Occult London - Secrets Of A City - Springhill Jack - Highgate Vampire - Dr. John Dee

BIN Exclusive

BY JANA  VERA GREASLEY

OCCULT LONDON -SECRETS OF A CITY

An exciting and dynamic city now the financial centre of the world, London has always been a capital with a deep,dark and fascinating occult past. From the horoscopes cast by Dr John Dee for English royalty in the court of Queen Elizabeth 1st, William Blake’s New Jerusalem to more modern legends of the Victorian Era’s Spring Heeled Jack and the Highgate Vampire of the late 60′s/early 70′s to the present day theories of conspiracy researcher the late Rik Clay concerning the occult symbolism of the 2012 London Olympic London’s occult history and legacies of society’s such as the ‘Order of the Golden Dawn’ and the ‘Theosophical Society’- all have left their mark  on the capital rumoured once in ancient times to be called ‘Troy’.

Elizabeth 1 reigned from 1558-1603 in an era when citizens of London were no strangers to occult observations,rituals and practices. One of which was the ‘cunning men’,an occult professi onal who was available for consultations of all kinds. The most famous of these was Dr John Dee.

Dee was an alchemist,mathematician,scientist and devout Christian and patriot. Apart from being credited with founding the Rosicrucians he is recorded as having a magical hand in the creation of the United States and the British Empire ,earning the moniker of the British Nostradamus.

15th June,1559-Elizabeth 1 coronation date-astrologically chosen by Dee and in his role of intelligencer (seeker of hidden knowledge and spy) he was arrested in 1555 for casting the horoscope of the Queen’s sister Mary. Horoscopes were considered to be an illicit form of surveillance as magic and science were given the same credence in this period of English history.

In 1582 ,using a scrying mirror or a speculum made of polished Obsidian and accompanied by sidekick Edward Kelley,Dee recorded his first successful contact with the spirit world and communication with angels using (1)(2) Enochian language. Dee also left a legacy of occult works -’The Monas Hieroglyphica’(1564) in which he identifies the ultimate symbol of occult knowledge. In 1557 he wrote’The General and Rare Memorials pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation’ the blueprint some believe of what was to become the British Empire,the conjuring up of which by magic Dee achieved at ancient hill fort (now called the Mud chute on the Isle of Dogs,a part of London where kings traditionally kept their hunting dogs)four hundred years ago in the presence of Christoper Marlowe,a famous playwright of his time. The ritual was not without a price however as Marlowe’s life was taken afterwards during a psychic attack,witnesses by several friends in a pub in Deptford.

At the height of his fame his cottage in Mortlake containing his famous occult book collection was the place where anybody who was anybody in Elizabethan London had to be seen receiving a consultation. However changing times and fortunes saw Dee moving Northwards to Manchester University to be employed as a warden after falling from royal favour but eventually he returned to London to end his days in poverty,his occult books and instruments stolen,his cottage derelict. Still,Dee’s influence echoes down the centuries as he is implicated by many an occult commentator as being the instigator and magical architect of a new empire that was to become the United States of America.

New Jerusalem & Hawksmoor-the Devils Architect. As the flames of the Great Fire of London died down in 1666 out of the ashes came men of the new sciences like Sir Christopher Wren who was commissioned by the Royal Society of Architects to design St Pauls Cathedral ,an iconic symbol of London’s skyline. Wren also had plans to redesign and modernise London and being an architect of his time,was familiar with Freemasonry,the Kabbalah and the 2,000 cubits sacred measurement of the Bible. (3)

Nicholas Hawksmoor was a pupil and assistant of Wren and some claim he constructed an alignment of churches using the 2,000 cubit rule and connected by lines of influence (ley lines) and formed a pattern of pentacles and triangles across the capital (see Ian Sinclair ‘Lud Heat’). Hawksmoor was commissioned by build churches in London as part of Queen Anne’s 50 New Churches Act and within this remit symbols of occult philosophy were expressed within the actual construct and positioning of them in relation to significant parts of London all leading him to earn the title ‘The Devils Architect’.

In Peter Ackroyds book ‘Hawksmoor’, 1985 he claims the churches form a ‘malignant map of London’.Also mentioned in Alan Moore’s graphic novels ‘From Hell’ ,1991-96 ,Hawksmoor’s influence is linked to the Jack the Ripper murders and Masonic influence. If a diabolical plan of London was Hawksmoors legacy then poet William Blakes vision was that of London as the ‘New Jerusalem’ could not be more different.

Blake died singing on the 12 th August,1827 and was buried in Bunhill Fields alongside his fellow dissenters Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan. He left behind a legacy of poems which expressed an intense desire to create a new London-a spiritual fourfold ‘London Eternal’ a New Jerusalem.

During the course of his life Blake challenged the system by the ways of radicalism and the occult .One of most famous works being the hymn ‘The New Jerusalem’ -’I will no cease from mental fight ,nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have built the New Jerusalem in England’s green pleasant land’.

Rumours of Blake’s association with  the Freemasons has never been firmly substantiated.However ‘Jerusalem’ seems to be an expression of the Masonic belief that they were the decenadants of the Lost Tribe of Israel and there-fore it was their mission to create a Britain that was the centre not only of a global empire but also a temporal and religious centre to rival the Vatican. (4)

Victorian London and the Terror of Spring Heeled Jack 1837-1904 Possibly the first ever urban legend-Spring Heeled Jack’s reign of terror lasted for 67 years and his description suggests a possible precursor of Batman -’skintight crimson suit with batwings ,a lions mane ,horns,talons,massive cloven hooves with sulphorous breath and moving in gigantic leaps in boots that have hidden springs. Westwood and Simpson pg 481 The Lore of the Land-A Guide to Englands Legends. With the first sighting in 1837 on Barnes Common,London,the demonic figure of Spring Heeled Jack caused fear and uproar among the masses by scaring police officers and servant girls alike .Gradually moving Northwards and culminating in an appearance on the roof of St Francis Xavier’s Church in Liverpool in 1904 , Jack’s main attribute was his ability to leap over high walls and rooftops of astounding height thereby achieving him the title ‘spring heeled ‘.

October of 1837 saw an unfortunate servant girl being terrorised,this time on Clapham Common ‘grabbed in a tight embrace and kissed,her clothes ripped by claws,the tall figure ran when she screamed but was seen the next night jumping in frontof s coach and horses and then leaping over a wall.

Times of London Rumours and panic spreading through London . Police began patrolling and rewards were offered and then in January of 1838 the Lord  Mayor of London received an anonymous letter which when published in The Times claimed Jack was a young,upper class gentleman ,hell bent on high jinks.However,another attack on a servant girl in February the same year and the arrest of one Thomas Millbank for being overheard telling fellow drinkers in a pub that he was Springheeled Jack but then acquitted for his inability to breathe fire,enabled Jack to now become  a (5) prominent figure in the fevered imagination of Victorian England. Apart from making regular appearances in the Penny Dreadful’s (an early version of a tabloid or National Enquirer) and the newspapers  other sightings and attacks occurred .Jack’s reign of terror spread across the land in Northhamptonshire and East Anglia and then mysteriously dissapearing for a while before re-emerging in 1872 in Peckham,London and 1877 in Sheffield. Apart from being shot a by a soldier on one occasion ,no one came close to catching Jack who remains a largely forgotten mystery of English paranormal history to this day.     

The Highgate Vampire: Highgate cemetery in North London had already achieved celebrity status  by having Karl Marx as one of it’s more famous residents. But from the late 60′s to the early 70′s it became more like the set of a real life Hammer horror film. On the face of it the Highgate Vampire story appears to be an exercise  in subterfuge and sensationalism without much evidence of actual vampire activity .However,events were widely reported and the imagination of the public was captured albeit for a short period of time. The story begins in 1967 as two schoolgirls were walking through Highgate cemetery where they claim they saw graves opening and people rising   out of them.By 1969 the sightings of ghosts,occult and unexplained happenings lead the local the ‘Hamstead and Highgate Express’ to run stories such asa local teenagers account of being woken at night by something cold holding her hand and marks being left on her neck to a tall man wearing a top hat dissapearing through one of the cemetery walls.

Then after the discovery of several exanguinated dead animals with marks on their necks the Express asked ‘Does a Vampyre Walk in Highgate’. It is at this point the Vampire hunter Sean Manchester enters the scene (rival vampire hunter David Farrant was to join the foray in 1974 but had a short lived career due to a conviction for malicious damage to a memorial in order to carry out an exorcism) and after being contacted by (6) a young woman named Lucia who claims to sleepwalk in Highgate and wake with neck marks ,Manchester and a Thames TV crew descend on the Columbarium area of Highgate on a Friday ,March 13th for a vampire hunt.However instead of finding the undead they were greeted with a ‘circus of spectators and freelance vampire slayers ‘to quote Manchester himself. who ,along with two assistants, found three empty coffins and lined them with garlic,a cross and a sprinkle of Holy Water. A low booming noise ensued which gradually became louder and suddenly stopped. By summer of that year the ante was upped at Highgate by the discovery of a headless body and evidence of occult activities. The Highgate story continues into the early 70′s with claims of stakes driventhrough bodies and  that the nearby St Michaels church was built on land that the ruins of a mansion previously leased by a mysterious European nobleman fleeing the vampire epidemic in the 18th Century. The similarities to Bram Stokers ‘Dracula’ cannot be overlooked but after spurious the collective claims and aspects of the Highgate Vampire the fuss eventually died down and apart from websites and books by Manchester and Farrant ,the story remains a curio in Britain’s vast  and varied catalogue of paranormal happenings. Rik Clay & the Occult Symbolism of the 2012 London Olympics.

His basic premise was that the London Olympics was an occult event to bring forth the manifestation of Zion-the New Jerusalem and put forward some occult philosophies to support his case. For example,logos can be used to bring on some great messianic event eg;Starbucks Isis symbology and the masonic golden arches of Mac Donalds asoccult symbology works on the subconcious of the consumer as it empowers it to manifest when the time is right (note MacDonalds was the only food outlet allowed to trade at the Olympics). Isis can be identified as the Angel Gabriel -the All Seeing Eye ,who is also God’s messenger and can unite Christianity and Islam (note the multi-designof the Olympic stadium )thereby creating a One World religion.The Olympic logo itself which when rearranged spells Zion was designed byWilf Owens who designed many European corporate  symbols and was (7) to have masonic connections and Zion,being the New Jerusalem that Blake and his fellow masons willed to make manifest in Englands green and pleasant land.

As Clay claims that ,again according to occult law,talismans channel the power of the stars as do heiroglyphs and letters off the English alphabet-he noted that among the twelve roads with biblical names such as Bethnal Green etc a pyramid is formed when two ley lines on the Olympic site cross over and are a link into the energy grid of the planet. He feels the Stratford site was deliberately chosen so the energy of such a large gathering of people and emotion would feed into the system but could also be drawn on. He also feels that the bibical road names,symbols and energy lines are  part of something that has been coming for a hundred years -a Trinity event which would usher in a new age(the Trinity symbology coming from Isis-Osiris-Horus  and that 2012 energy will manifest mind or will into matter.

As 2012 slips into the past,Iluminati symbology in archetecture continues to dominate the London skyline. The latest addition of which is the Shard. Standing at 95 storeys and the highest building in the European Union is located in the Southwark area of London and it’s tall pyramidal  design has lead to specuation that this is an Illuminati building.The Shard opens to the public in 2013, manifestation of concious into matter and another addition to the occult reputation of London.

J V GREASLEY   

For more on the paranormal and macabre visit The Church Of Mabus