Archives: Digital Events

Myrddin – the Welsh Merlin by Dr Mark Williams

Myrddin – the Welsh Merlin – 28 Nov 2022

Everyone thinks they know Arthur’s enchanter; this lecture makes the case that we do not know the Welsh figure who lies behind him nearly so well. This is Myrddin, not a wizard but a wildman and forest-dwelling prophet. We look at some early Welsh poems (one spoken by Myrddin to his pet piglet) and some high medieval texts which let us glimpse the lost Celtic saga of Merlin.

Reading – none

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

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

Finn mac Cumaill / Finn mac Cool by Dr Mark Williams

Finn mac Cumaill / Finn mac Cool – 9 Oct 2022

Finn is the other great hero of medieval Ireland – a complex figure leading a band of warriors and hunters known as the Fíanna. They are the subject of some of the most complex and beautiful literature that has survived from medieval Ireland, and we will be following their adventures and those of the Lord Finn tonight. Finally we will look at the afterlife of Finn – including an influential eighteenth century literary fraud, James Macpherson’s Ossianic prose-poems, which were purportedly written by Finn’s son Oisín.

Reading: Tales of the Elders of Ireland, trans. Ann Dooley and Harry Roe

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

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

Cú Chulainn by Dr Mark Williams

Cú Chulainn by Dr Mark Williams – 6 Sep 2022

This week we turn to the greatest of Irish heroes, who defends the entirely of Ulster single-handedly aged only seventeen. We look at the stories about him, including the great epic of medieval Ireland, the Táin, and at the complex women in his life—his wife, Emer, his fairy lover Fand, and the voracious Queen Medb or Maeve. Finally we turn to the ways in which Cú Chulainn was reimagined as a nationalist symbol at turn of the 20th century.

Reading: The Táin, trans. Ciaran Carson

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

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

Taliesin by Dr Mark Williams

Taliesin by Dr Mark Williams – 12 July 2022

Taliesin is the super-poet of Welsh tradition, the shapeshifting bard who has been everywhere and in everything. He knows creation from the inside. But the kernel of this mythological figure was a historical person, some of whose poems, composed in Old Welsh, survive. We look today at how the legend of Taliesin grew, paradoxically becoming more pagan and mythological as time went on.

Reading: The Book of Taliesin, trans. Rowan Williams and Gwyneth Lewis

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

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

Branwen, daughter of Llyr by Dr Mark Williams

Branwen, daughter of Llyr by Dr Mark Williams – 23 May 2022

This talk introduces the most tragic of Welsh heroines, whose story is found in the second of the Welsh Four Branches of the Mabinogi, composed around 1100AD. A British princess who becomes the wife of the King of Ireland, she finds herself at the centre of disaster as the two islands descend into a bloodthirsty and genocidal war, with her brother and her husband fighting on opposite sides.

Reading: Branwen, Daughter of Llyr/The Second Branch in The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davies.

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

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

Lurking at the Threshold: Finding Enchantment Beyond Belief by Peter Bebergal

Lurking at the Threshold: Finding Enchantment Beyond Belief

The challenge of writing about the supernatural and the occult is that one is assumed either to be a believer or a debunker. Peter Bebergal examines how authentic states of enchantment can exist beyond the debate of true or false. Bebergal has learned that allowing ourselves to exist–if only momentarily–in a state of enchantment is a much more interesting place to be. In the ambiguous and the liminal deep wells of meaning can be found and is where the use of magic is an important tool to activate the imagination. Using music, film clips, and images, this course will reveal how at the threshold is the possibility of enchantment as a creative and psychological experience that is immune to religious fundamentalism and hardened atheism.

Bio

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. He is the author most recently of Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll and is the editor of the sword and sorcery anthology Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of D&D. His essays have appeared in NewYorker.com, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement and Boing Boing. Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School, and lives in Cambridge.

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Witch-bottles from the 17th–20th Century – a Zoom talk with Brian Hoggard

Witch-bottles first appear in the archaeological record in the third quarter of the 17th Century. Most have been recovered from locations in buildings where they were originally concealed. The evidence within these bottles and their context within a building provides us with many clues about how they were used and thought to work. There are also 17th-Century documents which describe a method of boiling or heating bottles with urine and pins.

This illustrated Zoom talk will explore both types of evidence to unpick what might have really been going on with these practices.

Brian Hoggard has been studying history, archaeology and folk beliefs since his teens; his Twitter account enigmatically states that he has been a ‘Researcher of strange things found in walls and under floors since 1999…’ Brian’s undergraduate dissertation focused on folk beliefs and witchcraft, when he noticed there was a huge amount of further work that could be done to explore the archaeology of witchcraft. At that point his research escalated into a major project which has culminated in the publication of Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft (Berghahn 2019).

For more information see: www.apotropaios.co.uk

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell 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 first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize.

For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

The Cinematic Zombie: 1930 – 1969 by Dr Louise Fenton

Zombie. The word alone recalls images of shuffling, decaying corpses, of creatures seeking human flesh, of the living dead. Dr Louise Fenton will examine how the zombie originated in the films of the Golden Age of Hollywood. In early films the zombie was firmly in a Haitian and Caribbean context, a benign creature created to serve. The zombie then fell into decline during the 1950s, however, Louise will show examples of how it was represented during this time and how the zombie began to be detached from its cultural origins. It was then in the 1960s that the zombie became the flesh-eating creature that we are more familiar with today. Louise will discuss the zombie in films such as White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Plague of the Zombies (1966) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

This is a fully illustrated talk with film clips.

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.

 

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

Radical Dreams and Chicago Surrealism: A Conversation with Penelope Rosemont, Abigail Susik, and Elliott H. King

Celebrating the publication of the volume of essays Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance from Penn State University Press in March of this year, editors Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik host a discussion with legendary activist and Chicago surrealist, Penelope Rosemont. The conversation will cover topics relevant to the display of Chicago surrealist pamphlets and posters at the recent “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibition at the Tate Modern through August, and attendees will have the chance to pose plenty of questions about surrealism past and present.

Penelope Rosemont was welcomed into the Paris group by André Breton in 1966, and she coauthored the essay, “Surrealism in the U.S.,” which appeared in the Paris-based surrealist journal L’Archibras. Artist, writer, and publisher, her work was included by Arturo Schwarz in the 1986 Venice Biennale “Arts & Alchemy” presentation. Her books include Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (University of Texas Press); Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism Rebel Worker, SDS & the Seven Cities of Cibola (Kerr); and Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields (City Lights).

Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021). She is co-editor of Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021), and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2021). She is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. https://willamette.edu/undergraduate/arth/faculty/susik/index.html

Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. www.spiralspecs.com

Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09135-8.html

Lucid Dreaming Workshop with Sarah Janes

4 week online course

May 3, 10, 17 & 24 2022 7:00- 8:30 pm GMT

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Each session includes a short hypnagogic meditation of 25 minutes.

Temple Sleep: Ancient Dream Oracles and Sleep Medicine

How can a dream be medicine? How can a dream reveal the future?

In ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, it was thought that an auspicious dream could offer an opportunity to receive divine and miraculous healing. Entire sanctuaries and temple complexes were dedicated to dream space, sleep medicine and oneiric oracles. These centres functioned somewhat like a religious or spiritual spa and healing was usually delivered in a dream by beatific appearance or transcendent touch of a god or goddess.

The Greek god Asklepios is probably the most famous dream physician and you might imagine him as a sort of ancient Greek Wim Hof figure, dunking willing supplicants into chill spring water and promoting other immune-boosting tactics such as emotional catharsis through art, movement and song, fasting and abstinence from sex. Archaeological evidence for over 300 Asklepions (Sleep Sanctuaries dedicated to Asklepios) have been found across the vast territory of Hellenistic Greece. There is even at least one Sleep Temple in the UK – at Lydney Park in the Forest of Dean. This is a British-Romano temple dedicated to the Celtic deity Nodens (of the Silver Hand). Archaeologist Tessa Wheeler and her husband Mortimer, excavated the site with assistance from a young JRR Tolkien who, inspired by the folklore and discoveries of the dig, went on to weave these influences into Lord of the Rings.

In this session we will explore the roots of dream medicine culture in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, in ancient rituals of astral irradiation, dream divination and miracle-making and the divine celestial influence of night time oracles. We will explore the mechanisms of homeostasis in sleep and how these processes might really be enhanced in episodes of lucidity to work as potent placebo. Those familiar with lucid dreaming will know the feelings of bliss and ecstasy lucid dreaming is able to produce – could these experiences, in and of themselves, be part of a healing event? We all know what it feels like to wake up energised and inspired from a wonderful dream, and we all know the residual feeling of gloom that can seep into our day from a nightmare. How can these ancient dream techniques teach us more about our potential for self-healing, personal growth and the divine reality of nature. How can this ancient wisdom empower us to get the maximum benefit from our night-time slumber?

Dream Magic: Dream Incubation, Spells and Interpretation

Words and dreams are magical thought forms

In the ancient world, magic was often the preserve of the literati. Words and stories can create a feedback system with dreams, they create and record dream content. Looking at ancient dream analysis, we see that the preoccupation of ancient oneiromancers was always ‘the future’. This alone is an interesting concept to philosophise about. That dreams were clear visions of a yet to unfold series of events is rarely, if ever, attested. That they contained signposts, symbols, codes and language clues was much more case. In a sense, dream incubation is a sort of dream programming – using words and prescribed rituals to ensure a desired dream event or revelation. This can be achieved through the mere act of sleeping in a temple (the sacred sanctuary) of the particular god you’d like to dream with, or by making a special phylactery to charm favour from the desired entity.

Dream interpretation in ancient Egypt relied heavily on wordplay and visual/phonetic puns. As the hieroglyphs are made up of many images, punning and wordplay in the ancient Egyptian language has multiple dimensions.

In this session we will explore the dream story stelae of ancient Egypt – these are frequently interpreted as propaganda texts to prop up a royal claim. They also reiterate the importance of the dream as a narrative device and they establish the dream as a reliable hotline to the gods. We shall also look at the dream spells of the Greek Magical Papyri as well as dream interpretation and prognostic texts.

How can we work with words to improve our own dream experiences and recall of them? Reading and writing are excellent dream tools. We will explore the most effective ways to influence dream content, record it and make sense of it in our own ‘Night Book’.

A Wave in The Ocean of Everything: Mastering Lucidity in Dreams

Are you dreaming now?

How can you be sure? Is this a dream? There are many simple and effective techniques that can encourage more regular and reliable episodes of lucidity. If you have never had a lucid dream before it is likely quite possible that you still can, you just need to experiment and identify what works for you. A lucid dream could occur spontaneously, or you might feel that you have to work really hard to attain it.

In this session we will explore some of the most effective and popular techniques for inducing lucidity including: Wake Back to Bed, Wake Induced, Mnemonic Induction, Dream Induced, Body Scanning or Sense Initiated, Dream Journalling, Triggers, Sleep Hypnosis and Personal Mythology.

How can the ancient wisdom of dream incubation and sleep temples be applied to the contemporary dreamer about town?

Future Visions: Precognitive Dreams, Sleep Tech and Telepathic Experiments

What does the future hold for dreams?

We are a chronically sleep and dream deprived culture. We need sleep and we seem to need dreams for healthy imaginal and emotional catharsis. Our sympathetic nervous system has a chance to relax in sleep, as our body goes through its deepest processes of homeostasis. Sleep offers us the opportunity to reset, rebalance and detoxify. Without it, we wither and die. Healthy circadian rhythms are the blueprint and fingerprint of wellness.

To this end, sleep is something of great interest to those studying longevity and those who are exponents of transhumanism. Many attempts have been made to hack and enhance dreaming. In this session we will explore the emerging world of dream technology, supplementation in the form of nootropics and the fascinating scientific research that is trying to enter the world of the dreamer and extract their most intimate and unconscious fantasies. Making sense of garbled dream imaginings, might we be returning to the oracles of old? What can dreams really tell us about the nature of consciousness and time perception and what happens when you draw the dark unconscious out into the light?

In this session you will be invited to take part in an experiment of dream telepathy and oracular vision.

Sarah Janes has been an enthusiastic lucid dreamer since childhood and has written about dreams, dream culture and the anthropology of dreaming for a number of academic journals, the Idler magazine and more.

Sarah’s first book Initiation into Dream Mysteries, Drinking from the Pool of Mnemosyne is out later this year with US publisher Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. This book explores the ancient history and philosophy of dream therapy and sleep medicine, beginning in deepest antiquity through to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. It also has seven stories in it which are inspired by her own dream incubation practices. These stories are designed to act as psychomagic narratives to influence your dreams and take you on a self-initiatory conscious dream quest.

Sarah has given talks on the subject of dreaming at conferences, festivals and events all over Europe and hosts her own online Egyptology lecture series Explorers Egyptology in which she has had many esteemed Egyptologists and ancient history scholars and experts as guests.

This year Sarah is curating a series of events and talks to coincide with the touring exhibition #FEMININEPOWER at the British Museum, she is working on a sitcom about paranormal investigators and developing sleep hygiene/reality shifting workshops to tackle sleep deprivation in teenagers.

Sarah is also currently working with author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake and Guy Hayward at the British Pilgrimage Trust to reinvigorate the practice of dream incubation on pilgrimage in the UK.

Sarah co-hosts a weekly chat show – Consciousness Hour with author and researcher Anthony Peake. Anthony specialises in writing about exceptional human experience and anomalous phenomenon. On Consciousness Hour – life after death, dreams, Near Death Experience and OBEs, psychedelics, altered states, synchronicity, parapsychology and time perception are regular themes.

Alongside Carl Hayden Smith from the Learning Technologies Department of Ravensbourne University, London, Sarah developed The Seventh Ray, a virtual initiation experience inspired by ancient Mystery School traditions.

www.themysteries.org