Event Category: Ethnography

Cats in Mythology and Culture – Lena Heide-Brennand

Cats in Mythology and Culture

Warm welcome to an evening dedicated to our feline companions and their role and status in different cultures and mythology through history. From ancient Egypt to modern times, the fury enigmatic creatures have purred their way into our hearts and minds, leaving an indelible mark on our collective imagination. In this lecture we will take a closer look at the myths, the legends and the numerous superstitions that surround these fascinating and elegant creatures and try to unravel the secret behind their prominent status throughout the ages. Don’t miss out on this pur-fect opportunity to explore the fascinating and multifaceted history of cats and their influence on our cultural tapestry. Meow-ver miss out on this evening!

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

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Medieval Mermaids – a Zoom talk with Professor Sarah Peverley

Medieval Mermaids: Sirens of Shipwreck, Salvation and Folklore

Spotting a mermaid in the Middle Ages was easy. In both real and imaginary waterscapes merfolk had many guises, appearing as saints, sinners, and fantastic creatures. Chroniclers recorded encounters with merpeople, especially in the oceans encircling the British Isles and Ireland, which were believed to be home to a burgeoning population of seductive sirens with sleep-inducing voices and a propensity for shipwrecking sailors.

Across medieval Europe, fountains, pools, marshes, and rivers teemed with water spirits inherited from earlier mythologies, some of which were said to have founded royal dynasties, like Melusine of Lusignan. But mermaids and their male counterparts (mermen) also had a foothold on land, inhabiting the borders of richly illuminated manuscripts, swimming through the decorative stone and woodwork of churches, and adorning images of the world like the Hereford Mappa Mundi. Even noble households were not immune to the charms of fish-tailed women, as mermaids frolicked on royal embroideries and paraded across the heraldry of families like the Berkeleys.

Focusing on mermaids in medieval culture, this illustrated talk draws on literary and visual evidence, to offer new ways of thinking about the evolution of the mermaid. Join Professor Sarah Peverley as she draws on fresh evidence from her ‘Mermaids of the British Isles and Ireland, c. 450-1500’ project to consider the various ways that medieval people used mermaids and the complex interpretative frameworks that defined their aesthetic.

No prior knowledge of the Middle Ages is required, just a love of mythical creatures and a sense of adventure as we dive into mermaid history!

 

Professor Sarah Peverley is an academic, writer and broadcaster who divides her time between being immersed in the depths of mermaid history and lost in the medieval world. As professor of medieval literature and culture at the University of Liverpool she teaches across English and History and regularly speaks at festivals and heritage events. She has consulted for organisations like Guinness World Records, and has written, presented or appeared in over eighty TV, radio and press features. She is currently writing a cultural history of the mermaid. For more information see www.sarahpeverley.com.

Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. 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

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.

[Image: a Mermaid in The Luttrell Psalter: London, British Library.]

Haunted Houses in the UK – Lena Heide-Brennand

Haunted Houses in the UK

” There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” — Hamlet.

Do you believe in ghosts? Are you fascinated by the stories of haunted places and the people who lived there? If so, you won’t want to miss this one-hour lecture on “Haunted Houses, Palaces and Places in the United Kingdom”.

In this lecture, you will learn about some of the most famous and spooky locations in the UK, such as:

– The Tower of London, where the ghosts of Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, and the Princes in the Tower are said to roam.

– Glamis Castle, where the secret chamber of the Monster of Glamis is hidden, and where the ghost of Earl Beardie plays cards with the devil.

– Borley Rectory, dubbed the most haunted house in England, where paranormal phenomena such as apparitions, voices, and writing on the walls were reported.

This lecture is illustrated with stunning artwork of the haunted places, and packed with historical facts, legends, and anecdotes. You will be entertained, educated, and maybe inspired to take a trip to check the different places out for yourself.

Don’t miss this chance to explore the dark and mysterious side of the UK. Book your tickets now and join us for this unforgettable lecture.

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

John Kruse – The Faes’ Anatomy

The Faes’ Anatomy

The peoples of the British Isles have lived alongside faeries for several thousand years and have accumulated a deep knowledge of their ‘Good Neighbours.’ We have become intimately familiar with the culture, morals and, even, lifecycle of the population that shares these lands with us. In this talk John Kruse will examine what we know about the anatomy and physiology of faery-kind:

· How closely related to us are they?

· Can they fall sick?

· What do they eat?

· Do they have wings?

· Are they immortal or can they be killed?

John draws on hundreds of years of folklore tradition to give sometimes surprising answers to these questions- and others.

Bio

John Kruse has been interested in faery-lore since his early twenties. In 2016 he started the British Fairies blog on WordPress and has since written nearly two dozen books on the subject, including Faery and Beyond Faery for Llewellyn Worldwide and British Fairies and nine other titles for Green Magic Publishing. He has also written several books on nymphs and other aspects of classical mythology.

Curated & Hosted by

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

The Satanic Panic: Its Roots and Branches – Peg Aloi

The Satanic Panic: Its Roots and Branches

Although the recent resurrection of the Satanic Panic discourse tends to locate this phenomenon in the late 1980s through the early 1990s (thanks to a storyline on the series Stranger Things), the roots of this cultural oddity go back decades further. Of course, one could argue that the fear of Satan and all his works has been part of human history for centuries, as long as Christianity remains a powerful religious influence in the world, that fear is likely to continue. But the late 20th century Satanic Panic marked a volatile confluence of factors: an occult revival in the 1960s followed by a rise in secularism in the 1970s, and increased religious factionalism combined with the rise of right-wing political movements in the early 1980s. By the early 1990s, the stage was set for a number of prominent events that later came to define the Satanic Panic era. This talk will explore a number of disparate but often related elements that converged to create the Satanic Panic of the 1980s-’90s, including Satanic themed horror films (such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen), the Manson Family murders, and the rise of the Moral Majority in the US.

Bio:

Peg Aloi is a freelance film and TV critic, a former professor of media studies, and co-editor (with Hannah Sanders) of The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture (Routledge) and Carnivale and the American Grotesque: Critical Essays on the HBO Series (Macfarland). With Hannah she also co-organized two scholarly conferences at Harvard University on paganism, witchcraft and media. Peg’s forthcoming book The Witching Hour: How Witches Enchanted the World is a cultural analysis of the witch in contemporary media. Recently Peg was featured in the documentary film The Witches of Hollywood. She is currently editing a collection of essays for The University of Liverpool Press: Women in Folk Horror: Cradles, Cauldrons, Forests and Blood. Peg was also one of the co-founders of The Witches’ Voice and wrote about film and TV for the site for over a decade, and her long-running blog “The Witching Hour” can now be found on Substack. Peg also works as a professional gardener.

Curated & Hosted by

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

Formidable Warrior Women: Tales of the Amazons in Antiquity – Connie Skibinski

Formidable Warrior Women: Tales of the Amazons in Antiquity

Tales of the Amazons, a female-only society of fierce warriors, captured the imagination of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In antiquity, Amazons inspired a range of reactions – some saw them as a threat to the Greek patriarchal state, while others treated them as valiant heroes. This presentation examines a wide range of art and literature to trace changing attitudes towards these warrior women throughout Greece and Rome.

Bio:

Connie Skibinski is an Early Career Research having recently completed a PhD (Classics) at The University of Newcastle. Her primary research interest is Greco-Roman mythology and the adaptation of ancient mythology from the Medieval period to the contemporary era. Her doctoral thesis is a Classical Reception study of the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, examining written and visual representations from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Connie has published on the Amazons in contemporary media and is currently co-editing three edited volumes (on Xena, Wonder Woman and ancient women). She is also working on a contracted monograph on Amazons in Medieval literature, as well as a book chapter that examines the ancient Amazons through a queer theory lens.

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Darkling Shadows & Midsummer Madness: The Weird Fiction of R Murray Gilchrist – Daniel Pietersen

Darkling Shadows & Midsummer Madness: The Weird Fiction of R Murray Gilchrist

At the start of the 20thC Robert Murray Gilchrist was a celebrated if reclusive writer, able to count the likes of HG Wells amongst his friends and one of the rare few who found a home in the pages of the notorious Yellow Book. Yet, after his death in 1917, he was quickly forgotten and the strange vistas of his eerie tales faded rapidly from view. In this talk, Gilchrist scholar Daniel Pietersen will use newly-unearthed details of the writer’s life to explore this change in fortunes and why Gilchrist – a writer who explored the edgelands of Gothic, Decadent and what we would now call Weird fiction – is due a modern-day reader’s renewed attention.

Bio  

Daniel Pietersen is the editor of I Am Stone: the Gothic Weird Tales of R Murray Gilchrist, part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. He is a writer and critic with an interest in how weird and gothic themes are represented across film, literature and videogaming. Daniel’s work has appeared in publications like Dead Reckonings, Revenant and Sublime Horror and he is a regular guest lecturer for the Romancing the Gothic project. Daniel lives in a very old house in Edinburgh with a necromancer and pet hellhound.
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Brothers Zara and Raum: The Real Story of a Fake Buddhist Rosicrucian Order – Philip Deslippe

Brothers Zara and Raum: The Real Story of a Fake Buddhist Rosicrucian Order

In the early 1930s, two young men from Idaho took Buddhist ordination vows in San Francisco from a Japanese Rinzai Zen teacher named Nyogen Senzaki. Soon after, the pair left for an extended tour throughout Asia and were celebrated in the press as pioneering Buddhists, but were actually on their own mission for a mysterious Rosicrucian order with the aim to rectify the world’s religions.

This talk will tell the history of Francis Ormsby, Lewis Colburn, and their group, the Ordo Magiaro. It is a fascinating story of spiritual exploration, international travel, and imposture that included a coup and death by drowning, an affair that led to an international scandal, time in a naval prison, and pioneering treatment for alcoholics.

Speaker Bio:

Philip Deslippe is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara who focuses on metaphysical, Asian, and marginal religious traditions in modern America. He has published in numerous academic journals and popular venues, and edited and introduced The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition for Tarcher/Penguin in 2011.

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

Sheela-Na-Gigs: Power, Politics and Sexuality – Jenny Butler

Sheela-Na-Gigs: Power, Politics and Sexuality

Sheela-na-gigs are sculpted female forms displaying their, sometimes exaggerated, vulvas. While these carvings are found through much of Europe, there is the highest concentration of them in Ireland and Britain, with many also found in France and Spain. Archaeologically, they are categorised as “grotesques”, similar to gargoyles, found on church architecture and thought to ward off evil influence. While there is no consensus on their origin or age, some scholars place the emergence of such carvings in the 11th century. This talk tracks the history of Sheela-na-gigs in Ireland against the backdrop of Irish history. The women of Ireland were subjugated during an era in which female sexuality itself came to be regarded as vulgar, shameful, and deviant. In contemporary Ireland, there has been a resurgence of interest and cultural (re)connection with the Sheela-na-gig. The symbol has been utilised in political campaigns for women’s empowerment, in art, and in spirituality and examples are given of how today the Sheela is a vibrant, powerful, and celebrated form.

Bio

Dr Jenny Butler is President of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR). She is a Lecturer in the Study of Religions Department at University College Cork and a Principal Investigator of UCC’s Environmental Research Institute (ERI). Her research interests are in the area of New Religious Movements, Western esotericism, and folk religion. Her monograph 21st Century Irish Paganism: Worldview, Ritual, Identity is forthcoming from Routledge.

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Lewis Carroll and Surrealism – Mark Richards

Lewis Carroll and Surrealism

Surrealist writers and artists have been fascinated by Lewis Carroll’s works for over a century. Eileen Agar described him as a “herald of surrealism”, while André Breton refers to him as the “first teacher in the art of playing hooky” and references to the Alice books can be seen in dozens of surrealist artworks.Carroll’s influence on the Surrealists is both fascinating and indisputable. But, to what extent can we refer to Carroll himself as a “Surrealist”? A close examination of his life and works, his diaries and letters, reveal a man fascinated by dreams, differing states of consciousness and a desire to explore the absurd.

This talk will demonstrate Carroll’s influence on the Surrealists, explore the remarkable mind of the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and attempt to understand why this often misunderstood, English mathematician deserves a place in the history of Surrealism.

Bio

Mark Richards has been studying the life and works of Lewis Carroll for nearly 50 years. He is a collector, a former Chair of The Lewis Carroll Society and is currently developing the Lewis Carroll Resources website. (lewiscarrollresources.net)

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