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Hags and Crones: The Weird, the Wicked, and the Wise – Peg Aloi

Hags and Crones: The Weird, the Wicked, and the Wise

Popular culture has been saturated with occult imagery in recent years, thanks in part to a rebirth of interest in modern witchcraft and the paranormal. The figure of the witch, with us since the first century BC, continues to fascinate. Witchcraft as portrayed on social media has evolved into an almost impossible continuum from malevolent evil to aesthetically-pleasing self-care. Mass media offerings in film, television, animation, graphic novels and video games portray the figure of the witch in a myriad ways, from adolescent to ancient, from kind healer to malevolent magic-user.

The majority of witches are still portrayed as female, perhaps in keeping with the many narratives from history and the witch hunts that were gruesome expressions of misogyny. While many more recent stories focus on younger witches, with coming of age narratives being an increasingly popular and intriguing genre, there is still a great deal of emphasis on the older witch in the form of the hag, the crone, and/or the wise woman.

The hag may be viewed as a complex archetype. She is part Hollywood stereotype based on (often disturbing) fairy tales, and part expression of a woman who has moved beyond sexual utility, who is considered no longer attractive, useful, productive, etc. Portraying older women as witches is of course a common cultural meme, one that attempts to justify relegating such people to the edges of society, especially if such a woman is alone/not surrounded by family. No longer encumbered with child care or the domestic duties of being a wife and/or mother, the single older woman is a problematic entity.

For witches are the ultimate outsiders. Frequently the hag, crone or witch is portrayed as an edge-dweller: the witch who lives in a forest cottage, the hag dressed in rags who lives on the streets, or the solitary old woman ignored by her neighbours and teased by children, to name a few examples. She is often assumed to be dangerous, and is often the target of negative propaganda, for no apparent reason. The persecution of the hag has been with us practically since the dawn of human history, and continues unabated. This piece will explore the hag, the crone and the wise woman as controversial figures embodying a range of positive and negative connotations, through an examination of their presence in contemporary horror narratives and mass media.

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, is a traditional singer, and award-winning poet.

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.

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History and Practice of Geomancy 4: Geomantic Spellcraft – Prof Alexander Cummins

History and Practice of Geomancy 4: Geomantic Spellcraft

Considered a “sister” to astrology, the system of divination known as geomancy was an incredibly popular and well-regarded form of divination in Renaissance Europe. It was not simply a divination system however. The talismanic use of geomantic figures – ‘betwixt images and characters’ – was considered by many Renaissance magicians to bridge a divide between divination and operative sorcery: offering a range of elemental, planetary and zodiacal magical techniques.

These and other examinations of how early modern geomancer magicians worked their Arts begins to demonstrate the ceremony, invocation, spell-craft, evocation, spirit-work, and theurgy underlying this once-popular art of divination. Much more than a party-trick of simple fortune-telling, geomancy apprehends, interrelates and articulates grounded lived realities fundamentally dependent upon occult cosmological meaning and the conscious sorcerous manipulations of ritual magic.

This class will guide those new to geomancy and astrological magic through the options geomantic magic presents – from the sorceries emergent from sortilege, the image magic of characters and letters, talismanic spell-craft, and simple but potent folk magics of candle, bath, prayer, and charm, as well as techniques for working a variety of tutelary elemental, planetary, and necromantic spirits of geomancy.

This illustrated lecture is taught by professional diviner and consultant sorcerer Dr Alexander Cummins, a geomancer with over a decade of personal and professional experience in geomantic divination and remediation, spirit conjuration, spell-work, and talisman-craft. He can be found at his website www.alexandercummins.com, where he can be booked for talks, readings, and private coaching.

Bio:

This presentation is delivered by Dr Alexander Cummins, himself both a historian of magic and professional geomancer. And so, in this class, we will not only examine the historical practice of this incredibly popular Renaissance system of divination, students new to it will be taught how to consult this most worldly oracle. And even seasoned geomancers should appreciate the shared techniques and tips on exploring geomancy’s spirits and spell-craft!

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

See all the events in the series – Collection: Al Cummins – Geomancy Series

History & Practice of Geomancy 3: Mastering Shield Charts – Prof Alexander Cummins

History & Practice of Geomancy 3: Mastering Shield Charts

The fundamental act and process of European Renaissance geomantic divination, of “casting geomancy”, is setting a shield chart. So called because of the shield-like shape of the chart, this charting of geomantic influences distills down assessment of any and all aspects of the querent’s situation into a careful and stable judgement concerning how likely things are to happen, as well as offering advice on what will help and hinder one’s success in such matters.

The geomantic shield chart generally consists of fifteen (or, as we shall see, sixteen) ‘places’, not unlike the places of, say, a classic cartomantic three-card spread. As a sister art to astrology, geomancy of this sort uses the Twelve Houses of the Heavens as the first twelve of a shield chart’s places to assess the various specific moving parts of any given set of circumstances, situations, and conditions. As such, this class will carefully consider what information, perspectives, and insights can be gleaned from assessing the placements of the Sixteen Figures across the Twelve Houses.

This class will also offer some training in the so-called “advanced” techniques of analyzing geomantic shield charts, presenting how to locate and interpret the Via Puncti for considering underlying influencing factors in a reading; as well as setting and understanding the place of the Index of the shield chart for beneficial spiritual foci and the Part of Fortune for grounding the reading’s advice in practical action. Finally, this class will offer some tips and tricks on best phrasing your questions to minimize confusion and maximize helpful clarity in one’s own geomantic divination.

Bio:

This presentation is delivered by Dr Alexander Cummins, himself both a historian of magic and professional geomancer. And so, in this class, we will not only examine the historical practice of this incredibly popular Renaissance system of divination, students new to it will be taught how to consult this most worldly oracle. And even seasoned geomancers should appreciate the shared techniques and tips on exploring geomancy’s spirits and spell-craft!

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

See all the events in the series – Collection: Al Cummins – Geomancy Series

History and Practice of Geomancy 2: The Sixteen Figures – Prof Alexander Cummins

History and Practice of Geomancy 2: The Sixteen Figures

Systems of divination divide the universe and its events between various sets of icons of power and potentiality. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, the Sixty Four Hexagrams of the I Ching, even the Seventy Eight Cards of the Tarot. The Sixteen Figures of European Renaissance geomancy are no exception.

Geomancy as a system consists of only sixteen figures, each attributed an astrological identity in terms of a ruling planet and a corresponding zodiacal sign. These sixteen figures are combined in specific charts (known as shields) to render very particular answers, often employing the twelvefold Houses of the Heavens to answer specific questions, and locate deeper perspectives in the querent’s life.

But the Sixteen Figures themselves represent not only working lots of fate in geomancy’s engine of divination; the Figures are coherences of differing patterns of possibility and potential, each with their own unique expression and instantiations of events, influences, energies, and spirits.

In this class, contemporary cunning-man and professional geomancer Dr Alexander Cummins will take us an on in-depth exploration and celebration of the practical mysteries of the sixteen figures of European Renaissance geomancy: considering the messages they bring when they show up in readings, particularly considering the blessings and obstacles they can represent, as well as assessing the ways the occult virtues and spirits of these patterns of energy can be actively engaged with and worked in our spiritual and material lives.

Bio:

This presentation is delivered by Dr Alexander Cummins, himself both a historian of magic and professional geomancer. And so, in this class, we will not only examine the historical practice of this incredibly popular Renaissance system of divination, students new to it will be taught how to consult this most worldly oracle. And even seasoned geomancers should appreciate the shared techniques and tips on exploring geomancy’s spirits and spell-craft!

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

See all the events in the series – Collection: Al Cummins – Geomancy Series

History and Practice of Geomancy 1: A Worldly Oracle – Prof Alexander Cummins

History and Practice of Geomancy 1: A Worldly Oracle

At its height in the Renaissance, geomancy was one of the most popular and well-regarded forms of divination. It was the preferred oracle of monarchs and sages. Occult philosophers swore by it as one of the most accurate and insightful divinatory practices available. While geomancy’s earliest origins lie in Arabic traditions, it swiftly became popular across Europe in the late medieval period.

Perhaps the most inherently elemental system of Western divination, the ‘geo-‘ of it is understood not only as elementally Earthy, but as worldly: for it maps practically and precisely any and all events and influences occurring in and on this world, offering advice both grounded and gnomic.

Geomancy examines the roles of the planets in our daily lives, and while it utilizes the language and expression of astrology, is not dependent on astronomical measure. Our questions are answered in this familiar language of the stars, showing how these titanic forces are playing out in our lives and under our feet. It is not a replacement for astrology but rather its “Sister” oracle, and so many of its terms will be familiar to an astrologer. That said, no previous knowledge of astrology or sorcery is needed to attend or follow this lecture; on the other hand, these explorations and presentation of the art should refresh and enliven those already familiar with divination and even geomancy itself.

Bio:

This presentation is delivered by Dr Alexander Cummins, himself both a historian of magic and professional geomancer. And so, in this class, we will not only examine the historical practice of this incredibly popular Renaissance system of divination, students new to it will be taught how to consult this most worldly oracle. And even seasoned geomancers should appreciate the shared techniques and tips on exploring geomancy’s spirits and spell-craft!

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

See all the events in the series – Collection: Al Cummins – Geomancy Series

Folk Magic and Folk Games: The Occult Power of Play – Jeff Howard

Folk Magic and Folk Games: The Occult Power of Play

The history of folk magic and folk games are deeply intertwined. This is especially true in non-digital games, such as board games and card games, which are contemporaneous with the origins of folk magic and share much of its worldview. Ancient games, such as Senet and tarot, begin as entertainment and later acquire divinatory and ritual significance, while designers of modern tabletop games such as Solemn Vale and Dark Gods of Appalachia consciously weave the folk magic traditions of Cornwall and the Appalachian Mountains into their mechanics and worldbuilding.

This talk will explore the ways in which games can function as ritual and folklore, with particular attention to the category of games referred to by Caillois as “ilinx” or “vertigo games”—games designed to disorient and, potentially, to alter consciousness. Approached in this context, games can thus operate as what Andrew D. Chumbley called “the widdershins dance of the sufi”: a deliberately countercultural practice by which play serves as a vehicle for transcendence and contact with the spirit world of ideas, archetypes, and visions. In this talk, the author will discuss the ramifications of an occult approach to games on theoretical game studies and practical game design.

Bio

Ludomancer, Technomage, Occult Game Designer. Dr. Jeff Howard is Senior Lecturer in Games at Falmouth University in Cornwall, where he specializes in occult and games. He has presented on games and the occult at a variety of international conferences, including Berlin Occulture, Trans-States, and ESSWE9.

Curated & Hosted By:

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.

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

Shadow over Ilkley: Modern Magick on the West Yorkshire Moors – Dr Phil Legard

Shadow over Ilkley: Modern Magick on the West Yorkshire Moors

“All those dark Victorian cellars and storm-blasted moors seemed to create a hotspot for UK magick at that time…” – Peter Carroll

The moors of West Yorkshire have plenty of antique folklore: giants, fairies, apparitions, and hermits have been enduring fascinations, particularly since health-tourism sprung up around towns such as Ilkley, where the Romantic imagination still cast its shadow over the mind of those seeking the novel therapies of hydropathy.

However, in this talk Phil Legard turns from the myriad tomes on local folklore and their well-inscribed tropes, and towards more contemporary manifestations of the weird on the moors: to UFOs, the Great Old Ones, cloaked spectres, entheogenic witches sabbats, serpentine goddesses, and the adventures of chaos magicians, psychic questers, pagans, and neo-antiquarians amidst the gorse and standing stones.

Phil’s account of Rombald’s Moor in contemporary occulture draws draws extensively on the zines and small press publications of the 80s and 90s to describe a contemporary landscape of enchantment in the heart of Yorkshire.

Bio:

Dr Phil Legard is a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, whose interests lie at the intersections of esotericism and music – particularly in terms of contemporary musical practices and subcultures. He recently completed his PhD thesis, which employed autoethnographic methods to explore creative seekership, musical practice, and occulture. He is also co-author of An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke, with Al Cummins (Scarlet Imprint 2020).

Curated & Hosted By:

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.

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

Queer as Folklore – a Zoom talk with Sacha Coward

The vampire we know today has a convoluted story, from the rebellious first wife of Adam in Eden, to the original lesbian countess and the bisexual enigma that was Lord Byron. How and why are these creatures of the night so infamously queer-coded?

Unicorns originated as both a sexual and religious icon, with links to fertility and the male phallus. They’ve been used to both elevate and insult the bisexual community. Where does this leave them today and how have ‘girly’ unicorns become sexy again?

From the ancient Syrian goddess Atargatis, through to Hans Christian Andersen, the painting of Sea Maidens by Evelyn De Morgan, the burnt books of Nazi Germany and the merman in Trafalgar Square, why are mermaids so beloved by the queer community?

Learn about out all this and more as Sacha Coward takes us on an illustrated Zoom talk through the hidden queer history of myths and monsters.

Sacha Coward has worked in museums and heritage for over 10 years. For the past three years, he has been freelancing as an historian, public speaker, and researcher. He has run LGBTQ+ focused tours for museums, cemeteries, archives, and cities around the world. He has written articles for a huge number of publications, including Metro, Gay Star News, National Theatre, Art UK, Queer Bible, Royal Museums Greenwich, and Dig It Scotland, with a focus on LGBTQ+ history, underrepresented audiences in heritage and mythology and folklore.

Queer as Folklore is Sacha’s first book and is being published by Unbound in 2024. For more info see: https://www.sachacoward.com

Your curator and 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 Sea Maidens by Evelyn De Morgan. 1885/1886.]

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.

Bedtime Stories: These Woods More Free – Madeleine Grantham

Bedtime Stories: These Woods More Free

In These Woods More Free’ when Robin Hood goes to London adventuring, he leaves behind a web of community where the seasons turn, and at the heart of everything is the mysterious, wise Widow Sadler…

One Woman,
One Forest,
One rich tapestry of medieval men and women, surviving and thriving as the seasons turn.

Bio:

Madeleine lives on the edge of the New Forest and is inspired by its wild beauty – the wide expanse of heathland where the deer graze and buzzards soar. Inspired by authors like Ellis Peters and Candace Robb, Madeleine wanted to tale a tale of Robin Hood and place him within a living working world of ordinary men and women. Madeleine is an experienced Dorset based storyteller, who has been working in community and education settings. She took on the challenge of the Step Up Commission to step up to a national scale, to work on a piece for adults, telling traditional material to modern audiences with the vibrancy and relevance that have made these stories beloved by generation after generation. She is taking the well-known, well-loved tales of Robin Hood and exploring the role of women and gender in this very male dominated world. https://www.madeleinegrantham-storyteller.com/

Curated & Hosted by:

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.

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

Surrealist Themes in the Comic Book Art of Alejandro Jodorowsky – Amy Slonaker

Surrealist Themes in the Comic Book Art of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Please join religion and myth scholar Amy Slonaker for an illustrated lecture on the Surrealist themes in the comic book art of Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929- ). This lecture includes a discussion of the early comic strip art of Jodorowsky called The Panic Fables (Fabulas Panicas) which Jodorowksy drew by hand and which appeared on a weekly basis in Mexico City’s El Heraldo de Mexico from 1967-1973. Also discussed is Jodorowsky’s collaborative work with the comic artist legend Moebius and the Surrealist themes within their expansive comic vision,The Incal, which ran serially from 1981-1988. The Incal’s comic landscape is often noted as a receptacle for ideas from Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to produce a film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune but Slonaker suggests an alternative understanding of The Incal as a mystico-visionary text intended to directly transmit Jodorowsky’s own spiritual experience to the reader. Engaging theories about the imagination as an organ of perception, Slonaker’s discussion of Jodorowsky’s comic art explores themes from her dissertation research on comic books as mystical texts.

Bio:

Amy Slonaker is a PhD candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where she pursues a degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. After a career in law, she now studies theories about mystical experience and how physical images, when engaged by the imagination, can catalyze experiences of self-transcendence … even in comic books.

Curated and Hosted by:

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has written about topics as diverse as psychogeography, occult performance art, Pagan religious tourism, color theory, and extremist politics in modern Paganism. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays for Strange Attractor (2024) and an edition of Colquhoun’s erotic art and sex magic for Tate Publishing (December, 2023). She is the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022) and has contributed essays for Tate, Ignota Press, Burlington Contemporary, Correspondences Journal, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol. She is currently a curator and host for the internationally loved Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society lecture series and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall.

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