News from Southern Parts, via the marvel that is Mr Scott Wood.

<a href="http://www.selfs.co.uk" target="new">SELFS</a> events are always interesting and come highly recommended, except perhaps the talk on the 14th March...
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Forthcoming South East London Folklore Society stuff :

<strong>
14th February: Jason Oliver – Suspension and other Body Rituals</strong>

Jason will discuss body ritual with specific relation to suspension, both past and present, and its relation to the death posture as posited by Austin Osman Spare. Other body modifications will be discussed as a peripheral to these body rites of passage.

Jason is studying at the Royal College of Art for a Masters degree, his main themes being body modification, ritual and associated practices.

<strong>14th March: Mark Pilkington - A Fearful Current: Notes Towards a Chronology of Paranoid Technology
</strong>

From the 18th century to the 21st, some people have believed that machines are influencing their thoughts, words and actions. This talk treads a tentative path through this labyrinthine, liminal world, where the borders between fiction, delusion and reality are indistinct, and features cameos from August Strindberg, Evelyn Waugh, Louis Wain, William Sargent, Uri Geller, Philip K Dick and a host of others.

Mark is a contributing editor for the Fortean Times, editor of the Strange Attractor Journal, shrunken head collector and ferret fancier. (One of these facts is untrue, MOP)

<strong>
11th April: Neil Starman – May Day in South London </strong>

Neil is a local historian particularly interested in forgotten and radical history. In the run-up to May Day and Beltane, he will discuss spring rites from the Roman era to the present day, concentrating on rituals and festivals in South London.

Neil is the author of ‘Deptford Fun City’ and is a contributor to the south-east London blog Transpontine <a href="http://www.transpont.blogspot.com" target="new">www.transpont.blogspot.com </a>


As well as SELFS, John Constable does a regular ritual at 7pm on the 23rd of each month at the site of the Cross Bones graveyard in Southwark. I think you’d be interesting in the Southwark Mysteries, if you don’t know about him already and this is how I’ve written the event up for the SE-London blog:

"John Constable is Southwark’s shamanic poet, singer of songs and teller of tales of the lost history and magic of London’s outlaw borough. If my memory serves me correctly, John was talking through Southwark as the Jubilee Line extension was being dug below him and as the excavation encountered the Cross Bones graveyard, a site for paupers, prostitutes and other outsiders. As a skeleton was unearthed, the Goose, the goddess of outsiders, aspect of Isis and genius loci of Southwark contacted John and began singing her songs through him and his colleges in the Southwark Mysteries.

The focus for John at present is to leave a shrine on the site of the Cross Bones for the individuals interred beneath. London transport and other greedy developers are attempting to build an office on the site so, at 7pm on the 23rd of each month, John and others go to the gates of the site on Redcross Way, (just north of junction with Union Street), London SE1, (Borough tube, or London Bridge - Borough High St exit), to commemorate those buried there.

John says:

to honour the souls of the outcast dead, the prostitutes and paupers buried there...
to sing the songs of the Goose and Crow...
to perform our own (syncretic not dogmatic) inclusive rituals...
to bring our own offerings - ribbons, flowers, feathers and other totems...
to tie them to the gate, adding our personal sigils to the self-transforming shrine that has appeared...
to envision the memorial garden that is already taking root, despite the
best efforts of the would-be developers...
to reclaim magic, mystery and true community in the heart of our city...

(after which we all head off to a convenient watering hole to shoot the breeze, conspire with our higher selves and see how the spirits move us). The shrine has recently gained some extraordinary totems, including a piece of stone from the wall of Jerusalem, willow wreaths (for protection), a wand (once waved in through the door of 10 Downing Street during presentation of an SFC petition to reform the draconian laws that punish working girls and boys), and John Crow's 50 year old teddy-bear (with the >straw spilling from the seams) bound with ribbons of power…  at recent 23rd gatherings, magic has occurred... "