OMPHALOS MAGICKAL MOOT

2009 Schedule of Talks

These talks were held upstairs at the Huntsman, 1 Terrace Walk, North Parade, Bath.

8^th March: Sue Cawthorne – Authentic Living – Reclaiming your Natura

Sue will explore how we can use indigenous techniques to connect with our original instinctive self and express our true will in our everyday lives. The talk will include some practical exercises and an opportunity to participate in a short shamanic-style journey.

Sue Cawthorne is a nature-based healer who has worked all over the world delivering talks, workshops and practical ceremonies on self-awareness, healing and empowerment for over 20 years. She now resides on our local waterways near Bath.

12^th April: Gordon the Toad (Gordon MacLellan) - Everyday Animism

Looking at how we express our spirituality on a day-to-day basis, Gordon the Toad will invite us to reflect upon how we listen and respond to the world around us, to find the touch of the gods in washing up, the presence of the ancestors in the breath of the wind….

Gordon has been a speaker and pagan teacher for many years, promoting simple, creative approaches to our spirituality. In this talk he will talk about that practice of simplicity, his own shamanic path and the sheer delight of living in an animistic, spirit-filled world.

10^th May: speaker cancelled.

14^th June: Eloise Severin: Venus in Furs: The Spirituality of SM

Find out the connections between pain, pleasure and spirituality; explore the hidden world of kinky Paganism; dare to plumb the depths of depravity in the House of the Mysteries at Pompeii.
Eloise Severin has travelled the world in search of erotic and spiritual practices, studying with the Hidden Adepts of many lands to bring back forbidden knowledge.

12^th July: Jolane Abrams - Healing with Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon.

Jolane is an energy healer and recovering neuroscientist. She has spent a large proportion of last three years studying the healing system known as curanderismo, with a mestizo ayahuasca master, in the Peruvian Amazon. This talk will summarize the highlights of her time in the jungle.

9^th August: Geraldine Beskin:Crowley and Bennett at Cefalu, or Progradior and The Beast.

When Aleister Crowley and his sprawling family were magically directed to Sicily the 1920's, they were at interesting stages in their lives.
One person came, was enlightened and was never the same again. His doggedness and his 'ordinariness' make him superficially an unlikely person to 'get' Crowley's teachings but Frank Bennett was that person. He left his family to seek Crowley and left his Magical Diary as a testament to daily life with The Beast and his entourage. First-hand accounts are reasonably rare and Bennett was no spiritual tourist. He was desperately seeking something - and he found it.
Geraldine Beskin has had an embarrassingly long interest in Aleister Crowley and Austin Spare. Her ownership of The Atlantis Bookshop has enabled her to sell, discuss and publish works to do with these two marvelous magicians.

13^th September: Mike Magee - The 33 million aspects of the goddess and how they are all essentially one.

Mike is the author of the Shiva Shakti Mandalam web site (www.shivashakti.com). He has translated a number of tantras from Sanskrit into English, was a member of Kenneth Grant's OTO, and the founder of Amookos, an east-west group which sought to bring the wisdom of the east and put it into a western context.

11^th October: Leslie Hurford: Corn Dolly Making

This month Leslie Furford will be talking to the Omphalos Magick Moot about the ancient art of corn dolly making.
Leslie is a local speaker who has been making corn dollies all her life. Her talk will be interactive and on the day the audience will be invited to have a go at making corn dollies themselves.

8^th November: Payam Nabarz - Stellar Magic

Payam will be talking about his latest book: Stellar Magic A practical guide to the rites of the Moon, Planets, Stars & Constellations.
The practical rites and ceremonies in this Liber Astrum are created using a myriad of hymns and tales, drawi...ng inspiration and material from many ancient, classical and medieval sources.
The rites here are the beginning steps on your stellar journey, it is recommended that you write your own poems and invocations to the constellations and make your Path to the stars.

13^th December: Kim Huggens - "Ten Ways to Curse Your Lover: Malefic Erotic Magic in the Ancient World"

In the Ancient World to incite passion and love in somebody using magic was to curse them, and the methods employed by magicians to do so were disturbingly similar to those employed to kill, maim, bind, or ruin a person.
This talk will examine the techniques and methods used in ancient Egypt, Hellenistic Greece, and the Roman Empire for binding the object of affection (or victim) to the magician's will. Fetching charms, erotic-attraction spells, separation spells, curses to torment the victim until they yield to the magician's love, and more will be studied based on both textual and
archaeological sources.
In particular, the use of "voodoo" dolls – or effigies – in these erotic malefic magics will be explored. There will be a close study of the so-called "Louvre" doll currently residing the Louvre museum Paris: a female effigy of baked clay, made kneeling and with her hands and feet bound behind her back, with thirteen sharp nails driven through various parts of her body (dated to ca. 3rd century CE.) This archaeological find will be compared with the text from the Graeco-Roman Magical Papyri (PGM) IV. 296-466. The text and the doll bear a striking similarity, and highlight a wide variety of common features from these erotic malefic spells.
Kim Huggens is a current PhD student in Cardiff University's Ancient History department, with a thesis on malefic magic in the Late Antique period. Her research interests focus on the use of figurines in malefic magic in both the ancient and medieval world, and on the influence of the Mediterranean world upon other cultures and times in relation to magic and religion. Previous publications include "Sol Invictus: The God Tarot", and papers in "The Mithras Reader vol. 2", "Horns of Power", and "Priestesses, Pythonesses, and Sibyls". She is currently working on her second Tarot deck, "Pistis Sophia: The Goddess Tarot", and a homestudy Tarot course for Llewellyn publications due out Autumn 2010.