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The Untold Chapter Of British Traditional Wicca – Julia Phillips

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

The Untold Chapter Of British Traditional Wicca

‘Julia Phillips is one of the best current historians of Wicca and is breaking genuinely new ground in tracing the way in which the religion developed.’ (Ronald Hutton)

Modern pagan witchcraft commonly known as Wicca, or British Traditional Wicca, emerged publicly in England in the 1950s, influenced by the notion promoted by Margaret Murray of a continuing tradition of a Pagan religion that had survived centuries of persecution. Retired civil servant Gerald Gardner (1884-1964) claimed that had been initiated into such a cult in Hampshire, England, in 1939 and in December 1950 he met Cecil Williamson (1909-1999), whose childhood encounters with practitioners of a traditional style of English rural witchcraft inspired a lifelong passion for witchcraft and magic. In 1951 Williamson purchased a farm on the Isle of Man, which he turned into a Museum of Witchcraft and invited Gardner to take up a role as the ‘resident witch.’ Using original sources, Julia Phillips tells the story of this significant chapter in the story of the establishment and development of Wicca, placing Williamson and Gardner, and the Museum of Witchcraft, within the context of post-war Britain.

Speaker Bio

Julia Phillips is a post graduate researcher in the Department of History at University of Bristol. Her interest in occultism began in the 1970s, when she attended lectures at the Society for Psychical Research in London. Over the past fifty years Phillips has studied and written on many different subjects related to the occult and magic and her research about this untold chapter of British Traditional Wicca was published in Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, (University of Pennsylvania Press, Volume 16, Number 2, Fall 2021).

Photo: Cecil Williamson 28 January 1951, Sunday Mercury

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.

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

The Magical Women of Ireland by Dr. Gillian Kenny

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The Magickal Women Ireland

A look at how women have engaged in (or been rumored to have engaged in) magical practices over thousands of years in Ireland. Ranging across time from the battle queens of mythology to the nineteenth century wise woman and healer Biddy Early this talk will introduce listeners to the links between women and magic in Irish history and how women may have used ritual/spells and material goods to affect the world around them. Gillian will talk about various aspects of Irish women’s magic including

1. Protective magic

2. Cursing in Irish practice

3. The belief in the evil eye

4. Love magic and magic to control fertility and birth

5. The Christianisation of magical practice

6. Imported magical beliefs

Bio

Dr. Gillian Kenny is an Hon Research Associate at the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies in Trinity College Dublin. Her specialism is women’s lives in medieval and early modern Ireland and Europe. She is also interested in the lives of those considered outsiders in the medieval world and is currently researching that topic. She has taught in both UCD and TCD and has published extensively on women’s history. She has also appeared in and written on various historical topics on TV/podcasts and in newspapers/magazines.

Twitter – @medievalgill

www.medievalgill.com

medievalireland.blogspot.com

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

Suffolk Ghost Tales – Kirsty Hartsiotis

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

All places have ghost stories. Laurie Lee, in Cider with Rosie, says, ‘There were ghosts in the stones, in the trees, and the walls, and every field and hill had several.’ He’s talking about Gloucestershire, but, even now, a hundred years on from when Lee was a boy, it still holds true across the country. But of all counties, Suffolk is a little bit special when it comes to ghosts…

The low cliffs, pebble beaches and faded hotels of his home county have become fixed in our minds as subtly dangerous places with a hint of folk horror. All those lost places… Visit Dunwich to see the last grave of All Saints teetering on the edge of the cliff, visit Aldeburgh and see the House in the Clouds bright and distant across the marshes, go to lonely Minsmere and see the ruined chapel, all that remains of a monastery and village abandoned, go to Covehithe … if it’s still there.

Suffolk is, after all, the home county of one of the greatest tellers of ghost tales – M R James. James moved to Suffolk aged three, when his father became rector of Great Livermere, up near the Norfolk border. His family lived there from 1865 until 1909, so James had a foot in Suffolk for much of his life. Several of his tales, Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, my Lad; A Warning to the Curious; The Ash-tree and more, are set in Suffolk, and develop the disquieting aesthetic we now recognise in the landscape.

These fictions tap into the folk tales of the county, and there is no shortage of tales of ghosts, both true and tall, recorded in Suffolk. Most of the ghost tales still told seem to date back to no earlier than the 17th century – one of the earlier ghosts is Jonah Snell, whose story was possibly revived due to the uncovering of his gibbet post in the 1950s. Likewise, there are ghost stories about 17th century figures associated with the county’s sad history of persecution of witches, such as Amy Denny and Rose Cullender in Lowestoft. But Suffolk does have earlier ghosts recorded in its monastic chronicles. Now off Mildenhall Road in Bury St Edmunds, the site of Babwell Friary is right on the edge of today’s town. Before the friary was founded in the 13th century, Babwell was a marshy, fenny area, and there was found the county’s earliest named ghost: Leofstan, a luckless sheriff in Bury who fell foul of St Edmund.

As a storyteller who has come to specialise in local tales, I’ve been telling ghost stories for a good many years. One of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s these ghostly tales that people most respond to – because they have stories of their own. Of all the categories of local folk tale, it’s ironic that the ghost tale is the most living! Many of us know someone who has had a strange experience of a ghostly nature, or may even have had one ourselves. When I tell local ghost stories to audiences ranging from local WIs to school groups, I generally get some back.

I should say that I’ve never had much in the way of supernatural experiences myself – probably the scariest thing that’s happened in my researches was accidently standing next to a bird-scarer in a wood I wasn’t supposed to be in when it went off… I imagine they heard my shriek a mile away! Although, I will confess that we found there was a distinctly edgy atmosphere in Potsford Wood by Jonah Snell’s gibbet post. But we’ve been a bit naughty – we’ve gone visiting these ghostly locations in the middle of the day. What would have happened if we had visited by night? Probably the only ghost locations we’ve visited at night have been those hotbeds of supernatural activity – pubs!

With the season turning to midwinter and Christmas, there is more night than day, despite the lights being lit in our towns and cities. Christmas trees and other decorations are starting to go up in our homes. So, it’s time to tell these winter tales, these stories of ‘spirits and ghosts that glide by night,’ as Christopher Marlowe says in The Jew of Malta. It’s long been the tradition to tell ghost stories at Christmas, for at midwinter the night holds sway, and in the words of an early 11th century German abbess, Brigid, ‘the night is the domain of the dead.’ It’s a time to gather with friends and family and share stories, and it’s a time to remember those who have gone before, even as we look forward to a fresh new year and new possibilities.

M R James was aware of the tradition of telling ghost tales in the dark of the year, writing in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in 1904: ‘I wrote these stories … and most of them were read to patient friends, usually at the seasons of Christmas…’ So, pull up a chair, stoke the fire, turn on the fairy lights and start telling winter tales of ghost and spirits – and if they are Suffolk tales, so much the better! Did I tell you the one about the man who tried to get buried treasure from the county’s ghosts and met the monk-headed dog? Ah well, that’s another story!

Bio

Kirsty Hartsiotis, who is originally from Suffolk, has been a storyteller for more than twenty years, both solo and with her group Fire Springs. She came to storytelling with a lifelong love of stories and history, and a background in drama, heritage and education. She’s also a writer, and is the author of Suffolk Folk Tales and, with Cherry Wilkinson, Suffolk Ghost Tales, as well as a number of other folk tale collections. With her other hat on, she’s a museum curator, curating the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection at a Gloucestershire museum, and an Accredited Arts Society lecturer in art history – and folklore.

Photo Credit: The Potsford Ghost © Kirsty Hartsiotis

Zombies: The New Dead – a Zoom talk with Roger Luckhurst

In 1968, medical science radically re-defined death. It was no longer marked by the cessation of the heart, but by the absence of brain activity. This was a product of new technologies, which could sustain the physical body for prolonged periods on support machines in Intensive Care Units, but without the hope of a recovery of brain function. It produced early on a weird state between physical death and actual death occupied by profoundly anomalous beings. A kind of undead…

It is perhaps no coincidence that in 1968 George Romero released his Night of the Living Dead and launched the modern zombie story – beings somewhere between life and death, best dispatched by a shot to the head, not the heart. Since then, the number of types of people who occupy this shadowy position between life and death, or between two deaths, has only expanded. This talk will explore some of these conditions, and also examine how they pop up in horror fiction and film.

 

Roger Luckhurst is a Professor who teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written on mummies, vampires, and zombies, and was once welcomed onto Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ as ‘the go-to guy for the undead.’ His most recent book is Gothic: An Illustrated History, from Thames and Hudson (2021).

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. 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

[Image: a scene from Night of the Living Dead (1968). Direction and cinematography both by George A. Romero, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

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

New Orleans Voodoo, A fully illustrated lecture by Dr Louise Fenton- with Devil’s Botany Absinthe LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7pm

When walking around the Vieux Carré, the French Quarter, in New Orleans, there is the sound of Jazz, steamy heat and Voodoo. In this lecture Dr Louise Fenton will take you on a journey through the history of Voodoo, explaining how it evolved in this part of the USA. She will introduce you to key figures such as Dr John and Marie Laveau, show you key sites both within the French Quarter and beyond, take a look at Voodoo dolls and how Voodoo permeates the very soul of New Orleans. This lecture will introduce some of the practitioners in the Quarter now and discuss how people incorporate Voodoo into their daily life. By exploring literature, tourist guides, shops and Museums Louise will also show how Voodoo has been represented and how the authentic Voodoo can be differentiated from the tourist version.

Speaker Bio

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.

City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley by Phil Baker- with Devil’s Botany Absinthe LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7pm

“I dreamed I was paying a visit to London,” Aleister Crowley wrote in Italy, continuing, “It was a vivid, long, coherent, detailed affair of several days, with so much incident that it would make a good-sized volume.” Crowley had a love-hate relationship with London, but the city was where he spent much of his adult life, and it was the capital of the culture that created him: Crowley was a post-decadent with deviant Victorian roots in the cultural ferment of the 1890s and the magical revival of the Golden Dawn.

Not a walking guide, although many routes could be pieced together from its pages, this is a biography by sites. A fusion of life-writing with psychogeography, steeped in London’s social history from Victoria to the Blitz, it draws extensively on unpublished material and offers an exceptionally intimate picture of the Great Beast. We follow Crowley as he searches for prostitutes in Hyde Park and Pimlico, drinks absinthe and eats Chinese food in Soho, and finds himself down on his luck in Paddington Green–and yet never quite losing sight of the illumination that drove him: the abiding rapture, he wrote in his diary, which makes a ‘bus in the street sound like an angel choir!

Bio

Phil Baker’s previous books include the definitive biography of Austin Osman Spare, London: City of Cities, a critical study of Samuel Beckett and a cultural history of absinthe. He lives in London and walks everywhere.

Alexandrian Witchcraft: an Ascent to the Numinous by Sharon Day – LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7pm

Following the decades of controversy that have surrounded the late Alex Sanders, “Ascent to the Numinous” might not at first be the term that springs to mind when considering his heritage and, more specifically, the type of wiccan practice associated with him.

He has been labelled, among other things, a ‘showman’, a ‘plagiariser’, a ‘fascinator’, a ‘teller-of-tall-tales’, usually backed by accounts, purportedly based on personal experience, of his darker side. All, to varying degrees may well contain some element of truth.

Less common or at least less public are the innumerable accounts of his unbridled generosity; his knack of diverting unwanted attention from those loyal to him; and, most important of all perhaps, his intuitive grasp of the Mysteries, not to mention his ability to impart what he learned to his students and, through them, those initiates who to this day yearn to experience them.

Thanks to him, what today is known as Alexandrian witchcraft, its name associated with his own, was adapted – without ever betraying – those wiccan traditions that Gerald Gardner and others did so much to revive. By doing it, he fostered an approach that was at once both contemporary and fully respectful of the past, mindful of those traditions which all witches, irrespective of label, cherish and keep alive to this day.

The presenter will expand on these themes in her discourse.

Speaker Bio – Sharon Day

American by birth and British by marriage, Sharon’s academic career included one year in Japan as an exchange student in 1980. She would return there, having graduated from law school in New York City in 1992, with her husband, also a lawyer, when he took up a post in Tokyo years later.

After repatriating to London in 1997, Sharon felt drawn to esotericism and the occult, subsequently discovering what she felt was a vocation within Alexandrian witchcraft. Her search for suitable training and practical experience took her from London to Australia, the United States, and finally back to London, where she became the personal student of Maxine Sanders, co-founder of the Alexandrian Tradition.

Today, she leads the Coven of the Stag King in London under the eldership – and discreet guidance- of Maxine.

Sharon is also the founder of Rose Ankh Publishing Ltd, a book publisher of unique occult, historical, philosophical, and biographical works (www.roseankhpublishing.com) as well as an online historical archive dedicated to the Alexandrian witchcraft tradition (www.alexandrianwitchcraft.org).

Inside The World of Stonehenge – Dr. Neil Wilkin & Dr. Jennifer Wexler

Towering above the Wiltshire countryside, Stonehenge is perhaps the world’s most awe-inspiring ancient stone circle.

Shrouded in layers of speculation and folklore, this iconic British monument has spurred myths and legends that persist today. Featuring in a special exhibition that ran from February – July 2022, the British Museum revealed the secrets of Stonehenge, shining a light on its purpose, cultural power and the people that created it.

The exhibit followed the story of Britain and Europe from 4000 to 1000 BC, focusing on the restless and highly connected age of Stonehenge – a period of immense transformation and radical ideas that changed society forever.

This talk will look at some of the human stories behind the stones as revealed through a variety of fascinating objects. Among these are stone axes from the North Italian Alps, stunning gold jewellery and astonishing examples of early metalwork including the Nebra Sky Disc – the world’s oldest surviving map of the stars. A remarkably preserved 4,000-year-old timber circle dubbed Seahenge also took centre stage in the show, on loan for the very first time. All these objects offer important clues about the beliefs, rituals, and complex worldview of Neolithic people, helping to build a vivid sense of life for Europe’s earliest ancestors.

Bio’s

Dr. Neil Wilkin is the Curator of Early Europe at the British Museum and was lead Curator of this exhibition

Dr Jennifer Wexler is the Project Curator on the World of Stonehenge exhibit and an independent researcher and consultant working as a field and museum archaeologist in the UK, Italy, Egypt, and the USA.

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

Folktales of Fools & Wisemen – Michael O’Connor

Before schooling was widely available, for most people the classroom was at the fireside, the field and the country lane, where the bards told their tales.

Many such folk tales exist to convey life-lessons in an entertaining way. These stories are not the pontifications of ancient philosophers: they are the gleanings of countless storytellers, everyday men and women with hard-won life experiences and pockets full of folklore. The tales reflect the times and places of their origin, but have been handed down from generation to generation, evolving to meet changing times. Some are amusing; some are thought-provoking; all have been polished and honed for so long that their message slips, almost imperceptibly, into the mind.

Fools and Wise Men retells these stories for new generations – repaying our debts to the bards of old.

Many of us know the tale of the irascible samurai and the inscrutable sage who disarms his antagonist with a single sentence. It’s a common and successful formula for a ‘wisdom tale’. But historically there have been few samurai in Southampton, and sadly the gurus of Gateshead are not well-known. But for over 1000 years, in this country, storytellers have been creating, stealing, adapting, and cherishing stories that pass on lessons from life in a completely sage-free environment. Not the mystical wisdom of the ancients, but down-to-earth lessons from life, learned in the school of hard knocks. Not heavy handed moralising, but entertaining tales that subtly plant seeds of practical wisdom in the mind.

Mike O’Connor has re-evaluated the way we look at stories, the way we select stories, and the way we tell them. In this concert he invites us to relax and enjoy a selection of such tales from the British Isles. They are witty, hilarious, thought provoking and completely engaging.

Bio Mike O’Connor lives in St Ervan, Cornwall. He is a musicologist and musician, a folklorist and storyteller, and he specialises in the culture of his adopted home. As a result he is known for the songs and folk-music of TV’s ‘Poldark’. As well as many academic works, Mike is the author of ‘Cornish Folk Tales’, Cornish Folk Tales for Children’, ‘Isles of Scilly Folk Tales’ and ‘Fools and Wise Men – Folk Tales of Wisdom.’

Telling since the first days of the revival, his past major performances include ‘Imravoe’, ‘Tristan and Iseult’, ‘Return to Lyonesse’ and ‘Odysseus Dreaming’. He has performed at folk and storytelling festivals all over the country, most recently at the Festival at the Edge and Sidmouth International Folk Festival.

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

SÉANCE: Spiritualism, Photography and the Search for Ectoplasm – Shannon Taggart – LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7pm

Whether you believe in the paranormal or don’t, Shannon Taggart’s book is fascinating and the photos are haunting! – Uri Geller

Shannon Taggart discovered Spiritualism as a teenager when a medium revealed a family secret about her grandfather’s death that proved to be true. In 2001, while working as a photojournalist, she began taking pictures where that message was received – Lily Dale, New York, the town home to the world’s largest Spiritualist community. She expected to spend one summer figuring out the tricks of the Spiritualist trade. Instead, Spiritualism’s mysterious processes, earnest practitioners, and forgotten cultural history became an inspiration. Her project became a twenty-year odyssey, taking her around the world in search of ‘ectoplasm’ – the elusive substance that is said to be spiritual and material. In this illustrated presentation, Shannon Taggart shares stories and images from her “part documentary, part ghost story” book SÉANCE. The talk will also explore Spiritualism’s connections to art, science, and technology, its relationship with human celebrity, and its intrinsic bond with the medium of photography.

Speaker Bio

Shannon Taggart is an artist and author based in St. Paul, MN, USA. Her images have been exhibited and featured internationally. Her monograph, SÉANCE, with texts by Dan Aykroyd, Andreas Fisher, and Tony Oursler, was named one of TIME’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019.’ It will be re-released by Atelier Éditions, with an additional essay by JF Martel, in Fall 2022. She is currently working on an illustrated book about the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), one of the most exotic cases in the history of psychical research.