Sue Terry- The Domestic Occult

Does your boyfriend have ambitious ears? Will I marry this year? What does her garnet jewellery say about your great – aunt? All you need is a pen, paper and a quiet afternoon at home with a ‘luck book’ to find out! In this talk,  Sue Terry will introduce the world of women's luck and domestic magic, exploring social change through women’s subversive use of books and everyday objects, in fiction, self-help books and magazines.  Beginning in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, we will meet fashionistas, 'housewives' and office workers in search of love, success - and revenge! Freud, Jung and Madame Blavatsky will be found in the wings as Sue brings women's popular culture centre stage in a discussion of divination, spells, self-improvement and spiritual empowerment, embracing twentieth - century New Age philosophies while revealing the continuation of some rather ‘old age’, medieval, ones too. In a magical reading of domestic space, Sue will begin with a glimpse inside her Grandmother’s glass cabinet to discover what the domestic occult reveals - and conceals- about ourselves.

Sue Terry

Sue Terry has an MA in English Literature from the University of Surrey; after a thirty-three -year career doing something else, she is currently a PhD candidate researching feminist occult modernist novels of the interwar years. Sue is joint - founder and Director of the Magickal Women Conference (www.magickalwomenconference.com) and since 2018 she has been instrumental in providing a platform for women’s research and practice in all fields of magic, occultism and the esoteric; she’s been hosting (and speaking at) many exciting events for everyone to enjoy, online and live. Sue has been enjoying Alan Garner’s writing since 1970, which helped her open a door to new world of magic and earth mysteries that has remained open ever since. Her copy of The Owl Service signed by the author at a talk in Oxford in 2017 is a prized possession and a memorable total fangirl moment. Sue has several side projects, and her ongoing research since 1982 into Garner’s fiction will become a book one of these fine days.