<strong>Everything you Wanted to Know about Visiting a Hoodoo Doctor</strong>
<em>Lisa Mead and Stephen Grasso</em>
<em>19 February 2007 (Monday), 7.15 for 7.30pm start
</em> <em><a href="http://www.treadwells-london.com/" target="_blank">Treadwells</a>, </em>34 Tavistock St, Covent Garden. <em> £5
</em>
To inaugurate their hoodoo doctor surgery, opening for business at Treadwells next month, tonight's speakers will give an introduction to the rôle of the professional magician, ancient and modern. The practice of professional magic has a long history in all cultures, from the stone age shaman fixing cures for the tribe, to the hoodoo workers of the American south tying mojo bags and working conjure for clients.

Professional magic thrived in England in the period following the Reformation, with cunning folk plying their trade up and down the country; but by the nineteenth century it had slid from view. Now it's back. A doctor administers to the survival needs of the species, and it is a role as relevant to contemporary London in the twenty-first century as it was to our distant ancestors.