One summer, when I was a student, I worked at the Tower of London for a few weeks. The work itself was pretty soul destroying, but in my breaks I could wander anywhere I wanted within the Tower’s precincts. Chatting to Beefeaters was a particular highlight; they might share hair-raising stories about their times in active service, and they occasionally invited you into one of their little almshouses next to the Tower for a cup of tea and a biscuit. I was fascinated by the Prayer Book services in the Tower’s chapel, where the Beefeaters made up most of the congregation. I continued to visit this chapel on Remembrance Day each November for a few years afterwards.
Around the same time I was reading about all sorts of things which I would now condemn. I suppose they’re best described as “Western Esotericism” — a ragbag collection of subterranean spiritualities which was particularly popular in literary circles in the late 19th century, although it claims a lineage “from time immemorial” — drawing on ancient paganism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, mystical Christianity, renaissance astrology and so on, ad infinitum.
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