Tag: esoteric
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Of Shadows
One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Effigies, pentacles, masks and charms. Robes and blades, crosses and cauldrons. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, is a treasure trove of magical objects and books dedicated to the history of British folk magic and other forms of popular spiritual belief. Photographer…
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Murmuration of Starlings
A huge mass of black sweeps across the sky; surging, swirling and constantly changing form. This is a murmuration of starlings, an extraordinary natural phenomenon seen in the autumn and winter months. Such spectacular sights used to be more common when the birds flocked in greater numbers – in 1799, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge…
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Medieval Graffiti – Charms and Curses
This month sees the publication of Matthew Champion’s Medieval Graffiti. The book is a fascinating tour through the centuries of hand-carved writing and art that adorns the walls of churches across the country. One of the key themes that emerges is an apparent lack of clear delineation between official and unofficial – in thought, word,…
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Reimagining the British Witch
My first encounter with the works of Hayley Potter was in 2008, and the Secret Creature project: a diverse melange of strange, semi-believable owl-sheep-cat-bat-birds that flocked together in the branches of a community tree and peered out at you myopically. Since then her work has developed and her subjects proliferated. She has worked for a…
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Travelling with Unfamiliar Spirits
Taking place this October – just in time for Hallowe’en – is a two-week festival of esoteric art, entitled I:MAGE 2014, that promises to explore the fertile relationship between artists and spirit entities. If the world of the esoteric can often seem closed off (almost by definition) then I:MAGE 2014 goes some way towards breaking…