Eleanor Tirtasana Chubb has spent much of her life exploring the curious world of the tortoise, including their often eccentric keepers and collectors, zoologists, vets, traders (legal and illegal) and conservation efforts both successful and hopeless. Her exploration has involved creation of and involvement in multiple conservation and welfare organisations, plus teaching, lecturing and attending world conferences. Her lecture will intertwine nuggets of historical trivia, stories of humanisation taken to the extreme, the characters making change, madness behind myth, political extinction threats and conservation dysfunction, among other matters. If you didn’t think tortoises where interesting, you will after this.
Archives: Digital Events
Scientific Monsters: Natural History, Teratology & Extraordinary – Dr Stephen Asma
Scientific Monsters: Natural History, Teratology, and Extraordinary Biologies
January 9th
In this illustrated lecture Dr. Asma will explore the monsters of the modern era, specifically the natural history traditions from the Late Renaissance through the Victorian period. Focusing on the development of teratology, we will look at the medicalization of monsters and the reframing of monstrosity in evolution.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
Medieval Monsters, and the Problem of Evil – Dr Stephen Asma
Medieval Monsters, and the Problem of Evil
November 15th
In this illustrated lecture Dr. Asma will examine the major kinds of medieval monsters that were feared but also “cavorted with” during the Middle Ages. Some natural monsters of the ancient period continued in the medieval, but also many demons and theological monsters emerged with unprecedented terror.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
The Philosophy of Monsters in Ancient Greece & Rome – Dr Stephen Asma
Ancient Monsters: Greek and Roman Traditions
September 28th
In this illustrated lecture Dr. Asma will explore some of the dominant types of monsters in ancient Western literature, natural history, and philosophy. We will learn about classic beasties like Cyclopes, but also lesser-known topics like Plato’s monster, and Aristotle’s theory of monstrosity.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
Divination and Divination Tools Masterclass – Psychic Medium Patti Negri
Divination and Divination Tools Zoom Masterclass
Whether tarot cards, dowsing rods, a pendulum, ouija board… or the simple dance of a candle flame – divination is the art or practice of foreseeing future events or discovering hidden knowledge by the aid of spirit, magick or supernatural powers. Patti will teach you fun, simple techniques that will help add clarity and confidence to your divination and help open and deepen your awareness and your sight.
Patti Negri has been communicating with spirits since she could talk. She did her first séance when she was just seven or eight years old. She sat cross legged on the floor and I started asking the spirits to enter the room. She created her first chant – and low and behold – the room filled with orbs of bright light. They started in the corner and quickly began filling the room. It was amazing. She ran screaming out of the house… but had never been so excited. She had actually and consciously contacted the other side – and was able to control it. Her journey had begun. Since then she has studied religion, metaphysics, science, occult sciences and cosmologies and belief systems of all kinds and combined the truths within to create surefire and safe techniques to raise the veil between the worlds.
Witchcraft Curses of the Twentieth Century – Dr. Louise Fenton
The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic is in the beautiful Cornish village of Boscastle, UK. It was opened in this location in 1960 and is still there today. The founder of the museum, Cecil H Williamson, acquired an array of artifacts, some donated, some bought and some that he may have made. These artifacts include a collection that were made to harm, or worse, to kill. They do not all come from practitioners, some were made in domestic settings as revenge. Dr Louise Fenton has been researching the collection of curses and cursed objects at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic for the past ten years. In this fully illustrated talk she will discuss a range of reasons for the creation of the curses, what the intention was behind the objects, and some of the stories behind these fascinating artifacts.
Make your Own Memento Mori: Befriending Death with Joanna Ebenstein
4 week online course
January 12, 19, 26 & 2 February 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
Text Book: Death: A Graveside Companion (PDF to be provided)
Death is the great mystery of human life. Each of us – barring some medical miracle – will die. Foreknowledge of our own death is a defining characteristic of humanity; the ancient Greeks reserved the word mortal – meaning ‘subject to death’ – 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.
Black John and the Pencarrow Hunt in Cornish Ballads – Dr. Merv Davey
The Unnatural History of Cornwall – curated by Dr.Amy Hale brings stories of the weird and wonderful from Cornwall to a wider audience, with an emphasis on Cornish voices from the past and the present.
Traditional ballads and the tunes that go with them can be quite separate entities that connect and part company as they travel through time. There is a sense in which both carry the stories and interpretations of the people and communities with which they engage. Indeed, these stories and meanings will often tell us more about these people and their social milieu than the origins of the tradition. During the course of its travels the story of the Pencarrow Hunt and Black John has connected with some interesting characters and provides the perfect study for an “unnatural history”.
Death and Resurrection As Muse: 4-Week Tarot Course with Laetitia Barbier
Death and Resurrection As Muse: Stirring Your Creativity in Times of Crisis with Tarot’s Forgotten Iconography, Symbolism and Storytelling Power
4 week online course
Saturdays September 11,18,25 and October 2nd
PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Taught via Zoom by Morbid Anatomy Programing Director Laetitia Barbier
Why isn’t the Death card the last card of the tarot deck? Does the devil card announces damnation or celebrate irreverence? Is the Magician a creator, a shaman, a con-artist, or all of the above? The twenty two cards forming the Tarot’s major arcana have, for centuries served as a visual oracle, an iconic and adaptable muse to seekers, artists, occultists, film makers, pop-stars and high fashion, with influence stretching from the artworks of the Surrealists to TV’s Twin Peaks.
Tony ‘Doc ‘ Shiels – Reenchanted Landscapes of Cornwall – Dr.Rupert White
The Unnatural History of Cornwall – curated by Dr. Amy Hale brings stories of the weird and wonderful from Cornwall to a wider audience, with an emphasis on Cornish voices from the past and the present.
Speaker: Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels arrived in St Ives, Cornwall in 1958, a hopeful and ambitious young artist. For a few years his painting career went well, but he grew impatient with the limitations of abstract art. Instead, emboldened by Dada and Surrealism, his life became stranger and more magical. He displayed the disembodied head of an Egyptian princess, sawed a woman in half, and carried out some bizarre monster-raising stunts involving Morgawr the Cornish sea serpent. He included his wife, children and friends in many of these exploits and, indeed, after appearing in the national media, in the mid-1970s they became briefly known across Britain as ‘The weirdest family in the land’.
Curator: Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.
