In the run-up to Valentine's Day, I will be in Salem to speak about various aspects of love and magic.
On Thursday 8th February, I will be hosted by the lovely folks at Knights Templar OTO for a public talk on Love, Sex, and Gender in Early Modern English Magic. We'll be talking about the occult properties of semen and breast-milk (of course), but also lust, love-sickness, magical cosmetics, and much more.
On Friday 9th February I'll be delivering a talk at the Witch House entitled Where the Bolt of Cupid Fell: Early Modern English Love Magic, which will provide a much broader introduction to traditional occult philosophy and magical activity related to love, lust, the passions, and relationships. I always enjoy being able to speak about seventeenth-century people and magic in a seventeenth-century building re-furbished as a seventeenth-century home.
Then on Saturday 10th February I'll be speaking at the Hermetic Arts Learning Center on Love Divination and Folk Magic. This will go over all sorts of material, from reading the initials of your future spouse in an apple peel, to dream incubation on St John's Eve, to judging compatibility via assessment of astrological charts.
I love coming to Salem, not just because of the many witch-shops or even the early modern Burying Point (although that last is, I must admit, a real draw...), but because I get to catch up with friends, chat to folks who come to my talks, and meet new people with diverse and often fascinating perspectives on magic, history, and everything in between. So I'm very much looking forward to being back in Witch City.