Read below for more information on all talks

28th November 2022 – Seeing with the Eye of the Heart: the body in mystical experience

SPEAKERS: JANET ADLER, PROF. JANE BACON AND DR. JO BLAKE

Central to Mary’s gospel is a vision that she has of Christ, in which she sees through ‘the eye of the heart’. Christ eludes to the heart as an ‘aperture of spiritual perception’. In this way, Mary is connected to a lineage of female Christian mystics, who are all transformed by detailed visionary experiences. What is a vision? How do we understand and relate to non-ordinary visionary experiences? What is the relationship between this mode of perception and femaleness? How and where do the physical body and imaginal body meet? These questions will be explored in relation to mystical traditions and Jungian psychology.

15th December 2022 – Heretical Art and Borderland Practices: performance, ceremony, ritual

Speakers: Riham Isaac, Laura Burns, Lisa Lapidge, Izzy Brittain and Mikael Oberg

Jungian Analyst Jerome. S Bernstein writes, ‘The Borderland is a phenomena of the collective unconscious. It is an evolutionary dynamic that is moving the Western psyche to reconnect our overspecialized ego to its natural psychic roots.’

In this way, one could argue that to be in the borderland is to inhabit a heretical space, aligning with ‘a belief or opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted’. If we trace the etymology of heresy, we end up with the Greek hairesis, meaning ‘choice’, referring to a party or school of thought. Overtime, this difference or division has taken on the more negative connotation of ‘faction’. As time went on, these ‘heretics’ became associated with ‘false’ beliefs and were violently expelled from the growing orthodoxy of the church. Both the concept of borderland and heresy speak of Otherness and exile and difference. In this talk, contemporary artists will discuss how these concepts relate to their work, and how their often hard-to-define, intersectional work engages with spiritual and healing practices both on the personal and collective level.

October 13th 2022 – A Being in Relation to Others: Mary Magdalene as bride and ecological visionary

SPEAKERS: MARGARET STARBIRD AND SOPHIE STRAND

Using images of Mary Magdalene, including mosaic images by artist Lilian Broca, Margaret Starbird will draw on her extensive knowledge and lived experience to discuss Magdalene as ‘Avatar of the Easter Mysteries’, and the sacred marriage symbolism at the heart of Christianity. Following this, Sophie Strand will bring to us her keen and thoroughly original ecological reading of the Magdalene and the mistranslations that have undermined the potency of her wisdom.

3rd November 2022 – Unmuting Mary Magdalene: hearing her 2nd century gospel in 2022

SPEAKERS: DAVID CURTIS AND DR SARAH PARKHOUSE

A series of four creative talks that bring together artists, academics and practitioners to discuss, wonder at and amplify the legacy of Mary Magdalene, female spirituality and heresy. These creative talks are part of a wider project, HERESY by Jo Blake; a multi-stranded arts project inspired by the rediscovered Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Few people have heard of The Gospel of Mary – even fewer have read it. Yet this short but powerful text gives a remarkable insight into an early version of the Jesus movement and paints a picture of Mary Magdalene as the disciple who best understood and embodied his teachings. Written in the second century, the gospel offers a counter narrative to the developing orthodox, mainstream, patriarchal Church. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that it ended up being hidden away for 1500 years. Much like a Tibetan “terma”, a hidden treasure, it is a text that went underground until the world was ripe and ready to receive it. Maybe now in the 21st century we are at last able to listen to the words of the only known gospel attributed to a woman.

What is the context in which these words were written, read, buried, and then found? What can these remnants tell us about Mary’s Christianity? What might any of this mean for us today? Drawing from their direct experience with the Gospel of Mary, David Curtis will talk about his relationship to the gospel, and Dr Sarah Parkhouse will take us deeper into Mary’s Christianity and its relationship to the orthodoxy of the Church.