Previous events

Some of the past events hosted by the Centre for Magic and Esotericism and its members

2-3 July 2024, ENSIE 2024 Conference: Dreams and Visions in Islam

Meeting of the European Network for the Study of Islam and Esotericism (ENSIE)
You can read about the conference here!

9th March 2024, Therapeutic Landscapes: ritual, folklore and wellbeing

Drama PGR, Sarah Scaife, presented on her current practice-based research project at: Therapeutic Landscapes: ritual, folklore and wellbeing at the University of Worcester.

Sarah’s paper, Walking within and beyond spells of illness, reflects on her current practice-based research project which takes place in South Devon from deep winter to late spring, 2024. It takes the form of a series of six gentle, walking-based enquiries with people who have lived experience of breast cancer treatment.

This phase of her PhD research, supervised by Dr Bryan Brown, is an artistic- rather than clinical- trial to investigate the efficacy of a walking medicine in community. The series will include gentle but provocative prompts to create conversation and live experience which fertilises radical re-imaginings of our future selves. The enquiry with participants will range from ‘What brought you here?’ to ‘How might ritual space hold rich and honest dialogue about tender matters?’

Nov 21, 2023 Visiting Speaker Professor Noah Gardiner, University of South Carolina

New Research on Aḥmad al-Būnī and the Rise of Sufi Lettrism

Nov 24, 2023 Magic and Psychedelics part 2

A roundtable event with the University of Exeter’s transdisciplinary Psychedelic Colloquium. On the theme of Magic Medicine

June 23, 2023 Roundtable discussion: ‘Magic, Esotericism, and the Psychedelic’

Studies of significant overlaps or shared territories between the fields of study of magic, esotericism, and psychedelics,
theoretical reflections on avenues of exchange across these academic fields
Aspects of magic and/or esotericism viewed from consciousness-studies or psychedelic perspectives
Assessment of historical or contemporary uses of psychedelics or psychotropic substances in magical and/or esoteric religious contexts
Comparisons of and reflections on psychedelic and ritual magical means by which to form relationships with non-human communities or to access alternative realities
Explorations of alternative epistemologies and creative approaches to pedagogy arising from a psychedelic and/or magical worldviews
Opportunities to engage in radical ecological reimaginings offered by the joint study of magical and psychedelic experiences
Explorations of panpsychism as a philosophical theory through which to approach the shared study of psychedelics and magic

March 8th, 2023 Michael Noble: Reflections on research on the Islamic occult as a window into cosmology and the hard problem of consciousness.

October 19, 2022 co-hosted with the University of Exeter’s Center for Early Modern Studies

Frank Klaassen (University of Saskatchewan), ‘Encomium nigromantici: A Reconsideration of Conventional Histories of Western Magic’. Frank is a specialist in this history of medieval and early modern magical texts and will be talking about how they fit into wider histories of western magic.

September 28, 2022 Professor Tim Insoll: The ‘Magical’ Properties of Shrines and Figurines in Northern Ghana

The application of the term ‘magic’ to the study of West African archaeological and ethnographic material can be problematic in evoking grand evolutionary narratives, within which these materials were often categorized at the bottom of such schema, and essentialized as the ‘primitive other’. Yet, has the interpretive and descriptive potential of ‘magic’ altered and, like the use of ‘magical’ in African contexts now become more acceptable. This will be explored in relation to archaeological and ethnographic research completed on Tallensi shrines, substances, and medicine in the Tong Hills, and on archaeological figurines from Komaland, both in northern Ghana. It will be argued that ‘magic’ may have value if considered as part of a ‘bundle’ of phenomena rather than a unique descriptor.

April 27, 2022 Sarah Scaife, Show not tell: ‘La Medicina Incerta‘

March 24th, 2022 Samuel Gillis Hogan: “Fairies in Summoning Spells and Occult Philosophy, 1400-1700: The Articulation of a Learned Christian Animism at the Cusp of Modernity”

February 23, 2022 Professors Catherine Rider and Dionisius Agius: ‘Popular Healing: Christian and Islamic Medical Practices and the Roman Inquisition in Early Modern Malta’

February 2nd, 2022 Howard Gayton, “Listening to the Land: Pilgrimage to COP26.”

Nov 29th-30th, 2021 Medicine, Magic and Healing: a workshop organised by Professor Nahyan Fancy: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/events/details/index.php?event=11747

October 27th, 2021 Dr. Kara Reilly: A Medium to History: The Lyric Theatre as a Hauntological Site

March 3, 3021 Terri Windling: “The Modern Fairies Project”

February 3, 2021 Dr. Luca Patrizi, “Hydromancy in the Ancient, Late Antique, and Medieval Islamic world”

December 18, 2020 Michelle Szydlowski leads a conversation about the use and symbolic significance of animals in magic and beyond.

November 17th, 2020 Anna Milon and Crystal Hollis, “Popular Magic: Then and Now” : register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/popular-magic-then-and-now-tickets-122826516417

October 14, 2020 Professor Brian Rappert, “(In)Authentic Selves: How Magicians Craft Truth and Deception in Autobiographies”

May 27th, 2020 Sarah Scaife, “Visions as practise in practice-based research.”

April 3rd, 2020 Dr. Emily Selove, “Siraj al-Din al-Sakkaki’s Dangerous Books”

March 18, 2020 Anna Milon, “The Wildest God: Margaret Murray’s influence on interpretations of the ‘Sorcerer’ cave image.”

January 22, 2020 Samuel Gillis Hogan, “Stars in the Hand: British Latin Medieval Chiromancy and its Scholastic and Astrological Influences”

December 5th, 2019 Professor Brian Rappert, “A Performance of Dissimulation: The Magic of Deception in Social and Political Life”

November 7th, 2019 Dorka Tamás, ‘Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural: Witches and Magic in Plath’s Poetry and Fiction’

October 10, 2019 Dr. Earl Fontainelle, ‘Latin as Diabolical Vox Magica in Horror Cinema’

March 6, 2019 Dr. Bryan Brown and Olya Petrakova-Brown: MakeTank and methodologies of the drama department applied to the study of magic.

February 15, 2019 Howard Gayton: How does one place personal experience and epistemologies within the academic study of magic?

January 16, 2019 Anna Milon: “The Temptation of Margaret Murray”

November 14, 2018 Professor Nick Groom: “The Vampire: A New History”

October 10, 2018 Barbara Dunn: “The Astrologer and the Physician”

May 30, 2018 Professor Marion Gibson: “Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft”

March 28, 2018 Dr. Emily Selove, “A Medieval Arabic Handbook of Magic”

February 21, 2018 Inaugural Meeting