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Spirit of Creativity – Zara Waldeback – Zoom

5. Spirit of Creativity

The fifth instalment of Fey’s Shadow Salon is where we’re putting our knowledge of the Unseen to the test. Having traversed the Unconscious, studied the psi and the psychedelic, and analyzed the ancient oracle, we’ll see how we can practically and personally channel the Unseen via the creative process.

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Inspiration creates Life. In many languages, including English, the word “inspiration” relates to being breathed upon by the Spirits, a process that animates the moment. There are many ways to be inspired, and in this talk, you will experience ways to listen and relate to creativity beyond the human self.

To engage with creative processes – whether artistic, scientific or structural – is to engage with life. It can help us to remember that there is more to a project than our own minds see and what we think we know. Opening beyond our human self, our senses become alive and attuned and creativity becomes both a living process and a process aligned with life. We become willing and wise partners, knowing there is a bigger picture waiting to be revealed, as we learn to listen and open ourselves to genius (stemming from “Genie” or “Jinni”, a guardian deity or Spirit who guides and governs us through life).

When we connect with Spirits and invite them to be a conscious part of creation, a greater story comes to life. It becomes a vibrant process, starting with a question and a meeting, then weaving through the unchartered territories of imagination, that meeting place between human and unseen, where inspiration takes us beyond our own ideas.

In the animistic worldview, stories are alive and inspirited. They are containers of sacred wisdom and living meaning. Stories from Nature can allow us to listen to voices beyond the human and live in a way that respects all life. When we are willing to listen with connection rather than control, Stories help us to find our way.

This talk will be partly experiential and include writing and meditative exercises. Please bring pen and paper, a candle and matches.

Speaker Bio

Zara Waldeback began as a screenwriter, filmmaker and teacher, specialising in creativity. Born in Sweden, she lived for 30 years in the UK, working as Senior Lecturer at London College of Music and Media. She established an MA in Creative Screenwriting and researched music and sound as the unconscious of cinema. She has published two books about writing: Writing for the Screen and The Creative Screenwriter.

In 2006 she stepped consciously onto a spiritual path and has for over 20 years been actively exploring how creativity and Spirit can dance with each other. In 2022, she developed the Writing with Soul programme, to offer simple inspiring ways for people without a Spirit practice to learn to listen to hidden voices, inside and out. Over the years she has facilitated many events exploring the intersection between the unseen and human words, such as Stories of the Earth at Schumacher College, Spirit fairy tales at a shamanic conference in Dorset, animistic presentations for the Earth Rights international conference in Sweden, and ceremonies for Aurora Nature and Spirit conferences in Italy.

Together with her partner Jonathan Horwitz of Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies, she runs Åsbacka, a small retreat center in southern Sweden. Here they teach shamanism both in person and online. She is also engaged in the Rights of Nature movement, encouraging people to listen to the Living World. She offers her services as creative mentor for those who want to bring the Voices of more-than-human Nature to human ears, and help us remember that we are all in this together.

LINKS: https://www.shamanism.dk/about-zara and https://www.writingwithsoul.org/

Hosted and Curated by:

Fey, a mediator between the otherworldly and the mundane. Outside of the salon (Ada Kałużna), a researcher with interest in philosophy of mind, psychedelic experience and the extraordinary Past scientific officer at the Beckley Foundation. Community-builder and traveler.

LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ada_Kaluzna2

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Fey’s Shadow Salon – a lecture series where we explore the elusive, chart the intangible, and investigate the invisible. Come around as we initiate the first season of the Salon, the Study of the Unseen, on the eclipse of 3rd March and stay for the ride through labyrinths of the human psyche, from the seven circles of the Jungian unconscious, to the psychedelic fountains of creativity, to the tall peaks of imagination where the ancient Spirits dwell.

1. “Books of Visions”: Jung, Dante, and the Making of the Red Book – 3 Mar 2026

2. Psychedelics as Catalysts of Creativity – 30 April 2026

3. Dreams of Death: Navigating States of Dazzling Darkness – 14 May 2026

4. The I Ching Oracle – 28 May 2026

5. Spirit of Creativity – 28 July 2026

Live from Norway: Celebrate the 17th of May! – Live Stream with Lena Brennand

Live from Norway: Celebrate the 17th of May! Join us for a joyful live-stream celebration of Norway’s Constitution Day (17. mai) — a day filled with music, flags, laughter, and the unmistakable spirit of Norwegian tradition.

From the sound of marching bands and children’s parades to the sight of bunads, waving flags, and festive streets, this special broadcast invites you to experience the heart of Norway’s most beloved national celebration — wherever you are in the world.

Expect stories about the history and meaning of 17. mai, glimpses of the celebrations across Norway, traditional songs, and the warm atmosphere that makes this day so unique. Whether you are Norwegian, have Norwegian roots, or simply love Nordic culture, this livestream will bring the celebration straight to you.

What to expect

A look at Norway’s most cherished national traditions
Music, flags, and festive atmosphere
Stories from Norwegian history and culture
A chance to celebrate together across borders

So put on something red, white, and blue, pour yourself a cup of coffee (or perhaps a glass of bubbly), and join us as we celebrate Norway’s birthday — live!

Hurra for 17. mai!

Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

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Magic mushrooms – Robert Dickins – Zoom

Magic Mushrooms

In this talk, Robert Dickins explores the history of Psilocybe mushroom picking in Britain and the events that eventually led to their change in legal status in 2005. Beginning with the accidental ‘poisonings’ of the nineteenth century, and the slow systemization of the Liberty Cap by mycologists, he describes the post-war history of Psilocybe pickers emerging from obscure origins. Including, where and how knowledge spread, scientific research, pitched battles with farmers in fields, and the emergence of grow kits, all of which is set against the many methods the authorities used in order to shut down the nascent mushroom culture in Britain.

Speaker Bio:

Robert Dickins, PhD, is a historian and publisher, whose works examines the social and literary history of psychoactive substances and altered states of experience. He is the author of Cobweb of Trips: A Literary History of Psychedelics (2024) and Psilocybe Pickers: A Short History of Bemushroomed Britons (2025), and is currently researching the connection between tripping and gardens for a forthcoming book project.

Curated & Hosted by:

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The Mystic Wizard of Oz – John Bucher – Zoom

The Mystic Wizard of Oz

While many know The Wizard of Oz as a work of noted literature and a classic of the American film canon, few are familiar with its mythological significance. Creator, L. Frank Baum was involved with the burgeoning Theosophy movement of the era and included numerous symbols, motifs, and themes in his story that also found their way into the film. Heavily influenced by ancient wisdom traditions, The Wizard of Oz functions as a portal into a world of esoteric wonder.

Speaker Bio:

John Bucher is an American mythologist, historian, and award-winning public speaker specialising in comparative mythology, folklore, and the enduring power of ancient stories in the modern world. With a background in both history and education, he is particularly known for his ability to bring mythic traditions vividly to life for contemporary audiences.

John’s work explores how myths function as cultural technologies — shaping identity, morality, and collective imagination across time. His research and lectures range widely, encompassing Greek and Roman mythology, Norse and Celtic traditions, folk belief, ritual practice, and the survival of mythic archetypes in modern literature, film, and popular culture.

An engaging and highly sought-after speaker, John Bucher has lectured internationally at universities, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions, where his talks are celebrated for their clarity, humour, and narrative richness. He is also the author of several books on mythology and folklore, written with both scholarly insight and an accessible, story-driven style.

At the heart of his work is a conviction that myths are not relics of the past but living frameworks through which humans continue to understand fear, wonder, transformation, and meaning. Through teaching, writing, and public engagement, John Bucher invites audiences to rediscover mythology not as distant legend, but as a vibrant and vital force still shaping our world today.

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Comic Books as Modern Mythology – John Bucher – Zoom

Comic Books as Modern Mythology

Comic books and graphic novels have become significant cultural artifacts that reflect, influence, and shape modern society’s myths, values, and collective psyche. From their roots in the early 20th century to their evolution into a diverse and complex medium that addresses a broad range of themes — the mythic underpinnings of comics have evolved from being subtextual to textual.

Speaker Bio:

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Bestiary of Christian Saints: When Holiness Takes Strange Shapes – Sergei Zotov – Zoom

Bestiary of Christian Saints: When Holiness Takes Strange Shapes

This lecture explores how medieval Christian art repeatedly crossed the boundarybetween the sacred and the monstrous, the bestial, and the unsettlingly grotesque. Long before modern debates about blasphemy and provocation, artists freely depicted holy figures as monstrous, hybrid, or disturbingly bodily: Christ as a Lamb with seven eyes, Moses with giant horns, saints with the heads of lions, horses, bulls, or eagles, angels as multi-faced chimeras, sacred scenes now precepted as being with shocking details. Far from being marginal curiosities, these images belonged to the core visual language of medieval Christianity and were deeply embedded in theology and devotion.

By tracing examples from manuscripts, sculpture, and church frescoes, the lecture asks why monstrosity was not a threat to holiness but one of its most powerful tools. We will see how medieval viewers understood these “deviant” images not as mockery, but as ways to think the unthinkable: divine transcendence, incarnation, suffering, and salvation. In doing so, the talk challenges modern assumptions about religious imagery, censorship, and offence – and shows that the Middle Ages were far stranger, freer, and more visually radical than we tend to imagine.

Speaker Bio:

Sergei Zotov is a historian of science and visual culture specialising in alchemy, magic, and iconography in medieval and early modern Europe (c. 1400–1800). He received his doctorate from the University of Warwick and is currently an Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute (University of London). His research has been supported by major international fellowships held in Baltimore, Glasgow, Berlin, Gotha, Wolfenbüttel, and Überlingen, and has involved extensive archival work across more than 100 collections worldwide. Sergei has published in leading journals, including Nuncius and the British Journal for the History of Science, and is the author of five books on early modern iconography, two of which have received prestigious prizes and others shortlisted for major awards.

Curated & Hosted by:

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Votive World: Wax Testicles, Clay Wombs, and Kidney Stones in European Churches – Sergei Zotov – Zoom

Votive World: Wax Testicles, Clay Wombs, and Kidney Stones in European Churches

Early modern churches were not only places of worship — they were also sites of exchange with the divine. People promised a gift in return for healing, survival, or luck, and then paid their debt in objects: money, wax, metal, cloth, chains, crutches, bullets, teeth, bladder stones — and, strikingly often, anatomical models. You still could walk into a major pilgrimage shrine and find it lined with wax eyes and legs, silver hearts, tiny bodies, infants, breasts, hands, or explicitly intimate offerings made for urinary problems, hernias, infertility, and childbirth.

This lecture reconstructs the ex-voto tradition as a material history of fear, pain, and recovery. We will follow how a vow could become an action — pilgrimage, penance, public testimony — and how miracles were recorded not only in written “miracle books”, but also in things themselves: bandages, extracted objects, swallowed items returned by the body, or a stone displayed beside the votive image as physical proof. Why was wax so powerful — and in rural economies, sometimes as good as cash? Why did some shrines begin to resemble anatomical theatres or proto-museums, accumulating not only devotional gifts but also “wonders of nature”: crocodiles under vaults, whale bones, meteorites, “unicorn horns”, and other mirabilia that made the church feel like a cabinet of curiosities. And finally — why did reformers, inspectors, and state authorities repeatedly try to clean these spaces up, even when the objects were clearly doing the work of belief? We will go together on an illustrated tour through Europe’s most visceral archive of devotion.

Speaker Bio:

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The Weirdest Orthodox Icons: Monstrosity, Folk Magic, and Mysticism Against The Canon – Sergei Zotov – Zoom

The Weirdest Orthodox Icons: Monstrosity, Folk Magic, and Mysticism Against The Canon

Orthodox icons are usually associated with strict canons, solemn beauty, and timeless repetition. This lecture reveals a very different side of Orthodox visual culture by exploring some of its most striking, disturbing, and unexpected images: dog-headed saints, three-handed Virgins, six-armed Trinities, mystical labyrinths, folk icons used for healing or protection, and even modern icons featuring tanks, nuclear reactors, smartphones, and footballers. Drawing on examples from Greece, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, the lecture shows how Orthodox imagery absorbed folklore, mysticism, popular belief, and contemporary life in ways that are still largely unknown outside specialist circles.

Rather than treating these images as mere curiosities or deviations from “canon”, the lecture argues that they expose how Orthodoxy functioned as a lived visual culture. Icons operated not only as objects of worship, but also as tools for meditation, divination, moral testing, and negotiating fear, illness, and death. By tracing how church authorities periodically attempted — and largely failed — to regulate this visual imagination, the lecture reconsiders Orthodox iconography as a dynamic field where theology, folk belief, politics, and everyday experience constantly collided.

Speaker Bio:

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The Chimeric Imagination: From Japanese Shrines to P.T. Barnum – May Ho – Zoom

The Chimeric Imagination: From Japanese Shrines to P.T. Barnum

The Lens: Archaeology & The Biography of Objects

Drawing on May’s background in Applied Landscape Archaeology, this session treats the Fiji Mermaid not as a hoax, but as an artefact with a complex stratigraphy of meaning. We begin in Edo-period Japan, analysing the ‘Gaff’ through the lens of yōkai folklore and spiritual protection, before following its migration to the West. May will deconstruct how P.T. Barnum commodified ‘wonder’, transforming a sacred talisman into a work of the ‘experience economy’. We will ask: How does the museum display’s context change an object’s ontological status

Speaker Bio:

May Ho is an interdisciplinary researcher whose research integrates landscape archaeology, business management, and sustainability. She holds an MSc in Applied Landscape Archaeology (Distinction) from the University of Oxford and an MA in Managing Archaeological Sites (Distinction) from University College London. This academic background underpins her critical analysis of artefact biography, cultural stratigraphy, and spatial contexts.

Curated & Hosted By:

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On Collecting as a Psychological Condition – Viktor Wynd – Zoom

On Collecting as a Psychological Condition

A Live Online Conversation with Viktor Wynd and Lena Heide-Brennand

In this newly reimagined online event, Viktor Wynd turns his formidable curiosity back upon the question that has shaped his life: what does it mean to collect — and when does collecting become a condition rather than a choice?

Presented as a lively conversation rather than a solitary lecture, the evening opens Wynd’s extraordinary world of objects to dialogue and audience Q&A. His collections range from natural history to relics of the dead, from surrealist masterpieces to children’s toys, from ethnographica to occult art, orchids, ferns, spirit drawings, extinct birds, tropical fish, magic stones, mammoth bones — and the improbable, the beautiful, and the faintly disturbing in between.

A dodo’s bone beside an ostrich skeleton.

An Asmat death mask beside a painting by Leonora Carrington.

A giant crab sharing psychic space with thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of other curiosities.

But spectacle is only the surface.

Beneath the accumulation lies a more disquieting inquiry:

Why do some individuals experience possession not as pleasure but as necessity?

What inner architecture compels the acquisition of one more relic, one more fragment, one more charged object?

Is collecting preservation, devotion, taxonomy — or something closer to obsession?

Together, Wynd and Heide-Brennand will explore collecting as ritual practice, cabinet theatre, existential strategy, and psychological terrain. They will question whether the cabinet of curiosity is a proto-museum, an anti-museum, or a deeply personal cosmology constructed against chaos.

Expect intellectual mischief, rigorous thought, eccentric digressions, and an engaged audience Q&A.

Some people collect things.

Some people create worlds.

Speaker Bio:

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.

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