THE INSURRECTION INTERVIEWS PODCAST, Dec-Jan 2020-2021
Episodes are released throughout December-January 2020-2021. Check out our blog for updates on the latest releases and listen to the episodes by clicking on the links below:
Siddharth Pandey (Independent scholar, India) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
Erik Davis (Independent scholar, USA) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
Charlotte Rodgers (Independent artist and author, UK) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
Isabelle Stengers (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
Adam Bobbette (University of New South Wales, Australia) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
David Abram (Creative Director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics, USA) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
Alice Tarbuck (Queen Margaret University, UK) I LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
MAGIC AND ECOLOGY PANELS & LIVE Q&A, Jan-April 2021
Seminars are biweekly. Talks are released as podcasts 1 week prior to the online gathering, which takes the form of a live Q&A with the speakers.
Registration for our live Q&As is now open via Eventbrite! Registration is free but spaces are limited. Sign up to the event you want to attend by clicking “REGISTER ONLINE” below.
January 8: Podcast I Richard Irvine & Lupa I WATCH THESE TALKS
January 15: Live Q&A I Richard Irvine & Lupa (chaired by Simone Kotva) I WATCH THE RECORDING
Unlike one popular of idea of magic as the ability to change the world at will, this panel discusses the notion of magic as collaboration with non-human beings and investigates the significance of animism for the critical theory of Anthropocene discourse and practice. Why is ecological thinking today so interested in magic? What does “magic” mean in an environmental context? What practices are being described, and who practices them today? In this opening panel, anthropologist Richard Irvine and magical practitioner, author and artist Lupa introduce us to the relationship between ecology and magic.
Richard Irvine
Richard Irvine is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at St Andrews University. An anthropologist with a special interest in ecology and magic, he works across three ethnographic fieldsites: Orkney and East Anglia in the UK, and Tuv aimag in Mongolia, and his interests span environmental change and religious life. He has published widely on the Anthropocene, spiritual practice and deep time, and is the author of numerous articles, including: “Anthropocene East Anglia,” Sociological Review 65 (2017): 154-170; “Seeing Environmental Violence in Deep Time: Perspectives from Contemporary Mongolian Literature and Music,” Environmental Humanities 10 (2018): 257-272; with T. Kyriakides, “Just out of Reach: An Ethnographic Theory of Magic and Rationalisation,” Implicit Religion 21 (2019): 202-222. His most recent monograph is An Anthropology of Deep Time: Geological Temporality and Social Life (2020).
Lupa
Lupa is a writer, artist and magical practitioner based in Portland, Oregon (USA). They use three-dimensional sculptures as statements on the problems we face, pairing aesthetic attraction with harsh realities. But they also invite others to seek solutions, offering relationships with sacred artefacts and the transformational rites they may incite in one’s life. Lupa draws on the tradition of the Wunderkammer, the cabinet of natural curiosities that serves as a personal museum, to encourage people to bring reminders of the nonhuman world even into their very homes. Lupa is the author and editor of several books on the ecology of magic, including Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic (2006), Talking about the Elephant: An Anthology of Neopagan Perspectives on Cultural Appropriation (2008), and Nature Spirituality from the Ground Up: Connect with Totems in your Ecosystem (2016). Lupa posts regularly about their work on www.thegreenwolf.com.
Chair: Simone Kotva is post-doctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, where she works on the “Ambivalences of Nordic Nature: Gift, Guilt, Grace” project.
January 22: Podcast I Sabrina Scott & Lilith Dorsey I WATCH THESE TALKS
January 29: Live Q&A I Sabrina Scott & Lilith Dorsey (chaired by Alice Tarbuck) I WATCH THE RECORDING
Western magic historically has been concerned with discerning connections between the human (microcosm) and the world (macrocosm), but modern magical practices digs deeper into these efforts of discernment. Faced with environmental crisis, what can magical techniques teach us about what it means to be a body entangled with other bodies? Lilith Dorsey and Sabrina Scott have both researched and practiced forms of magical entanglement, and in this panel they discuss witchcraft as an art of attuning to the real.
Lilith Dorsey
Lilith Dorsey is an author, speaker and magical practitioner. Her first initiation came from Mambo Bonnie Devlin, and her academic work has focussed on ritual dance and possession on film. Lilith edits Oshun-African Magickal Quarterly, and is the creator of the critically acclaimed experimental documentary Bodies of Water: Voodoo Identity and Tranceformation. Lilith is the author of numerous books, including Voodoo and Afro-Caribbean Paganism (2005), Water Magic (2020) and Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens: The Divine Feminine in the African Religious Traditions (2020). Her work has been featured in the New York Times and the Village Voice. Lilith was also choreographer for jazz legend Dr. John’s “Night Tripper” Voodoo Show. In July 2013, she led her first ever Voodoo Zombie Silent Rave, complete with very confused Thriller flash mob. Lilith posts about her work on https://lilithdorsey.com/.
Sabrina Scott
Sabrina Scott is a doctoral student in Science and Technology Studies at York University, Toronto. Their MA dissertation, WITCHBODY: a rambling and poetic autoethnography of western occult magic as a pathway for environmental learning and advocacy (2018, 2nd ed.), won the 2016 LGBT Youthline Outstanding Achievements in Post-Secondary Academic Environment Award. Scott views magic as a way of building relationship with non-human beings: you, me, plants, trees, coffee cups and garbage bins. Their forthcoming Curse & Cure (2022) is a guide to working with magic and witchcraft in the real world. Scott maintains a professional design and illustration practice using comics, illustrations, zines, and book arts to work through critical theory, philosophy, ethics, spirituality, sensation and social justice: sabrinamscott.com / https://instagram.com/sabrinamscott.
Chair: Alice Tarbuck is a poet and academic based in Edinburgh. Alice is the author of A Spell in the Wild: A Year and Six Centuries of Magic (2020).
February 5: Podcast I Zakiya McKenzie & Victoria Whitworth I WATCH THESE TALKS
February 12: Live Q&A I Zakiya McKenzie & Victoria Whitworth (chaired by Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal) Due to copyright reasons this recording unfortunately is unavailable
How do we write the world and how does language change the shape of our stories? This panel engages the literary as literal spell work and examines contemporary nature writing as rites of passage and techniques for altering the power narratives that stories impart. Zakiya McKenzie and Victoria Whitworth are nature writers whose work challenges conventional ideas of how nature can – and should – be “written”. This panel explores how words are used in order to alter our perception of the objects they name. Can words re-enchant our relationship to the nonhuman? What are the ethics of “environmental” writing?
Zakiya McKenzie
Zakiya Mckenzie is a Bristol-based writer and researcher. She was the 2019 writer-in-residence for Forestry England and 2017 Bristol Black and Green Ambassador. In 2017, she completed a Master of Research degree in Sustainable Futures at the University of Bristol focusing on the environmental and economic implications of “black gold” – petroleum – off Guyana’s shore. She is currently writing for a PhD at the University of Exeter researching Black British journalism in the post-war period. Zakiya is also a volunteer at Ujima 98FM community radio station in Bristol and she regularly leads naturebased art and writing workshops, including one on Caribbean storytelling for children. Zakiya has appeared on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Farming Today, Inside Out West and has written for Smallwoods and BBC Wildlife Magazines. Follow Zakiya’s work at https://zakiyamckenzie.com/
Victoria Whitworth
Dr Victoria is a novelist and academic who explores the culture and society of Britain in the Early Middle Ages, focusing on death, burial and memory. From 2012 to 2016 she was lecturer at the Centre for Nordic Studies on the Orkney campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands. She is the author of Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England (as Victoria Thompson); the novels The Bone Thief and The Traitors’ Pit (as VM Whitworth) and Daughter of the Wolf, all set in England’s Dark Ages. Her latest book, Swimming with Seals, is both an acclaimed memoir of life, death and swimming, and a treasure trove of the history, myth and archaeology of Orkney. Victoria lives with her daughter in Edinburgh.
Chair: Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.
February 19: Podcast I Peter Grey & Geraldine Hudson I WATCH THESE TALKS
February 26: Live Q&A I Peter Grey & Geraldine Hudson (chaired by Bethany Dubow) I WATCH THE RECORDING
Since the beginning of the modern witchcraft revival in the 1950s, witchcraft has often been understood as counter-magic that challenges the authority of “man” (anthropos) and of human reason. The oppression of human bodies, particularly those of ethnic minorities, remains connected structurally and historically to the oppression of earth and environment; the logic of witch-hunting remains with us and remains at the core of the climate crisis. Peter Grey and Geraldine Hudson are both authors and artists who have explored the political significance of witchcraft in the Anthropocene, and in this panel they discuss their own experiences of apocalyptic witchcraft and its role in in contemporary occulture, art and activism.
Peter Grey
Peter Grey is a writer and co-founder, with Alkistis Dimech, of the publishing house Scarlet Imprint. He is the author of the controversial Apocalyptic Witchcraft (2013), a unique interpretation of modern witchcraft which places it in the context of the Sabbat and in a landscape suffering climate and ecological collapse. His latest work is Lucifer: Princeps (2015), a study of the origins of the figure of Lucifer. His work has also appeared in numerous small journals and collections, such as The Fenris Wolf, as well as online: https://scarletimprint.com/.
Geraldine Hudson
Geraldine is an interdisciplinary British artist and curator based between Stockholm and London. Within her own practice Geraldine is participating specifically at the intersections of site, myth, psychological topography, otherness and the liminal experience of the magickal body. Drawing from initial psychogeographic work started in 2005 where she was working with archetypes of the wild, sexuality and transgression in relation to carnival/ritual , place and event, Geraldine’s practice has gradually evolved to acknowledge her own relationship to esoteric and lost knowledges. As experiential research rather than anthropological study, she wishes to question notions of consensus reality, in turn blurring the lines between fact and fiction, through a phenomenology of animism and cosmological accordance. She is currently studying the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, where she is constructing work around new mythologies and ideas of communal ritual as a conduit for reacquaintance with land, place and ecological kin. As a curator she has organised various events in Sweden, most notably the Conjuring Creativity – Art & the Esoteric biennial. Geraldine’s website is: https://geraldinehudson.org.
Chair: Bethany Dubow is a doctoral student in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge.
ENVIRONMENTAL MAGIC AND GEOMANCY
March 5: Podcast I Josephine McCarthy & Alexander Cummins I WATCH THESE TALKS
March 12: Live Q&A I Josephine McCarthy & Alexander Cummins (chaired by Simone Kotva) I WATCH THE RECORDING
Plants, animals and organic material have always played a hugely important role in magic. “Geomancy” is an ancient technique of divination used by consulting the earth (geos). This panel explores “landscape magic” and how human interaction with place affects thoughts, emotions and actions. How are these practices employed today and what can be learned from historical examples? Alexander Cummins and Josephine McCarthy are writers and practitioners with several decades of experience exploring the intersection of magical practice with ecology.
Alexander Cummins
Alexander Cummins is an historian, poet, and consultant whose practice centres around religion, philosophy, medicine and magic. He is the author of The Starry Rubric: Seventeenth-century English Astrology and Magic (2012), which explores the history of magical approaches to the emotions: from mapping personality with astrology, to managing emotionality with herbs and amulets, to the manipulations of aphrodisiacs, the evil eye, and the conjuration of spirits. He also has a special interest in geomancy and the history and practice of seeking conversation with non-human spirit-entities through the aid of interpreting the non-human environment. Cummins writes for both academic and esoteric publishers and facilitates a range of workshops and lectures series: http://www.alexandercummins.com.
Josephine McCarthy
Josephine McCarthy is an esoteric practitioner, teacher and author of 26 books on the theory and practice of western magic, and four fiction works on similar themes. Her work has particular emphasis on the magician’s relationship with the land and environment, and the magical analysis of New Kingdom Egyptian Funerary texts in exploration of the living use of such texts, with the concept of the deities as forces of nature. She is also the author of Quareia – an extensive in-depth open source training course in the theory, practice and history of western magic that moves magical practice into deeper cooperative relationships with nature: https://www.quareia.com/. Josephine also blogs at: https://josephinemccarthy.com.
Chair: Simone Kotva is post-doctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, where she works on the “Ambivalences of Nordic Nature: Gift, Guilt, Grace” project.
ANCIENT MAGIC AND THE NONHUMAN WORLD
March 19: Podcast I Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe & Esther Eidinow I WATCH THESE TALKS
March 26: Live Q&A I Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe & Esther Eidinow (chaired by Thomas Harrison) I WATCH THE RECORDING
One unexplored resource for thinking about the nonhuman is Greco-Roman religion and magic. This panel explores the relationship between place, power and bodies in ancient magic. How did specific landscapes embody spiritual beings? What was the role played by plants and animals in enabling the sorcerer to access secret powers? Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe and Esther Eidinow are Classicists with a special interest in the blurry line between nonhuman spirit-world and nonhuman creatures in Greco-Roman magic.
Esther Eidinow
Esther Eidinow is Professor in Ancient History at the University of Bristol. Her expertise is ancient Greek society and culture, with specific focus on ancient Greek religion and magic. She has published monographs on oracles, curse tablets and binding spells, concepts of fate, luck and fortune, and the social emotions surrounding ‘witchcraft’ trials in classical Athens. Eidinow takes an interdisciplinary approach to research, employing cognitive and anthropological theories to investigate ancient evidence, with particular interest in questions about social emotions, the concept of the individual and ideas of the self, network theory, and the socio-cultural power of narrative. She is currently working on projects exploring narratives and environmental risk; myth and landscape; the idea of ‘belief’; and concepts of change in the ancient world.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe is Lecturer in Patristics at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity. Her research centres on the life and thought of the church in a “long” late antiquity (from the second to sixth centuries CE) in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean and further afield, especially in the Syriac-speaking world. Her PhD was on the political theology of Ambrosiaster, an anonymous Christian writer of the later fourth century. Her current major project is on late ancient ideas of the devil and demons, concentrating on notions of diabolical agency. She also has long-standing interests in patristic biblical exegesis, political thought, the history of liturgy, inter-religious relations in late antiquity, and magical texts and objects.
Chair: Thomas Harrison is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews.
April 2: Podcast I Merlin Sheldrake & David Abram I WATCH THIS TALK
April 9: Live Q&A I Merlin Sheldrake & David Abram (chaired by Alice Tarbuck) REGISTER ONLINE
David Abram’s seminal The Spell of the Sensuous (1997) argued that disdain for magic produced, in the West, a distorted rather than enlightened sense of the non-human world. Merlin Sheldrake’s recent book, Entangled Life (2020), explores what Abram calls the “more-than-human” quality of nonhuman presences, and together David and Merlin examine what it means to live “humanly” in a more-than-human world of entangled lifeforms.
David Abram
David Abram is a cultural ecologist, philosopher and sleight-of-hand magician whose influential work, The Spell of the Sensuous: Language and Perception in a More-than-human World (1997), demonstrated the parallels between animism and eco-phenomenology and brought non-Western ontologies into dialogue with Western metaphysics. Abram is especially interested in language and has done important work on the ethics of speech and how it relates to the environment of things named. Abram holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is Founder and Creative Director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics: https://wildethics.org/.
Merlin Sheldrake
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Merlin’s is a keen brewer and fermenter, and is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. Find out more at merlinsheldrake.com. Twitter: @MerlinSheldrake.
Chair: Alice Tarbuck is a poet and academic based in Edinburgh. Alice is the author of A Spell in the Wild: A Year and Six Centuries of Magic (2020).
ART EXHIBITION
ANIMIST ART ACTION I Charlotte Rodgers