with the beautiful Anne, Henry asked the Catholic Church for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The Church refused, so in order to marry Anne, Henry created a reformed version of the church, making himself the head - a direct challenge to the authority of the Pope. Having obtained his divorce and married Anne, Henry was determined to have a son, but Anne gave birth to a girl, Elizabeth, in 1533, and from then on the relationship between Anne and Henry deteriorated. Henry found a new love interest in Jane Seymour. Anne became pregnant again, but the child was stillborn. Henry, determined to rid himself of Anne, fabricated a charge of treason and confined her to the Tower of London. Her execution took place on 19 May 1536.
Anne Boleyn is reputed to haunt Hampton Court - along with many of Henry’s other five wives - and the Tower of London where she was executed. Predictably, she has been seen there as a headless female figure near the Queen’s House, where she was confined prior to her execution. At Blickling Hall in Norfolk, Anne’s family home, there have been sightings of a headless young woman riding a horse and carrying a severed head on her lap, typically on the anniversary of her death. Anne has also been sighted in the Hall’s corridors. An administrator reported seeing a woman walking down towards the lake wearing an old grey gown with a white lace collar and cap. He thought she was either lost or trespassing and went out to ask if she was looking for someone. The woman replied, ‘That for which I seek has long since gone.’ Then, in a moment, she disappeared.
BOND, FREDERICK BLIGH [1864-1945]
Born in Wiltshire, England, in 1864, Frederick Bligh Bond became a well-known author, editor, architect and archaeologist. Considered to be the pioneer of ‘psychic questing’, he was regarded as exceptionally talented but ‘irascible, eccentric, difficult to work with, moody and confrontational’ by his colleagues. He had a deep interest in all things psychic, occult and esoteric, and his work involved analysing medieval woodwork and construction techniques.
In 1908 Bond was commissioned to excavate the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, burial place of three kings of England and reputed to have connections to the legendary King Arthur and the Holy Grail. It was while working on this project that Bond claimed to have been in communication with spirit monks, called the Watchers, who once had lived at Glastonbury. The Watchers established regular communications with Bond and allegedly penned messages to Bond in a curious mixture of Old English and rudimentary Latin, giving clues to the hidden history of Glastonbury Abbey and insights into the building’s original design and architecture. In all, these communications gave a startling insight into everyday life within the abbey and a glimpse back into the medieval world.
Bond’s claim to have psychic guidance from spirits drew sharp criticism from his conventional colleagues in both the fields of archaeology and architecture. But his communications with the ghostly monks won him the support of members of the British Society for Psychical Research. In 1918 he published The Gate of Remembrance, a collection of transcripts and reports from his automatic writing sessions, and it sealed his fate by firmly undermining his reputation as a professional once and for all. However, Bond’s enthusiasm for his interaction with the ghosts of Glastonbury Abbey prompted him to follow up his book with The Hill of Vision, in which he revealed allegedly prophetic warnings given to him by the spectral monks, including a prediction of World War I.
Despite great success in locating unknown and little-known structures, Bond was gradually pushed out of his work at Glastonbury. It would be easy to say that this was due to his psychic work, but it may simply have had to do with the fact that he was vain and arrogant and made a lot of enemies along the way. He was an amateur archaeologist at a time when the field was professionalized, and his refusal to follow a systematic plan of excavations laid down by professionals was bound to create tension. By 1921 he was reduced to cleaning the artefacts he had found, and by 1922 he was asked to leave Glastonbury.
In 1926 Bond took up an offer from a wealthy American to pay for his passage to the US. He found work as an architect and began a successful lecture tour organized by the American Society for Psychical Research. In 1935, again at his patron’s expense, he returned to England jobless, penniless and homeless. He died in a cottage in Wales in 1945 at the age of 82. Throughout his life Bond never lost his love for Glastonbury or his fascination for the paranormal, but many of the suggestions given by the Watchers have never been followed up, and to this day his books are banned from the Glastonbury Abbey bookstore.
BONES, READING
An ancient Chinese method of divination that used bones from the shoulders of oxen, sheep, deer or pigs, or the shells of turtles, to predict the future. A petitioner would approach a diviner with a question that could usually be answered by yes or no. The diviner would write the petitioner’s question on a bone or a turtle shell from a sacrifice, and would then heat the bone by inserting into it a hot bronze poker. The heat would cause the bone to crack. The patterns of the resulting cracks were then interpreted according to mystical techniques, providing an answer to the petitioner’s question. Answers and results were recorded after the divination had been completed.
Rulers seem to have consulted the oracle bone diviners on even the most trivial aspects of life. Questions were asked about auspicious days for sacrifice and ancestor worship, births, illness, marriage, weather, agriculture, hunting, court appointments, government policy and warfare. A sample divination record reads:
On day 49 the king, making cracks, divined: ‘Hunting at Chi, going and coming will there be disaster?’ The king, reading the cracks, said, ‘Extremely auspicious.’ At this point we drove off in our chariots. We caught 41 foxes and 8 hornless deer.
The first oracle bones known to modern researchers were discovered by late-nineteenth-century Chinese peasants digging in their fields, and since then nearly 155,000 oracular inscriptions have been recovered. Most date to the period of the Shang Dynasty in the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC, or, in other words, to shortly after the time of Moses, and they are an invaluable source of historical insight. Although the use of oracle bones eventually died out, divination continued to play an important role in Chinese life. By the ninth century BC, bones were replaced by divination through the oracular book known as the I Ching, which continues to be used in China today, and around the world.
BOOK of CHANGES
See I Ching.
BOOK OF THE DEAD
The Book of the Dead refers to the funeral literature of ancient Egypt. The texts consist of charms, hymns, spells and formulas designed to help the soul pass through the dangerous parts of the underworld. By knowing these formulas, it was thought that the soul could ward off evil spirits and pass safely into the realm of Osiris, god of the underworld. At first carved on to stone sarcophagi, the texts were later written on papyrus and placed inside the mummy case, and therefore came to be known as Coffin Texts.
BOOK OF SHADOWS
A book that contains rituals, laws, healing lore, chants, spells, divinatory methods and other topics to guide witches in practising their craft. There is no single definitive Book of Shadows for witchcraft; each tradition may have its own book, and local covens and individual witches can adapt books for their own use. In past centuries Books of Shadows were held secret; however, some witches in recent years have made their books public.
Traditionally a coven kept
