The Secret City: London's Hidden History of Magic, Mystery, and the Occult.

  Buy Now (Book Link) While John Dee was conversing with angels and attempting to build a magical empire, a very different kind of magic was being practised across the river in Lambeth. This was the world of Simon Forman, a man who was not a high-minded philosopher or a courtly magus, but a pragmatic, street-smart, and immensely popular service magician. Forman was the people's sorcerer, a man who brought the power of astrology and practical magic to the everyday lives of Londoners, from serving girls to countesses. His detailed casebooks, which have miraculously survived, provide an unparalleled glimpse into the hopes, fears, and desires of Elizabethan and Jacobean London. They reveal a city where magic was not a rare or esoteric pursuit, but an integral part of the fabric of daily life —a tool that people used to navigate the challenges of love, health, and fortune. The Rise of a Self-Made Magician Forman was not a university-educated scholar like Dee. He was a self-taught man, a...