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Buddhist Folk Tales – Bedtime Stories from Kevin Walker

Buddhist Folk Tales

Join Kevin on his personal journey through Buddhism as he shares with you; tales from previous lives, tales both ancient and modern, tales of talking animals, tales to make you weep, laugh and cry and tales that will stay with you when the telling has ceased.Ā  Here are lyrical stories telling the birth of Buddha and also how the current Dali Lama was found. There are humorous storiesā€¦why the King of the Monkeys wanted to rule the universe, the archer who changed his kingā€™s whole outlook on life and a talkative turtle trying to fly with the birds. Most of the stories are from the Jataka cycle, stories from over two thousand years ago, told by Buddha about his previous lives. Some of these are well known, some of them influenced western writers, as it is believed the soldiers of Alexander the Great and other travellers may have brought them back, so we have stories similar to The Golden Goose, The Lion and the Mouse and even Chicken Licken. Many of the stories deal with the human condition and are quite deep, almost distressing at times. And there is an original story written by my good self, that brings together research about the ā€˜missing yearsā€™ of Jesus. Over forty stories in all and many illustrations.

Bio

Kevin Walker has been a professional, oral storyteller for over twenty years, working with most age groups and performing at clubs, festivals, historic venues and schools. Recently he has taken a retirement sabbatical to concentrate on writing and published Queer Folk Tales in 2020 and has his next collection of stories, Buddhist Folk Tales, published in February 2022. He is also working on his first novel, based on folk tales, Shadows and Light, the life of Oberon, the King of Faerie and another collection of Queer Tales based mainly on medieval documents.

He is raring to get back to telling.

He lives at the moment, in Leicester with his husband Martyn and Daisy dog, but they are all getting itchy feet so will be moving soon.

Folk Tales of Song and Dance from Pete Castle

THE SONG IS IN THE STORY – Or Vice Versa

Folk Tales of Song and Dance from Pete Castle

In this set Pete Castle will explore musical stories and storytelling songs, mainly from the English tradition but with a few visitors from further a-field. There will be stories about musicians and their adventuresā€”which havenā€™t changed much over millennia, and also stories in which your normal Tom, Dick or Harry uses music to get himself out of a tricky situation. Pete will include a couple of traditional ballads which tell the same kinds of stories in musical form.

Throughout history storytelling and songs have been intertwined. Songs have told stories, stories have included songs, an item in one art form has been rewritten in the other. In many cultures storytelling is often accompanied by musicians or even dancers. In Britain the Welsh and Irish bards were usually harpers who sang and it seemed a prerequisite of a Celtic leader to also be a musician. This was widespread, King David, in the Bible, was a musician who composed psalms. It doesnā€™t seem to have applied to the English though. Can you think of any musical English king/queen (apart, perhaps, from Henry VIII)? Can you imagine the present Royal Family getting together for a singaround!?

BIOGRAPHY

Pete Castle was born in Ashford, Kent in 1947 but has lived in Derbyshire for most of his adult life and considers that home. He trained as a teacher but in 1978 gave that up to pursue a career as a professional folk singer playing folk clubs and festivals, which he has done ever since. A few years into that career he discovered storytelling and started billing himself as a ā€˜folksinger and storytellerā€™. He has always been willing to restrict himself to one or the other is asked but much prefers to do a mixture of the two. He has worked with every type of audience imaginable in a wide variety of venues from clubs to festivals, schools, libraries, on story walks, in historical sites and many more. He has taught and lectured for local authorities, the WEA, the Workers Music Association and so on. He is one of the few English artists to be invited to perform at the Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington DC.

Since 1999 Pete has edited the storytelling magazine Facts & Fiction.

In 2010 he was invited by The History Press to write Derbyshire Folk Tales for their county folk tales series. To his surprise he enjoyed being an author and followed it with Nottinghamshire Folk Tales (2012); Where Dragons Soar, animal folk tales (2016); and most recently Folk Tales of Song and Dance (2021)

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

Death of the Gods? From Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire ā€“ with David Walsh

During the fourth century, the Roman Empire was transformed from a place full of gods, cults, temples and rituals into a Christian state. This transition has often been described as a rapid and violent process, with bands of zealous monks tearing down false idols, powerful bishops holding sway over the emperors, and many of the empireā€™s inhabitants forced to convert.

In fact, as David Walsh will discuss in this talk, the reality behind this image was more complex, for while clashes between Christians and pagans did occur there were also important long-term developments in Greco-Roman ā€˜paganismā€™ that brought about significantĀ changes in attitudes towards rituals and temples. David will also explore how for manyĀ conversion to Christianity did not mean leaving the old ways behind, but rather led to a melding of traditional Roman religious practices and their new faith – proving once again that old habits die hard.Ā  Ā 

Dr David Walsh works for Canterbury Archaeological Trust and is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Kent, where he taught Classical and Archaeological Studies for three years. He also undertook his PhD at Kent, which looked at the development and demise of the Mithras Cult in third to fifth centuries AD. Davidā€™s thesis was published as a monograph in 2018, and he has also written various articles on temples in the Roman Empire, as well as hosting a podcast ā€˜Coffee and Circusesā€™ in which he discusses with guests their work on the ancient world.

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 ā€“ as well as the authorā€™s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edwardā€™s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see:Ā https://edwardparnell.com

 

Dreaming Ahead of Time – Gary Lachman on Precognitive Dreams

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Dreaming Ahead of Time – Gary Lachman on Precognitive Dreams

Can we see the future in our dreams?

Does time flow in one direction?

What is a ‘meaningful coincidence’?

Renowned esoteric writer Gary Lachman has been recording his own precognitive dreams for forty years – dreams, that is, in which he has caught a glimpse of the future. In a unique and intriguing new book, Dreaming Ahead of Time, Lachman recounts the discovery that he dreams ‘ahead of time’, and argues convincingly that this extraordinary ability is, in fact, shared by all of us. Along the way Lachman explores the related phenomenon of synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidence.”

Dreaming Ahead of Time is a personal exploration of precognition, synchronicity and coincidence drawing on the work of thinkers including J.W. Dunne, J.B. Priestly, C.G. Jung, Colin Wilson, P.D. Ouspensky and others. Lachman’s description and analysis of his own experience introduces his readers to the uncanny power of our dreaming minds, and reveals the illusion of our careful distinctions between past, present and future.

Speaker Bio

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

The Mythologies of Death: Psychopomps, Liminal Spaces, and Underworld Realms with Joanna Ebenstein

6 week online course

May 4, 11, 18, 25 & 1, 8 June 2022 7:30- 9:30 pm GMT

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

Taught interactively via Zoom to a small class by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein

Death is the great mystery of human life. Today, we tend to view death through the lens of science and rationalism. Our ancestors, however, experienced death as part of a rich, invisible world with its own personalities and terrains, with eloquent myths explaining the origin of mortality and what happens to our souls when the body dies. These world viewsā€”or cosmovisions–were replete with their own dedicated gods and goddesses; psychopomps who oversaw the journey through liminal space from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead; rites of passage to contain and define the journey; and detailed descriptions of the places where the souls of the dead traveled to when the stage of embodiment came to an end.

In this six week class–comprised of lavishly illustrated lectures, suggested readings, homework prompts and class discussions and presentations–Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein will lead students in a deep dive into the fascinating ways our ancestors understood and imagined death and its personages and terrains, with an eye towards commonalities, and how these ideas live on today in religion, psychology, and a renewed interest in the occult and the invisible realms.

Along the way, we will examine the differing ways in which matriarchal and patriarchal cultures viewed death, the roots of ā€œgoodā€ and ā€œevil,ā€ death in cultures of balanced complementary duality instead of binary opposition, the ways in which dominant Christian beliefs differs from most cosmologies around the world, and Jungian notions of symbols and mythologies of death and the dead.

For a final project, students will create their very own death deity, psychopomp, or map of geographies of life and death. Students will also have an opportunity to give a class presentation on a death cosmology or deity of their choice, perhaps one from their own ancestral heritage.

CLASS STRUCTURE (order of topics subject to change)

Week One

  • Introduction
  • Death and Mythology
  • Ways to understand mythology
  • Myths of how death is enters the world
  • The Soul in a variety of traditions
  • Good, evil, and complementary duality in various cosmovisions
  • Life, Death, Rebirth: Fertility and Sexuality

Week two

The Journey: moving from the land of the living to the land of the dead

  • Pyschopomps: Guides to the journey
  • Messengers, arbiters, and angels of death
  • Liminal Spaces/inbetween realms
  • The Veil: That which separates the realms
  • Times when the veil is thin: visiting the dead

Week Three

  • Geographies of the dead
  • The Upperworld
  • Heaven, Hell, Purgatory
  • The Cosmic or World Tree

Week Four

  • Deities of the Dead
  • Staying in touch with the dead: Ancestor veneration, cadaver traditions, and Spiritualism

Week Five

  • Presentations

Week Six

  • Present final Projects

Image

Freya: Norse goddess of love and fertility, associated with sex, lust, beauty, sorcery, gold, war, and death.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and more. You can see her Tedx talkā€”Death as You’ve Never Seen it Beforeā€”here.

Make your Own Memento Mori: Befriending Death with Joanna Ebenstein

4 week online course

20, 27 November and 4, 11 December 2024 – 7:30- 9:30 pm GMT

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

Taught interactively via Zoom to a small class by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein

Text Book: Death: A Graveside Companion (PDF to be provided)

Death is the great mystery of human life. Each of us ā€“ barring some medical miracle ā€“ will die. Foreknowledge of our own death is a defining characteristic of humanity; the ancient Greeks reserved the word mortal ā€“ meaning ā€˜subject to deathā€™ ā€“ for humans alone. Some people believe that it is foreknowledge of our own death that drives all human culture, from religion and philosophy to mythology and art.

With the current global pandemic, our awareness of death is closer to us in the industrialized West than itā€™s been in over a century This historical moment will, for most of us, pass. This class seeks to use this moment to look death in the eyes, to get to know it, to create a closer, less fearful relationship with it. To make friends with it. And to create art from that encounter.

To do so, we will explore the ways in which death has been understood and represented in different times and places. There will be a special focus on imaginings of death manifested in time of plagueā€”such as Memento Mori, Ars Moriendi (literally, The Art of Death) and the Danse Macabre, or dance of deathā€”or when death is an unpredictable part of every day life, such as Mexicoā€™s Santa Muerte, literally saint or holy death. A PDF of the book Death a Graveside Companion will be provided to each student as reference.

The class will consist of slide-illustrated lectures, readings and reading discussions, journal prompts, guided image collecting, meditations, and, if technology allows, special guests.

Students will draw on what they have learned for their final project: the creation of their own personal memento moriā€”an object intended to remind you of your own death to help you live your time on earth more fully. This can take the form of an image (painting, drawing), object (collage, mask, sculpture, talisman, icon, artistā€™s book, retablo, ex voto, graphic novel) short film, or even words (essay, creative writing). It will embody your unique vision of death, developed or clarified over the course of the class, be it a deity, a personal or impersonal force, a symbol, or something else entirely.

Students will leave this class not only with their own memento mori, but also with an enhanced understanding of the ways in which death has been understood and represented in different times and places, as well as a more nuanced and critical view of contemporary attitudes. It is also my hope that students will leave the class with less fear of death in these uncertain times.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and more. You can see her Tedx talkā€”Death as You’ve Never Seen it Beforeā€”here.

Hilma af Klint & the occult milieu in turn of century Sweden by P Faxneld

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TALK WILL NOT BE RECORDED AND A RECORDING WILL NOT BE TICKETHOLDERS.

IF YOU BUY A TICKET AND ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND PLEASE REQUEST A REFUND.

Hilma af Klint and the occult milieu in turn-of-the-century Sweden

The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862ā€“1944) has been called a pioneer of abstraction, and claimed her radical art was channeled from the spirit world. The talk offers a guided tour through the occult milieu she was part of in Sweden. We will encounter occultist monarchs, an alchemist playwright, poets receiving verses from the dead, and many other significant figures of the period’s cultural life, including several who were close to the enigmatic Hilma. By taking a deep dive into the local esoteric-artistic pond in which she swam, we will gain a fuller understanding of her work and its symbolism.

Lecturer Bio

Dr. Per Faxneld is the author of Satanic Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2017) and several other books (among them a book on Hilma af Klint and the Swedish occult milieu c. 1900). He has published extensively on art and esotericism, lecturing and writing for museums across the world.

The Satanic Vampire: Death and devil symbolism in Nosferatu (1922), and the film’s occult connections by Per Faxneld

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS TALK WILL NOT BE RECORDED AND A RECORDING WILL NOT BE TICKETHOLDERS.

IF YOU BUY A TICKET AND ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND PLEASE REQUEST A REFUND.

The Satanic Vampire: Death and devil symbolism in Nosferatu (1922), and the film’s occult connections

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is a powerful classic of horror cinema, and the talk will explore how much of its power comes from a deliberate use of symbolism centred around Satan and a personified death. We will also explore the deep involvement of the film’s producer, Albin Grau, with secretive, transgressive occult societies, which helped shape its unique aesthetics and atmosphere.

Lecturer Bio

Dr. Per Faxneld is the author of Satanic Feminism (Oxford University Press, 2017) and several other books (among them a book on Hilma af Klint and the Swedish occult milieu c. 1900). He has published extensively on art and esotericism, lecturing and writing for museums across the world.

Sacred Waters: Healing Holy Wells and Folk Science by Dr. Celeste Ray

Our blue planet is a watery world, yet only one percent of earthā€™s most abundant molecule is both accessible and fresh. Supplying lifeā€™s most basic daily need, freshwater sources were most likely the earliest sacred sites, and the first protected and contested resource. Guarded by taboos, rites and supermundane forces, freshwater sources have also been considered thresholds to otherworlds. Internationally, holy ā€œwellsā€ are often sacred springs, but can be any natural source of fresh water that is a focus for ritual practice and engagement with the supernatural. Containing the majority of the earthā€™s liquid surface fresh water, lakes are sometimes called holy wells, as can be the spring sources of rivers, ponds and swamps. Often associated with also venerated stones, trees and healing flora, sacred water sources are sites of biocultural diversity.

Water sources were likely the first sites humans venerated and those that cross-culturally and cross-temporally have remained the most common category of sacred natural sites worldwide. Some water sources were selected as sacred because, across the generations, locals realized they seemed to alleviate or cure particular ailments (these actually contain magnesium, iron, sodium chloride or lithium, for example). Those water sources deemed a panacea for aches (of the back, throat, head or teeth) are often near trees with pain-relieving qualities in their bark such as willow trees (from the bark of which came aspirin). Explaining the who, what, where and why of existence, religions everywhere can be viewed as folk science. Important information about stewarding environmental resources and about healing was often enshrined in religious practices and ritual so that it would not be forgotten. Religious traditions that perpetuate biodiversity conservation deserve our attention. This talk identifies patterns in panhuman hydrolatry and asks how cultural perceptions of waterā€™s sacrality can be employed to foster resilient human-environmental relationships in the growing water crises of the twenty-first century.

Speaker Bio

Celeste Ray is Professor of Environmental Arts and Humanities and Anthropology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She is the author of The Origins of Irelandā€™s Holy Wells and Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans and the American South, and the editor of four other volumes considering Scottish Identities or ethnicity. Her passion for sacred springs and holy wells began as an undergraduate studying in Galway, Ireland in the 1980s and has been furthered in research trips to Italy, Scotland, Cornwall, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and near her institution in Appalachia.

Hosted by 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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Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – Dr Al Cummins

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – Dr Al Cummins

The libraries of cunning-folk – those local village wizards and wise-women of the early modern British Isles – ranged considerably from scraps of spoken and written charms, to a single imposing personal book of secrets, to heaving shelves full of magical tomes. The magics contained in such books ran from pious prayers to more suspicious “black magic” and from the techniques of folk magic and witchcraft to (frequently streamlined versions of) ritual conjurations of angels, devils, and the dead.

Such folk magicians employed a wide range of ephemerides, conjurations, and experiments. The sources they commonly drew on included potent astrological, alchemical, and nigromantic know-how. From Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of WitchcraftĀ (an accidental best-seller which provided intricate details of the rituals of which it so disapproved) to (pseudo)Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult PhilosophyĀ – which collected a variety of instructions on divination and spirit conjuring – there was a wealth of printed as well as manuscript sources upon which these practitioners cut their eager teeth and worked their craft. Undoubtedly the most prized texts upon their shelves were the working-books: the collections of spells, recipes, formulae, and correspondences gathered on-the-fly by enterprising and experimenting folk magicians.

The “average” cunning-man and cunning-woman’s reading material still presents substantial evidence to modern practitioners looking to understand our magical forebears and their days and ways better. In this talk, contemporary cunning man and historian Dr Alexander Cummins will offer us a tour of such libraries, and present some key findings about the nature of magic, community, and knowledge along the way.

Speaker Bio

Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires. He received his doctorate on early modern magical approaches to the passions. Dr Cummins is the co-editor of the Folk Necromancy in Transmission series for Revelore Press and co-host of Radio Free Golgotha.

His published works include An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke with Phil Legard (Scarlet Imprint, 2020), A Book of the Magi: Lore, Prayers, and Spellcraft of the Three Holy Kings (Revelore Press, 2018) and The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press, 2012) as well as contributions to collections by both academic and occult publishers on topics including talismanic objects, geomancy, planetary sorcery, cunning-craft, and nigromancy.

Dr Cummins gives classes and workshops online and in person. The Good Doctorā€™s work and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

Curated and hosted by Dr. Amy Hale

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.

Series from Dr Al Cummins on Necromancy and Cunning Craft

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – 3 Aug 2022

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – 10 Aug 2022

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – 17 Aug 2022

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