Archives: Digital Events

Dreaming Ahead of Time – Gary Lachman on Precognitive Dreams

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Dreaming Ahead of Time – Gary Lachman on Precognitive Dreams

Can we see the future in our dreams?

Does time flow in one direction?

What is a ‘meaningful coincidence’?

Renowned esoteric writer Gary Lachman has been recording his own precognitive dreams for forty years – dreams, that is, in which he has caught a glimpse of the future. In a unique and intriguing new book, Dreaming Ahead of Time, Lachman recounts the discovery that he dreams ‘ahead of time’, and argues convincingly that this extraordinary ability is, in fact, shared by all of us. Along the way Lachman explores the related phenomenon of synchronicity, or “meaningful coincidence.”

Dreaming Ahead of Time is a personal exploration of precognition, synchronicity and coincidence drawing on the work of thinkers including J.W. Dunne, J.B. Priestly, C.G. Jung, Colin Wilson, P.D. Ouspensky and others. Lachman’s description and analysis of his own experience introduces his readers to the uncanny power of our dreaming minds, and reveals the illusion of our careful distinctions between past, present and future.

Speaker 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

The Mythologies of Death: Psychopomps, Liminal Spaces, and Underworld Realms with Joanna Ebenstein

6 week online course

May 4, 11, 18, 25 & 1, 8 June 2022 7:30- 9:30 pm GMT

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Taught interactively via Zoom to a small class by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein

Death is the great mystery of human life. Today, we tend to view death through the lens of science and rationalism. Our ancestors, however, experienced death as part of a rich, invisible world with its own personalities and terrains, with eloquent myths explaining the origin of mortality and what happens to our souls when the body dies. These world views—or cosmovisions–were replete with their own dedicated gods and goddesses; psychopomps who oversaw the journey through liminal space from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead; rites of passage to contain and define the journey; and detailed descriptions of the places where the souls of the dead traveled to when the stage of embodiment came to an end.

In this six week class–comprised of lavishly illustrated lectures, suggested readings, homework prompts and class discussions and presentations–Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein will lead students in a deep dive into the fascinating ways our ancestors understood and imagined death and its personages and terrains, with an eye towards commonalities, and how these ideas live on today in religion, psychology, and a renewed interest in the occult and the invisible realms.

Along the way, we will examine the differing ways in which matriarchal and patriarchal cultures viewed death, the roots of “good” and “evil,” death in cultures of balanced complementary duality instead of binary opposition, the ways in which dominant Christian beliefs differs from most cosmologies around the world, and Jungian notions of symbols and mythologies of death and the dead.

For a final project, students will create their very own death deity, psychopomp, or map of geographies of life and death. Students will also have an opportunity to give a class presentation on a death cosmology or deity of their choice, perhaps one from their own ancestral heritage.

CLASS STRUCTURE (order of topics subject to change)

Week One

  • Introduction
  • Death and Mythology
  • Ways to understand mythology
  • Myths of how death is enters the world
  • The Soul in a variety of traditions
  • Good, evil, and complementary duality in various cosmovisions
  • Life, Death, Rebirth: Fertility and Sexuality

Week two

The Journey: moving from the land of the living to the land of the dead

  • Pyschopomps: Guides to the journey
  • Messengers, arbiters, and angels of death
  • Liminal Spaces/inbetween realms
  • The Veil: That which separates the realms
  • Times when the veil is thin: visiting the dead

Week Three

  • Geographies of the dead
  • The Upperworld
  • Heaven, Hell, Purgatory
  • The Cosmic or World Tree

Week Four

  • Deities of the Dead
  • Staying in touch with the dead: Ancestor veneration, cadaver traditions, and Spiritualism

Week Five

  • Presentations

Week Six

  • Present final Projects

Image

Freya: Norse goddess of love and fertility, associated with sex, lust, beauty, sorcery, gold, war, and death.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and more. You can see her Tedx talk—Death as You’ve Never Seen it Before—here.

Make your Own Memento Mori: Befriending Death with Joanna Ebenstein

4 week online course

30 April, 7, 14 & 21 May 2024 – 7:30- 9:30 pm GMT

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Taught interactively via Zoom to a small class by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein

Text Book: Death: A Graveside Companion (PDF to be provided)

Death is the great mystery of human life. Each of us – barring some medical miracle – will die. Foreknowledge of our own death is a defining characteristic of humanity; the ancient Greeks reserved the word mortal – meaning ‘subject to death’ – for humans alone. Some people believe that it is foreknowledge of our own death that drives all human culture, from religion and philosophy to mythology and art.

With the current global pandemic, our awareness of death is closer to us in the industrialized West than it’s been in over a century This historical moment will, for most of us, pass. This class seeks to use this moment to look death in the eyes, to get to know it, to create a closer, less fearful relationship with it. To make friends with it. And to create art from that encounter.

To do so, we will explore the ways in which death has been understood and represented in different times and places. There will be a special focus on imaginings of death manifested in time of plague—such as Memento Mori, Ars Moriendi (literally, The Art of Death) and the Danse Macabre, or dance of death—or when death is an unpredictable part of every day life, such as Mexico’s Santa Muerte, literally saint or holy death. A PDF of the book Death a Graveside Companion will be provided to each student as reference.

The class will consist of slide-illustrated lectures, readings and reading discussions, journal prompts, guided image collecting, meditations, and, if technology allows, special guests.

Students will draw on what they have learned for their final project: the creation of their own personal memento mori—an object intended to remind you of your own death to help you live your time on earth more fully. This can take the form of an image (painting, drawing), object (collage, mask, sculpture, talisman, icon, artist’s book, retablo, ex voto, graphic novel) short film, or even words (essay, creative writing). It will embody your unique vision of death, developed or clarified over the course of the class, be it a deity, a personal or impersonal force, a symbol, or something else entirely.

Students will leave this class not only with their own memento mori, but also with an enhanced understanding of the ways in which death has been understood and represented in different times and places, as well as a more nuanced and critical view of contemporary attitudes. It is also my hope that students will leave the class with less fear of death in these uncertain times.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and more. You can see her Tedx talk—Death as You’ve Never Seen it Before—here.

Hilma af Klint & the occult milieu in turn of century Sweden by P Faxneld

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.

Hilma af Klint and the occult milieu in turn-of-the-century Sweden

The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) has been called a pioneer of abstraction, and claimed her radical art was channeled from the spirit world. The talk offers a guided tour through the occult milieu she was part of in Sweden. We will encounter occultist monarchs, an alchemist playwright, poets receiving verses from the dead, and many other significant figures of the period’s cultural life, including several who were close to the enigmatic Hilma. By taking a deep dive into the local esoteric-artistic pond in which she swam, we will gain a fuller understanding of her work and its symbolism.

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.

The Satanic Vampire: Death and devil symbolism in Nosferatu (1922), and the film’s occult connections by Per Faxneld

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.

Sacred Waters: Healing Holy Wells and Folk Science by Dr. Celeste Ray

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Our blue planet is a watery world, yet only one percent of earth’s most abundant molecule is both accessible and fresh. Supplying life’s most basic daily need, freshwater sources were most likely the earliest sacred sites, and the first protected and contested resource. Guarded by taboos, rites and supermundane forces, freshwater sources have also been considered thresholds to otherworlds. Internationally, holy “wells” are often sacred springs, but can be any natural source of fresh water that is a focus for ritual practice and engagement with the supernatural. Containing the majority of the earth’s liquid surface fresh water, lakes are sometimes called holy wells, as can be the spring sources of rivers, ponds and swamps. Often associated with also venerated stones, trees and healing flora, sacred water sources are sites of biocultural diversity.

Water sources were likely the first sites humans venerated and those that cross-culturally and cross-temporally have remained the most common category of sacred natural sites worldwide. Some water sources were selected as sacred because, across the generations, locals realized they seemed to alleviate or cure particular ailments (these actually contain magnesium, iron, sodium chloride or lithium, for example). Those water sources deemed a panacea for aches (of the back, throat, head or teeth) are often near trees with pain-relieving qualities in their bark such as willow trees (from the bark of which came aspirin). Explaining the who, what, where and why of existence, religions everywhere can be viewed as folk science. Important information about stewarding environmental resources and about healing was often enshrined in religious practices and ritual so that it would not be forgotten. Religious traditions that perpetuate biodiversity conservation deserve our attention. This talk identifies patterns in panhuman hydrolatry and asks how cultural perceptions of water’s sacrality can be employed to foster resilient human-environmental relationships in the growing water crises of the twenty-first century.

Speaker Bio

Celeste Ray is Professor of Environmental Arts and Humanities and Anthropology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She is the author of The Origins of Ireland’s Holy Wells and Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans and the American South, and the editor of four other volumes considering Scottish Identities or ethnicity. Her passion for sacred springs and holy wells began as an undergraduate studying in Galway, Ireland in the 1980s and has been furthered in research trips to Italy, Scotland, Cornwall, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and near her institution in Appalachia.

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.

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – Dr Al Cummins

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – Dr Al Cummins

The libraries of cunning-folk – those local village wizards and wise-women of the early modern British Isles – ranged considerably from scraps of spoken and written charms, to a single imposing personal book of secrets, to heaving shelves full of magical tomes. The magics contained in such books ran from pious prayers to more suspicious “black magic” and from the techniques of folk magic and witchcraft to (frequently streamlined versions of) ritual conjurations of angels, devils, and the dead.

Such folk magicians employed a wide range of ephemerides, conjurations, and experiments. The sources they commonly drew on included potent astrological, alchemical, and nigromantic know-how. From Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (an accidental best-seller which provided intricate details of the rituals of which it so disapproved) to (pseudo)Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy – which collected a variety of instructions on divination and spirit conjuring – there was a wealth of printed as well as manuscript sources upon which these practitioners cut their eager teeth and worked their craft. Undoubtedly the most prized texts upon their shelves were the working-books: the collections of spells, recipes, formulae, and correspondences gathered on-the-fly by enterprising and experimenting folk magicians.

The “average” cunning-man and cunning-woman’s reading material still presents substantial evidence to modern practitioners looking to understand our magical forebears and their days and ways better. In this talk, contemporary cunning man and historian Dr Alexander Cummins will offer us a tour of such libraries, and present some key findings about the nature of magic, community, and knowledge along the way.

Speaker Bio

Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires. He received his doctorate on early modern magical approaches to the passions. Dr Cummins is the co-editor of the Folk Necromancy in Transmission series for Revelore Press and co-host of Radio Free Golgotha.

His published works include An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke with Phil Legard (Scarlet Imprint, 2020), A Book of the Magi: Lore, Prayers, and Spellcraft of the Three Holy Kings (Revelore Press, 2018) and The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press, 2012) as well as contributions to collections by both academic and occult publishers on topics including talismanic objects, geomancy, planetary sorcery, cunning-craft, and nigromancy.

Dr Cummins gives classes and workshops online and in person. The Good Doctor’s work and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

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.

Series from Dr Al Cummins on Necromancy and Cunning Craft

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – 3 Aug 2022

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – 10 Aug 2022

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – 17 Aug 2022

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – Dr Al Cummins

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – Dr Al Cummins

British Library Additional Manuscript 36674 contains several short treatises, two of which should be of particular interest to necromancers. The Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke is a particularly instructive grimoire of the sixteenth century teaching one how to summon spirits – from the ruler of the dead, to the kings of the spirits, to the ghosts of famous magicians – complete with prayers, conjurations, and various ‘nota’ of injunctions and advice for the aspiring conjuror. The purpose of these conjurations is to make powerful knowledge available to the magical practitioner, whether delivered by subordinate spirit, received text, or express empowerment.

An appended document, referred to simply as Visions, is a magical journal accounting the experiments and scrying sessions performed alongside the reception of the Excellent Booke between 24th February and 6th April 1567. These scrying records detail the unbidden appearances and teachings of saints, angels, and dead magicians, as well as evidencing the techniques and procedures involved in putting together the Excellent Booke itself. Read together, these interrelated documents are quite simply a unique record of early modern English necromancy, offering vital ‘behind-the-scenes’ perspectives on sorcery, magical texts, and spirits.

This lecture by historian of magic and contemporary cunning man Dr Alexander Cummins analyses some of the techniques contained within this manuscript source: from ways of working with spirits, to the expressly necromantic components of the work, to wider implications for approaches to spirit tuition, texts, and taboos in early modern European conjuration.

Speaker Bio

Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires. He received his doctorate on early modern magical approaches to the passions. Dr Cummins is the co-editor of the Folk Necromancy in Transmission series for Revelore Press and co-host of Radio Free Golgotha.

His published works include An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke with Phil Legard (Scarlet Imprint, 2020), A Book of the Magi: Lore, Prayers, and Spellcraft of the Three Holy Kings (Revelore Press, 2018) and The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press, 2012) as well as contributions to collections by both academic and occult publishers on topics including talismanic objects, geomancy, planetary sorcery, cunning-craft, and nigromancy.

Dr Cummins gives classes and workshops online and in person. The Good Doctor’s work and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

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.

Series from Dr Al Cummins on Necromancy and Cunning Craft

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – 3 Aug 2022

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – 10 Aug 2022

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – 17 Aug 2022

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – Dr Al Cummins

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – Dr Al Cummins

The early modern age of 1500-1700 was a period of European colonial expansion into the so-called ‘New World’, civil wars, famine, and plague: life could indeed be ‘nasty, brutish, and short’. Amidst such fragile mortality, people prayed for their deceased, petitioned elevated Christian martyrs, witnessed ghosts, and whispered of black magic in midnight graveyards.

This talk by contemporary cunning-man and historian Dr Alexander Cummins investigates the roles and powers of the dead in Western occult philosophy and magical practices: from magical funerary customs to corpses as spell components, and from the exorcism and summoning of ghosts and spirits to early sensationalist reports of the customs of various indigenous peoples of the Americas. Finally, this class investigates the diabolical associations of necromancy and “nigromancy” with witchcraft and demonology, offering analysis of a number of pre-modern rituals and techniques involving shades of the deceased, including the many uses of rosemary, sending ghosts to fetch other spirits, and warding one’s home and person against the returned and revenant dead.

Speaker Bio

Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires. He received his doctorate on early modern magical approaches to the passions. Dr Cummins is the co-editor of the Folk Necromancy in Transmission series for Revelore Press and co-host of Radio Free Golgotha.

His published works include An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke with Phil Legard (Scarlet Imprint, 2020), A Book of the Magi: Lore, Prayers, and Spellcraft of the Three Holy Kings (Revelore Press, 2018) and The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press, 2012) as well as contributions to collections by both academic and occult publishers on topics including talismanic objects, geomancy, planetary sorcery, cunning-craft, and nigromancy.

Dr Cummins gives classes and workshops online and in person. The Good Doctor’s work and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

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.

Series from Dr Al Cummins on necromancy and cunning craft

Rosemary & Revenants: Necromancy in Early Modern England – 3 Aug 2022

The Excellent Booke: A Manual of Sixteenth-century English Necromancy – 10 Aug 2022

Cunning Libraries: The Magic Books of Early Modern Folk Magicians – 17 Aug 2022

American Feminism & Sex Magic in the Late Victorian Era – Dr Christa Shusko

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

This talk examines the important if overlooked esoteric and feminist contributions of three American women: Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912), Ida C. Craddock (1857-1902), and Eleanor Kirk (1831-1908). Building on their experiences struggling for women’s suffrage and women’s rights, all three developed unique practices which sought to perfect human relationships and sexual intercourse–and in so doing, to perfect the world. These three thinkers demonstrate the complex relationships between women’s rights, sex reform, and then emerging esoteric religious ideas. In so doing, they can enrich our understanding of both American history and contemporary spirituality.

Speaker Bio

Christa Shusko holds a PhD in Religion from Syracuse University. She has published numerous scholarly book chapters on American esotericism ranging from Fin de siécle Martian romances to séance spiritualism in the Oneida Community to the importance of beauty in Eleanor Kirk’s newspaper columns. She currently serves as a co-chair for the Western Esotericism Unit of the American Academy of Religion.

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.