Magical Gems and Jewellery, Healing, and the Stars Workshop 22nd May 2021

Witches regularly wear occult jewellery: pentagram pendants, amber, jet, moonstone, coral, or even acorn necklaces; magical rings with special stones or symbolic designs; and lots of silver, the metal of the moon. Wearing jewellery is a form of communication: to the wearer to other people, and to hidden forces attracted by certain colours, substances and patterns. Join Dr Caroline Tully in a workshop about magical gems and jewellery from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt; ancient healing modalities and gods; and healing astrology. Learn about the stone amulets, empowering talismans, and protective jewellery of the Ancient World, and the spells used to activate them. Through discussion and practical ritual, contemporary approaches to healing magic will be revealed. Bring a piece of your own jewellery and through ritual we will draw down the stars to consecrate it to a healing deity. Participants will also take home their own moonstone amulet.

Caroline has a background in various traditions of witchcraft and magick. She has written for many Pagan and occult publications and was a feature writer for Australia’s Witchcraft Magazine for six years. Caroline is also an archaeologist who studies ancient Mediterranean Pagan religions as well as their manifestation in the modern world. She has many areas of interest including ancient religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism.

Held at Muses of Mystery 

 

Thelemic Witchcraft for Beginners Workshop 8th May 2021

Thelema is a Greek word meaning ‘will’ or ‘desire’. Join Dr Caroline Tully in a beginner’s workshop on Thelemic Witchcraft, a form of New Aeon Witchcraft that focuses on methods for causing change in accordance with your will. Through practical ritual and discussion this old-but-new approach to Magick will be illuminated. Caroline has a background in various traditions of Witchcraft and magick. She has written for many Pagan and occult publications and was a feature writer for Australia’s Witchcraft Magazine for six years. 

Caroline is also an archaeologist who studies ancient Mediterranean Pagan religions as well as their manifestation in the modern world. She has many areas of interest including ancient religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism.

Held at Muses of Mystery

 

Gorgeous poem about me by Michele Mitrovitch

Caroline

 

Bewitching Caroline, admirer of Holy Dionysus,

But not a mere Maenad - herself a goddess in the flesh,

Minoan sister to the winged and protective Isis,

She’s an epiphany among the sacred rocks and trees, so dewy-fresh.

 

Her copper-tinted, dark and wavy lengths of locks

Are crowned with a wreath bestowed on her by coven sisters

And like Bulgakov’s Margarita on a vernal equinox,

Abandoning her clothes, she flies, short-circuiting transistors.

 

She flies through inky-black and starry, moonlit skies

And whispers very ancient, closely guarded incantations,

Her skin aglow and fragrant with a secret potion’s spice,

She’s headed to a place of mysteries and pagan celebrations.

 

Her Tarot cards are spread and pentagrams are dampened

By drops of fresh and ruby-colored sacrificial blood,

With servant entities and spirits of ancestors honored, not abandoned,

Her power can heal or punish, stir a whirlwind or a flood,

 

But that’s by night and in her sacramental, secret lair,

But in the daylight - she’s a scholar, razor-sharp, creative and quick-witted,

Her learned colleagues hardly guess the source of her bewitching flair,

Only some chosen few to take a glimpse into her mysteries are graciously permitted.

This lovely poem was written by my friend, the Aegean archaeologist and all round multi-talented artist, Michele Mitrovitch. See more of her work here.

 

Minoan Snake Goddess and Altered States of Consciousness Workshop April 24 2021 (In Person and Online workshops)

According to Goddess-Feminist history, the Great Goddess was the original, and only, deity of humankind from the dawn of time up until around 3000 BCE, when Goddess-oriented cultures were conquered by patriarchal, warlike worshippers of a sky god. Late Bronze Age Minoan Crete (1750–1490 BCE) is considered to be the Goddess culture’s final flowering, believed to exhibit the last gasp of the feminine values associated with Goddess culture before it was wiped out by warlike, patriarchal Mycenaean Greeks. Before this time Minoan Crete was peaceful, worshipped the Great Goddess and her Dying and Rising Consort (who was also her son), and women and nature were respected. Join Dr Caroline Tully in a workshop on ancient Minoan religion, focussing on the Snake Goddess. Find out about the claim that on Crete the snake appears in the worship of the female deity more repeatedly than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Focus will be on ancient artifacts that depict female figures holding snakes in their hands or with them coiled about their bodies, suggesting that they were an integral part of the religious rituals. There will also be a practical component on methods to achieve altered states of consciousness using techniques you can take away and practise at home. Through images, discussion, and practical trance exercises, contemporary approaches to Minoan religion will be revealed.

In person workshop at Muses of Mystery

Online workshop at the Ancient Magic Symposium    

 

List of My PowerPoint Lecture Topics

Aegean

Aegean Archaeology

Cockles, Mussels, Fishing Nets and Finery

Enthroned Upon Mountains

Metascape and Power

Minoan Snake Goddess

Minoan Women’s Costume

Numinous Tree and Stone

Thalassocratic Charms

The Artifice of Daidalos

The Cultic Life of Trees

The Sacred Life of Trees

Traces of Places

Trance-former Performer

Tree Cult in Minoan Glyptic

Understanding the Language of Trees

Within You and Without You: Minoan Epiphany

 

Egyptian

Akhenaten

Egypt – the Basics

Egyptomania

Heka Egyptian Magic

Isis of the North / Celtic Egyptians

Nuit Whence the Star Goddess

Thelemic Witchcraft

 

Graeco-Roman

Death in Ancient Mythology

Decadence and Domesticity

Graeco-Roman Magic

Isis in Rome

Magical Gems and Jewellery

Mediterranean Death

Mediterranean Witchcraft

The Suppression of the Bacchanalia

 

Near East / Levant

Gannôt or Not

Melbourne Museum Pres

On Every High Hill and Under Every Green Tree

Orientalism

The Bible and Archaeology: Who Were the Israelites?

 

Neo-Pagan / Historical / Modern Witchcraft

Researching the Past is a Foreign Country

The Devil’s Mischief

 

Celts

Celts: Modern Politics and Controversies

Image: Pierre Le Faguays, Faun and Nymph (1925).

 

 

Caroline Tully - About

I am a Pagan and Witch who is also an archaeologist. I have many areas of interest including ancient Mediterranean religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism. I am an expert on Egyptomania, as well as on tree worship in the Bronze Age Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. I also have strong interests in the Environmental Humanities, nature, landscape, animism, ecology, ecofeminism, the Anthropocene, and posthumanism. I have a background in fine art and worked as a professional tapestry weaver at the Australian Tapestry Workshop for fourteen years, and I maintain an interest in both contemporary and archaeological textiles.

I am the author of The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus (Peeters 2018), as well as many academic articles available here. I am also passionate about translating academic research on ancient religions for a popular audience. I have curated exhibitions of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, and I regularly present lectures and workshops on ancient religion and magic.

 

 

I'm a Capricorn, right? More on the Precession of the Equinoxes

 

The subject of the precession of the equinoxes and the subsequent non-alignment of the Tropical Zodiac with the Sidereal Zodiac is a topic that I am perpetually interested in. I have written about it previously here. Yes, I would say that Tropical Zodiac astrology is physically inaccurate in regards to the actual constellations. People say "Oh, well it's not about the constellations" its about dividing the sky into 12 portions and aligning them with the seasons (Tropical Zodiac), but it isn't, otherwise it'd be called 'seasonology' rather than ASTROlogy. The Tropical Zodiac is 23 degrees 'out' from the Sidereal Zodiac - the actual positions of the stars. I personnaly cannot understand why western astrologers persist with the tropical Zodiac, except that it is _so ingrained_ in our history that they just can't give it up and keep making excuses for why it is innaccurate. Yes, about 2000+ years ago the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiacs aligned, and they would still if people bothered to pay attention, as it is, the Tropical Zodiac is now only a conceptual system. The equinoctal point moves backwards through the Zodiac at the rate of about 1 degree every 72 years. Now, the positions of planets in Houses and their Aspects, their relation to each other, doesn't change, it is accurate, the thing that is not accurate is the Signs they are in. They are all 'out' by 23 degrees, you need to move their positions backwards 23 degrees. So, for example, my sun is 23 degrees Capricorn according to the Tropical Zodiac, but according to the Sidereal zodiac, it is 1 degree Capricorn. This also makes what people are calling "The Age of Aquarius" utterly inaccurate, we are still within the tail of one of the Pisces fishes, apparently the equinox won't be moving into Aquarius until something like 2600. I get really tired talking about this because people just are so wrapped up in Tropical astrology that they simply don't believe you. I have a Certificate in Natal Astrology and have studied Astrology for years, I'm not simply making this up to be annoying. Plus yes, the signs in the sky are upside down in the southern hemisphere as well as occurring in the opposite signs to that in the northern hemisphere. I believe the meanings of the signs were characterised to an extent by the season in which they occurred and so their characteristics, I believe, are inaccurate in the southern hemisphere. To be accurate, one would first, move the degree back 23 degrees, and then flip the meaning of the sign, so really I'd be 1 degree Cancer instead of 1 degree Capricorn. I think if Tropical astrologers actually looked into this they'd agree with me. And now I await the shouting...

Image by Malte Mueller.