Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Scientist
The most successful figure of the early twentieth century occult revival was also its most enigmatic, the ‘spiritual scientist’ Rudolf Steiner. Before emerging in the early 1900s as a remarkable esoteric philosopher and leader of a new spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, Steiner kicked around Vienna, Berlin, and points in between as an all-purpose Germanic professor, lecturing on Hegel or Nietzsche at working men’s colleges, loitering in cafes, and for the most part keeping under wraps his strange ability to see spirits and speak with the dead. Starting out as a Goethe scholar, after a lecture to the Berlin Theosophical Society, Steiner re-invented himself as the charismatic, inspiring herald of a modern mystery school, that would have remarkable practical results in agriculture, architecture, education, medicine, the arts and even politics. Who was Rudolf Steiner? My lecture will go some way to answering that question.
Book: Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work
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
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Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times
This talk concerns the history of the dark side of witchcraft since c. 1800. The notion of mystic interpersonal harm, of bestowing misfortunes onto others through occult and magical means, is conventionally equated with the premodern era, particularly with the period of the European witch-trials. Yet long after the official witch-prosecutions had subsided, the notion of harmful magic continued to inspire fears, beliefs, habits, precautions, practices, and sometimes outrages among the people of the British Isles. This lecture explores the nature of witchcraft belief, its various and evolving forms, its role in people’s lives, and what caused it to ebb and flow during the Georgian and Victorian eras, the Twentieth century, and beyond. The eerie type of witchcraft is a fascinating though in some ways difficult topic, with a rich modern history that connects village folklore with Georgian eccentrics, interwar occultists, professional magicians, exorcists, and many others past and present.
Bio
Dr. Thomas Waters is a Lecturer in History at Imperial College London and author of Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (Yales, 2019) along with a wide range of articles about the history of witchcraft and magic in the modern British Isles. He read History at the University of Leeds and then Oxford, where he did doctoral research on religion, magic, and supernatural belief in Victorian England. He has lectured at Oxford, Derby, Hertfordshire, and Leeds, as well as for the Workers’ Educational Association. He regularly writes and speaks for audiences beyond academia, and is currently researching, among other esoteric topics, the social history of moonlight.
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Rivers and streams sculpt our landscape, and have connected our communities throughout history, from mountain to estuary and to the wide sea beyond. They give us water and food, trade and transport, yet they have a life-force all of their own.
Lisa Schneidau has collected traditional folk tales from wild rivers, lakes, and streams for her new book River Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press). Here are old stories of danger and transformation, river goddesses, ghosts and mysterious creatures that dwell in the watery arteries of these islands. They tell of the power and energy of water through our landscape, and the price to be paid for neglect and pollution.
Bio
Lisa Schneidau is a storyteller and environmentalist based on Dartmoor. She seeks out, and shares, traditional stories about the land and our complex relationship with it. Lisa is the author of Woodland Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press, 2020) and Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press, 2018). She tells stories at events, nature reserves, arts centres and schools, including performance storytelling, training and storytelling development within education, as well as helping to run South Devon Storytellers and Dartmoor Storytellers. Lisa trained as an ecologist and has worked in British nature conservation for over twenty years, in roles as diverse as farm advisor, lobbyist and conservation director. http://www.lisaschneidau.co.uk
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Gertrude Abercrombie once said, “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” ‘Gertrude Abercrombie once said, “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” ‘Solitary Surrealism’ is a term that often describes Abercrombie’s paintings populated by lone women, cats, owls, and moonlight. Her rooms feature empty chairs, tables, and chaise lounges — a sense of domesticity not so much disrupted but achingly quiet and still.
Abercrombie’s images are otherworldly yet felt so deeply real and profoundly familiar; a dreamy Surrealism with a touch of hallucination. This lecture will focus on Abercrombie’s solitary Surrealism and how her still, isolated art offers us glimpses into marvellous worlds that feel excitingly alive.
Bio
Dr Sabina Stent is a freelance writer specialising in women surrealists and visual culture. Her bylines include Magnum Photos, AnOther Magazine, Crime Reads, and MAI: a journal of feminism and visual culture (as a contributing editor). She is especially interested in how work by feminist-surrealists explores the body, fashion, the cinematic, and the uncanny. Her authored book chapters including ‘Women Surrealists and the Egyptian Imagination’ in Tea with the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt and the Modern Imagination (I. B. Tauris, 2019); and ‘Leonor Fini: Fashion Magic Sorceress’ in Making Magic Happen: Selected Essays From the Inaugural Magickal Women Conference 2019 (Hadean Press, 2021).
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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In 1938, Surrealist fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli — collaborator of Salvador DalÃ, Leonor Fini and Jean Cocteau, and pioneer of everything ‘Shocking Pink’ — unveiled her Zodiac Collection. The spectacular celestial garments included jackets emblazoned with planets, dresses with stars, and solar-adorned capes. Every item was carefully thought-out and rooted in Schiaparelli’s fascination with astronomy, Euclid’s Elements, and the constellation Ursa Major, her life-long talisman.
This illustrated lecture will specifically revolve around Schiaparelli’s Zodiac Collection, exploring her fascination with the Solar System and how astronomy influenced her life. We will also delve into Schiaparelli’s scientific approach to couture, the collection’s effect on contemporary fashion, and how the planets provided creative force for other women artists associated with the Surrealist movement.
Bio
Dr Sabina Stent is a freelance writer specialising in women surrealists and visual culture. Her bylines include Magnum Photos, AnOther Magazine, Crime Reads, and MAI: a journal of feminism and visual culture (as a contributing editor). She is especially interested in how work by feminist-surrealists explores the body, fashion, the cinematic, and the uncanny. Her authored book chapters including ‘Women Surrealists and the Egyptian Imagination’ in Tea with the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt and the Modern Imagination (I. B. Tauris, 2019); and ‘Leonor Fini: Fashion Magic Sorceress’ in Making Magic Happen: Selected Essays From the Inaugural Magickal Women Conference 2019 (Hadean Press, 2021).
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.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
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. Here are lyrical stories telling the birth of Buddha and also how the current Dali Lama was found. There are humorous stories…why the King of the Monkeys wanted to rule the universe, the archer who changed his king’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 ‘missing years’ 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.
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 adventures—which haven’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 doesn’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 ‘folksinger and storyteller’. 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)
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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.
Leah Gordon explores the links between Vodou and art, in both Haiti’s rich art history and contemporary practice. Leah will discuss the use of image and artefact within Vodou ritual and the often, interchangeable role of artist and Houngan (Vodou priest). To conclude Gordon will explore the liminal space that contemporary artists currently inhabit whilst trying to negotiate their ancestral histories and cultural antecedents within a contemporary art market which still has a conflicted relationship toward ethnographic and ritual objects.
Leah Gordon will discuss these issues from her experience of co-curating ‘POÌ€TOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince’ at Pioneer Works, Red Hook, Brooklyn, ‘Kafou: Haiti, Art & Vodou’ at the Nottingham Contemporary, ‘In Extremis: Death & Life in 21st Century Haitian Art’ at the Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, as one of the directors of the Ghetto Biennale and as an adjunct curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.
Speaker Bio
Leah Gordon (born Ellesmere Port, UK) is an artist, curator, and writer. Her work explores the intervolved and intersectional histories of the Caribbean plantation system, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Enclosure Acts and the creation of the British working-class. In the 1980’s she wrote lyrics, sang, and played for a feminist folk punk band. Gordon’s film and photographic work has been exhibited internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the Dak’art Biennale; the National Portrait Gallery, UK and the Norton Museum of Art, Florida. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; was a curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; was the co-curator of ‘Kafou: Haiti, History & Art’ at Nottingham Contemporary, UK; and was the co-curator of ‘PÃ’TOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince’ at Pioneer Works, NYC in 2018 and MOCA, Miami in 2019. In 2022 she will be exhibiting and curating at documenta fifteen, Kassel.
Still widely consulted and appreciated, the works of the nineteenth century Cornish folklore collectors Robert Hunt, William Bottrell, and Margaret Courtney were published against a background of profound upheaval within Cornish society, as its traditional industries collapsed and a third of its population emigrated to the American continent and to the antipodes. Their successors, the folklorists of the early to mid twentieth century, are less well known, but their collections were of similar scope and likewise amassed during a period of societal change. Two of the most significant of them were William Henry Paynter and Barbara Catherine Spooner, both of whom were active as folklore fieldworkers during the inter-war period. This talk sets their practices in context, using archival and published sources, and explores beliefs in the supernatural at a time when such beliefs were in retreat.
Speaker: Jason Semmens, M.A., is the Director of the Museum of Military Medicine and an independent scholar with particular research interests around the history of vernacular beliefs in the supernatural in the South West of England from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries.
Your host for this even is 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.
