Zoom Lecture Archives - Page 53 of 81 - The Last Tuesday Society

Scandinavian love magic: divination and curses – Tommy Kuusela

How can one find true love? Who will it be and will it be a happy marriage? These questions have been asked time and time again throughout the ages by young unmarried women. I say women as most records mentioning different types of love divination concern women. In a time when much was uncertain and love could be a luxury, many dreamed of a decent marriage, a good partner and supportive husband. Men practiced another, more sinister magical technique. There are many examples, stretching as far back as the Viking age, of how different curses and other magical traditions have been used for love and for forcing the opposite sex into having intercourse. We can find examples of this in early written sources (for example in The Poetic Edda, Runic inscriptions and the Icelandic Sagas). Evidence of similar traditions have also been found in the archeological material. Many later folklore sources, now stored in folklore archives, mention the same tradition. The latter was a magical tradition primarily used by men, while young and unmarried women instead relied on divination techniques and other rituals for finding out who their future husband would be. In this talk, I will present and discuss types of love divination and curses in myth and folklore from pre-industrial Scandinavia moving from the Viking Age up until early 19th century.

Bio

Tommy Kuusela earned his PhD in History of Religions at Stockholm University in 2017. He has written more than 50 articles on Old Norse religion and Scandinavian folklore and is a well-known folklorist in Sweden. Kuusela works in one of Sweden’s largest folklore archives and is a board member of several academic societies. He is also one of the hosts of Sweden’s biggest podcast on folklore, När man talar om trollen (a saying in Swedish for ‘Speaking of the Devil’).

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Halloween in New Orleans – Dr Louise Fenton

Halloween is now widely celebrated across the world, often accused of being too ‘Americanised’. However, where did these traditions begin? Dr Louise Fenton will consider how Halloween traditions evolved in America before moving her focus to the traditions within New Orleans. The culture, traditions and society of New Orleans is unique due to an eclectic mix of people and beliefs. This fully illustrated lecture will show some of the historic traditions before exploring Halloween today, a mix of Voodoo, ghosts, decorations, parades, all celebrated to the sound of Jazz. Louise will show how houses are decorated, the range of celebrations and where Voodoo fits into this special time of year. Mixing contemporary celebration with centuries old traditions, Louise will show how the Crescent City will get you in the mood for Halloween.

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.

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Samhain – stories of encounters with ghosts and the darker face of faerie – Hugh Lupton

Let Hugh Lupton tuck you into bed and tell you tales of Ghosts and Faeries

Beltane and Samhain (May-eve and Hallowe’en) are the two points in the year when the boundaries between the worlds grow thin. As the light wanes and autumn’s chill deepens into winter, the stories of Samhain have a darker hue than those of Beltane. The spirits of the dead mingle with the more malign forces of Faerie. In this storytelling performance Hugh Lupton will invoke the spirit of the season with stories of Tam Lin, Fionn McCumhail, the Ferrishers and various ghosts.

Bio

Hugh Lupton has been a professional storyteller since 1981. He tells stories from all over the world, but his particular passion is for the hidden layers of the British landscape and the stories and ballads that give voice to them. He is also a lyricist and a novelist and has published many collections of traditional tales. His novel ‘The Assembly of the Severed Head’ explores the moment the Mabinogion moved from being part of a fluid oral culture to becoming a written text.

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The Fairies of Suffolk – From Green Children to Tom Tit Tot: Francis Young

Suffolk may not be the first English county that most people would associate with fairies, but there are more accounts of strange encounters with otherworlders from medieval Suffolk than from any other county in southern England, and the county has a rich 19th-century folklore of fairies compared with neighbouring counties. This talk will explore the fairy lore of Suffolk, from the 12th-century tale of the Green Children of Woolpit to the familiars of 17th-century witch trials and the world-famous Tom Tit Tot, the subject of a fairytale recorded in the 19th century.

Speaker Bio

Francis Young is the author of 18 books, most recently Magic in Merlin’s Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain. His history of British fairy belief, Twilight of the Godlings, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

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Pilgrimage & Powerspots: A Discussion on Sacred Travel – C Greer & M Oing

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring

The pandemic has reminded us that travel, seemingly mundane, is actually a risky endeavor. By leaving home, we enter into a zone of liminality, a realm in which the structures of the mundane world are dissolved. Embarking on pilgrimage places our responsibility to family, clan, and nation on hold, so that we can enter into a new community of fellow travelers, lovers, animals, plants, gods, stones, synchronicities, monsters, and all that is fantastic. Intercoursing with the spirits of the road, then, unbinds the imagination, so the mind tunes itself into the everyday dimension of the cosmic. At the core of pilgrimaging is the process of sacramentalization, or recognizing the sacred that dwells within ourselves and the world around us.

In this discussion, my co-author and I will use our latest book, Kumano Kodo: Pilgrimage to Powerspots, as the jumping off point for a deep dive into the metaphysics of pilgrimage. Over the course of our conversation, we will survey the foremost pilgrimage sites of today, from the Marian shrine at Lourdes, France, to the vertices of Sedona, Arizona, and the psychedelic trips conducted within the human mind. Reflecting on our own weird experiences as pilgrims on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela and Japan’s Kumano Kodo, we will open up discussion on the much-debated dichotomy between a tourist and a pilgrim, as well as the shifting demographics of pilgrimage in the contemporary world

Dr. J. Christian Greer is a scholar of Religious Studies with a special focus on esotericism. In addition to earning a MDiv at Harvard Divinity School, he received his MA and PhD in Western esotericism from the History of Hermetic Philosophy department at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His forthcoming book, Angelheaded Hipsters: Psychedelic Militancy in Nineteen Eighties North America (Oxford University Press), analyzes the growth, diversification, and expansion of psychedelic culture within fanzine networks in the late Cold War era. He is currently director of the History of Hermetic Philosophy’s summer/winter school, hosted as the Uni. of Amsterdam, and a lecturer at Stanford University

Dr. Michelle K. Oing is a scholar of late medieval art and architecture, focusing on the intersection of sculpture and performance in Catholic Europe. She received her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture in 2020 from Yale University, and is currently a Postdoctoral Mellon Fellow at Stanford’s Center for the Humanities. Her current project examines the role of moveable sculpture in Northern Europe through the conceptual framework of puppetry, paying particular attention to notions of play and discovery. Bringing together insights from art history and performance studies, Dr. Oing’s work seeks to highlight the dynamic interaction of humans and objects in the creation of meaning. She is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, and lecturer at Stanford University.

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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Exploring the Anomolous in Psychedelic Therapy – Dr David Luke

Exploring the Anomolous in Psychedelic Therapy, from neurodivergence to the transpersonal

This Month’s Psychedelicacies, our very own Co-host and Maitre d’ of the Psychedelicatessan, Dr David Luke, will be providing the night’s talk

Now that the psychedelic renaissance has found its way out of the birth canal and enters its childhood there is an ever-increasing need for psychedelic psychotherapy, integration, sitting, welfare and aftercare. While many therapists and counsellors are well equipped to provide containers and practice for processing the autobiographical material that arises there a number of unique dimensions to the transpersonal nature of psychedelics that warrant special attention and treatment. This talk explores some of the range of transpersonal experiences that may arise, their ontological complexities and challenges, and the metaphysical shifts that may arise. Some consideration will also be given (if time) to the nature of neurodivergence and the use of psychedelics. Topics likely to be covered include inter-species communication, eco-consciousness, mediumship, possession, entity encounters, near-death and out-of-body experiences, psi, alien abduction experiences and lycanthropy, alongside blindness, aphantasia, synaesthesia, HPPD and autism/ASD.

Speaker Bio

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

‘Blossom’ by Erik Thor Sandberg. https://erikthorsandberg.com

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

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“The Devil’s Gateway” – Daughters of Eve in the Middle Ages – Professor Elizabeth Archibald

The Middle Ages had a complex attitude to women. Eve was responsible for the Fall of Man, and theologians warned against the temptation offered by female beauty and wiles; the Virgin Mary and female saints were the only safe objects of devotion. But the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the rise of troubadour poetry celebrating the joys and pains of love, and of chivalric romance in which ‘ennobling’ love inspires knights to great deeds. Many medieval texts written by men today seem to us misogynist, but Chaucer was described by a near-contemporary as “always women’s friend”; and at the time he was writing, a striking defence of women was offered by the remarkable Christine de Pizan in her City of Ladies.

Elizabeth Archibald was Professor of English Studies at Durham from 2012 until her retirement in August 2021. Before that she held posts at King’s College, Cambridge, the University of Victoria (Canada), and Bristol University. She specializes in medieval romance and the classical tradition in the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the Arthurian legend. She is co-editor of the journal Arthurian Literature, and a past President of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society. Her current research project is an interdisciplinary study of bathing in medieval literature and society. Elizabeth has published monographs on Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Variations (1991), and Incest and the Medieval Imagination (2001), and has co-edited A Companion to Malory with A.S.G. Edwards (1996), and The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend co-edited with Ad Putter (2009). Her many essays and chapters range over classical and medieval themes and texts, including Chaucer, Malory, and Scottish literature.

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. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. 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: The Garden Of Eden With The Fall Of Man by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel de Oude (1615): Mauritshaus, The Hague. Photo by Ben Sutherland. See Creative Commons license.

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The Irish Goddess Morrigan – Lora O’Brien

The Irish Goddess Mórrígan

The Irish Goddess Mórrígan is a popular but still often enigmatic or misunderstood deity, associated with battle, death, and prophecy in Irish mythology. This presentation will answer the questions: Who is She?; When and where did Her stories take place?; What does She do?; Why and how might people work with Her in the modern age? You will experience the unique perspective of an indigenous Mórrígan Priestess who has studied the lore directly, and lived right by the Mórrígan’s ‘fit abode’ for over a decade; guiding people – both physically and spiritually – on a daily basis to seek the presence of the Great Queen at the Síd ar Cruachán in Rathcroghan, County Roscommon.

Speaker Bio:

Lora O’Brien is a modern Draoí – a practitioner and priest of indigenous Irish magic and spirituality. She has been consciously following a pagan path for 30 years, and dedicated specifically to the Irish Goddess Mórrígan in 2004. She managed one of Ireland’s most important sacred sites – Cruachán/Rathcroghan – for a decade, and is a co-founder and legal celebrant with Pagan Life Rites Ireland. With her partner, Jon O’Sullivan, she is the co-founder of the Irish Pagan School. Lora is currently a candidate for a Masters Degree in Irish Regional History (2023).

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The Long Lost Friend: An American Grimoire – Dan Harms

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The Long Lost Friend: An American Grimoire

Two centuries ago, in a valley near Reading, Pennsylvania, a man wrote a book of charms, incantations, and recipes taken from German tradition. Although he received condemnation for revealing magical secrets, his book became an instant classic. It became a sourcebook of spells for German-speaking immigrants, and its promises of invulnerability brought it wider success – until its reputation was stained with bloody murder.

This talk explores The Long-Lost Friend, an American grimoire that became a sensation in its native Pennsylvania and far beyond. We will explore its author, John George Hohman, the culture in which he lived, and the spells in the book itself – and why it is no longer used within that community.

Speaker Bio:

Dan Harms is a librarian and author from upstate New York, and editor of the Llewellyn annotated edition of The Long-Lost Friend. He has also edited The Book of Oberon, Angels, Demons, and Spirits, and the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. His research interests include early modern grimoires, nineteenth-century ritual magic, and roleplaying games.

Curated and Hosted by Dr Amy Hale

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The Untold Chapter Of British Traditional Wicca – Julia Phillips

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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

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