ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

The Arcanum in London

The first organized investigative work into the occult in the United Kingdom was probably begun with the early incursions of the Christian church. The library at Hampstead still has copies of letters written from the Abbot of Lindisfarne to his opposite number in Ashby-de-la-Zouche in discussion of how a local nun had driven a spirit away from a bridge seemingly by power of faith. The letter had been dated by Arcanum scholars at the early 1200's and is thought to be one of the earliest records of activities by the so-called White Monks.

It is certainly known that in Elizabethan times there was a resurgence of this group which was associated with the development of more sophisticated forms of hedge magic and the wider availability of these techniques to the more educated classes. The groups which formed around the country to exchange knowledge and to seek power in the form of knowledge of what they called "the ancients" were loose-knit and tended to be equally made up of the younger sons of nobles and clergy out of the direct lines of power and prestige. Their motives were unclear, to say the least, and although some investigators were high-minded intellectuals, there are records in the library of many others who seemingly destroyed what they were to have been investigating.

The first formal reorganization of these groups occurred during the English Civil war when Oliver Cromwell gathered about him such people who were interested in the hunting down of information and organized them into the Second Model Army (SMA) along the same lines as the New Model Army. This group was initially also involved heavily in political espionage as well as investigation of the occult. Whether any of the members realized it or not, it was to become an organization of witch hunters whose most prominent member was Mr. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General. In practice, the only safe way to use any form of hedge magic, faith or psychic abilities was to be a member of this group. Many of the records of the period were sadly destroyed in a fire which wrecked the old library in St. Albans whilst the documents were in the process of being moved.

After the restoration, the SMA continued with its work, albeit undercover, as those of the general public who knew of their work did not think highly of them. Whilst witches were no longer tried or forced to join their ranks, other ways of encouraging them to give up their practices were found, which included bribery and encouraging the fast introduction of new technology as well as threats. By the early 1700s the vast majority of numina types had some vague association with this group, but the SMA itself had grown distant from the military it was originally designed to support and was no longer held in any sort of respect. Funding from the government was flaky at best and the group was beginning to fracture.

This process continued with a few breakaway groupings of people with different goals from the original. The next upheaval came when a young Danish noblewoman with strong telepathic powers became involved with the SMA. In 5 years she had subtly changed the direction of the group away from actively hunting witches and towards scholarly activity, which for the first time began to involve actively seeking out stories from the general populace.

This trend continued and by the mid 1800s the SMA, which now called itself the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was organized along the lines of an institution with regular meetings in different towns across the country and occasional guest speakers. Although this attracted a lot of miscellaneous loonies the society struggled to maintain high-minded ideals. In the background, some of the splinter groups that had been formed mainly by groups of hedge-mages were also making use of the information that members of the SPR had been gathering. The senior members of the society had already decided amongst themselves that some of the scholarly work being done was more worthy than others and although the public donations helped them keep up the great library of St. Albans which had been founded with the help of the protestant church there, most of this was only made available to "well established" researchers.

Members of the SPR were involved in the Parisian Wars of the Roses, after which the society really did split. The most part remained with the SPR, although the less public scholarly branch, now calling itself the Arcanum, had for the first time its own organization within the SPR's umbrella. Many of the more active numina users who felt that simply studying for the sake of knowledge was not enough went their own way. Many of the Scotland Yard Occult Affairs Squad have psychic abilities and ties to one of these breakaway groups.

Today the SPR is still the public face of the Arcanum which any member of the public may join. Its executive committee (always chosen exclusively from Arcanum members) stands for election every four years. Members of the executive committee tend to have a cosy relationship with some of the other occult groupings (although not wittingly the Inquisition), although there have been times when investigative work has been concentrated on acting directly against one of the other groups. Oddly enough, it is thought that of recent years, the British government (and particularly the Ministry of Defence) has again been funding some activities.

The SRP (Public Face)

The headquarters of the SPR is in a church off Kensington High Street. This is where the London branch have their monthly lecture meetings, often with slides and tape-recordings, and with a tea afterwards. This is also where the monthly newsletter to the public The SPR Journal, is put together and where most of the administrative work of the SPR is handled.

Apart from the monthly meetings, the SPR has an annual conference lasting a week which always attracts some press attention due to the outrageous nature of some of the speakers. Many of the public members are conspiracy theorists, oddballs or people with "theories" which doesn't do a great deal for the general standing of the society.

The Arcanum library is based in a building in Hampstead. It is run as a private library which any member of the general public may join for an annual fee. The main library has a good collection of first edition and out of print books on many topics in addition to the occult. The basement library and archives are open to Arcanum members only and is a rather more useful selection. The current SPR executive in charge of the library is an ex-army man, Major James Wynne, who has specialized in his research career in debunking hauntings. He himself is in fact a medium, a talent that was only brought to light after having suffered shell shock as a young man in the second World War. He is in the habit of rearranging the archive shelves every so often to bring to the front the topics in which he is interested (such as documented hauntings) and conceal those he thinks little of (such as anything else, which will include vampire sightings).

The current librarian, Leonard Long, has been working at the library for the last 10 years, ever since the previous librarian died. Since he started this work his memory has slowly been fading and he has difficulty remembering anything that happened to him more than about a year ago. His personality has also begun to change to match that of the previous librarian, a fiery-tempered spinster. Being an escapist by nature he chooses not to think too deeply about this and concentrates his time on trying to keep the archives in reasonable condition. This is probably why he hasn't found out yet that the previous librarian, in her turn, also suffered some of the same symptoms.