10TH ANNIVERSARY SYMPOSIUM @ LILY DALE
July 25-27, 2024
Programmed by Shannon Taggart
$225 FULL 3-DAY EVENT PURCHASE TICKETS HERE
Full Ticket Includes After Party Co-sponsored by Illuminated Brew Works
*Single day tickets are also available
*Please note, Lily Dale has a $15 Gate Entrance Fee
Need a Room in Lily Dale?
LILY DALE’S HISTORIC MAPLEWOOD HOTEL
LILY DALE GUEST HOUSES
LILY DALE CAMPGROUND
There’s much to explore in Lily Dale, including free healing and message services. You may want to allow extra time for this when planning your trip. Free events related to the Symposium at Sacred Grounds Coffee House begin on Wednesday, July 24th.
Travel Questions? EMAIL ME
OPENING EVENT
Thursday, July 25th @ 8PM
WEIRD STUDIES Live!
Professor Phil Ford and writer J.F. Martel record a live episode of Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast exploring ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."
SYMPOSIUM DAY I
Friday, July 26th, 9am - 6pm
The Making of Magical Cornwall, with Amy Hale, Ph.D.
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Cornwall has been center stage for a resurgent interest in myth and magic. Current tourism frames the region in the southwest of Britain as a site with stunning landscapes and enchanted folkways that have withstood the ravages of modernity. However, since the Middle Ages, Cornwall has been shorthand for “the place where legends happen” throughout much of Europe. It was the setting for some of the earliest Arthurian tales, the sunken lands of Lyonesse and Tristan and Iseult, and legends of Druids and witches, all of which shaped ideas of Cornwall as a site conducive to magical happenings. In this presentation, Amy Hale explores Cornwall’s enduring reputation as the perfect Celtic Otherworld.
Eusapia Palladino: Epistemological Troublemaker, with Asti Hustvedt, Ph.D.
The extraordinary physical medium, Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), known as “the diva of the savants,” was investigated over a period of more than twenty years by leading scientists and scholars, including Nobel laureates. Variously called a fraud, a marvel, a human oddity, a hysterical trickster, and an authentic conduit to the spirit world—sometimes all at once—Palladino’s seances troubled existing taxonomies and baffled some of the most brilliant minds of her generation. In this talk, Asti Hustvedt will examine how Palladino disrupted gender and class hierarchies, and blurred the boundaries that separate fact from fiction, mind from matter, life from death, and the natural from the supernatural.
Acid Queen: Rosemary Woodruff Leary's Life Underground, with Susannah Cahalan
Poet Allen Ginsberg once named Rosemary Woodruff Leary "the Acid Queen," but her legacy remains unacknowledged following her break with husband Timothy Leary in 1976. Using archives and an unfinished memoir, Susannah Cahalan will explore Rosemary’s role as a key hidden figure of the acid movement of the 1960s. Rosemary's story will be traced from her childhood in St. Louis, to peyote ceremonies with Beat artists, to Timothy Leary's infamous acid commune in Millbrook, NY, and to her eventual status as an international fugitive after aiding her husband's prison break. Rosemary, however, is not merely a Zelig of the counterculture. She offers a rare glimpse into a woman's exploration of altered states and a life lived in pursuit of the ineffable.
Lily Dale, Canada, and the Spiritual Journey of Mackenzie King, with Anton Wagner, Ph.D.
For Canadian Spiritualists, Lily Dale was like the Greek Temple at Delphi, connecting seekers with the spirit world through oracle-like mediums. Anton Wagner’s illustrated presentation highlights how Lily Dale’s mediums influenced prominent Canadians, including Mackenzie King, the country’s longest-serving prime minister (1922-1930, 1935-1948). Materials drawn from Anton’s groundbreaking two-volume biography of Mackenzie King, The Spiritualist Prime Minister, will spark the discussion. Topics include direct-voice trumpet medium Etta Wriedt’s séances linking Lily Dale with King, Lily Dale’s connection to Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd’s family history, and Mackenzie King’s belief in Spiritualism, which has often been censored. The dream visions and séances that led Mackenzie King to attempt telepathic communication with Adolf Hitler during World War II will also be addressed.
Ghosts in the Machines: A History of Spirit Communication Tools, with Brandon Hodge
Author, collector, and séance historian Brandon Hodge reveals the fascinating history of spirit communication devices, from the earliest origins of spirit rapping and table-tipping mediumship to automatic writing planchettes, talking boards, spirit trumpets, and more. Spiritualism’s history is deeply tied to the psychic apparatus that enabled its adherents to communicate with the dead, and this presentation explores that history and its enormous impact on popular culture through the decades. Participants will have the opportunity to handle historical séance apparatus from Brandon’s extensive collection and experience artifacts not found in any other collection in the world, getting up close and personal with the means our ancestors used to commune with the dead.
SORRAT: The True Story of America’s Most Active Séance Group, 1961 - 2015, with Shannon Taggart
In 1961, the American Poet John G. Neihardt began directing students from the University of Missouri in experiments meant to increase scientific understanding of the paranormal. The Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), would endure for over half a century, becoming one of the strangest cases within the history of psychical research. The group’s extraordinary claims shocked onlookers, baffled investigators, and incited scandal. SORRAT’s saga was painstakingly documented by a founding member, an aspiring science fiction writer named John Thomas Richards. The Richards archive represents a singular collection of psychic media, including the first purported example of spirit cinema. This presentation will use the Richards materials, recently rescued and largely unseen, to tell SORRAT’s story.
Uncanny, Absurd, Authentic: The Art of the Paranormal Documentary, with Ronni Thomas
Filmmaker Ronni Thomas (Kybalion, The Midnight Archive) presents his favorite clips depicting paranormal realities, drawn from films made in the 70s and 80s—an era he proposes as the ‘Golden Age’ of the genre.
SYMPOSIUM DAY II
Saturday, July 27th, 9am - 6pm
Finding Dawn: A Remote Viewer's Search for a Missing Woman with Suzanne Clores
Remote Viewing is a scientifically validated but anomalous method of gathering data across space and time. Born in the 1970s, Remote Viewing is the result of a collaboration between government agencies, psychics, and scientists. This controversial method is still used in law enforcement and the private sector to gather intelligence from thousands of miles away. In this multimedia presentation, author and podcaster Suzanne Clores will introduce the practice and explain how Remote Viewing differs from typical psychic or mediumistic methods. Her presentation will then look at the role of Remote Viewing as recently used in the cold case of Dawn Mozino, a 24-year-old woman who disappeared on May 22, 1989, near Bryn Mawr, PA.
Margery the Medium Revisited, with Anna Thurlow
Mina Crandon, known internationally as "Margery," discovered her mediumship abilities in 1923 and continues to be a topic of interest and debate today, over 100 years later. As Margery, Mina was unique in terms of the range of phenomena she produced and the scientific discussion she provoked on an international scale. In this presentation, her great-granddaughter, Anna Thurlow, will remember Mina's life in the context of her as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, and artist, exploring how these myriad roles influenced her mediumship. Rare images and artifacts will be shared from the private family archive held in the Libbet Crandon de Malamud Collection. A new perspective on the famous July-August 1924 séances with the magician Harry Houdini will also be shared.
Channeled Visions: Hildegard, Hilma and The Coven of Creativity, with Jessica Hundley
A visual journey into the alchemical magic of creative manifestation - spirit expressed as art, music and words. Delving into the ecstatic works created through meditation, mediumship and direct dialogue with the divine, we’ll explore the history of channeled visions, from ancient petroglyphs to transcendent works by contemporary artists. Led by Jessica Hundley, Author and Editor of Taschen’s The Library of Esoterica, a multivolume encyclopedia series on the art of esoteric traditions, we’ll weave our way across time, exploring the lives and works of visionaries such as Medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the Swedish seeker Hilma af Klint, and the Surrealist coven of Varo, Fini and Carrington. We’ll dive into the vast catalogue of ecstatic works born of Theosophy and Transcendental philosophies and sacred psychedelic exploration. Join us in celebrating the alchemy of the creative, of dreaming transformed into cathartic realization, a magical communion between spirit and form.
The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion, with Larry Arnold
Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) is the sudden, sometimes thorough burning of a person that occurs without a known external ignition source amid surroundings that show little, if any, heat or flame damage. For centuries, these rare events have mystified doctors and scientists, with many denouncing SHC as superstition, pseudoscience, crackpottery, or “Impossible!” Recognized internationally as the leading researcher of anomalous fires worldwide, Larry Arnold has spent a lifetime tracking down the unexpected evidence that supports a different conclusion about this phenomenon. Arnold will discuss this eerie enigma that has haunted humankind for millennia in a presentation especially tailored for Lily Dale, exploring SHC from an esoteric and spiritual perspective.
Fifty Years' Wandering in the Spiritual Realm: Piety, Practice, and Perseverance, with J. Gordon Melton, Ph.D.
American religious scholar J. Gordon Melton— foremost expert on Scientology, author of over fifty books, and creator of a sui generis collection on the vampire—reflects on a life spent exploring the thousands of different religious groups now found in the United States. Since the late 1960s, Melton has studied the diversity of America’s free religious landscape, wandering the country to experience its extremes —from cannabis-using communes to serpent-handling congregations, to Spiritualist séances, meditations with Hindu gurus, and meals with vegetarian hippies. Beginning his career as a representative with Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship and, in a long career teaching at the University of California and Baylor University, Melton has remained dedicated to searching out America’s ways of finding God, exploring spiritual realms, and laying claims to enlightenment.
Space Brothers Among Us: The Extraterrestrial, Inter-dimensional Folk Healing Films of Unarius, with Jodi Wille
In 1954, traveling medium Ernest L. Norman and Science of Mind practitioner Ruth Norman met at a Los Angeles spiritualists convention. They soon married and cofounded The Unarius Educational Foundation. The still active organization promotes self-mastery and healing through an "inter-dimensional understanding of energy,” past life therapy, and channeled guidance from advanced extraterrestrials as well as former Earth luminaries from Pythagoras to Tesla to Will Rogers. In the 1970s, under the direction of the colorful septuagenarian Ruth Norman, Unarius students built their own DIY film and video studio, producing four 16mm and Super8mm feature films and 80 television shows, including elaborately produced past-life psychodramas. These shows aired regularly via public access airways for decades.
Part I: Jodi Wille, director of the new feature documentary Welcome Space Brothers, will take us on a deep dive into the Unarius archive and present an overview of the group within the context of metaphysical groups and popular culture trends of the 20th Century.
Part II: A rare screening of the self-produced Unarius magnum opus / origin story, The Arrival (Dir. The Unariun Brotherhood and Prince Uriel, 1980, 50 minutes, new digital xfer from 16mm).
Artists-in-Residence 2024
Sponsored by Sacred Grounds Coffee House @ Lily Dale, with thanks to the Southern Comfort Guest House.
Gabi Abrão
Los Angeles based writer, spiritual theorist, internet artist, and author of Notes on Shapeshifting Gabi Abrão joins us for a live event and to share work focused on developing a language with the invisible.
Live Event: Wednesday, July 24th, 4pm - 6pm, Gabi Abrão in conversation with Stacy Schuerman Kopchinski
Tim Kerr
“Self-expressionist” DIY polymath, American punk legend, musician, producer, photographer, skateboarder, artist, and Texas Music Hall of Famer Tim Kerr joins us from Austin for an exhibition of paintings of Spiritualist heroes created especially for Lily Dale.
Live Event: Thursday, July 25th, 4pm - 6pm, Exhibition Opening and Musical Performance
AFTER PARTY
Saturday, July 27 @ 7pm
Spoon bending and more! Free entry for 3-day event ticket holders! Secret venue outside of the Lily Dale gates. Co-sponsored by Illuminated Brew Works.
WITH GRATITUDE
Thank you to everyone listed above for making this event possible, and also to Ed & Lauren Thibodeau of The Bird House at Lily Dale, Charles & Penelope Emmons, and Ralph Smith for their support.