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Lucky For Some: Gypsies and the Supernatural

Speaker: Jeremy Harte

Presented by: London Fortean Society

0	LONDON: The Bell
P	Tuesday 1st August, 2023
N	7:30pm

Event information

NOTE NEW DATE -- TUESDAY 1 AUGUST
Some peoples achieve magical status, some have it thrust upon them: the Gypsies have done both. Arriving in Europe as an unprotected minority, the Romany turned their alien status into an art (prophecy is the trade that needs no tools) and an armour (who would mess with a people with such occult powers?). Fortune-telling was a seduction, a charming into shared intimacy about the future, and a way to deploy the intuitive cunning cultivated by all subaltern groups.
Folklorist Jeremy Harte has spent many years with English Gypsies and was commissioned to write a history of the community. He’ll be reflecting on two themes that run through Romany culture – plaited threads of truth and lies which entwine when people sense the supernatural suffusing family and identity, yet make a living from the huckster arts of the fairground.