I’ve been starting this beautiful green spring at a deliciously slow pace, savoring the golden evenings, knowing that as we tumble into summer my life will be speeding up. I have been sitting on announcements of a number of exciting projects and engagements for quite some time, and it’s time to start sharing!

First off, I’m heading back for a drop in visit to NYC for a couple of days in mid-June. Wednesday, June 17 from 6:30–8 pm, as part of the Whitney Museum’s Pride Month programming I will be in conversation with one of my favorite people, the lovely and big brained Zach Blas. He will be performing his lecture “Does an AI God Have an Ass”, after which we will be chatting about the performance, his Whitney Biennial installation CULTUS and his broader body of work around the strangely occulted cultures of Silicon Valley. If you are in or around New York City, I think this is going to be an electric event as Zach and I have a delightfully queer conversation about sigils, Renaissance magics, submission, surveillance, and of course—glorious asses! Tickets here!

I can finally announce my exhibition Holding A Bright Untroubled Sky: Visioning a Better World Through Magic, running from August 10-September 18 at the Rowe Galleries at the campus of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. This will be a riotous, colorful celebration intended to jumpstart our capacities to start visualizing a future we can all love, featuring an amazing group of the most inspiring international artists:

John Abell

Alice Bucknell

CROSSLUCID

Edgar Fabián Frías

Angela Fraleigh

Heather Freeman

Hilma’s Ghost (Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder)

Loni Johnson

Alessandro Keegan

Anna Kenar

Tai Shani

Mark Titchner

Suzanne Treister

Erik Waterkotte

Expect more details very soon about the opening reception, artist profiles, and programming. I am so very excited about this one!

Ithellmania is getting another boost! Already announced is my long awaited edited collection of Ithell Colquhoun’s magical essays, A Walking Flame, which should hit the material plane in late June. This uniquely curated and annotated collection demonstrates the range of Colquhoun’s esoteric interests, and also places her in a wider context of women occult essayists of the mid 20th century. This is going to be a very pretty book, so pre-order here from Strange Attractor Press.

Last but certainly not least, I am finally ready to start unveiling a super special project that you will be hearing much more of over the next few months. Here is the cover reveal for my new book with Tate Publishing, Magic: Beyond the Supernatural in Contemporary Art featuring an image by Natasha Viosna Moody. This is a survey of 45 global, contemporary artists who combine magical practice with their artistic practice. I can’t wait to introduce you to these amazing artists and share their work with you. This project is designed to expand our conceptions of magical practice into exciting new territories while showcasing the cutting edge of occult, esoteric and magical art. It’s due out in October, and you will be hearing much more over the coming months.

So that’s a bit of what I’ve been getting up to. I am just bouncing with enthusiasm! Things might be getting busy around here, so I might go put my feet up and read a good book while I can. Take care of yourselves and each other, always.

Hi everyone! It’s been awhile. First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who has a paid subscription to this Substack. It’s a small group of folks, but your support is so meaningful to me. I have been working on big projects this year and as a result haven’t taken on many writing commissions, so I am extra grateful to the people who are backing my work. Thank you all so very much.

I know it’s been a minute since I have written an update. Much of this has been because I am working hard on an exciting new manuscript and curating my first big show for the autumn of 2026, so I have been heads down in goblin writing mode. But trust me, I am going to have some big announcements very soon!

In so many ways, 2025 has been an incredible year of dreams fulfilled. I started the year with the Ithell Colquhoun Retrospective at Tate St. Ives in February and have been riding high on that energy the whole year! Ithellmania feels real and I am eager to see how the reception of her work carries on.

In terms of my own Colquhoun based projects, February 12, 2026 I will be speaking at the Hunterian Gallery in Glasgow on “Ithell Colquhoun’s Radical Normativities”, part of the Normative Esotericism project spearheaded by Drs. Tanya Cheadle and Justine Bakker. As the program is finalized, watch this space!

Also, I know that many folks are eager to get A Walking Flame: Selected Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun into your hands. This has been a surprisingly difficult book to design and we hit some production snags earlier in the year that we are still working out. I am pleased to say that we are in the final stages of this project and we are all hoping to see a release in early 2026.

The Magic in Contemporary Art Video Podcast that I have been hosting in conjunction with Treadwell’s Book and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic has been wildly successful. I have had such stimulating discussions with a variety of artists, and I think we have been pushing the boundaries of how people think about magic and art. The final episode will be January 18, and I will be chatting with Jacqui McIntosh, curator at the College of Psychic Studies, and artist Kate Walters about altered states of consciousness and contemporary art. Here is the link for the final session, I hope you join us!

Finally, I am very proud of my contribution to the new, quite wonderful, open-source edition of Approaching Religion, The Witching of Art History, edited by Nina Kokkinen and Sofia Sjö. My essay is titled Everything She Touches, Changes Remix: Feminist New Materialism and Contemporary Magical Futurist Art, which looks at emergent cultural discourses around magic and their impact on a group of contemporary artists. This is a topic that keeps developing for me, and I think the relevance of this wider project is continuing to build as the world just gets crazier.

Speaking of which, it feels really hard sometimes to share the work that I am doing when everything seems so dire and frightening. This past year I have had to slow down just a little to focus on mental and physical health. Those were good investments. I know 2026 will require a lot from everyone, so find your center, breathe deeply, and embrace the sunshine in the shadows. Invest in your communities, your people and your own resilience however you can.

May you have a beautiful festive season however you celebrate, and may you ring in 2026 with hope in your hearts, and visions of a bright future for all.

Hi everyone, I hope the beginning of your summer or winter depending on where in the world you are is treating you well. I only have a few short updates for programs happening this month, as I'm spending most of my time working on the new book. So very briefly, here's what I've got coming up!

Magic and Contemporary Art with Treadwell's and Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Two Episodes!

First, on July 6^th, will be the delayed episode where I'm chatting with filmmaker Judith Noble and member of the radical 1980s feminist performance art collective the Neo Naturists, Christine Binney, about the feminist art of the 1980s, which in my view has been an enormous influence on contemporary magical art. We will talk about the role of ecofeminism, Paganism and Goddess culture on the art of the period, how it impacted their own artistic practice, and where it has led their practice today. If you don't already have tickets, you can get them here:

Then on Sunday July 20^th, I'll be having a conversation with Chantal Powell and Mary MacGregor Reid about their spiritual and artistic practice and the very different ways in which both artists use alchemical imagery. They will discuss what draws them creatively to these themes and their reflections on why spiritual alchemy is relevant to our lives and journeys today. Chantal and Mary both use alchemical themes in distinctive, artistic ways, that are thought provoking, sometimes whimsical, and deeply profound. Through this series I love having the opportunity to introduce people to artists they may not be familiar with, and I think you will really enjoy learning about these two women and their practice. You can book tickets here:

The Feminist Lecture Program

Monday, July 14th, at 6:30 PM London time, I'll be doing a lecture for the amazing Feminist Lecture Program, Ithell Colquhoun and The Vital Energies of Land and Body. In this talk I'll be looking at how Colquhoun understood the notion of vital energies, her interest in science and empiricism, and the connections she made between esoteric sexuality and sacred landscapes. There are lots of cool pictures, so if you have been bitten by Ithellmania, I think you will enjoy this lecture.

But definitely check out the other incredible speakers and lectures in this series. I was really honored to have been asked to be involved, and there are such innovative and dynamic speakers on this program it's hard to find something you won't like.

Other Cool Events: Shannon Taggart Symposium at Lily Dale!

Although I won't be attending myself this year, From July 24th to 26th my friend Shannon Taggart is hosting the 11th annual Shannon Taggart Symposium of the Supernatural in the spiritualist community of Lily Dale New York. This is hands down one of the very best events of its kind, where wonder and inquiry merge to create a truly magical atmosphere where anything is possible. Shannon always gets the best speakers, and this year Erik Davis, Phil Ford, Christopher Josiffe and Annebella Pollen are among the jam packed list! It may not be the easiest destination to get to, but if you can ever attend one of these events I promise you you will be transformed.

New Book! Lally MacBeth’s The Lost Folk

I'm also exceptionally delighted that the multi talented Lally Macbeth has just seen the publication of her new book The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk. While it isn't due to be published in the states for a couple of months yet, I'm excited to get my hands on the digital version. Lally has a fresh take on the current popular interest in folk culture in Britain, expanding conceptions of artifact, genre and ownership in a thoughtful and inclusive way. Primarily, I'm expecting a fun journey through ephemeral aspects of British culture that have been marginalized or forgotten, reinvigorated through the lens of communal creation and meaning. This looks like perfect Summer reading over here.

So this is pretty much all I have to report, I hope you're staying warm or staying cool taking a moment to breathe, and finding time to laugh as much as you possibly can.

Hi everyone, and thank you so much for coming along for the ride. Atlanta is so very luscious right now. It’s cool and green and filled with birdsong. It's been a truly wild and exciting time since the opening of the Ithell Colquhoun show at Tate St. Ives in February. I returned to Cornwall in the last week of April, for a number of events clustered around the final weekend of the Colquhoun show in St. Ives before its move to London. The first event was a day conference I co-organized with my colleagues at Falmouth University and the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter. It was a day long symposium that I titled Colquhoun’s Cornish Context in which a wonderful variety of invited guests and a lively audience engaged in spirited conversation around themes inspired by Colquhoun’s art and life; the construction of sacred landscapes, esoteric religions in Cornwall, and Cornwall's creative economy. These days I'm finding that I prefer discussion and exchange to lectures, and in that respect this day was absolutely perfect. The atmosphere was warm and accepting and everyone felt empowered and comfortable to speak. I'm so grateful to everyone who participated.

Then onto St. Ives and the final weekend of the Colquhoun show in Cornwall which was absolutely amazing and beautifully programmed. The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art helped to sponsor a final study weekend where a diverse group of writers and artists engaged with Colquhoun’s work. On the Friday night I kicked off the events with a keynote lecture where I explored Colquhoun’s interest in magically encoded public art and compared it with a group of contemporary artists who are motivated by magic and changing consciousness. The rest of the weekend included dancing by local Morris group The Wad, the beautiful singer Daisy Rickman, poetry by Gwenno, dream journals, and zine creation. I can hardly think of a more suitable way to celebrate Colquhoun’s creative life.

Colquhoun at Tate Britain

Now, however, Colquhoun is ready to storm the capital! From June 13th to October 19th, the Colquhoun show is headed to Tate Britain, where it will be run in parallel with an exhibition of the work of the imaginative and sometimes whimsical Edward Burra. This show will be slightly different from the St. Ives version, with more of a focus on Colquhoun’s London activity. If you weren't able to get to Cornwall, definitely make sure to get to this one!

Magic and Contemporary Art with Treadwell's and Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

June 15th at 7:00 PM London time we're back with another excellent discussion of magic and contemporary art with two very different absolutely fantastic Hermetically inspired artists, Jesse Bransford, and Barry William Hale. We will talk about their own Hermetic journeys, and what inspires them, and how their art and magical practice converges.

Sadly, due to a bereavement, the episode on feminism and magical art in the 80s with Judith Noble and Christine Binney has been delayed until July 6.

The Spiral with Chantal Powell, PhD

I'm so excited to be a guest of the truly magnificent Dr. Chantal Powell in her upcoming course that looks at the role of the spiral not only as symbol in art but also as a pattern for growth and development. Chantal is an absolutely brilliant artist and thinker who takes a Jungian approach to alchemy and psychology. From her website:

From the patterns of galaxies and plant growth to the mandalas and labyrinths of sacred traditions, the spiral is a universal motif that connects nature, psychology, and spirituality. In this three-week course, we will explore the spiral symbol through the lenses of Jungian psychology, mythology, alchemy, and art.

For the third session in her course, Chantal and the artist and curator Simon Moretti and myself will be engaged in what I know will be a magnificent chat about the esoteric significance of the spiral.

Chantal does so many great things you really should check out her website regularly, but here is the listing for the spiral course, which I think would be very appealing to many of my readers.

A Walking Flame Update

There have been some delays to the collection of Ithell Colquhoun’s magical essays that I have been working on with Strange Attractor press, but it should be with the proofreader soon, and I'm hoping that it will be ready by later this summer. It's been a very complex text to put together, but I think it will be worth it in the end!

It's been a busy and jam packed couple of years, so I'm hoping to slow down a bit this summer and redirect my energies, even though I am still busily working on a massive project. I want less screen time, more walking and dancing. I’m also learning new skills and lighting up my brain by taking an improv course at Atlanta’s internationally recognized improv theater Dad’s Garage! Finally, I want to wish everyone a Happy Pride Month. Love freely, fearlessly be yourself, build the Queer Utopia and above all just care for each other.

Thank you for reading!

Thank you so much for signing up and being here. This spring has truly been all about finding balance. The green earth here in Atlanta is alive and beautiful, filled with flowers and pollen. It's just so tremendously lush and invigorating. The flowers are so fleeting, I make the time to really pay attention to them. The world continues to be deeply unsettled, so immersion into the cyclical greening of the woods in which I live is a very welcome and joyous practice.

The Ithell Colquhoun exhibition in St. Ives has been a resounding success. People have absolutely fallen in love with her work, and the reviews have been outstanding! Katy Norris’ curatorial vision for the show was absolutely sublime. The environments for each section were just so stunning! It was really such an absolute joy and dream to be involved with this show.

What’s coming up!

This Sunday April 13 will be the second installment of my discussion series co-sponsored by Treadwell’s Books in London and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall. I will be chatting with the legendary Leonora Carrington scholar Susan Aberth about how art history has responded to a deeper understanding of the influence of occultism, spiritualism and magic on artistic practices, and how the narrative of modern art is changing. We will also talk about her work on Carrington and how magic has shaped her own groundbreaking scholarship.

I will be back in Cornwall at the end of April where I will be involved in two different events! The first, Colquhoun’s Cornish Context, is a day of discussion I am organizing with my colleagues at Falmouth University and the Institute of Cornish Studies, a department of the University of Exeter. Here is the event summary:

Since the Dark Monarch Exhibition held by Tate St. Ives in 2009, interest in Ithell Colquhoun’s work and her association with Cornwall has been steadily increasing. Colquhoun-inspired art projects such as Ancient Scent, and tourism inspired by Colquhoun’s travelogue The Living Stones have all contributed to an increased enthusiasm for visitors who want to see and experience Cornwall through Colquhoun’s eyes. The retrospective of Colquhoun’s work at Tate St. Ives which has run from February to May of 2025 has firmly sealed the importance of her work to Cornwall’s artistic legacy.

However, Colquhoun’s interest in Cornwall was generally informed by romantic constructions of the region, many of which persist, driving tourism, and also artistic and spiritually based in-migration. There persists a tension between these romanticized encounters with Cornwall and those of Cornish people and residents whose experiences of place and culture, may be shaped differently, by disadvantaged local communities, post industrialism, lagging development and second home ownership. As interest in Colquhoun grows, it is critical that we address the difficult conversations around gentrification, colonialism and appropriation in Cornwall that will likely emerge alongside her increased popularity.

This day long symposium will consist of three casual roundtable conversations with a variety of artists, scholars, curators and others, each lasting an hour with 30 minutes for general discussion. Tickets are free to the public and there will be a virtual option.

There is going to be some really fantastic discussion and I am so excited about this. Please join us in person or virtually. Go here for tickets!

On May 2nd-4th I will be back at Tate St. Ives to participate in what is going to be an outstanding final weekend of events celebrating the Colquhoun exhibition. On May 2nd I will be participating in a study day sponsored by the Paul Mellon Foundation, The Spaces Between: From The Individual to The Collective.

How can readings of Ithell Colquhoun’s work illuminate the role of individual transformation in relation to a collective movement for change? This event will critically engage with inherent and acquired relationships to place, with topics including artistic ritual, art making as community activity and spirituality and the land.

The rest of the weekend will feature music, dance and all sorts of opportunities for creative exploration. Find out more here!

I think that’s just about all for now. I hope you are able to enjoy the beauty of the season wherever you are, whether you are in the first blooms of Spring or an invigorating Autumn, may the seasons transform you and give you hope.

It's been quite a busy time, so I hope that my dear friends and readers will kindly excuse the belatedness of my communications. Ithellmania has absolutely struck, and in the past couple of months, as one might imagine, I've been very busy getting various things ready for the spectacular show, Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, that opened February 1st at Tate St. Ives in Cornwall. I was a contributor to the catalog and also an advisor to the exhibition, and everybody was working until the last minute to produce a glorious result. The curator, Katy Norris, had an amazing vision for this show, and it has already touched so many people and blown so many minds. I was involved in two “in conversation” events the day of the opening, both of which were packed to the walls. The following day I spoke at a Colquhoun inspired exhibition, at the Crypt Gallery in St. Ives featuring the artists Greg Humphreys, Julian Vayne, Kate Southworth, and Neil Scott. Greg, Julian and Kate started the Colquhoun inspired artist group the Order of the Sun and the Moon exploring various aspects of occult and visionary art. They are just three of the growing number of artists and writers who have been inspired by Colquhoun’s visions and methods (speaking of which, if in London go see the Linder Retrospective Danger Came Smiling at the Hayward Gallery!). The ever increasing impact of her art has been almost overwhelming. When I started working with Colquhoun’s material 25 years ago, a Colquhoun Tate retrospective would have been beyond my wildest dreams, but my sole motivation was to share with the world what a brilliant, radical and magical mind Colquhoun possessed. Mission accomplished, but there is so much more to do!

Naturally I was delighted to see that the initial press response to the show was exceptionally positive. To my delight, people were entranced by the beauty and sensuality of her work and also the stunning curation. Guardian writer Jonathan Jones enjoyed the show, which rather surprised me as he is notorious for disliking pretty much everything, but he was predictably resentful of the fact that the esoteric dimension was taken seriously and actually treated with respect. Another critic enjoyed the magical material, but repeated the tired trope that a current focus on magic in art is evidence of a cultural retreat into the irrational. While I understand where this line of thinking comes from, I fully believe it is misdirected.

The implication of Jones's commentary is particularly troubling. Back in 2009 I wrote an essay, White Men Can’t Dance, examining the inherent racism surrounding institutional prejudices in scholarship concerning the occult and the esoteric. The short thesis of this article is that while many would not have problems with displays of esoteric or magical practice emerging from non-Western cultures, there seems to be a level of dismay and disappointment when the magical practices of Westerners are in any way normalized. But the historical fact is that magical practices have always played a part in the diverse array of Western spiritual experiences and worldviews, so for commentators to find frustration with this fact implies to me that they feel that somehow Westerners are or should be held to a different standard of rationality. Of course this is not only problematic, it utterly ignores the incredible complexity, nuance and diversity of Western navigations of reality, agency and relationality. I don't want to reproduce the entirety of this academic article in this newsletter, so I will just link to it here. If you can’t access it and want to, just drop me a line.

As I have argued in many places and will continue to argue, what I believe we are seeing is a realignment of the variety and diversity of Western spiritual and magical practices into those of the rest of the world. Magic is just part of the human experience. While some theorists want to attach a broad and somewhat apocalyptic significance to the overall growing interest in magical practice, I don't believe that's the answer, so my upcoming work over the next couple of years will be exploring these ideas, and the ways in which our ideas about magic are changing.

What’s coming up!

Lots!!

Morbid Anatomy Course: The Art of Magic and the Supersensual

First, join me for my upcoming course with Morbid Anatomy, The Art of Magic and The Supersensual:

Over the course of four weeks, we will undertake a survey of magical art, including spiritual abstraction, surrealism, feminist art of the 1980s, and the work of some of the best contemporary magical artists. We will also look at magical art outside of a gallery setting and the relationship between art, aesthetics and communities of practice as seen in the art and craft of Freemasonry and friendly societies, Pagan and Occult devotional art, magical tools and psychedelic art, as well as folk art, craft, outsider art, visionary art, and art brut. We will investigate the aesthetics of magic, and explore the role of clothing, jewelry, body art, décor, and the creation of sacred spaces as strategies of not just expression but also as an essential aspect of magical and spiritual practice. We will also consider recent scholarly debates about esotericism and magic, and the reconsideration of diverse magical themes in modern and contemporary art movements across the globe.

The course runs from Thursday March 13- April 3, 2025 and is $100 for Morbid Anatomy patrons and $135 for everyone else. This is going to be a fun ride, I would love to see you there.

Next up…

In Conversation: Magic and Contemporary Art with Treadwell’s and the MWM!

And here is something I have been sitting on for a while! In collaboration with Treadwell’s Bookshop in London and the fabulous Museum of Witchcraft and Magic I am hosting a 10-part lecture and conversation series on Magic and Contemporary Art. From the website:

In this 10-part series, Dr. Amy Hale explores the history and key themes of magical and esoteric art, tracing the recent cultural and creative fascination with the numinous and otherworldly. Through conversations with curators, artists, and scholars, Hale examines how the growing study of artists like Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun is rewriting modern art history. She also explores the emergence of visionary works by contemporary artists such as Hilma’s Ghost, Barry William Hale and Tai Shani, which are reshaping how we think about magic and encounter the world.

My first conversation with be with curator and critic Jamie Sutcliffe, as we set the stage for this contemporary explosion. Sign up here:

And then…

Conjuring Creativity Conference

And finally, I will be speaking (virtually) at the Conjuring Creativity conference in London March 15^th and 16^th. The theme is “Inhabiting Esoteric Ecologies” and the lineup is stellar!!

My talk is titled “Feminist Ecologies and Emergent Magics in Contemporary Art”

This presentation explores the work of several contemporary women and LGBTQ artists who are disrupting and “troubling” earlier magical paradigms, creating new processes and magical aesthetics incorporating feminist ecologies which acknowledge a universe that extends beyond the visible. The work of Tai Shani, Alice Bucknell, Bones Tan Jones, Saya Woolfalk and others reflect a worldview of complex connections and bold visions for relating with a variety of entities. They engage with responsive and feminist magically informed practices including ritual, visual storytelling and worldbuilding, promoting change and transformation, reconfiguring our relationships and responsibilities to the other than human, both seen and unseen.

Tickets here!

I think that’s just about all for now, but there will be more before long that I can’t wait to share. In the meantime, the world just seems to get weirder and more unsettled every day. Hold those you love and find your center. We are all in this together. Above all, don’t give up hope and keep dreaming of beautiful futures.

I hope you have all been enjoying the winter (or summer!) holiday season so far. Although I’ve been a bit quiet, I have been paddling like a duck underneath working on a number of exciting new projects for 2025 and beyond that I can’t wait to share with you all. Despite the planning and preparation, I am taking a lot of time for introspection and quiet joy, as is rather customary for the dark period of the year. In many years I have been eager for the winter to be over and for the light to return, but I am currently savoring the coziness of the season and the opportunity to just be a bit of a house mouse after what has been a pretty wild year.

There are, though, a couple of things to announce:

On January 13 I will be doing an online lecture for Viktor Wynd’s Last Tuesday Society Series in support of the Victor Wynd Museum’s “Four Witches and a Warlock” exhibition in London. One of the “witches” is Ithell Colquhoun, and I am offering a lecture on transgression and taboo in Colquhoun’s work, “Ithell Colquhoun Between the Sacred and the Profane”. This talk is juicy and at times downright filthy, so please do join us if you like that sort of thing! Ticket prices are by donation.

Coming in March hosted by Morbid Anatomy the first in a series of courses I plan to offer in 2025, The Art of Magic and The Supersensual! From the description:

“Over the course of four weeks, we will undertake a survey of magical art, including spiritual abstraction, surrealism, feminist art of the 1980s, and the work of some of the best contemporary magical artists. We will also look at magical art outside of a gallery setting and the relationship between art, aesthetics and communities of practice as seen in the art and craft of Freemasonry and friendly societies, Pagan and Occult devotional art, magical tools and psychedelic art, as well as folk art, craft, outsider art, visionary art, and art brut. We will investigate the aesthetics of magic, and explore the role of clothing, jewelry, body art, décor, and the creation of sacred spaces as strategies of not just expression but also as an essential aspect of magical and spiritual practice. We will also consider recent scholarly debates about esotericism and magic, and the reconsideration of diverse magical themes in modern and contemporary art movements across the globe.”

The course runs from Thursday March 13- April 3, 2025 and is $100 for Morbid Anatomy patrons and $135 for everyone else. This is going to be a fun ride with a lot of interactivity and discussion, and I would love to see you there.

Inputs and Inspirations

My Yule playlist has been on regular rotation of late and I am really in love with the dreamy vibes it’s giving me this year. Here are three of my favorite selections:

Thea Gilmore’s Sol Invictus

Renowned men’s chorus Chanticleer performing Sarah Hopkins’ Past Life Melodies. It’s the aural equivalent of the aurora borealis.

Eric Whitacre’s shimmering, golden Lux Aurumque.

2024 has had some rough moments for many folks, so please take care of yourself during this holiday season.

Wishing you a joyous Yuletide and hoping for a peaceful 2025 for everyone.

Much love to you all,

Amy

“Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.”

― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

It is Samhain tide, Halloween, a time when levity and poignancy collide as the dark of the year truly starts to turn in upon us. I am writing this overlooking the river in New Orleans, where I'm fortunate to be taking a small break, watching dark clouds roll in over the city.  I have had a couple of months back at home, doing a lot of writing and enjoying the golden glow of a Georgia autumn, which this year was punctuated by a hurricane threat, which actually derailed my September update. Luckily for us, the storm moved to the east, but it utterly devastated the neighboring state of beautiful North Carolina.  Nevertheless, after intensive travel the first part of the year, home has felt good to me. As surely most of you know, it's a rather difficult time in the United States right now. Emotions are running high, and with everyone in the grip of fear it is a definite chore finding joy in small things, but that is exactly what we must do. 

What’s been going on

I have intentionally kept my engagements to a minimum over the past few months so that I could concentrate on getting some larger projects underway. I'm really excited about what comes next, and I know that early next year is going to be a whirlwind with the Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds Retrospective at the Tate, so I'm grateful to take this chance to turn inward a little bit. 

I had the opportunity to write an essay for a catalog in support of a wonderful young artist Tia Taylor Berry. Tia is a mediumistic artist who works in geometric abstractions, and this last year she has been a teaching fellow at Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University sponsored by Freelands Foundation. Tia has been spending the last year working on her own delicate abstracted Tarot deck, which is quite stunning, but I'm also really taken with her wall paintings and portal series, featuring these large pulsing circles of energy. One of the most inspiring things I learned about Tia while writing the essay was that she and a fellow artist have formed a rejection club, where they gleefully share all of the rejections that they have had and then move on to discuss what they're going to work toward next. Given how crushing rejection can be, especially for young people putting their work out there, I love the idea of reframing rejection as just another aspect of being a working artist.

I was also exceptionally honored to do the gallery essay for the lovely Chantal Powell and Femmy Otten who collaborated on the Heart Spells show for Arusha Gallery in London.

This was such a beautiful, subtle alchemically themed show, with an emphasis on those moments of transformation where you don't know exactly what it is that you are becoming. The work of these two artists complemented each other beautifully, and of course the Arusha space in London is just a delight to be in. You can find a copy of the essay here. 

I've also been collaborating on a conference paper with artist and academic Heather Freeman for a small but mighty conference being held next week in Venice, the Aesthetics of Esoteric Practices: Materialities, Performances, Senses, hosted by The Giorgio Cini Foundation.

This paper looks at the work of contemporary artists and magical practitioners who are using digital technologies to create exceptional magical spaces for practice, including encounters with AI entities. In particular we're profiling some of my favorite artists, Zach Blas, Alice Bucknell, Barry William Hale, and of course Heather herself.  

And if you're not familiar with Heather's work, she is the host and writer of the podcast Magic in the United States. It's a great listen, so check it out here! 

November 19th I will be giving a talk for Laetitia Barbier’s Cartomancy Program “This Current Drew You: Ithell Colquhoun's Erotic Energies and Sacred Landscapes”, an illustrated talk exploring the connections between Colquhoun's theorizing about Sex Magic and her view of energy in the landscape. The talk is free, and it's a really fun one!

Inputs and Inspirations

Inspired listening at the moment has been a return to the work of Aoife O'Donovan. Her 2016 album The Magic Hour is perfect listening for this time of year, as she conjures all sorts of spirits and ancestors with her Celtically tinged Americana. And if you like your harmonies tight and juicy, I also recommend her collaborations with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz in the award winning trio I'm With Her. 

Inspired watching has been Derek Sarno’s Vegan Cooking You Tube Channel.

Thanks for reading, and wishing all of you love and the unquenchable light of hope this season.

It’s a beautiful hazy, golden late summer here in Atlanta. After eight trips in eight months, I am very happy to be grounded for a while in the place I love, catching up on health, home and family. We are spending a lot of energy on integrating two rescue kittens that showed up in our yard into our home, which is already populated by three cats. It feels like most excellent work.

Thoughts on Deck

For the past couple of years, I have been serving as a consultant for the major Ithell Colquhoun retrospective Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, being held at Tate St. Ives from February to May 2025, and then moving to Tate Britain from June to September. It’s been a fascinating opportunity to see the inner workings of a major exhibition, and I have actually quite enjoyed the glimpses into the nitty gritty of curation.  Before my trip to Lily Dale, I finished writing the catalogue essay, which had me reflecting more deeply on the enduring relationship between constructions of science and magic.  The inspiration for this musing was contextualizing Colquhoun’s use of the aesthetics of science and empiricism, especially as it applied to her visual magical experiments.  For both scholars and practitioners, this conversation is well worn ground, but it got me thinking about the hodge podge of practices and spiritual orientations that get lumped into the category of “magic” today and how historical beliefs about science and empiricism shaped this corpus.  How is it that divination, spell casting, healing, herbal lore, you know, all that traditional cunning folk stuff, got mixed in with discourses about consciousness, human potential and self-deification?  On the face of it, these are wildly different projects and you can still feel this tension in magical subcultures today. This definitely causes friction when one group wants to cast aspersions of authenticity at another.  A fine example is the ideological divide between magico-religious witchcraft and “traditional” witchcraft, where one group frames itself in religious terms and the other generally does not.

To quote from the catalogue draft:

By the early twentieth century, the “magic” of Western Occultism becomes a fascinating hybridised mashup of practices including altered states of consciousness, astral projection, dream work, yoga, adaptations of grimoire and planetary magic as “secrets of nature”, Kabballah, alchemy, mythological studies and ritual performance.  These disparate techniques were all connected by the idea that they were empirically solid, backed by emerging scientific discovery, and that perfection of them would result in the practitioner achieving superhuman capacities, delivering both appropriate earthly success and enlightenment.   

I started to consider the ways in which these weird bedfellows came together through various applications of evolutionary theory from the mid nineteenth century onward. One apparent consequence is that the materialism that dominates most “traditional” magical practice gets recast as being something one does to get in touch with one’s “Higher Self”.  It’s how spell work, divination, and working with spirits becomes engulfed in a moral framework of doing one’s true will, to build one’s connection with the divine.  Doing a ritual for a new job? Is your magical success dependent on how “right” that job is for your ultimate path?  To quote again from the essay:

However, the way in which operative magic was believed to work still fit neatly into a scientized framework involving human potential; the more in harmony a person is with the universe, the more effective their magic will be and the more likely the helpful beings of other dimensions will be in support of their aims.  Spell work, then, emerges primarily to help one become the best versions of themselves.

Of course, this history is far more complex and nuanced than I can get into here, I suppose you will have to wait for the catalogue where I expand on the argument a bit more. However, these links do help me think a bit about the ways in which many modern occultists perceive what they do and what the overall project is for them.  I continue to be fascinated with the various frameworks of magical practice and how they change over time. I am always mindful of the incursions of Protestant and capitalist ethics that turn contemporary magical spiritualities into even more work, and also how people use their sense of magic to resist it. I assure you there will be more on this from me to come.

Wanderings

Since the last newsletter I had wonderful times in both Lily Dale, New York and California! I really enjoyed visiting the Pacifica Campus in lovely Carpenteria and meeting the students there.  What a special day! 

We discussed definitions of magic, explored magic in relation to community and personal aesthetics and finished the day by creating some sacred spaces of our own.  Truly unforgettable!  Then I headed down to LA to the Philosophical Research Society.  Not only is their event calendar just off the chain, but their film program looks outstanding. I wish I could have seen their showing of Jody Wille’s new film on the Unarians, Welcome Space Brothers. I got a sneak peak in Lily Dale and it’s utterly lovely. If you have a chance to catch this, you should.

Future movements

I’m staying put for the next couple of months, which excites me no end!  I am starting on a really big new project with Tate Publishing that I will be sharing details about soon, and that will keep me very busy here. I will have more news of upcoming events next month.

Last Tuesday Society September Hosting

Although I am no longer curating for LTS, I am still enjoying hosting some of the very fabulous lectures on what I think I the best online lecture series going.

On September 4 Premiere Aleister Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski will be doing a spirited lecture on the topic of his new book titled Friendship in Doubt: Agnosticism and Magick in Aleister Crowley's Circle.

September 11, Dr. Sophie Hollinshead will be sharing the Mystery of Sophia Hyatt, The White Lady of Newstead Abbey. Sophie is a fine storyteller and deep researcher of tales of place. This will be a lovely journey.

September 26^th  the fabulous witch Melissa Madara will continue her plants and magic series with us, with her Introduction to Planetary Herbalism.

And on October 1^st, Religious Studies scholar Philip Deslippe will enchant us with the tale of Brothers Zara and Raum: The Real Story of a Fake Buddhist Rosicrucian Order. Philip is an exceptional speaker, you don’t want to miss this!

Inputs and Inspirations

If you don’t know the work of Cornish based musician Angeline Morrison, she will blow your mind. A stirring and critical voice taking the British musical folk idiom to new places with unheard stories of Black Britain.  Her 2022 The Sorrow Songs : Folk Songs of Black British Experience is essential listening.

I’m really excited about her new album Ophelia, available for pre order on Bandcamp.

The few preview tracks she has released are so gorgeous, and will provide the perfect soundtrack for sliding easily into Fall.  I am completely in love with Angeline and you should be too.

Best wishes for a beautiful late summer, and see you next month!

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Recent Wanderings

This has so far been a mad, hot summer. I’ve missed some wild storms here in Atlanta, but the figs on our massive fig tree are just starting to ripen:

I’ve just been recovering from an absolutely incredible trip to the UK, where I had many firsts as well as some wonderfully connective time with dear friends. I was honored to have been invited by Professor Alyce Mahon to speak at the Department of Art History at Cambridge, where in a most festive end of term atmosphere I shared Ithell Colquhoun’s sex magic with a delightful group of folks.  This was swiftly followed by the “Art, Magic, Lore” day conference organized by the London Fortean Society, where I got to hear wonderful talks by Jennifer Higgie, Lucy Wright and Kathryn Atherton. I was deeply inspired by the artistic resistance of Thomas Sharp, Marc Spicer & Rosey Trickett, in their account of Circling the Square Mile of the City of London with a fairy ring, demonstrating the true nature about City traders as tricky fae. Then I hopped a train to Kernow where I was a keynote speaker for the “Sex, Scandal, and Sensation” conference organized by Jo Parsons and the Dark Economies Research Group at Falmouth University.  I spoke about Ithell Colquhoun’s penchant for transgression and suggested some spiritual and artistic principles that may have inspired some of Colquhoun’s more eye watering artistic production. I’m super proud to be an Honorary Research Fellow at Falmouth University. They really undertake some of the most incredible and edgy, groundbreaking and necessary research and this conference was no exception. Next summer will bring a conference on Haunted Modernities, so watch this space for more news there!

Body in Motion

July 24th I am sitting down with some fantastic colleagues for a Societas Magica Online workshop focused on esoteric scholarship and public engagement.  I’ll be hanging out with Heather Freeman, Al Cummins, Jesse Hathaway Diaz, Earl Fontinelle and JoAnna Farrer to talk about principles of outreach, public scholarship (which is absolutely my jam!), and maybe raging against the academic machine a wee bit.  Registration is here:

July 25th-28th I will be heading to Lily Dale, New York, the oldest Spiritualist community in the US, to Shannon Taggart’s Lily Dale Symposium, where I will be speaking on the Making of Magical Cornwall. Shannon has been organizing this event in Lily Dale for 10 years now and I was honored to attend last year as well. This event hits the most perfect theoretical sweet spot with respect to the weird and supernatural; no debate, no argument, no apologetics. Let’s just accept that the weird is a space we are choosing to inhabit in this moment and listen to wonderful stories.  Phil Ford and JF Martel will be reprising their live Weird Studies podcast, and there will be a breathtaking array of speakers.

August 8th I will be taking part in an event hosted by my wonderful friends at Treadwell’s Bookshop in London and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic where I will be in conversation with artist WhiteFeather Hunter, who currently features in an exhibition at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, ‘Arcanum Sanguinis: Occult Blood’.  Hunter is an exceptionally rare example of an occult/magical artist in that she works within a visual idiom that is informed by the aesthetics of the modern lab, yet which is also highly occulted, allowing us to more deeply reconsider the historical relationship between science and the occult.  This is going to be a cool conversation, including Peter Grey and Alkistis Dimech, so if you are inclined, please join us! Check out Hunter’s lab constructed clitoris!

Finally, also in August, I am off to Cali where on August 12th I will be conducting a one-day colloquium, doing a deep dive into Art and Magic for students of Pacifica Graduate Institute. This has been at the forefront of my brain of late, so look out for more thoughts on this to come. Then onto Los Angeles where on August 15^th I will be talking about Ithell Colquhoun’s Sex Magic at the Philosophical Research Society!  There will also be books available just before the North American launch of the book I recently completed with Tate Publishing, which is pretty exciting. If you are in town c’mon along!

Inputs and Inspirations

Music and color are my two immediate sensory remedies to get into or out of my head as required, and at the moment I feel as though I need frequent recalibration. Current atmospheric favorites are Manchester jazz outfit GoGo Penguin , where I have been taking refuge in their latest album Everything is Going to Be Ok. Another consistent retreat is the newgrassy Americana flavored Punch Brothers, who I have discovered are not as familiar to my UK pals. Other lush life elements are giant local heirloom tomatoes, a bright orange blazer, and the lullabies of crickets. Hope you are finding your small joys in the height of the season wherever you are.

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