Hanging with the South East London Folklore Society

In a post on here recently, I believe I mentioned that august periodical, the Fortean Times (actually I know I did – my query was rhetorical).  I also mentioned my respect for the quality of the articles concerning the scholarship evident in them.  For me very definitely the research is the reason I prefer it over those magazines touting mediumship, crystals and ghost tours.  Not that there is anything particularly wrong or bad with any of the aforementioned, he backpedals rapidly, just that these things are generally approached with something less than scientific or academic rigour and seem (to me, anyway – am I reading the wrong New Age stuff?) very anecdotal indeed.

Now, I have to admit that I cannot remember the precise order of events, but one fine day, when I was perusing my Facebook account, I either saw or was notified that the esteemed David V Barrett was to give a talk hosted by the South East London Folklore Society upon the subject of Scientology and its similarities to ritual magic.  I was a mite taken aback as, although folklore is a fortean subject, I was surprised (pleasantly, I might add) with the range that SELFS tackled.   David V Barrett is an author, having several books to his name.  He also speaks on various subjects (I daresay you worked that out from what I wrote above – well done you) and writes book reviews and articles for my favourite strange-phenomena-based magazine.  I rather liked the look of this, having previously read that L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had been associated with ritual magic via the rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons.  As a result of this, it would not seem like the world’s biggest leap to conclude that Hubbard had extrapolated the procedures and workings of his religion from ritual magic.

So, a speaker whose name I had heard of and whose credentials I was already impressed with and a subject that seemed both titillating and genuinely intriguing.  The thought running through my head was not “shall I attend?” but how soon could I arrange it?  Luckily, it’s quite simple to partake of a SELFS (what a great acronym!) meeting – just get yourself to The Old King’s Head in Borough, literally round the corner from London Bridge station, buy a pint or two and wait for the function room upstairs to be opened.  You then pop along, pay your money and sit whilst one is addressed by the speaker.  Great!  The real wonder starts when you find the pub.  It’s quite a blast from the near past.  Firstly, when you find it, it’s down an alley.  Seriously.  You approach from the main road and there is an archway, with the name in wrought (well, probably cast) metal inside the arch.  You go down there and the pub is on the right.  The pub is, to my eye, quite old-fashioned, and all the better for that.  Also, it has evolved rather than being "antiqued" for the tourists.  It is very high-ceilinged and a tad on the dingy side, due to the windows facing the brick wall opposite which is the other side of the alley down which it is set.  In my view, all part of the cham, though.  You then settle down (it’s better to arrive before five o’clock in the evening as it is not easy to get a seat after that), order a pint of Harvey’s or St. Austell’s Tribute, buy some food (my fiancée recommends the toasted Club or the BLT sandwiches and a bowl of their excellent potato wedges) and wait until eight.  The only real criticism of this Dickensian (I mean that as a compliment) venue is the Dickensian staircase up to the first-floor function room.  Walk on the wrong side of it and the treads are non-existent.  It’s tough not to love the place, though.  Get to the doorway, pay your money (which, I believe, is £1.50 concessions or £2.50 otherwise – I am more than happy to be corrected by any SELFS member), choose a seat, clutch your beer and listen.

The Scientology talk was entertaining and informative.  David V Barrett kept the room’s interest and the group was friendly and open.  It was a very good evening indeed which was repeated a couple of months later when we went to see Phil Baker speak about the artist, visionary and mystic Austin Osman Spare.

So, there we have it.  The South East London Folklore Society is an entertaining and social bunch of folk, who recruit a high calibre of speaker to their monthly meetings.  They gather at the charming venue above on the (squints at their website) second Thursday of every month.

I’m not sure what I had been doing, but it had never really occurred to me before just how many organisations there were like this – especially in London – that covered the stuff that was a large part of my lifelong obsession with the unknown.  Cuh, eh?  It just goes to show and that.  My next post will probably be about more of these groups that I have stumbled across.

Fortean Times

When I started this blog, one of the things that (for reasons that completely evade me now) I omitted to put in the title was the word fortean.  This is a massive oversight on my part, as the word covers just about nine-tenths of my interests in the outside world.  Please allow me to explain.  Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer who lived from 1874-1932.  His overwhelming preoccupation was phenomena that did not fit accepted theories and world views of the time.  He made copious notes on aforesaid phenomena and published several books concerning them.  For those of you particularly fascinated by this character I have put a link to the Wikipedia entry about him.

Because of the nature of his researches, he has not only gathered a large, posthumous following but also folk have felt moved to publish magazines and periodicals detailing and documenting modern anomalous phenomena in his name.

The first one that came to my attention was Fortean Times.  I must have been in my mid-late twenties at the time, and I was working on a small but busy street in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.  I had cause to use the shops, including the newsagents, regularly.  I cannot, at this distance in time, remember precisely what it was that made me buy it, but it’s quite obvious in many ways as to why I would be attracted to it.  It offers both current and past examples of UFO (UAP) sightings, cryptozoology (think from the Loch Ness Monster(s) to undiscovered “normal” animals), parapolitics (conspiracy theories) – well, I’m sure you get the picture by now.  All sorts of odd stuff with good to wonderful pictures and (very important, this) intelligent articles written by people who do their best to research and check their arguments presented with a dash of much-needed humour and self-deprecation.  The brilliant thing is that it’s still going strong (let’s hope that this is not the kiss of death)!  The founder of this journal is Bob Rickard and the origins stretch away back to the late sixties.

Over the years I have found Fortean Times to be the one constant inspiration for both information and imagination.  It was available before the Internet was, and even now provides me with a welcome respite from glowing LCDs.  There are other publications in the UK that cover and overlap as far as subject matter is concerned, but they all seem to be a poor second.  Either the articles are incredibly subjective, with researchable and checkable facts conspicuous by their absence or the writers are po-faced in extremis.  The biggest selling point by far is that it hasn’t been (and, I trust, never will be) overrun by wafty, indeterminate (except for profit-making) New-Ageism.  I have to admit that the New Age is, to me, a small blessing and a large curse.  More on that elsewhere.  It reads like level heads are in charge and doesn’t centre on a particular belief system.

I would like to finish by saying more power to its editorial elbow and long may it continue.

Robin Hood - More Than an Outlaw?

Robin Hood.  I have mentioned elsewhere that I have been fascinated by this swashbuckling character since childhood.  It may just be that there were not many mediaeval figures to feature in stories when I was a mere stripling, but my interest has held fast over the years.  There has been much scholarly debate whether he actually existed, or was an exercise in mythological folk tales and such.

I have also found the knight-errant stories absorbing, too.  Along with plastic cowboys and the like I also had toy knights - namely crusaders.  Their armour (unbeknownst to me at the time) was also fairly accurate for that period.  When, later on in life, I learned about the Knights Templar (the warrior monks of Jerusalem) I became even more engrossed in the period of time surrounding the Crusades.

I have been a regular reader of a magazine called the Fortean Times for at least fifteen years now.  Named after Charles Fort, an American who collected reports of strange phenomena and later wrote several books on the subject, it has been a constant delight and eye-opener.  Imagine, therefore, my surprise and delight when I found both subjects covered in one article!  To try and summarise; the Templars were outlawed by the Pope at the time and some of them may have hidden in the woods.  They were very skilled in feats of arms, and so one of these bands could have been led by the character we came to know as Robin Hood.  The chap who wrote the article, John Paul Davis, has written a book - "The Unknown Templar" - on this very theme.  I fully intend to get my hands on a copy.  Here is a link to their site.  Try registering and typing "Robin Hood" into their Search.  See what you think.

Fortean Times