Archives: Digital Events

Antone Minard: The Mari Lwyd: Death, Beer, and Poetry in Victorian Wales

Antone Minard: The Mari Lwyd: Death, Beer, and Poetry in Victorian Wales

The Mari Lwyd is a distinctively South Welsh tradition where guisers lead a figure made from the skull of a horse, challenging for their right to enter. Once moribund, the tradition has revived and become a popular symbol of Welsh culture. While the individual ingredients in the ritual are not unique to Wales, the combination of elements does reveal distinctively Welsh ideas about the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it. This talk will discuss the nineteenth-century evidence for the Mari Lwyd and its parallels elsewhere in Welsh tradition and the ritual’s meaning in traditional Wales.

Bio

Antone Minard holds a PhD in Folklore and Mythology, specializing in Welsh and Breton Folklore. He currently teaches Latin and Mythology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and researches the intersection between the supernatural, cultural world and the natural world of plants and animals.

Curated and Hosted by Dr Amy Hale

Dr Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS – The Story of The Snowshill Collection at the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle – Mark Hewitt

ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS – The Story of The Snowshill Collection at the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle

In the years before his death, the arts and crafts inspired architect, artist and collector Charles Paget Wade bequeathed both his lovingly restored Cotswold home, Snowshill Manor, and his collection of hand-crafted objects sourced from near and far to the National Trust. On his passing in 1956, the Trust approached Cecil Williamson, owner of the Museum of Witchcraft – then located in nearby Bourton-on-the-Water – to investigate a small attic space within Snowshill known as ‘the Witches Garret’. This tiny room housed Wade’s collection of items relating to witchcraft and the occult, which Williamson determined to be ‘especially dangerous’. Despite claiming to have burnt the items he removed from Snowshill, Williamson in fact did something altogether very different with them. Join Mark Hewitt who will delve into the personalities of both Wade and Williamson as well as exploring the tangled journey this collection has been on, examining why it is indeed an especially dangerous group of objects and the impact this collection may yet have on wider culture.

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Bio

Mark Hewitt is originally from Coventry, but lives and works in Chester, England. He has a degree in International History and has held a lifelong passion for the subject. Having been exposed to the supernatural documentary writing of Peter Underwood at a young age, it was not long before the subject of occultism became another perennial interest, blossoming into an eclectic magical practice informed by both early modern and contemporary methodologies. He is currently the custodian of the Chester Occult Society and has been published in both The Cauldron and the Enquiring Eye. His book ‘Especially Dangerous: Charles Paget Wade, Cecil Williamson and the Snowshill Collection’ is due to be published by Troy Books.

Curated and Hosted by Dr Louise Fenton

Dr Louise Fenton is a senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and a cultural and social historian and anthropologist. 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. Dr Fenton has been researching West African Vodoun, Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo and Witchcraft, especially curses and cursed objects for many years. She has appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Beyond Belief’ and is a consultant on a new drama for BBC 3.

An introduction to Thelemic Magick Workshop – Julian Vayne

An introduction to Thelemic Magick Workshop

2 week online workshop

19th & 26th March 2024 – 8:00- 9:30 pm GMT

Julian Vayne leads a two part workshop exploring the theory and practice of Crowley’s occultism. Participants will learn about the cultural context in which his approach called ‘Thelema’ developed, and will have the opportunity to try some of the accessible and powerful practices grounded in that tradition. Participants will learn about the ancient Egyptian deities that populate the Crowleyian cosmology, the methods of mediation and mind-control that Crowley suggested, and his approaches to contacting spirits including the Holy Guardian Angel. We’ll also see how Crowley’s work influenced modern esoteric systems ranging from Wicca to neo-Tantra and beyond. These workshops are be suitable for neophytes but may also offer experienced magi a new perspective on Crowley’s system.

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Bio:

Julian Vayne is a British independent scholar and author with over four decades of experience within esoteric culture: from Druidry to Chaos Magic, from indigenous Shamanism through to Freemasonry and Witchcraft.

Growing up in the Britain of punk and then rave culture Julian immersed himself in the philosophy and techniques of magic. His journey into group ritual practice began within the Western Esoteric Tradition when he was 16. Since then he has worked in ceremony with practitioners from many different lands and lineages. Julian is a senior member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros and widely recognized as one of Britain’s leading occultists.

The Beastly Prophet: Aleister Crowley and Thelemic Magick – Julian Vayne

The Beastly Prophet: Aleister Crowley and Thelemic Magick

Join Julian Vayne for this informed and accessible deep dive into the story of the most notorious occultist of the 20th century. Discover the backstory of Crowley the man, his role as prophet of a new age, and how his approach to ‘magick’ continues to influence occulture today. Ground breaking and maddening in equal measure, Crowley was an accomplished mounteer, poet, chess player as well as philosopher, prolific writer and founder of a new religion. This lecture will set Crowley in his historical context, trace his influences through later 20th century popular culture and beyond, as well as providing a clear introduction to his esoteric teachings.

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Bio

Julian Vayne is a British independent scholar and author with over four decades of experience within esoteric culture: from Druidry to Chaos Magic, from indigenous Shamanism through to Freemasonry and Witchcraft.

Growing up in the Britain of punk and then rave culture Julian immersed himself in the philosophy and techniques of magic. His journey into group ritual practice began within the Western Esoteric Tradition when he was 16. Since then he has worked in ceremony with practitioners from many different lands and lineages. Julian is a senior member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros and widely recognized as one of Britain’s leading occultists.

“Colors are Forces, the Signatures of the Forces”: Esoteric Theories of Color and Modern Art – Dr Amy Hale

“Colors are Forces, the Signatures of the Forces”: Esoteric Theories of Color and Modern Art

This lecture will explore the ways that esoteric understandings of color as an entity and force developed through Neoplatonic thought, Renaissance magic, the earliest sciences of optics and into modern esoteric and occult theory and practice. I will look at the role of color in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Theosophy and the work of Rudolph Steiner, perhaps providing greater insight into artists such as Hilma af Klint, Ithell Colquhoun, Ethel Le Rossignol and others who clearly saw color in a way that went far beyond symbol.

Bio:

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.

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Gog and Magog: the Giants in Guildhall – Zoom lecture with John Clark

John Clark, formerly curator of the medieval collections at the Museum of London, investigates the origins and significance of the two figures of giants, known as Gog and Magog, that stand in the medieval Guildhall in the City of London.

In recent years, London’s Lord Mayor’s Show each November has included two large figures made of basketwork, representing heavily-armed giants. They carry pennants with the names Gog and Magog. In the City’s medieval Guildhall there are two massive carved wooden statues of the same pair of giants, made in 1953 to replace earlier figures destroyed in the Blitz in December 1940. And two giants had welcomed Queen Elizabeth I on a visit to the City in 1559. But who were Gog and Magog, and how did they come to be regarded as symbols and guardians of London?

Our story begins in the 1130s, when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a fraudulent ‘History of the Kings of Britain’, which tells how Trojan settlers, fleeing after the destruction of Troy by the Greeks, arrived in an island then called Albion, and found it inhabited by giants, whose leader was ‘Goemagog’…

John Clark, for many years curator of the medieval collections at the Museum of London, has long been interested in byways of medieval history, and in particular the way ‘real’ history relates to and interacts with legends and folklore. He has a book in preparation on the subject of his previous lecture, which has the working title: The Green Children of Woolpit: Strangers in a Strange Land.

Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s folklore-strewn first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you miss or can’t attend the event live on the night – the next day we will send ticketholders a recording that will be valid for two weeks.

[Image: the two statues of Gog and Magog in London’s Guildhall.]

The world of the Bogomils. Looking for heresy in medieval eastern Europe – Andrew Roach – Zoom

Pop Bogomil and the Bulgarian forerunners of Cathar dualism’

The Bogomils are less well known than the Western European Cathars, but are arguably more influential on European spirituality. They emerged in tenth century Bulgaria, itself a new state recently converted to Christianity. Pop (priest) Bogomil and his followers took on some of the major challenges of Christianity. Where did evil come from? What was the role of prayer? What good were priests, monks and images? What was the role of women? The Bogomils tackled all of these questions and experimented with dualism. They were enthusiastic missionaries and provided leadership for the Western Cathars in Italy and Southern France.

Bio

Andrew Roach is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow. he is the author of The Devil’s World; heresy and society (2005) and co-editor (with James R. Simpson)of Heresy and the Making of European Culture (2014).

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Bedtime Stories: Mexican Folk Tales – a Matter of Life and Death – Mike Payton

Bedtime Stories: Mexican Folk Tales – a Matter of Life and Death.

In Mexican culture, death is not taboo, hidden away behind closed doors and polite euphemisms. La Catrina, the elegant skeletal Lady of Dead, finds a place in almost all Mexican houses, a reminder that death is always present in life – and on el dia de los muertos, the dead come back to commune with the living once more.

Unsurprisingly, the folk tales of Mexico often reflect this embrace of the other world, and storyteller Mike Payton brings some of his favourites out into the light in this odd, thought provoking collection: a chance meeting with Death on a mountain; a man who refuses to leave offerings for his dead parents and the consequences of this slight; and perhaps, if we can face it, a meeting with La Llorona, the crying ghost of the Mexican night.

Bio

Mike Payton is a Midlands based storyteller whose first love are the tales of Mexico. He lived and worked there for some years, sharing songs and stories with his friends and neighbours. He has performed for The British Museum and The Welcome Trust as part of their Day of the Dead celebrations. www.mikepayton.org

Curated and Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

A Short Course in Old Norse Cursing – Prof Bernt Thorvaldsen

A Short Course in Old Norse Cursing

Old Norse sagas and poetry offer a rich insight into various magical practices. These range from helpful runes and charms to darker spells meant to harm or control others. This lecture delves into the more shadowy side of Norse magic. A recurring theme in many tales is the blend of insulting words with magic, invoking a surprising variety of supernatural forces against the victim. Attendees will meet a sorceress fond of young men, an Icelandic poet in need of anger management, a menacing ghost, a grieving lady full of danger, and a messenger from an ancient deity, as well as their unfortunate victims. Through these tales, we’ll gain a better understanding of how the Old Norse saw the balance between individuals and society at a cosmological scale, and their strong belief in the power of spoken words.

Bio:

Bernt Ø. Thorvaldsen (b. 1976) is a professor of Norwegian at the University of South-Eastern Norway, where he teaches language and literature. Thorvaldsen is an expert on Old Norse culture, with Old Norse mythology and Edda poetry as his speciality.

Curated and 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

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Chilling ghost stories of the Scandinavian countries- Christmas edition – Lena Heide-Brennand

Chilling ghost stories of the Scandinavian countries – Christmas Edition

Ladies and gentlemen, gather ’round as the icy winds howl outside and the snowflakes dance upon the windows. Tonight, we delve into the mysterious depths of the Scandinavian folklore, where whispers of chilling ghost stories intertwine with the enchantment of the Christmas season. Brace yourselves for a journey beyond the realm of the living, where tales of restless spirits and ethereal apparitions lurk in the shadows, waiting to send shivers down your spine.

In the land of fjords and forests, where winter grips tightly onto the land, the Scandinavians have long embraced the tradition of sharing spine-tingling tales during the holidays. As the warmth of hearths and the glow of candlelight fill their homes, families huddle together, their breath visible in the frosty air, ready to experience the eerie wonders that lie hidden within the folklore.

Imagine, if you will, a yuletide evening in a remote Norwegian village. The air is heavy with the scent of pine and the sweet aroma of freshly baked gingerbread. The villagers gather in the ancient church, its timeworn walls whispering secrets of centuries past. As the clock strikes midnight, the silence is shattered by the haunting melody of a hymn, sung by voices unseen.

Or perhaps we find ourselves in a snow-covered Swedish manor, where generations of family have celebrated Christmas for centuries. In the flickering candlelight, shadows dance upon the walls, seemingly taking on a life of their own. Legends speak of a ghostly figure, clad in white, roaming the halls, its mournful cries echoing through the ages.

And let us not forget the ethereal spirits of Denmark, where ancient castles and cobblestoned streets hold secrets that time refuses to relinquish. On a moonlit night, when the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin, the restless souls of fallen warriors rise from their graves, seeking solace or revenge.

Tonight, my dear audience, we embark on a journey into the realms of the supernatural. We will explore the darkest corners of Scandinavian folklore, where tales of ghosts, apparitions, and spectral encounters intertwine with the joy and merriment of the holiday season. So gather your courage, for in this Christmas edition of chilling ghost stories, we shall venture into the unknown. But beware, for once these tales are unleashed, they may haunt your dreams long after the final embers of the Yule log have faded away.

Bio:

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

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day