Shadow Over Ilkley - a talk by Dr Phil Legard

“All those dark Victorian cellars and storm-blasted moors seemed to create a hotspot for UK magick at that time…” – Peter Carroll

The moors of West Yorkshire have plenty of antique folklore: giants, fairies, apparitions, and hermits have been enduring fascinations, particularly since health-tourism sprung up around towns such as Ilkley, enchanting the minds of those who came seeking novel therapies like hydropathy.However, in this talk Phil Legard turns from the myriad tomes on local folklore and their well-inscribed tropes, towards more contemporary manifestations of the weird on the moors: to UFOs, the Great Old Ones, cloaked spectres, entheogenic witches sabbats, serpentine goddesses, and the adventures of chaos magicians, psychic questers, pagans, and neo-antiquarians amidst the gorse and standing stones.

Phil’s account of Rombald’s Moor in contemporary occulture draws extensively on the zines and small press publications of the 80s and 90s to vividly describe a landscape of contemporary enchantment in the heart of Yorkshire.

Biography Dr. Phil Legard is a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, whose interests lie at the intersections of esotericism and music – particularly contemporary musical practices and subcultures. He recently completed his PhD thesis, which employed autoethnographic methods to explore creative seekership, musical practice, and occulture. He is also co-author of An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke, with Al Cummins (Scarlet Imprint 2020) and performs music as Hawthonn, with Layla Legard.

Host or Publisher Village Pavilion