Event Category: Esoteric

“Books of Visions”: Jung, Dante, and the Making of the Red Book – Dr Tommaso Priviero – Zoom

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

What astonishing dimensions may lie, yet unseen, within your mind? What labyrinths of woe and wonder await your discovery?

The inaugural talk of Fey’s Shadow Salon investigates this question by comparing two texts, as monumental as mystifying: the Divine Comedy and the Red Book. Pack your bags and buckle up – we’re going to hell!

Dante’s Commedia, one of the defining works of European literature, recounts the protagonist’s visionary journey into hell and back in order to meet again his beloved Beatrice. Seven centuries later, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology C.G. Jung underwent his own “season in hell”, a period of wide inner explorations which he later referred to as the years of his “confrontation with the unconscious”. Jung took record of these experiences in a series of personal notebooks that formed the Red Book, which he regarded as the most difficult and important experiment of his life. During this period, Dante’s poem served as a source of guidance and inspiration. For Jung, the Commedia was less a literary masterpiece than a first-hand account of a profound existential transformation: a “meditation book” enriched with archetypal symbolism. As Jung’s inner journey unfolded, the story of the Commedia began to intersect with his own explorations, at historical, psychological, and symbolical levels. This talk traces this encounter and suggests a new way to explore the relations between depth psychology and what Jung termed “visionary works”, i.e., artistic or literary creations based on life-transforming experiences of extraordinary states of consciousness.

Bio:

Dr Tommaso Priviero is an academic and analytical psychologist based in London. He received his PhD from University College London (UCL) and currently holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). His work focuses on the history of psychology and psychoanalysis, featuring in journals such as The International Journal of Jungian Studies, The European Yearbook of the History of Psychology, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Education, The Journal for the History of the Behavioural Sciences, among others. His most recent monograph, Of Fire and Form: Jung, Dante, and the Making of the Red Book (Routledge, 2023; with a preface by Sonu Shamdasani) is the recipient of the prestigious 2025 “Eugenio Montale Fuori di Casa” award. He is a registered member of the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP), the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) and the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP).

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

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

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. The Reality of the Invisible – 2 April 2026

3. Psychedelics as Catalysts of Creativity – 30 April 2026

4. The I Ching Oracle – 28 May 2026

5. Spirit of Creativity – 28 July 2026

Heroine or Succubus? Blodeuwedd, Taliesin, and Artificial Life – Dr Mark Williams – Zoom

Heroine or Succubus? Blodeuwedd, Taliesin, and Artificial Life

‘Blodeuwedd is one of the unforgettable heroines of Welsh mythology. In the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (c.1100) she is created out of flowers to be the wife of the hero Lleu of the Skilful Hand, whom she ultimately betrays. A century of commentators and creative people have seen her as a feminist figure, who follows her own heart and desires and who suffers a cruel and unjust punishment by being turned into an owl. This talk ranges widely over the theme of the artificial women in western literature – Pandora, Pygmalion’s famous statue – to suggest ways in which the original audience of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi might have interpreted the story—ways which might be strikingly different and less approving than the one which has become normal in our own cultural context. Is she a misunderstood heroine—or a succubus?!

Speaker Bio:

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and a specialist in the Celtic literatures and languages. He is the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016) and The Celtic Myths that Shape the Way We Think (2021). He is also a qualified Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in Oxford.

Curated & 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

Image: Drawing by Lena HB

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

The Witchcraft of Wales – Benjamin Stimpson – Zoom

The Witchcraft of Wales

Wales’ cultural legacy has always stood distinct from England, and the stories of the witches and cunning folk of Wales is no exception. In this short lecture, join folklorist Benjamin Stimpson into a deep dive into the legends and historical reality of magic and witchcraft of Wales. Exploring how the Welsh perceived magic and what common stories were shared we will meet the conjurors of spirits who took shifts being the vicar of the local church; the little old women who plied their divination in the markets of both North and South; and the dyn hysbys, the ‘knowing ones,’ who sold charms to protect and were sometimes hired for more ducious conflicts.

Speaker Bio:

Benjamin Stimpson (He/They/Them) (BA, MBACP) is an award-winning UK based writer, independent researcher, podcaster, and public speaker on folk practice, occultism, medieval history, and British folklore. Ben holds a BA (Hons) minoring in Classical, Medieval and Religious Studies from the University of Waterloo as well as a Diploma in Spiritual Psychotherapy. His research focusses on medieval and early modern folk practice, the folklore and history of magic and witchcraft, and applied modern spiritual practice. He is the author of the award-winning Ancestral Whispers: A Guide to Developing Ancestral Veneration Practices (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2023), and Of Doves & Ravens: The Witches and Wisefolk of Wales and the Borders (History Press, 2025). An acclaimed public speaker, Benjamin has been a regular guest on hundreds of podcasts; and, at festivals and conferences in North America and Europe. www.benstimpson.com

Curated & 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

Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years

Following the end of the First World War, families processed the loss of loved ones and re-assessed their relationships with life, death and the great beyond. Within this chaos, Spiritualism offered a lifeline of community and comfort, professing to be able to reunite the living with the dead, and appease any fears of an eternity of nothingness. Within Spiritualist home circles, communities were made, relationships nurtured, and a new religion found a second life within an increasingly secular populous.

While messages of comfort emerged from these spirit realms, so did ghosts, animals, objects and ectoplasm. Fortunes were found and lost at the edge of a séance table, and while deceased celebrities made a habit of visiting some of the country’s most popular mediums, others looked on in bafflement. The interwar years were a boom time for Spiritualists and debunkers alike, as Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini were at loggerheads; a friendship spoiled in a cloud of fairy photographs, fake ghosts and even faker moustaches.

While countries began to rebuild after conflict, a new spiritual war began to rage beneath the surface, more profound, impassioned and dangerous than ever before.This talk offers an overview of the world of Spiritualism during the interwar years, introducing key events, figures (and dramas!) with an informative and light-hearted tone.

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years-  28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

The Sensuality of Séance – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

The Sensuality of Séance

Summary: Séance requires the shedding of the rational mind and the awakening of the senses. From the stench of ectoplasm to the touch of a loved one, seances take place as a fully multi-sensory experience, for bad or for good.

The Sensuality of Seance delves into the sense-based aspects of historical séance, and the impact such experiences have on the sitter and observer within the séance room. Refocusing sitters’ attentions to a particular sense allowed domestic spaces to be transformed into liminal spheres, where each interaction brought about a fresh and vulnerable experience.

With the touch of a spirit’s robe, the soft hand of a stranger, the smell of heavenly bouquets, the glimpse of a manifesting spirit or the sound of hymns, sung into darkness; all culminated in the heightened, unseen and unspoken power of the séance room

Presenting examples of scent, touch, sound and sight in the séance room, this talk examines séance as a curated experience, far greater than its perceived singular spiritual purpose..

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

 

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies – 28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era

The spiritualist movement of the 19th century is often remembered as a stumbling new religion, a historic curiosity, a feminist footnote, or simply a pseudoscientific trend in an age of spiritual credulity and industrial development. However, within this diverse and fascinating new field, science frequently attempted to assess spiritual claims of mediumship as a measurable and explainable phenomena.

Using physiological and medical arguments, scientists utilised new knowledge on the human nervous system – alongside more cultural beliefs surrounding mental weaknesses between the genders – to align spiritualism with their cultural norms and accepted medical developments. This curious talk presents these lesser-known cultural and scientific beliefs, explaining the prominent arguments and scientific theories of the time, and what their work really said about the spiritualist movement, women’s changing role in society, and our own understanding of consciousness.

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years-  28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

Deconstructing the Séance Room – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

Deconstructing the Séance Room

Do you know your trumpet from your tambourine? What about your cabinet from your knocking hand? In Deconstructing the Séance Room, Kate Cherrell leads a tour through history’s greatest spiritual successes and frauds, presenting history’s tools of the spiritualist trade against stories of their use and power. When spiritualism bloomed as the new religion of the 19th century, it reunited the living with the dead, transforming grief and posing greater questions about man’s changing place – and power – within the universe. It also created an environment where fraudulent practitioners could lay roots, taking equipment from stage magicians and rebranding it as a mystical new outlet.

Spirituality is the mother of invention, and the Victorian era was prime for new beliefs and methodologies that stretched the limits of science and belief. Taking a journey through the séance rooms and spiritual theatres of the past, this talk celebrates the ingenuity of the spirit telephone and floating banjo, while placing fantastical tales of mediums and spirits back into a human, and historical, context.

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years-  28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

Strange Tales from the Seance Room – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

Strange Tales from the Seance Room

Historically, séance rooms were not simply places of spiritual reflection and revelation, but worlds of astonishment and fear. From levitating mediums to ghost marriages, to ancient goddesses and lucrative gemstone mines, accessed only through the spirit world, séance rooms have played host to the most wonderful and strange phenomena.

In this light-hearted and haunting talk, Dr Kate Cherrell dives into the curious archives of spiritualist history, unveiling strange tales that were previously lost to time. Taking a journey from hilarious claims to horrifying crimes, the séance room is revealed as a space where the best and worst in humanity have thrived.

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years-  28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – Dr Kate Cherrell – Zoom

Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances

Since the creation of the modern celebrity, séance and the supernatural have been unhappy bedfellows, allowing audiences to incite or imagine interactions with their idols. Mediums and psychics have built careers on the backs of dead celebrities, with many long-dead pop stars unknowingly spurring an entire subsection of psychic memoirs and after-death experiences. Neither Elvis, John Lennon or Princess Diana have had restful afterlives, but have experienced decades of public appearances and sightings, captured on film, vinyl and in countless paperback books.Para-social relationships are an inherent part of the celebrity/consumer cycle, but do not finish at the point of death,rather transform and elevate, where personal ideas, beliefs and senses of self can be projected onto a spectral blank slate. Looking at popular culture within the history of celebrity séance, we can learn more about ourselves and our societal needs than what Oscar Wilde and Michael Jackson had for breakfast. This light-hearted talk takes a sideways look at the weird world of celebrity seances in western history, from Elvis’ spectral adventures in Watford to Oscar Wilde’s post-mortem literature.

BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves

Curated & 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

This is a 5 part series of lectures

  1. Has Elvis Really Left the Building? A Short History of Celebrity Seances – 22 April 2026
  2. Strange Tales from the Seance Room – 12 May 2026
  3. Deconstructing the Séance Room – 25 Jun 2026
  4. Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era – 30 Sept 2026
  5. Fruits and Fallacies: The Spiritualist Revival of the Interwar Years-  28 October 2026
  6. The Sensuality of Séance – 9 Nov 2026

The Sin-eater: lives and afterlives – Dr Helen Frisby – Zoom

The Sin-eater: lives and afterlives

A sin-eater was a ‘long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal’ (Aubrey, 1687) who, by eating a special meal over the coffin, consumed a dead person’s sins and thus helped them enter heaven. In this talk Dr Helen Frisby surveys the historical evidence for this fascinating old funerary character and their mysterious rituals in service of the souls of the dead. As it turns out, things aren’t quite what they might first seem – but Helen will suggest that it’s the sin-eater’s very elusiveness within the historical record which has enabled them to rise again in present-day film, TV and literature.

Bio

Dr Helen Frisby has taught history at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and funeral directing at the University of Bath where she’s also a Visiting Research Fellow. Hon. Secretary of The Folklore Society, Helen has appeared on The History Channel and BBC radio. She continues to research and publish on topics relating to death, funerals and bereavement, past and present.

Curated & Hosted by

Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She lives in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesvos.

Image is: ‘Two Old Ones Eating Soup or Two Witches’ by Francisco Goya (1823). Public domain courtesy of Wikimedia.

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