BANNED BOOKS WEEK – 26th SEPTEMBER

BANNED BOOKS WEEK – 26th SEPTEMBER

* 26th September : JOHN DEE – CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ANGEL GALVAR – Hannah Fox, Steve Simmonds, Introduced by Simon Costin

> Play Webcast > The Angel Galvar

14th June 1583 – Trithenius is put in his place by the female angel Galvar… who takes the form of a far from ‘weak or feeble woman’, unlike the Queen described herself. John Dee explained that the angel takes male or female form depending on the gender which best serves its purpose. Galvar is quite clear that women and men are indeed equal. Trithenius claimed that angels could never take female form, because of their inherent weakness and ‘impurity’. That makes this passage thus possibly one of the earliest feminist treatises to appear in the English Language. John Dee’s conversations with angels were made possible through the use of scrying, rather than via elaborate ritual process; the one piece of magical apparatus that Dee and Kelly did have was a ‘shew-stone’ through which the scryer saw the visions of angels. Following the transcription of the conversations with angels, the documents were buried and hidden from public view, and self-censored. 

 

* 25th September : THE SWORN BOOK OF HONORIOUS – Joyce Froome, a conversation

>Play Webcast > The Sworn Book

Joyce Froome is one of the Curator Team at the Museum Of Witchcraft and Magic and is a writer and researcher into the history and practice of magic. For Banned Books Week, Joyce has translated a section of The Sworn Book of Honorious and here discusses its importance in the history of magical practice and its co-option into the Paris Determinatio. Joyce also raises the issue that the Sworn Book was in actual fact co-authored by The Angel Hocroel, potentially presenting a rights issue for publishers, given the question of his immortality…

 

* 24TH September : BOOKS IN FLAME? THE SUPPRESSION OF MAGICAL TEXTS FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY – Steve Patterson, Folklorist

> Play Webcast > BOOKS IN FLAME

Steve Patterson writes on complex subjects and speaks in plain easy to understand prose.  In this rather wonderful talk touching on The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the self-censorship of Mary Anne South and our obedience to the new gods of technology,  Steve Patterson discusses not only these details but the history of the book in general, the dissemination & suppression of magical literature, and the hermeneutics of power in relation to the publication of hermetic and magical texts from the early mediaeval period to the present day. 

 

* 23rd September 2019 : THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD: Dr Louise Fenton on Zora Neale Hurston. 

> Play Webcast >  ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Dr Louise Fenton’s webcast introduces Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston’s extraordinary work on Haitian and Jamaican Voodoo,TELL MY HORSE – was not actually the work which got her banned from the bookshelves – that honour went to her equally extraordinary (and previously published)  novel, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. Hasten to read both! A controversial and uncompromising figure in her lifetime, in 1948 Hurston was falsely accused of a crime she could not have committed as she was finishing a novel at the time in Honduras. “My race has seen fit to destroy me” she said at the time; long since repatriated she is seen today for what she was: a distinguished anthropologist, film maker and a writer of poetic and most insightful prose. 

 

* 22nd September 2019 : Dr Thomas Waters – CURSED BOOKS? HARRY POTTER, RELIGIOUS CENSORSHIP & THE DELIVERANCE MINISTRY

> Play Webcast > CURSED BOOKS? HARRY POTTER

Dr Thomas Waters joined us for our AUTUMN EQUINOX & BOOK EVENT, where he gave two talks as part of launch activity for his new book for Yale University Press, CURSED BRITAIN. 

Thomas gave the a talk on the phenomenon of recent and present day accusations of witchcraft and delivered for us also the first piece of programming for our first BANNED BOOKS WEEK reading, his talk on the Banning of Harry Potter in some states in the USA.  

 
MORE ON BANNED BOOKS WEEK:
 

From the Grimoire to the Bodice Ripper – discover ancient magical texts subverted as evidence in witch trials, unpublished transcriptions of conversations with spirits, alchemic formulae, works of occult philosophy and novels so racy and depraved they were banned from sale on the Paris Metro! 

Celebrating the right to read and the right to listen; Nightly at 10 PM we will be adding a webcast for every evening of BANNED BOOKS WEEK 22-28th September. 

We have discovered some interesting correspondences between some of our writers, texts, and manuscripts, and will be sharing them with you over the course of the next week.   

Please ‘tune in’ nightly for our short presentations, which we will also add on social media.

 

Remaining webcasts will be added nightly!

* Maria Prophetissima: The Axiom of Maria

* Culpepper : The Censored Revolutionary

* The Sworn Book of Honorius

* Dr Louise Fenton : Zora Neale Hurston 

* John Dee – Conversation with The Angel Galvar

* Aleister Crowley: The Banned Lecture

* La Bas ( The Damned ) – Huysman

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