Mind Body Spirit
Posts tagged friends of Watkins
Special Connections – Astrology and Watkins Bookstore (by Wendy Stokes)
Sep 5th
by Wendy Stokes
During the Victorian era, the intelligentsia and the rich and fashionable of London were fascinated by mysticism and spirituality and, in this era of excitement, one of the leading lights of the day, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, encouraged her friend John Watkins to open the first ever specialist esoteric bookshop. It bears the ‘Watkins’ name to this day. It is situated in the dignified elegance of Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road. The shop’s logo depicts Thoth, Egyptian God of Wisdom in the act of writing with pen and paper. The store stocks the UK’s widest selection of esoteric information in 60,000 book titles, cards, CD’s, DVDs, talismans, artefacts and other interesting items. In its early years, its customers included W B Yeats, Aleister Crowley, G R S Mead, Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley to name a few. Many people, from unassuming Sufis to specialists in ciphers, codes and covert communications found valuable knowledge on these shelves.
John’s son Geoffrey had been educated in Germany and was commissioned by British Intelligence during WWI. Then, early in WWII, Adolf Hitler was having immense military success, perhaps due to the employment of Karl Ernst Krafft who was Hitler’s personal astrologer! It was known that More >
A True Holiday Story by Hallie Lerman
Jan 14th
It is a cold, cloudy, overcast day, one of these rainy days where the rain runs intermittingly, where the windshield wipers have to be kept continually on. The rain is hard and then slows into a drizzle. Now, for the moment, the rain stopped.
It has been a rough ten days of hard rains in Los Angeles. They say that it has been the rainiest December on recorded history. Downpours upon downpours. Then hours of light rain, where I have been able to race out, and do a few errands. I examine the skies to see if I can continue on, this week before Christmas, and decide that I can. At this precise moment, the skies are cloudy, but it is clear, only windy. I have a thick sweater on with a wool scarf and boots. This is my last errand. I need to take in a pair of shoes to be fixed and cleaned. Parking on the main street in front of the mamma/pappa store is impossible. There are never any places to park. Instead, I use the alley in back. It is a long alley. The small stores that face the street also have entrances from this alley.
The alley More >
