WELCOME TO THE CENTRE FOR FOLKLORE MYTH MAGIC

AUTUMN/ WINTER
2022
EVENTS PROGRAMME

DIANE RODGERS
GENERATION HEXED
'70S KID'S HORROR TV AND ITS LEGACY

1st October 2022

4pm, £6

Saker Tea Room, Halifax Road

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For tickets please see events tab.

HOLLY ELSDON
PROPHECY: FATIMA OR FICTION?

Saturday 8th October 2022
4pm, £5

In 1917, three shepherd children witnessed a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary near Fatima, Portugal. Our Lady revealed three secrets to the children including a number of prophecies, all of which have come to pass in the intervening years.
Or so the official story goes... 
This talk will take in saints, miracles, Spiritualists, conspiracies, the Cold War, imposters, trouble at the Vatican, lots of Popes, a nun, and aliens, to ask: What did the events at Fatima actually foretell, and are there more revelations to come?…
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FOLK HORROR FROM NEWCASTLE

Saturday 15th October 2022
3-6pm

Icy Sedgwick: North country Sprites: Fairies or Ghosts?

Rich Blackett: Occult Tyneside: the Legacy of Black Jacky

Darren Charles: Urban Witchcraft

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JACQUELINE HARRIS
CONTEMPORARY FIRST-PERSON SUPERNATURAL ORAL NARRATIVES AND BELIEF

22nd October 2022, 4pm

Jacqueline Harris will share contemporary first-person supernatural oral narratives that she has collected and discuss the role of belief in influencing the way such stories are told and received.
Tickets- see events tab.

AMANDA EDMISTON
POISONOUS TALES FROM THE BACK OF THE APOTHECARY'S ALMANAC: A WEEKEND OF STORIES AND WORKSHOPS

12th-13th November 2022

Tickets available individually or as a weekend ticket to all three events- see events tab

PREVIOUS EVENTS

INGRID BURNEY
SHAPESHIFTING TALES

17th September, 2022
7-9pm

Ingrid invites you to spend an evening with a motley group of shapeshifters from myth and folklore. 
Prepare to be entertained, enthralled, mystified and horrified as you find out why the man changed into a hawk, the woman into a deer, the boy into a grain of wheat, the girl into a wolf, and much more. You may never look at the living world around you in the same way again!
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You may bring your own drink to this event.

SPELLS AND POTIONS: MAGICAL ELEMENTS IN 18TH AND 19TH-CENTURY FOLK MEDICINE

Debora Moretti
10th September 2022
4pm

The advancement in witchcraft studies across Europe has shown that although decriminalisation of the act of witchcraft and magic did indeed take place across Europe from the end of the 18th century – mainly through a change in the legislation and a growing disinterest from European intellectuals and professionals – witchcraft and magic beliefs did not decrease at a popular level.
Join me on this journey throughout Italy and discover the most popular spells, incantations, potions, and materials used in the 18th and 19th- century and see how some of them have survived into the 21st century.
For tickets: see events tab.

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SARAH CALDWELL-STEELE

20th August 2022, 4pm

There’s dark…and then there’s jet-black.

Jet, often referred to as ‘The Witch’s Stone’ remains one of the least understood gemmological materials on earth. With its roots in prehistory, jet has unusual and anomalous properties, and that these attributes, often described in Anglo-Saxon texts as eight powers, have resulted in its association with magic, witchcraft, and the occult for millennia. It’s present-day association with death and the macabre however, is a Victorian concept, a remnant of the deep wave of mourning which swept through the British Empire following the death of George IV in 1830. Modern pagan practices often seem at odds with the evidence presented in the archaeological record and the literature of classical antiquity. Have we lost touch with these old beliefs, or are they indeed hiding below the surface of our modern practices?

For tickets, see events tab.

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SPEAKER-
CERI HOULBROOK
MONEY DOES GROW ON TREES:
THE BRITISH COIN-TREE CUSTOM

13th August 2022, 4pm
For tickets see events tab

TALK- THE SHADOW OVER ILKLEY

Phil Legard

When twilight shadows fall across Ilkley Moor, strange things happen. Torches flame, flute music meanders beneath darkened boughs, heralding rites of Baphomet, Choronzon, and Yog-Sothoth. Elsewhere people camp at a newly discovered stone circle, beholding apparitions and glowing earth energies. Do they have something to do with the UFOs and Earth Lights that haunt the place? Magical rites, visions, and awakenings all happening in an area of 1670 acres.
Giants, cunning men, hermits, UFOs, witches, occultists, fairies: Ilkley Moor has attracted its own share of curious lore and esoteric characters over the centuries. This talk, by Phil Legard, explores the use of Ilkley Moor by West Yorkshire’s occultural milieu from the late 1970s to the 2000s, illustrating how the moor drew together loosely connected groups of chaos magicians, Ley Hunters, UFOlogists, witches, and Psychic Questers, whose presence can be felt to this day.
Phil Legard is a musician, lapsed chaos magician, lecturer, and PhD candidate with the Leeds School of Social Sciences. His current research explores the lived experience of occultism through autoethnography, phenomenology, and discourse theory. With Al Cummins he is the co-author of An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke: The Magical Works of Humphrey Gilbert and John Davis (Scarlet Imprint, 2020).