Since her death in 2011, the legendary Surrealist Leonora Carrington has been reconstructed and reinvented many times over. In his new book, Gabriel Weisz Carrington draws on remembered conversations and events to demythologise his mother, revealing the woman and the artist behind the iconic persona. He travels between Leonora’s native England and adopted homeland of Mexico, making stops in New York and Paris and meeting some of the remarkable figures she associated with, from Max Ernst and André Breton to Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. At the same time, he strives to depict a complex and very real Surrealist creator, exploring Leonora not simply in relation to her romantic partners or social milieus but as the artist she always was. A textured portrait emerges from conversations, memories, stories and Leonora’s engagement with the books that she read. Using the act of writing to process and understand the death of his mother, the author has produced a moving and fascinating account of life, art, love and loss.
Leonora Carrington is one of Viktor Wynd’s most enduring obsessions, her work is in his museum and surrounds him at home.
These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation – if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also much appreciated. Thank you for your support.
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Please note this lecture will not be recorded
Join Per Faxneld, author of the award-winning book “Satanic Feminism” (Oxford University Press, 2017), to learn about how feminists around the year 1900 used satanic symbolism as a strategic tool. Discover how these women weaponized and inverted misogynistic notions of Eve as the Devil’s chosen one, making a heroine of her, Lilith, and witches to combat conservative Christian oppressors. The talk explores various forms of Satanic feminism appearing at the crossroads of feminism, art, occultism, and progressive politics. We will see colourful examples from literature, painting, occult texts, feminist tracts, and even jewellery design. The cast of spectacular characters include occult-inspired suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her guru the theosophist H.P. Blavatsky, Luciferian lesbian poet Renée Vivien, and Mary MacLane of Butte, Montana, who wanted to marry the Devil to become free of all societal regulation of women.
Per Faxneld is Associate Professor in History of Religions at Södertörn University (Stockholm), and a devotee of weird antiques, ominous music, and sinister sartorialism. He is the author of three monographs, two edited volumes, and numerous articles on Satanism, occultism, and esoteric art. In 2020, Faxneld made his literary debut with “Offerträdet” (“The Tree of Sacrifice”), an illustrated collection of folk horror tales set in 19th-century northern Sweden.
A World on The Wing – Bird Migration with Scott Weidensaul
Bird migration remains perhaps the most singularly compelling natural phenomenon in the world. Nothing else combines its global sweep with its inherent ability to engender wonder and excitement.
The past two decades have seen an explosion in our understanding of the almost unfathomable feats of endurance and complexity involved in bird migration – yet the science that informs these majestic journeys is still relatively in its infancy.
Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted writer and ornithologist Scott Weidensaul is at the forefront of this cutting-edge research, and he will talk about some of the most remarkable flights undertaken by birds around the world.
His own voyage of discovery sees him sail through the storm-wracked waters of the Bering Sea; encounter gunners and trappers in the Mediterranean; and visit a forgotten corner of northeast India, where former headhunters have turned one of the grimmest stories of migratory crisis into an unprecedented conservation success.
As our world comes increasingly under threat from the effects of climate change, these ecological miracles may provide an invaluable guide to a more sustainable future for ourselves. This is the rousing and reverent story of the billions of birds that, despite the numerous obstacles we have placed in their path, continue to head with hope to the far horizon.
Scott Weidensaul is one of the most respected natural history writers in the country. Among the more than 30 books he’s written are Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is a contributing editor to Audubon Magazine, and a columnist for Bird Watcher’s Digest. Weidensaul is an active field researcher specializing in bird migration. He is a co-director of Project Owlnet and directs Project SNOWstorm. He has been given numerous awards including the Audubon Award for Environmental Writing and was recently honored as a prestigious elective member of the American Ornithologists’ Union. Weidensaul is a highly sought-after speaker at universities, museums and birding festivals.
Let The Apothecary’s Daughter take you on a journey through a lover’s garden, unpicking a carefully curated selection of plants that will soothe a broken heart, alleviate nerves on a blind date or increase fire in the loins. She will offer an illustrated lecture including old favourites like Rose, native gems like Hawthorn, and old legends like Mandrake, and hope that this will make you fall in love all over again with the natural wonders that surround us. You may wish to include these in your potions, but please do so at your own risk.
Speaker: Maria Vlotides completed a degree in Herbal Medicine at the University of Westminster in 2007 and started her life as a herbalist as The Apothecary’s Daughter. Having initially read PPE at Oxford University during the dark ages, she found herself hanging out with increasing regularity at the University’s Botanical Garden, fascinated by plant beds and the magic held within leaves and buds. She had a clinical practice until 2016 and has since continued to focus on teaching and writing. Her book Pharmapoetica in collaboration with poet and author Chris McCabe was nominated for the Ted Hughes Award in 2013. www.the-apothecarys-daughter.com.
Join Ronald Hutton for an evening devoted to the main form of male divinity found in modern Paganism: the horned god of nature and of fertility. The questions to be answered in it are why this particular expression of the divine masculine came to dominate in contemporary Pagan tradition, and how and when it did so. The result is a tour through the work of poets, novelists and magicians over the past two hundred years, following the hoofprints of the god from remote antiquity through all manifestations of the modern. In the process we encounter him as protector, liberator and lover.
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.
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Cornwall has a reputation as a place where magic exists just under the surface. Its history includes a tapestry of Druids, witches and Arthurian legend, set amidst dramatic, sweeping, landscapes and mysterious stone monuments. Today it is a modern Celtic Otherworld that is both genuinely potent and sometimes exploited. This talk will explore the historical development of magical Cornwall in the cultural imagination. We will reach back to its early status as a liminal setting for medieval Continental legend, explore the antiquarian and folklore studies of Cornwall emerging alongside early modern Celtic identities, and finally look at how post-industrial tourism has shaped perceptions of a Cornwall that is lost in time.
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.
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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.
There is a web of sites around the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, that are often seen as places where the veil between the worlds is thin. The waterfall at Nectan’s Glen, the carved labyrinths at Rocky Valley, and the memorial stone to Joan Wytte, reputed nineteenth century Bodmin witch, where genius loci (spirits of place) dwell. One way of thinking about experiences at these sites is to think of the uncanny – the prickle on the back of the neck, the feeling of being watched by other-than-human persons, the sense of time slippage or dislocation from the everyday. Rather than see these feelings of the uncanny triggered by primal fears, I use this map of a magical Cornwall to think about how the uncanny may also be an invitation – although not necessarily benign – towards encounters with animated and live otherworlds.
Speaker: Dr Helen Cornish (Anthropologist, Goldsmiths): I have carried out anthropological fieldwork with British witches and Pagans on histories of modern witchcraft since 2000. Most of my research has been in Sussex and at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. I am completing a book that looks at how witchcraft histories have been negotiated over the last twenty years. Some photos of the Cornish sites can currently be found at the Shared Sacred Landscapes online exhibition at https://www.sharedsacred.com/helen-cornish.html
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.
This winter let Viktor Wynd share a nightcap with you, tuck you into bed and tell you Fairy Tales to send you into a deep sleep of strange dreams. In this first session Mr.Wynd will tell you some of his very favourite fairy tales from Ireland, featuring a talking corpse, a Merrow (which is very similar to a mermaid, but not at all the same), the good people (who may be fairies, and may not be that good), a changeling child (or possibly two) and the very devil himself.
Viktor Wynd, proprietor of London’s eponymous (nay infamous) Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History has spent the last twenty five years telling stories to audiences across the globe. Fascinated by traditional fairy tales his repetoire includes tales from The Brothers Grimm, The Arabian Nights, Scandinavia, Russia, Italy, France, Irieland, Africa, Papua New Guinea & North America – so far.
Mr.Wynd will be drinking Malmsey Wine (Madeira) this Sunday evening and strongly recommends you do too – or perhaps a glass of Marsala Wine or even Whiskey. That said if you would rather have a cup of cocoa or chamomile tea that would also no doubt be delightful, though you may find that not only will an alcoholic drink help you enjoy the stories, but, certainly if you ahve enough, help you to slip into a deep sleep as well
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
This winter let Sam Lee & Viktor Wynd share a nightcap with you, tuck you into bed tell you Fairy Tales, sing you ballads and a sweet lullaby to send you into a deep sleep of strange dreams.
Let Viktor Wynd share a nightcap with you, tuck you into bed and tell you Fairy Tales to send you into a deep sleep of strange dreams. Be warned these are not the Ladybird or Disney verisons and may not be suitable for the tenderist ears.
This evening Mr.Wynd will choose some of his favourite tales, Princesses will suffer strange enchantments, evil stepmothers will plot and scheme, shapes will change, magic, madness and evil beasts galore.
Viktor Wynd, proprietor of London’s eponymous (nay infamous) Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History has spent the last twenty five years telling stories to audiences across the globe. Fascinated by traditional fairy tales his repetoire includes tales from The Brothers Grimm, The Arabian Nights, Scandinavia, Russia, Italy, France, Ireland, Africa, Papua New Guinea & North America – so far.
