Halloween week events

Here are highlights of pagan events in and near London in the week running up to Halloween - or Samhain. To find out about future events, click on the events link at the top of the page.

Now to 31 October; London Ghost Festival 2010 with London Paranormal. This 10-day festival celebrating everything ghostly and paranormal offers a huge range of things to do including ghost walks, lectures, parties, seances, haunted house experiences and lots more. Events are taking place all over London and some are free - including some lunchtime lectures. For full details of the programme of events, and to book places, visit the website http://www.londonparanormal.com/lgf.htm

Monday 25 October; Cadavers in the Cloisters. Talk by Rob Stevenson at pagan forum Secret Chiefs. Venue: Devereux public house, 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, London WC2R 3JJ. Meet from 7.30pm, event starts at 8.30pm. Admission £2. http://secretchiefslondon.wordpress.com/

Monday 25 October; Guided Ghost Walk with John Constable (aka John Crow), author of Secret Bankside: Walks Around the Outlaw Borough and The Southwark Mysteries.The cost is £10 (£7 concessions), just turn up as there are no advance bookings. Meet at 6.45pm at the corner of Borough High Street and Tabard Street, SE1 1JA (the pedestrian area between St George the Martyr and John Harvard Library), by Borough tube, London. See http://www.crossbones.org.uk/#/events/4527977528

Tuesday 26 October; A Change of Mind - Creating Your Own Reality. Talk by David Manning at The College of Psychic Studies 16 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2EB. Time: 7pm - 8.30pm. Cost: £5/£8. Advance booking essential. Tel: 020 - 7589 3292. http://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/index.html

Thursday 28 and Friday 29 October; Samhain at Butser Ancient Farm, Chalton Lane, Chalton, Hants. For more details, call 02392 598838 or visit http://www.butser.org.uk/

Tuesday, 26 October; The Official Houdini Seance by Jon Randall at London Earth Mysteries Circle. Venue: The Theosophical Society 50 Gloucester Place W1U 8EA. Time 7.15pm.

Wednesday, 27 October; Talk by Simon Brighton on The Knights Templar at The Moot with No Name, upstairs at the Devereux Public House, 20 Devereux Court, off Essex Street, The Strand, London WC2R 3JJ. Price £3/£5. Time 7.30pm. http://www.theatlantisbookshopevents.com/page2.htm

Thursday, 28 October; The Book in Western Art: Symbol, Device, Allegory. Talk by Laura Miller at Treadwell's, 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London. Advance booking essential, price: £7: Time: 7.15pm for 7.30 start. For more details call 020 7240 8906 or email info@treadwells-london.com

Thursday, 28 October; Ki Signature of Buildings: The house whisperer's journey. Talk by Christian Kyriacou at Sacred Space, Rudolph Steiner House, 35 Park Rd, London NW1. 7.30pm start. Nearest tube Baker St. Email marionbriggs148@btinternet.com for more details.

Friday 29 October; Through A Glass Darkly: Performance Inspired by Victorian Seances of the Fraudulent Mediums, by The London Magician. At this exclusive evening of mind-reading and cold-reading performance, the London Magician will talk about, and demonstrate, the mind-reading and magical effects that first flourished in the Victorian seances hosted by fraudulent mediums. Venue: Treadwell's, 34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London. Advance booking essential, performances sell out quickly. Price: £10 in advance. For more details call 020 7240 8906 or email info@treadwells-london.com

Friday 29 October; Demonstration of Mediumship by Tuula Jukola at The College of Psychic Studies 16 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2EB. Time: 7pm - 8.30pm. Cost: £5/£8. Advance booking essential. Tel: 020 - 7589 3292. http://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/index.html

Friday 29 October: Magical Mindsets: The Varieties of Sacred Geometry. Talk by Paul Devereux at Research into Lost Knowledge Organisation (Rilko). Venue: Theosophical Society, 50 Gloucester Place, W1U 8EA. Admission £7 non-members, £5 members. Time: AGM at 6.30pm, lecture at 7.15pm

29 - 31 October; Dancing with the Ancestors. Shamanic creativity retreat with artist and shamanic practitioner Eva Weaver at Tilton House, Firle (near Lewes), East Sussex. Cost is £320 inclusive of accommodation in twin rooms (double £50 supplement), delicious vegetarian food, workshop and all materials. For more details, call 07757747027 or email evaweaver@talk21.com. To see the venue, visit http://www.tiltonhouse.co.uk/

Saturday 30 October; Free & Open Gorsedd of Caer Abiri Samhain Ritual at Avebury Sun Circle, in Avebury, Wiltshire. Open druidic style ceremony to mark Samhain, the end and beginning of times. Meet at the Red Lion Pub, Avebury, around noon for rite at around 1.30pm, ending at around 3.30pm. As it is Halloween there will be small gifts for children in fancy dress. Contributions of song, poetry, mead and cakes are welcome

Sunday, 31 October; Celebrate Samhain at an open air ritual in London, at the top of Primrose Hill, London NW1 8YH (entrance opposite Rothwell St). The ritual will take place in the Hawthorne Grove on Primrose Hill under the Aegis of the Loose Association of Druids and afterwards at the Washington Publick House, 50 Englands Lane, London NW3 4YD. Time: 12.30pm - 2pm. Free, but bring food and drink to share. For more details, email jtmorganhaberdasher@yahoo.co.uk

Sunday 31 October; Southwark Mysteries presents The Halloween of Crossbones XIII the 13th performance of this legendary alternative Halloween ritual to honour the spirits of Crossbones Graveyard. This year, John Constable (aka John Crow) and his Southwark Mysteries group are joined by Tom Baker (Bohemianauts), Nigel of Bermondsey and Vanessa Woolf (London Dreamtime). There will be an altar to the ancestors and a Samhain ritual with Crow priestesses and the tantric pulse. The performance ends with a candlelit procession to Crossbones Graveyard (pictured). The price is £15/£10 concessions. Doors open at 7pm at Debut (formerly The Drome and SEOne club) Weston Street (in the tunnel between Tooley St and St Thomas St). London Bridge tube and overground and buses are nearby. Advance booking essential, for details on how to book, visit http://www.crossbones.org.uk/#/events/4527977528

Please note: I try to keep my events page accurate, but if you do spot any errors, please let me know by leaving a comment. If you know of any other events you would like mentioned, please email badwitch1234@gmail.com