England Positively Crawling With Witches, Warlocks, Wizards, Diviners
Pastor Dale Morgan
England Positively Crawling With Witches, Warlocks, Wizards, Diviners*
May 11th, 2007 10:12 AM
English Occult
(CBS) This grand old country of ours is steeped in history and legend.
But you Americans always assume we're a sensible race - a bit quiet,
slow to change maybe, not given to absurd flights of fancy. How wrong
you are.
In fact England is positively crawling with witches, warlocks, wizards
and water diviners. There is a hardly a village in the Kingdom where you
will fail to find someone gazing into a crystal ball, offering to tell
your fortune, or getting involved in close encounters with aliens.
Forget Salem, when it comes to the occult, we've cornered the market.
Harry Potter isn't just a best seller and an international movie hit -
it is real life for many of us. There are parts of England where one in
ten of the people believe they have the power to teleport their
neighbors - pick them up and spirit them away, literally.
The northern county of Yorkshire, for example, is packed with
telepathists, time-travelers, enchanters, mediums and astrologers. Essex
- to the east of London - contains the highest number of people
subscribing to ancient pagan customs and rituals, and my own home
county, Kent - just south of the capital - has three times the national
average of psychic healers.
This isn't just mumbo jumbo. It is the result of detailed academic
research overseen by a leading cleric of the Church of England which
normally has a vested interest in playing such things down. But even the
Church can't disguise the extent of this occult revival. The survey
found only two places in the land where it fails to flourish - the
industrial Midlands of England - which is a bit short of the open green
spaces most witches prefer (nowhere safe to land your broomstick), and
parts of Western Scotland, which is far too cold and bleak for anything.
Everywhere else the paranormal is booming. Ancient spells are available
on every sidewalk. It may seem peculiar but please don't mock. They
might turn you into a toad.
By Ed Boyle © MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.