Zoom Lecture Archives - Page 52 of 81 - The Last Tuesday Society

Surrealism and the American West: Breton’s “Hopi Notebook” – Kate Conley

Surrealism and the American West: Breton’s “Hopi Notebook”

André Breton’s visit to the Hopi villages of Arizona in 1945 had an impact on his view of the world and of the objects he collected. His response to what he witnessed in the month when the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was reflected in the notebook he kept on his trip, known as the “Hopi Notebook,” and in the poem he began writing that month, “Ode to Charles Fourier.” His belief in the liveliness of repurposed things, haunted by their former lives, was particularly pertinent to the Hopi katsinam he collected on his trip to the American West and subsequently kept close to him in his apartments in New York and Paris. These things had an impact on surrealist thought through the memories they stirred in him of the dances he had witnessed on the Hopi Reservation that he recorded in the “Notebook” and the “Ode.” Particularly when considered in light of the visit by Aby Warburg, another European intellectual, to the same villages 50 years earlier, Breton’s “Hopi Notebook” adds a missing piece to our understanding of the premier avant-garde movement of the twentieth century through the way Breton continued his effort to capture his evolving understanding of what it means to be human.

Bio

Kate Conley is a professor of French & Francophone Studies and Chancellor Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures at William & Mary. She is the author of Surrealist Ghostliness (Nebraska, 2013), Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life (Nebraska, 2003), and Automatic Woman: The Representation of Woman in Surrealism (Nebraska 1996) and multiple articles and book chapters on the surrealist movement. Her current book project has the working title of “Mapping the Surrealist Collection.”

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Baba Yaga in Russian Folktales – Prof Sibelan Forrester

The traditional Russian folk character Baba Yaga is an ambiguous and fascinating figure. She appears in folktales as a monstrous, hungry cannibal, or as a canny inquisitor of the adolescent hero or heroine of the tale. Her roles in the various tales suggest that she is an ancient part of traditional culture, a player in adolescent rites of passage, possibly even once a deity comparable to the Hindu goddess Kali. She has daughters but no husband or lover. Some of the best-known Russian tales feature her in variously frightening or testing roles: Vasilisa the Beautiful, The Frog Princess, or some versions of The Firebird. Baba Yaga also continues to show up in popular culture, both folk and artistic illustrations and films and cartoons from the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. She has emerged as a figure in Western media or games as well, often with a very different personality and affect.

Bio

Sibelan Forrester is the Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Russian at Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania, USA), author of the introduction and translator of the tales in the volume Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairytales (2013). Besides her scholarly work on Russian poetry, gender studies and folklore, she is a poet and translator from Croatian, Russian, Serbian, and a co-translator from Ukrainian.

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Visions of the Occult – Victoria Jenkins – zoom lecture

Victoria Jenkins will discuss her new book – the first major survey of the occult collection of artworks, letters, objects and ephemera in the Tate Archive. Revealing over 150 esoteric and mystical pieces some never before seen, giving a new understanding to the artists in the Tate collection and the history and practice of the occult.

This lavishly illustrated talk acts a potent talisman connecting the two worlds of Tate – the seen public collection and the unseen secrets lurking in the archive. She will explore the hidden artworks and ephemera left behind by artists ,and shed new light on our understanding of the art historical canon. She offers an in-depth exploration of the occult and its relationship to art and culture including witchcraft, alchemy, secret societies, folklore and pagan rituals, demonology, spells and magic, psychic energies, astrology and tarot.

Expect to find the unexpected in the works and lives of artists such as Ithell Colquhoun, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Cecil Collins, John William Waterhouse, Alan Davie, Joe Tilson, Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, William Blake, Leonora Carrington and Pamela Colman Smith.

For the first time, the clandestine, magical works of the Tate archive are revealed with archivist Victoria Jenkins exploring relationships between art and the occult, and how both can act as a form of resistance to challenging environments. This talk challenges perceptions and illuminates the surprising breadth and extraordinary ways in which artists interpret not just the physical world around them but also the supernatural, to make the unseen, seen. If you think you know Tate artists, it’s time to think again.

Bio

Victoria Jenkins is a Warwickshire born, London based artist and author and is an archivist at Tate. Her work concerns the relationship between art, the occult and popular culture.

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Fairies & The Witches Who Loved Them – Professor Diane Purkiss

When we think of fairies, we might still think of something small and sweet, something kind and helpful. But that is not the way that fairies were seen in earlier periods in the British Isles. Instead, fairies were a branch of revenant, akin to the restless dead, and willing to welcome those who died before their time into their midst. We know this from Scottish witchcraft trials, in which men and women who had dealings with the fairies were accused of trafficking with demons, something they were all too willing to believe because of the dark experiences they had with fairies and their kind. And yet fairies also represented a connection with the barren and unproductive parts of nature, as well as a possible link to dead relatives and friends, often accessible through the stone creations of previous generations of human beings. Fairies are nature spirits, but they are dark and terrifying, and they remind people of what they have tried to control, discard or destroy.

Bio

Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at Keble College, Oxford. She was formerly Professor of English at Exeter University. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Witch in History , and Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories

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Scottish Highland Second Sight: Its Past, Present, and Future – Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart

The mysterious faculty of Second Sight—an apparently involuntary ability to see events in the future or far distant, usually encompassing funerals, death, and disasters—is understood today as quintessentially a Scottish Highland phenomenon.

If we turn to older historical accounts, however, the suspicion grows that in the past the notion of Second Sight (taibhsearachd in Scottish Gaelic) may have meant something altogether different: a more direct, even willed ability to communicate with usually invisible, capricious, and potentially dangerous beings, whether powerful otherworldly creatures such as sìthichean or fairies, or else treacherous spirit doubles of mortal men and women. These beings could impart occult secrets and occult gifts, although little benefit would accrue to their recipients in the long term.

Again, if we examine folklore and popular belief elsewhere in northern Europe, it appears that there may in fact be little that is specifically Highland about ‘Second Sight’. There, similar anecdotes and similar motifs about such uncanny phenomena were pervasive in the past—and are still told today.

This suggests that Highland Second Sight may have a history, an unexpected process by which an already somewhat ambiguous power was transformed—and, perhaps, restrained—into a more passive, spontaneous, innate, and inexplicable ‘sixth sense’. If this is the case, why did Second Sight change, and why has the ability come to be perceived as somehow emblematic of the Scottish Highlands?

An expedition—with some diversions—through four hundred years of Highland folklore and popular belief, in this world and the otherworld.

Bio

Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a Senior Lecturer at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, and Course Leader there for the MSc in Cultar Dùthchasach agus Eachdraidh na Gàidhealtachd (Material Culture and Gàidhealtachd History). He has lectured and published extensively on the history, literature, material culture, ethnology, folklore and popular culture of the Scottish Highlands from the seventeenth century onwards, and is often interviewed on these subjects for radio and television.

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Goddesses of Sex & War – Professor Ronald Hutton – Zoom Lecture

This talk is devoted to a particular form of ancient pagan goddess, one who is at the same time associated with love and sex, and with warfare. Though this may seem like a paradoxical linkage, it was actually quite a common one in the pre-Christian European and Near Eastern world, combining two different types of dramatic and often ecstatic human activity, associated with potent bodily fluids. Moreover, some of the most important of these goddesses actually influenced, and helped engender, the others, and the talk considers these in particular, in a divine chain reaction, stretching across the ancient world: the Sumerian Inanna, the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar, the Syrian Astarte, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus. It considers the development of each one, which can be traced through history, the particular and distinctive forms which each attained, and the powerful influence which they exerted on each other, spanning the most important and pervasive ancient cultures.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.

Here are some of his other talks you might be interested in https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/digital-events/?cat=ronaldhutton

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The Holy Grail – Professor Ronald Hutton – Zoom Lecture

Everybody thinks that they know what the Holy Grail is, whether the person in quest of it is one of King Arthur’s knights or Indiana Jones: the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, preserved by his followers and hidden until the right hero, with the right attitude, comes to find it. Some believe that it actually exists in the human world at the present day, embodied in particular vessels preserved at Nanteos in Wales, or at Glastonbury, or concealed at Rosslyn Chapel or Rennes-le-Chateau. Others, conversant with Edwardian British scholarship, think that it is a Christianisation of a pagan Celtic tradition of enchanted cauldrons, ultimately representing the divine feminine. This talk is a quest in itself, for the origins of the story, which can be pinpointed quite specifically, and for the process by which an idea with a precise origin grew into a motif capable of taking so many different forms. It also considers the claims of the Celtic cauldrons to be the ‘true’ grails and those of the vessels revered today by many people as the genuine one.

Here are some of his other talks you might be interested in

https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/digital-events/?cat=ronaldhutton

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Robin Hood – Professor Ronald Hutton – Zoom Lecture

Robin Hood is the most famous outlaw in the whole of world fiction, and during the modern period his popularity has only increased. This is largely because he reflects both sides of the traditional social order, as a decent English gentleman, unjustly outlawed, who fights his way back to respectability with the help of ordinary people. In his original, medieval, form, he is actually even more remarkable, as a man of the common people himself, from the greenwood, who blatantly flouts the social and religious order while upholding a basic humanity and goodness. This talk is intended to show what was so different about him that made him so famous in world culture while other outlaws, fictional and real, have disappeared. It is also, however, a quest for his origins. Was he a forest god or spirit, or was there a real, remarkable, human being, who inspired the legend because he did something really outstanding? It will be concluded that there actually is good historical evidence that suggests an answer to this question.

Here are some of his other talks you might be interested in https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/digital-events/?cat=ronaldhutton

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The Fabulous Tale of the Fly Agaric Mushroom – Andy Letcher

The Mushroom at the End of Time: the fabulous tale of the Fly Agaric mushroom

There is now considerable interest both within academia and in mainstream culture about the therapeutic and transformative potential of the so-called classical psychedelics, most especially psilocybin and the mushrooms that produce it. Amidst all this excitement, a distant fungal cousin, the Fly Agaric Amanita muscaria, has gone almost unnoticed. Unmistakeable with its dramatic red and white-spotted cap, the Fly Agaric is if not exactly psychedelic then provocatively psychoactive. Its effects are capricious, ranging from visionary ecstasies through to increased stamina, optical distortions, muscle twitches and a coma like sleep. Largely shunned despite its legality in the UK, the very idea of it has nonetheless had a profound cultural impact, from its discovery by Western travellers to Siberia in the seventeenth century through to the present day. No other mushroom has generated so many myths.

In this talk, Dr Andy Letcher discusses the chemistry, effects, history and cultural impact of this strange, eldritch mushroom, and he answers many of the stories that swirl and circulate about it. Did Siberian shamans drink mushroom-infused reindeer piss to get high? Was Jesus a Fly Agaric mushroom? Had Lewis Carroll been chomping them when he wrote Alice in Wonderland? And is the red and white figure of Santa Claus actually a mushroom shaman bringing gifts from the Upper World with his flying reindeer?

Speaker Bio

Dr Andy Letcher is a Senior Lecturer at Schumacher College, where he is programme lead for the MA Engaged Ecology. He is the author of Shroom. A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, as well as many papers on subjects as diverse as fairies, eco-magick, psychedelic experience, mysticism and animism. He is currently researching the use of psychedelics by contemporary Druids, and the use of the Fly Agaric mushroom in contemporary culture.

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Maya Bracknell

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

David Luke

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Spiritual Abduction: ETs, NDEs & DMT – Pascal Michael

Spiritual Abduction: The surprising semblance betwixt spirits and aliens, near-death and extraterrestrial experiences

The relationship between near-death experiences (NDEs) and death/dying is evident. The connection between the psychedelic DMT and the alien encounter similarly so. The resonance between NDEs and aliens, however… less so.

What could be the possible interlacing between NDEs, ETs, UFOs and DMT? Some may be surprised to hear of a phenomenological space-sharing between the experience of dying and that of alien abduction and other UFOlogical motifs, the sometimes reported presence of the deceased during such ET encounter events, and the generally unemphasised (at least in certain discourses) but fundamentally spiritual nature of “alien” beings. This echoes such controversial topics as ancient astronaut theory, and the divinisation of ‘star beings’ – the ‘Aliens as Angels’ analogy – as well as the shamanic, entheogen-ocassioned communing with these entities.

But the most pivotal question in this context remains – Do what we refer to as ‘aliens’ have something to do with human death?

While this subject is firmly within the realms of high weirdness and is of ontological implications – the experience of having a loved one die and the subsequent grief is unavoidable. As such, it simultaneously becomes a subject of the most intimate nature one can explore. In this vein, a personal experience of recent grief will be shared – to complement the far out with the fundamentally deeply within.

Speaker Bio:

Pascal Michael BSc, MSc is a Psychology PhD candidate at the University of Greenwich, comparing experiences from the first DMT field study to the near-death experience (NDE), with a view to establish the NDE as a psychedelic episode – indicated by their phenomenology and neural correlates, as well as their transformative and parapsychological effects. His interests lie in death and dying as an entangled continuum – existing at the levels of the molecular, humanistic, and transpersonal. He has presented at Breaking Convention and the Oxford University Psychedelic Society, and published in Frontiers. He is a coordinator for the ALEF Trust’s certificate in Psychedelics, ASCs and TP, and the 2020 recipient of the Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award.