Zoom Lecture Archives - Page 71 of 82 - The Last Tuesday Society

C.G. Jung, Lord of the Underworld – Gary Lachman – Zoom

A Short History of Modern Occultism in three lectures, each lecture will be sold separately, see below for details of the other lectures in the series (if missed, these will be available on demand)

1. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society – 11 Jan 2022

2. Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Magician in the World – 8 Mar 2022

3. C.G. Jung, Lord of the Underworld – 27 Mar 2022

Crowley wasn’t the only mystical face on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s. Another figure with whom he shared space among “the people we like,” was the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, who died in 1961, just on the cusp of the 60s revolutions. With Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, Jung was one of the Big Three of modern psychology, and throughout his career Jung presented himself as a scientist and empiricist, mapping out the contours of the psyche. But Jung had the occult in his DNA. His mother spoke in tongues and held seances in which she communicated with her dead father, and Jung started his career with a study of the paranormal performances of his cousin. Jung broke with Freud because of his occult beliefs – at one point scaring the wits out of Freud by manifesting a poltergeist – and his “descent into the unconscious” following their split revealed to him the secrets of the “collective unconscious,” the reservoir of ancient symbols and images whose archetypes come alive each night in our dreams. As early as 1940, Jung was talking about a coming Age of Aquarius,and anyone who knows they are an introvert has Jung to thank for that. UFOs, out of the body experiences, Near Death Experiences, the I Ching and the “meaningful coincidences” he called synchronicities are only some of the unusual phenomena that the”sage of Kunsnacht” explored in his long life.

Gary Lachman is the author of many books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, and Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at www.garylachman.co.uk, www.facebook.com/GVLachman/ and twitter.com/GaryLachman

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum

Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Magician in the World – Gary Lachman – Zoom

A Short History of Modern Occultism in three lectures, each lecture will be sold separately, see below for details of the other lectures in the series (if missed, these will be available on demand)

1. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society – 11 Jan 2022

2. Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Magician in the World – 8 Mar 2022

3. C.G. Jung, Lord of the Underworld – 27 Mar 2022

Aleister Crowley, the 20th century’s most infamous magician, was known in his day as “the wickedest man in the world” and “the man we’d like to hang.” Today his portrait hangs in London’s National Portrait Gallery and in 2002 he came in at no. 73 in the BBC’s Top 100 Britons poll, beating out J.R.R. Tolkien, Johnny Rotten, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Crowley swaggered through the fin-de-siecle, climbed Himalayas, was polymorphously perverse before the phrase was even invented, and took more drugs than anyone I know. But he was also a remarkably serious and devoted practitioner of the dark arts and took as his mission their revitalization in the modern world. After his death in 1947 Crowley sank from view, only to be resurrected in the 1960s as a poster boy for the psychedelic, sexual, and social revolutions of that decade, his philosophy of “Do what thou wilt” informing the acid-fueled guruship of Timothy Leary, and the psychedelic sounds of the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Today Crowley’s religion of “excess in all directions” continues to inform popular culture, from heavy metal and gangsta rap, to the tepid sounds of the Jonas Brothers

Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society – Gary Lachman – Zoom Lecture

A Short History of Modern Occultism in three lectures, each lecture will be sold separately, see below for details of the other lectures in the series (if missed, these will be available on demand)

1. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society – 11 Jan 2022

2. Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Magician in the World – 8 Mar 2022

3. C.G. Jung, Lord of the Underworld – 27 Mar 2022

The single most important and influential figure in modern occultism is Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the madcap Russian adventuress who founded the Theosophical Society in NYC in 1875. HPB – as she was known – surfaced in Manhattan’s immigrant community after travelling around the world and studying ancient Buddhist mystical teachings in a hidden monastery in Tibet. Her Masters, Koot Hoomi and Morya, charged her with the mission of restoring the lost knowledge of the ancients to the modern world. In the process she influenced art, literature, religion, society, politics and just about everything else. W.B. Yeats, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Gandhi were only a few of the important players in modern culture who sat at her considerable feet, and practically all the major figures in 20th century occultism were influenced in some way by her major works Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum

Folklore and Strange Tales of Cornwall’s Seas – Joan Passey

Cornwall is surrounded on water by three sides, fractured from Devon by the length of the Tamar. No where in Cornwall is further than 17 miles from the sea. Those who weren’t mining were making their living fishing, and throughout history Cornwall’s waters have been important to its status as a global trading port, enabling the export of its world-class ores despite the relative difficulty of accessing much of the county by land. Cornwall has been, and continues to be, shaped by its seas, and this paper explores the importance of the seascape to Cornish culture, identity, and history. In the nineteenth century in particular Cornwall was infamous for its number of shipwrecks, and the seas that gave so generously were alternately imagined as places of death, fear and violence. This tension between Cornwall’s reliance on and fear of its waters led to an abundance of strange tales of maritime disaster, deep sea monsters, and haunted coasts. We will explore the folklore – and folkhorror – of Cornish seas, from biting mermaids to phantom ships gliding across the moors.

Joan Passey Bio

Joan Passey is a lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. She completed her PhD on Victorian Gothic Cornwall in 2020 at the University of Exeter and her monograph, Cornish Gothic, is upcoming with University of Wales Press. She has released an anthology, Cornish Horrors: Tales of the Land’s End with the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series and has spoken on BBC Radio 3 about haunted shores and nineteenth-century Cornwall. She has additionally published on Ann Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins, and Shirley Jackson, and is co-founder of the Haunted Shores Network. Please feel free to contact her on [email protected], @JoanPassey or joanpassey.com

The Cornish Gothic: Haunted Cornwall in Victorian Literature – Joan Passey

In the mid-twentieth century Daphne du Maurier seemingly established Cornwall as a Gothic place through such celebrated novels as Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. Yet, having lived in and studied Cornwall, she was likely aware of a longer tradition of the representation of Cornwall as a frightening, haunted space. Indeed, a Gothic Cornwall emerged in the popular imagination a century earlier, with authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon writing Victorian Gothic tales set in the county.

This talk asks why Cornwall was such a fertile site for the Gothic imagination at this time, and why a Gothic Cornwall has been hitherto neglected as a topic of study. Cornwall is often pressed to the margins of literary and cultural histories, but throughout the nineteenth century was a locus for the popular imaginary and a microcosm for a host of Victorian anxieties. In the period Cornwall was undergoing radical seismic changes, with a failing mining industry, connection to the rail network, and the birth of coastal tourism, and these factors all contribute to the emergence of a distinct and particular flavour of the Gothic unique to the Duchy. We will explore Cornish ghosts, bodies aboard trains, creatures lurking in dark, dim mines, and reanimated mummies on Cornish shores, to name but a few of the terrifying tales set in the county.

Joan Passey Bio

Kate MccGwire’s Marvellous Menagerie by Dr Catriona McAra – Zoom Lecture

Kate MccGwire’s Marvellous Menagerie by Dr Catriona McAra

An in-conversation celebrating a major new monograph on the mesmerizing sculptures of English artist Kate MccGwire! She is joined by essayist Catriona McAra to explore the themes of the feminine grotesque that have come to characterize MccGwire’s work. McAra will trace over two decades of MccGwire’s career as it segues through the lessons of soft sculpture, surrealism and postminimalism, drawing from the likes of Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Dorothea Tanning towards the raw animal masses of Berlinde De Bruyckere and others.

The book is published by Anomie Publishing, edited by Mark Sanders and designed and produced by Peter B. Willberg. It features essays by curators and writers, Catriona McAra and Jane Neal. Now available: Kate MccGwire | (anomie-publishing.com)

Biographies

Kate MccGwire is an internationally recognized sculptor known for her distinctive aesthetic formula and innovative use of feathers. The feminine grotesque and the uncanny have sustained a significant hold over MccGwire’s creative imagination over the last twenty years, with interlocking thought-forms and otherworldly beings dominating her oeuvre. Her muscular, epic, knot-like artworks exploit dichotomous feelings of revulsion and desire, troubling boundaries of the wild and the civilized.

Dr Catriona McAra is Assistant Director, Heritage Collections and Curation at the University of St Andrews. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art history with particular interests in feminist-surrealist legacies. Her forthcoming books include Ilana Halperin: Felt Events (MIT and Strange Attractor, 2021) and The Medium of Leonora Carrington (Manchester University Press, 2022). Recent writing on MccGwire includes ‘Boundary Creatures’ (Anomie, 2021) and ‘Menagerie’ (C8, 2020).

Piskies & Pobel Vean: Cornwall’s Capricious Little Folk/ Siân Esther Powell

The Unnatural History of Cornwall – curated by Dr. Amy Hale brings stories of the weird and wonderful from Cornwall to a wider audience, with an emphasis on Cornish voices from the past and the present.

The Cornish piskie is arguably one of the most well-known creatures of British folklore. They’re often portrayed as cheeky and mischievous but ultimately harmless. You can find them on charm bracelets and tourist souvenirs when visiting Cornwall. You can even spot them in children’s pop culture like Harry Potter. But Cornwall’s fascination with the Pobel Vean, the little folk, is not always so winsome. There are many types of piskies in Cornwall: those in rags who dance merrily on the moors, those who conjure up storms to protect their treasure, those who dwell in the darkest places underground and those who steal away children. Like the sea itself, that surrounds Cornwall on three sides, the folklore of this land is capricious. Piskies are capable of helping humans and also causing them great harm. So, let us explore the Cornish Pobel Vean, just how harmless are they really?

Speaker: Siân Esther Powell is a museum professional, podcaster and amateur folklorist from Cornwall She is Exhibitions and Engagement Officer for Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum. She recently graduated with a Master’s Degree in Celtic Studies where she explored and challenged the common narrative of Cornwall’s industrial decline in the 19th century. She has a particular interest in the relationship between community and industrial landscapes. Growing up Cornish and Welsh, she developed a fascination for the folklore and mythology of both places, eventually leading to the creation of the Celtic Myths and Legends podcast. She has recently written and recorded a BBC Arts commissioned audio piece set in a fictional Cornish village where piskies, mermaids and giants exist as an everyday part of life. She likes to use folklore as a tool to explore contemporary issues in Cornwall and beyond.

Curator: Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.

Occult World, Art & Poetry of Marjorie Cameron – Dr. Manon Hedenborg White

“In early 1946, 24-year-old illustrator and artist Marjorie Cameron (1922–1995) met the autodidact rocket scientist and occultist John “Jack” Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952), one of the earliest followers of the religion Thelema, founded by the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). Parsons, who was magically trying to bring the Thelemic goddess Babalon to earthly incarnation, was struck by Cameron’s flaming red hair and dramatic looks, and the pair became lovers. Playing a key role in Parsons’ “Babalon Working”, Cameron soon began studying occultism under Parsons’ tutelage. Following Parsons’ accidental death in 1952, Cameron delved deeper into Thelema, magic, and visionary states, experimenting with peyote and seeking the guidance of her Holy Guardian Angel. She devoted the rest of her life to occultism as well as her art and poetry, which continuously explored themes of metamorphosis, eroticism, and death. As an icon of the Los Angeles artistic avantgarde, Cameron inspired filmmakers Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger, starring as the “Scarlet Woman” in the latter’s Crowley-inspired Inauguration of the Pleasure-Dome (1954). This talk will delve into Cameron’s art, poetry, and occultism, situating her as one of the most enigmatic mystical visionaries of the twentieth century.”

Manon Hedenborg White holds a PhD in the History of Religions from Uppsala University. She is the author of ”The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism” (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Eroticism and Surrealist Sewing Machines by Dr Abigail Susik – Zoom

Why were surrealists so preoccupied with the imagery of the sewing machine? Artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Óscar Domínguez, and Joseph Cornell devoted artworks in different mediums to the iconography of the sewing machine. Elisa Breton, Alan Glass, Maurice Henry, Konrad Klapheck, and others followed suit later in the 20th century. Certainly, surrealists were inspired by the infamous simile of the late-19th century writer Comte de Lautréamont in his experimental text, Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) (1868–69): a desired male lover is as handsome “as the chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table!” However, a closer examination of surrealist texts from the interwar period reveals that figures such as André Breton and Óscar Domínguez were also deeply interested in the sensational 19th century French medical discourse about the gynecological dangers of sewing machine work for women.

In this lecture devoted to surrealist sewing machines and the surrealist movement’s interest in female masturbation as a form of social-sexual resistance, art historian Abigail Susik will share research from her new book, Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, October 2021). Focusing on paintings and objects by the Canarian artist Óscar Domínguez, as well as other surrealist artworks from the 1930s, this talk will uncover some of the secrets of surrealism’s sewing machines and its other objects of self-pleasure and autoeroticism.

Abigail Susik

is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021). She has written numerous essays devoted to Surrealism and is co-editor of Absolutely Modern Mysteries: Surrealism and Film After 1945 (2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (2021). She is co-curator of the 2021–22 exhibition Alan Glass: Surrealism’s Secret at Leeds Arts University and also curated a major survey of Imogen Cunningham’s photographs at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR, in 2016. Susik is a founding board member of the International Study for the Society of Surrealism and co-organised its 2018 and 2019 conferences.

New Orleans Voodoo, A fully illustrated lecture by Dr Louise Fenton

When walking around the Vieux Carré, the French Quarter, in New Orleans, there is the sound of Jazz, steamy heat and Voodoo. In this lecture Dr Louise Fenton will take you on a journey through the history of Voodoo, explaining how it evolved in this part of the USA. She will introduce you to key figures such as Dr John and Marie Laveau, show you key sites both within the French Quarter and beyond, take a look at Voodoo dolls and how Voodoo permeates the very soul of New Orleans. This lecture will introduce some of the practitioners in the Quarter now and discuss how people incorporate Voodoo into their daily life. By exploring literature, tourist guides, shops and Museums Louise will also show how Voodoo has been represented and how the authentic Voodoo can be differentiated from the tourist version.

Dr Louise Fenton is a senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and a cultural and social historian. She teaches contextual studies in the School of Art and supervises PhD students; she is also an artist and illustrator and uses drawing within her research. Her interest in New Orleans Voodoo began when studying for her PhD which she was awarded from the University of Warwick in 2010. Most recently Louise has appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Beyond Belief’ and is a consultant on a new drama for BBC 3. Her research covers Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo and Witchcraft, especially curses and cursed objects.