we could, in turn, offer our ancestors. Which parts of them within us did we cherish; which parts did we need to destroy? My eyes were closed, but streaks of violet coursed through my line of sight. A phrase, a fragment, slipped into my mind:
The things you're carrying may not be your own.
The things you're carrying may not be your own.
The things you're carrying may not be your own.
I imagined my bloodline flowing slow and lavalike underground. It burned across continents, simmered through centuries, splitting, forking, coursing in all directions. So much of my lineage is completely foreign, lives I cannot fathom no matter how hard I try—but there can still be family in the unfamiliar. Lying on my back, I continued to breathe, thanking those who came before, who led me to this body, this city, this work. I listened in anticipation, waiting for what I don't know. My mind was reeling; limbs electric. Every exhale was a purge, every inhale a balm. The channel was open and knowing washed over me in a wave.
Two hours collapsed into minutes. I was in a completely different place and time when our guide interrupted me mid-thought to gently lead us into the present. Bodies stirred and came back to life. I was in a room full of strangers in a hotel basement again. We were asked to open up about our experiences if we felt called to. I was at a loss for words. My journey thus far had proven to be both an induction and a return, but I had much further to go before I could share.
Already coaxing open the doors of perception, the Mandrake was living up to its reputation. Traveling itself is an altered state, and I wanted to prolong my trip. With my mind on the magic of the hotel's feral namesake, full immersion into plant lore beckoned. I wanted to walk on fertile ground, to interface with flora foundational to the legacy of the witch. The oldest botanical garden in the city, Chelsea Physic Garden, was just the place.
Founded by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1673—decades before witch hunts went not-so-gently into that good night—Chelsea Physic Garden was built for apothecaries to teach their apprentices about the healing and harming powers of plants. Tucked away in the former village of Chelsea right off the Thames, the garden has been blessed by a microclimate. The air is warmer, the soil richer than other parts of London. Since the site was deemed worthy of planting some 350 years ago, it has housed species from around the world.
Walking through a small arch in the high brick walls that enclose the place is like entering a temple of sorts. Although the garden was created by men, it is plants that rule inside. Small signs denote poisonous plants that should not be touched. Others indicate healing plants that could save your life. Still others mark plants that offer the raw materials for clothing and furniture—and then there are those whose beauty is their bounty. There's a sense of veneration in the Chelsea Physic Garden. Inside this green cathedral the incense is oxygen-rich air, the steeple a verdant canopy, the stained glass a collage of petals, the holy order botanists, birds, and insects quietly buzzing about, tending with reverence to the plant life as they have done for centuries.
The garden continues its tradition as a center for learning. A gradeschool group of curious kids was winding through as I took in the Garden of Useful Plants, the Garden of Edible Plants, and the Garden of Medicinal Plants. Voices automatically lower to a hush when in the garden, as if everyone else feels it is a sacred place, too. A friendly orange moggy appeared out of a flower bed and stopped to slide her shaggy feline mass across my legs before ducking back into the brush. Around me a wealth of information blossomed from signage between the stalks. There are sections dedicated to species from every corner of the world: you can find yourself in Asia, the Middle East, or the Americas, but it is in the British Isles where witches make themselves known.
“While the British flora contains only 1,600 species, up to a quarter are said to have medicinal uses,” a plaque reads, citing the Druids and the Romans as the early keepers of plant knowledge before it became the province of the Christian church. It wasn't the church alone that took responsibility for plant knowledge, though. There were also folk healers whose familiarity with magical and medicinal plant remedies made them indispensable to their communities—for the most part. “The 15th-17th centuries saw folk healing driven underground as many women healers were persecuted as witches,” the sign continues.
In the British Isles, folk healers, often called cunning folk, were part of a distinct magico-medical stratum. “Cunning folk . . . always dealt with a nameless art that addressed various aspects of medicine, magic, and divination” writes Nigel Pennick in Witchcraft & Secret Societies of Rural England. They could aid you in exorcisms or contacting the dead, healing a sick animal or family member, finding a lost or stolen item, and conjuring a beloved to suit your fancy. “The powers of the cunning folk are ambiguous,” Pennick continues, “useful for life and healing, but also for illicit private gain and harm. The practitioner elicits both admiration and fear among those with whom he or she has business.”
Recent discoveries have shed new light on the ways of the cunning folk. One seventeenth-century London cunning man's book of charms, conjurations, and prayers has been made available to the general public. The Grimoire of Arthur Gauntlet isn't just a single man's knowledge, though, but draws from the magical and medical skill sets of other practitioners—both men and women—whom he encountered and worked alongside. Compiled between 1614 and 1636, the grimoire lists spells and cures that require a variety of plants I came across in the garden: valerian, apple, henbane, poppy.
“Write in an Apple Reguell Lucifer Sathanus And say I conjure thee Apple by these three names written in thee That whosoever shall eat thee may burn in my love until such time she hath fulfilled my desire,” Gauntlet's grimoire instructs. He also offers herbal remedies for common ailments, divinatory spells to contact angels, and recipes for perfumes one can create for devotional or practical purposes.
As my walk continued, I found witches lurking in more seedbeds. The sign for Stachys officinalis (sometimes known as common hedge nettle or wood betony) announces that the plant “preserves the liver and the bodies of men from the danger of epidemical diseases and from witchcraft.” This knowledge is attributed to botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer Nicholas Culpepper, the man who wrote The Complete Herbal in 1653. Culpepper's work was widely consulted by cunning folk and makes multiple mentions of witchcraft. Other plants he prescribes to repel witches include branches of holly or branches of mistletoe hung around the neck. (Gauntlet's grimoire suggests carrying a pomegranate around to ward off witchcraft.)
Although cunning folk are intimately linked to the witch archetype, persecution of folk healers during the witch hunts—despite what the sign in the Physic Garden says—remains a subject of debate. “For many early modern theologians and intellectuals, cunning folk were considered as bad as or even worse than witches,” explain Owen Davies and Lisa Tallis in Cunning Folk: An Introductory Bibliography. “However, since by and large the common people saw cunning folk as important allies in the struggle against witches and misfortune, they rarely sought to prosecute them for what they practiced.” Exceptions do exist, and you'll see cunning women and men deemed witches in witchcraft pamphlets and trial records alike. We also know that English lawmakers were not fond of folk healers, and “it was the concern over those who practiced theft magic, love magic and treasure hunting, rather than witches as they came to be defined later in the century, which led to the first so-called Witchcraft Act of 1542,” Davies writes in Cunning-folk: Popular Magic in English History. James I's Witchcraft Act of 1604 was directed at both cunning folk and witches, too.
Folk healers, cunning women, or wise women may not have been a driving force of the English witch hunts, but they do occupy a very special place in English magical history. In fact, the first commercial tourist destination in England was Mother Shipton's cave in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, established as a site to be seen by 1630. “Mother” was a common title given to wise women, and Mother Shipton, born Ursula Southeil in a cave by the River Nidd around the year 1488, was the most notorious prophetess—England's Nostradamus she's been called—to ever charm her way across the British Isles.
Much of her biography and words have been fabricated, and many wonder if she was even a real person at all, but there is evidence that the “Witch of Yorkshire” did offer remedies to everyday folk while she was dropping prophesies on the side. Mother Shipton supposedly foresaw the English Civil War, the Great Fire of London, and perhaps even digital connectivity with the couplet: “Around the world thoughts shall fly / In the twinkling of an eye.”
Before I headed back to the Mandrake, I stopped at the place where the mandragora grew. There wasn't much to see as the seeds lay dormant, but mere steps away the Mandragora officinarum is pictured in a 1597 illustration from Gerard's Herball. The plant's roots are split in two, and it looks as if it might walk right off the sign. A creature with a will of its own, just as folklore would portend.
These “visionary nightshades” hold special power, Daniel A. Schulke reveals in Veneficium: Magic, Witchcraft and the Poison Path. Plants like mandrake, henbane, belladonna, and thorn apple have “ancient histories of magical use, and [are] characterized by demoniac visions at shamanic doses.” They can be spiritually sustaining, and they can be deadly, much like the practice of witchcraft itself.
“The Devil's arsenal includes a specific handful of toxic plants, many of them in the Solanaceae family,” explains Corinne Boyer. “The triple nature of these ‘Witching Herbs’ lie[s] in their ability to heal, harm and facilitate magico-visionary experiences, all outcomes dependent on dosage.”
Said to hail from the realm of the Devil, mandrake, henbane, belladonna, and thorn apple are also frequently mentioned in extant writings about the witches’ flying ointment, a potent blend of lore where sexuality, spirituality, and hallucinogenics meet. Such magico-sexual connections made even more sense when I thought of my hotel's ethos of uniting spirituality and hedonism as one. The mandrake plant was often called for in spells conjuring “increased fertility, sexual vigour, and attracting a sexual consort,” notes Schulke. (And it's no coincidence that the root looks a bit like human genitals, too.)
Leaving the Physic Garden, I reflected on the flora responsible for so much of our sustenance and suffering. These days, plants aren't viewed with much reverence by the general public. They are raw materials to exploit, things to be used. But a trip around London's oldest garden will have you sorted. The Chelsea Physic Garden endows visitors with a healthy respect for the power of plant life. (Croplifters Will Be Propagated, warns a sign inside.)
Walking back into a world of concrete and bleating cars was leaving an Edenic paradise. But there was something else I needed to see. Like Eve, I was enrapt by a certain tree intimately tied to great suffering. I had to press on beyond the garden's borders to satisfy my curiosity.
Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, Tyburn was the place for public executions. Little is left of the gallows where many convicted witches were hanged in London save for a cement traffic triangle in the northeast corner of Hyde Park near the Marble Arch. Fountains spurt across the street, and traffic zips by on all three sides. No one seemed to pay any mind to the unassuming marker I stood staring at when I arrived from the Physic Garden. A small circular plaque marks the location of the Tyburn Gallows. It reads: “The site of Tyburn Tree.”
London's witch hunts may not be as famous as those that tore apart Lancashire or East Anglia, but they were certainly just as grim. For so many women and men, the gateway between this world and the next was Tyburn. All who heard tales of this deadly tree gained a healthy sense of respect for it, much like those who knew of the Mandragora officinarum and its poisonous brethren. Mother Nature has always had her canny ways to create and destroy, but mankind has been a quick study.
For 600 years, Tyburn Tree saw some 50,000 to 60,000 people meet a grisly end. The gallows there were a triptych of wood beams originally sourced from the elms near Tyburn Brook, and the scaffold that was continually built and rebuilt could hang up to twenty-four people at a time.
According to Matthew Beaumont's account in Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, at midnight before a hanging was to take place the following day, a “hanging fair” occurred, and “the bellman of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate recited verses to the men and women who were due to be executed. ‘All you that in the condemn'd Holds do lie, / Prepare you, for to Morrow you shall die’, he began . . .” A staggering 50,000 to 100,000 people could be in attendance for an execution. Spectators arrived en masse, squeezing together, standing on ladders, elbowing their way through to the grandstand to take in the show. There was no single kind of criminal these gawkers came to see, but the hanging of accused witches no doubt had its own morbidly unique appeal.
In 1585, Margaret Hackett, a sixty-year-old widow, was hanged at Tyburn for allegedly murdering a man through witchcraft.
In 1599, Anne Kirk, another destitute widow, was hanged at Tyburn for allegedly cursing and killing children through witchcraft.
In 1621, Elizabeth Sawyer, a surly woman who confessed to having a canine familiar, was hanged at Tyburn for allegedly practicing witchcraft.
In 1652, Joan Peterson, a London cunning woman, was hanged at Tyburn for allegedly bewitching a client.
It is not possible to fathom every single death of the thousands who died at Tyburn, or who perished in the European witch hunts—or in any mass extinguishing of human life. But that doesn't mean it is pointless to try to keep memories of these people alive.
“Remembering is an ethical act. . . . Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead,” Susan Sontag opines in Regarding the Pain of Others. “But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history.”
Western patriarchy has long decided whom we should remember and whom we should forget. But that stranglehold grip is loosening. Histories are being recovered and rewritten. When it comes to the witch hunts, the past is by no means immutable. Within the last decade, new witch hunt memorials have been proposed or unveiled in Lancaster, Colchester, Kinross, Orkney, Fife, and beyond. Communities are petitioning for posthumous pardons. Historians are digging into records to dispel myths and share long-lost stories. Across the United Kingdom, memories are surfacing, and once-muted voices are now being heard.
