An Interview with Dr. Jacqueline Simpson

Today here at Albion Calling, I am greatly honoured to have a scholar widely regarded as one of Britain's foremost folklorists as my interviewee, Dr. Jacqueline Simpson, currently Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester’s Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy. A specialist in both the folklore of Iceland and her native England, Simpson has been active in the field since the 1950s, having published over fifteen books and many other papers in peer-reviewed journals over that period. She currently serves as editor of FLS News, the newsletter of The Folklore Society and has previously been both president of the Society and editor of its journal, Folklore. We talk about the many things that she has accomplished over the years, and discuss everything from the witch-cult theory of Margaret Murray to Simpson’s experiences with the eminent medievalist Hilda Ellis Davidson, and from the folklore of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels to the perils and pitfalls currently facing folkloristics.

[EDW] Having been schooled at Sion Convent in Worthing, West Sussex, you went on to study English Literature and Medieval Icelandic at Bedford College, University of London. For many years you operated as an independent scholar, but returned to established academia in 2010, when you were appointed to the position of Visiting Professor at the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy at the University of Chichester in West Sussex. Can you tell us a bit more about this academic trajectory that you have taken? Were you driven to become an academic and a scholar from an early age?

[JS] There was a fairly ‘academic’ tradition in the Simpson family, where several generations of my forebears were vicars, doctors or schoolmasters, though none of them became dons. In my Belgian mother’s family there were barristers, and also (and more importantly for me) a deep interest in literature, classical music and art. At school I was good at my studies, and was particularly fond of English literature; it was simply taken for granted that I would try to get into university, and there was no need for me to feel ‘driven’ towards it. I did not consciously plan to become a scholar – I just wanted to go on reading and learning for as long as possible.

 I say ‘try’ to get in, because in those days conditions for admittance were tough. There were far fewer universities then than now, and they accepted students not on school-leaving exams but on the basis of their own stringent entrance examinations, often with interviews too. I have seen it stated that only 5% of the population went to university then. It was particularly difficult for women, as almost all colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were for men only. On the other hand, money was no problem for us of the post-war generation; thanks to Labour Government policies, if you did get accepted, a Local Authority grant paid the fees.

And so I had three happy and hard-working years studying for a BA in London, and then two more years doing a thesis for an MA on a little-known Icelandic saga (the doctorate came much later, by the ‘body of published work’ route). My present status as Visiting Professor at Chichester came as a most unexpected and very gratifying surprise.

After the MA I could have applied for a university post, but decided not to, because of my mother’s frail health. So I settled in Worthing as a part-time teacher at my old school, and wrote a couple of academic articles based on parts of my MA thesis. Then came a stroke of luck: both the tutors who had supervised my MA research (Professors Peter Foote and Norman Garmonsway) were approached by publishers with requests to write books for a popular readership, which they were too busy to do, and both said, ‘No thanks, but I do know a young woman who might be interested.’ I most certainly was; hence The Northmen Talk and Everyday Life in the Viking Age. From then on I went on to combine teaching with research and writing, while living at home to look after my mother.

[EDW]: For most of your career, you have been closely affiliated with Britain's foremost organisation for folkloristics, the Folklore Society, at various times serving as its Secretary, President (1993–96), and Editor of its peer-reviewed journal, Folklore (1979–93). You remain a regular at the Society’s London lectures and conferences, sit on the group’s committee, and serve as editor for FLS News, while in 2008 the Society awarded you the Coote Lake Research Medal for your work. How did you get involved in this organisation, and what do you see as its importance and its achievements?

[JS]: My first contact with the Folklore Society was a by-product of my interest in Nordic mythology. I had become interested in the motif of severed heads that speak, and had read somewhere that there were instances of this in British folktales. I wrote to Dr Katharine Briggs asking for references, and she answered very fully and kindly, and advised me to join the FLS for the sake of its library. This was in 1962 or ’63. I soon realised that the study of folklore is a fascinating and important branch of cultural history in its own right, not a mere postscript to long-gone paganism.

I was elected on to the Society’s Council (now called Committee), and eventually, as you say, I served in several capacities. It has been a most valuable and enjoyable experience, and I have made many friends there. 

To understand the importance of the Folklore Society one must realise that in English universities (unlike Ireland, Scotland and most European countries) folklore has not been accepted as an academic subject in its own right, with an entire department to itself. Most universities here, at most periods, have offered no folklore courses whatever; those that did (Leeds at one time, Sheffield at another) did so under the aegis of some more conventional department, and unfortunately were forced by financial pressures eventually to drop the courses. Currently, there is the new and vigorous Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy at the University of Chichester – may it live long and prosper!

The Folklore Society therefore played a vital role as a place where isolated folklorists, and scholars for whom folklore was a sideline to their official subjects, could meet, hear lectures, produce a journal, and – most importantly – use the extensive library which the society built up. Our Late Victorian founders were ambitious in their ideas for collecting and publishing material. Sadly, the First World War disrupted their plans, and throughout the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s the Society concentrated its efforts on its journal and its library.

From the 1960s onwards, the Folklore Society steadily raised the academic standard of its journal and other publications, and gained increasing international recognition. Many of its members have written substantial books on one or other aspect of British folk tradition – children’s games and beliefs, witchcraft, fairy lore, plant lore, local legends, seasonal customs, folksong, superstitions, etc – often drawing on the resources of its library and journal. Even in this age of the internet, it is still important to have access to material where accuracy and evidence remain paramount.

[EDW] I’ve asked many of those in this interview series where their fascination with the subjects that they study actually stem from, and I’d like to extend that question to you; did you have a love of folk and fairy tales in childhood, or is this an interest that developed later in life?

[JS] My mother used to say it was her fault I turned to folklore, since she gave me Grimm’s fairy tales, stories of King Arthur, and a book on Greek myths as a child. Certainly I liked them, but the real fascination developed much later, through Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and medieval poetry.

[EDW] Born in Worthing, Sussex, you’ve clearly taken a great interest in the folklore of your home county, having published The Folklore of Sussex (1973, 2002, 2009) and articles on Sussex sites like Chanctonbury Ring and the Long Man of Wilmington. I can certainly understand why you would be interested in this area; it’s a beautiful place. For you, as a native, what is it that is so fascinating about the folklore of Sussex? How does it stand out from the folklore of neighbouring counties like London, Kent, or Surrey?

[JS] I remember very precisely how and when my interest turned to Sussex tales. It was in the summer of 1968. I had been working on Icelandic legends, but one day I was chatting with some workmen who were repainting my kitchen, and one of them jokingly mentioned the Devil at Chanctonbury Ring. This brought back my own childhood memories, and I thought to myself, ‘Hey, it’s not just in Iceland that people tell stories about the landscape, we do it here too! Maybe there are more… Enough for an article, perhaps?’ I knew that Worthing Public Library has a large Local History Reference section, so basic research should be fairly simple. Sure enough, I found many references to local customs, tales and superstitions scattered through back issues of the Sussex County Magazine from the 1930s and 40s, in little books on the history of some village, and in published memoirs. Most were brief, but by putting them together, there was soon not only enough for an article, but the makings of a book.

At first the fascination came largely from awareness that this is my county, so these are my stories, but very soon I realised that the same story-patterns can crop up in pretty well any part of Britain, provided the landscape is appropriate – obviously you won’t find tales about giants hurling rocks at one another if there are no rocks lying around. This repetition itself fascinates me too; so many legends that at first seem ‘local’ are in fact ‘migratory’, and not merely within Britain but often in Europe too. Details may vary to fit local topography and local history, but the core of the tale remains recognisable.

I think it dangerous to claim that the folklore of one county ‘stands out’ from others. So much will depend on the accident of whether there have or have not been people to actively collect and record the traditions of that particular area. Nor do I think the county is a really significant unit when one is assessing variation. Sometimes one can spot small local clusters where a story, song or custom seems to have spread from one village to another not far off, presumably through imitative rivalry. And sometimes there are large-scale regional differences, due to differences in social and economic history, e.g. in the growth of cities and industrialisation.

[EDW] Perhaps the strongest single research theme in your career has been the folklore of the Nordic world, something stemming from your undergraduate studies in Medieval Icelandic. Aside from various peer-reviewed papers on the subject, you have published The Northmen Talk: A Choice of Tales from Iceland (1965), Everyday Life in the Viking World (1967), Icelandic Folktales and Legends (1972, 2004), Legends of Icelandic Magicians (1975), The Viking World (1980), and Scandinavian Folktales (1988), in addition to adding introductions and notes to published translations of the Old Icelandic Gudmundar Saga (1955) and Heimskringla (1964). What is it that attracts you to the folk tales of the Northern nations, and could you tell us more about your research into the folk beliefs and tales of the region?

[JS] My interest in Northern literature and lore began with a book I happened to see in my school library, Word Hoard by Margaret Williams. It was an introduction to Anglo-Saxon culture, with translations of various poems, including ‘The Wanderer’ and parts of ‘Beowulf’, and also some information about pagan myths. Then in 1948 the BBC broadcast a two-part radio dramatisation of Njals Saga. I was deeply impressed by the dark, doomed courage seen in the poetry, in the saga heroes, and in some of the myths.

[EDW] As someone who is primarily an Anglo-Saxonist by university training, I am interested by your work with the eminent historian Hilda Ellis Davidson, whom you worked alongside in the Folklore Society and who authored a chapter on archaeology that was included alongside an edition of Old English poem Beowulf that you co-translated with George Garmonsway in 1968. How did you come to know Davidsen, and what was it like working alongside her?

[JS] In the summer of 1950, towards the end of my first year at Bedford College, Hilda Davidson came as a visiting lecturer to give a single talk on Anglo-Saxon swords. She was at that time on the staff of Birkbeck College, another branch of London University; previously, under her maiden name of Hilda Ellis, she had published her first book, The Road to Hel, a study of early Nordic beliefs about death and the afterlife, which I had read with great excitement. Of course as a mere student I did not actually meet her on this occasion, but her lecture had a decisive impact on my life

In the London Honours English course, students had to pick an ‘ancillary’ subject to study in their latter two years, something only marginally related to the main syllabus. The ancillaries on offer at Bedford were Modern Irish Drama, the History of Literary Criticism, and Medieval Icelandic (Old Norse). I passionately wanted to do the latter, of course. But a fellow student, one of those candid friends one should avoid like the plague, told me I’d become such a bore on the topic of Old English poetry that if I added sagas to my repertoire I’d be unliveable with, and Icelandic was a useless subject anyway. This had shaken me – was I being selfish? Should I give up my own wishes, and do Irish Drama? Then I listened to Dr Davidson on how pattern-welding was done, and what magic there was in swords, and I came out of her lecture almost in tears at the thought of abandoning the wonders of the North… and, encouraged by an older and more sensitive friend, I signed up for the Old Norse course.

Years later, when I joined the Folklore Society, I was delighted to find that Hilda was on the Council, and we got to know each other well. She had an amazing range of knowledge and interests, and wonderful enthusiasm, both in lectures and in conversation. Time and again she would return from visiting some archaeological site or some museum exhibition, with glad cries of ‘It’s so, so exciting!’

It was Professor Garmonsway’s idea that she should contribute a chapter to the Beowulf book, since archaeology was relevant to the topic. She sent her section direct to him, so I cannot claim to have actually worked with her. Of course we often talked of Anglo-Saxon and Norse topics, and went to the same meetings and conferences.

One which I remember well was the second Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium in Galway in 1991; we sat together, simmering with quiet indignation whenever speakers claimed that a particular genre (e.g. legends of buried treasures) was distinctively Celtic-Nordic, when we knew it was common in England too. This the first time I really grasped how little was known outside Britain – or even in Britain itself – about our rich repertoire of local legend. When we got back to England we grumbled about this to various friends in the FLS, including Jennifer Westwood. I suspect that the origins of Lore of the Land may go back to these grumbles.

[EDW] Throughout the latter part of the 1970s and 1980s you also published on a wide array of folkloric topics: The Folklore of the Welsh Border (1976), British Dragons (1980), The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang (1982; with Eric Partridge), and European Mythology (1989). How did you manage to carry out so many diverse strands of research, and what brought about your interest in these various subjects?

[JS] The first two you mention were natural developments from The Folklore of Sussex. It had sold unusually well for such a topic, so the publishers (Batsford) commissioned a series of similar regional books, and assigned the English counties nearest to the Welsh border to me. I was dubious, for it is a large area to cover in a book of the size they had allotted, and much of it had already been covered by previous folklorists. I would have preferred to tackle some less well known area, but for commercial reasons the publishers stuck to their choice. I think of Folklore of the Welsh Border as my ‘patchwork quilt book’ – a mass of small items stitched together from various sources.

British Dragons, on the other hand, arose entirely from my personal fascination with the topic, which started when I found out that my own Sussex dragon, the Knucker of Lyminster, was not alone of his species, for there were other local dragons and dragon-slayers scattered up and down Britain, each more dramatic and/or amusing than the last, which nobody had ever studied as a group. I spent many happy hours tracking them down through various books of regional and local lore in the FLS library.

The Historical Slang book was another commissioned work, a scissors-and-paste job abridging and selecting from Partridge’s extant two-volume Dictionary of Slang. A boring job, with no actual research involved.

European Mythology was again a publisher’s idea – or rather, my modification of their idea. Hamlyn were running a series of mythology books, and what they thought of as European ‘mythology’ was stories of historical or semi-historical figures regarded as heroes. I said this was very narrow; I would prefer to tackle wider issues in popular belief and culture, e.g. the belief in witchcraft, or in fairies, attitudes to death, and so on. I have always liked writing for ‘general readers’ and giving them what I hope is sensible information on topics which intrigue me, so this was a book I very much enjoyed doing. Once again, information mostly came via the FLS library.

[EDW] Much of my research has looked at the development of the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca, which was founded largely from the basis of the witch-cult theory advocated by Margaret Murray in the first half of the twentieth century. One of your most widely read papers has been “Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her and Why?”, published in Folklore in 1994; in that paper you built on the work of historian Norman Cohn and highlighted the various problems with Murray’s hypothesis. Why did you feel the need to put together that paper, and what do you think Murray’s influence in folkloristics – and the public perception of folkloristics – has been?

[JS] It began accidentally. The Folklore Society decided to hold a conference on the theme of women folklorists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and we sat around discussing who’d like to do which. I picked Murray because I’d read her Witch-Cult in Western Europe in my teens, and had found it exciting and convincing. Naturally by the 1980s I had long realised that her theory was historically rubbish, but my memory of her actual arguments was vague, and I assumed that I would be saying something like ‘She was wrong of course, but when one considers that she used X as source and was influenced by Y, it becomes understandable.’ Instead, I discovered that she distorted, or even suppressed, the statements in her sources in order to fit her preconceived theories, and that her attitude to other scholars was arrogantly dismissive. I was astonished, and indignant.

Murray’s influence on the general public had been considerable. It can be seen in many writings from the 1930s onwards, from the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica to assumptions made about pagan survivals in detective stories, ghost stories and horror films, and it was, as you say, crucial to the formation of Wicca in the 1940s. It was widely assumed among historians that most folklorists endorsed her views – even Ronald Hutton in his early book The Stations of the Sun casually referred to ‘the folkloric or Murrayite view of witchcraft’ – and I felt this mistaken perception might well be one reason why folklore was not seen as a ‘respectable’ academic subject. I felt it was very necessary to put the record straight.

[EDW] In the early years of the twenty-first century, you published two significant overview works on the subject of English folklore; The Dictionary of English Folklore (2000), which you co-authored with Steve Roud, and The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends (2005), which you co-authored with Jennifer Westwood. These are both major projects, and I was wondering how they actually came about, and what you see as their successes?

[JS] These were indeed massive projects, and I feel proud and happy to have achieved them. As regards The Dictionary of English Folklore, the initiative again came from the publishers (this seems to be a recurrent theme in my life!). Oxford UP was expanding its range of dictionaries, and approached me to ask if I would do one on folklore. I replied that I would love to, but that the subject is far too big and varied for one person to tackle, and in particular that I was not competent to deal with the musical side. I suggested bringing in Steve Roud, who already had extensive knowledge of folksong, dancing, and the mumming plays. The combination worked extremely well. Steve wrote the entries on these topics, and also most of those on seasonal customs and festivals. I dealt with narratives (local and historical legends, fairytales), magic and supernatural beings (fairies, bogies, witchcraft, ghosts, demons). He did weddings and Christmas; I did Easter and funerals.

The Lore of the Land was originally Jennifer Westwood’s idea; she had convinced Penguin that there was scope for a whole book on English legends, but she also felt that it would be more than she could tackle alone, so she invited me in as her collaborator. This time, the division of labour was not according to topic but by geography. She took counties north of the Thames and up the east half of England, plus Cornwall, on which she had worked some years before; I took the south and the west. We overlapped a bit in the midlands, and shared London; we also shared the ‘green page’ mini-essays on particular subjects. Once again the collaboration worked very smoothly and happily.

With both these books, my collaborators and I had two main aims: to present as full a picture as possible of England’s numerous folk traditions, and to correct out-dated and inaccurate ideas about them which persisted at popular level, e.g. in guide-books, press and TV, though now discarded by scholars. Usually this was a matter of dating; people assumed a custom or belief must be ancient – medieval at the very least, preferably pagan, prehistoric, and concerned with fertility – when the earliest evidence for its existence was from the 17th or 18th century. Jennifer, Steve and I all see folkloristics as a branch of historical studies, where accurate evidence is of prime importance. I am confident that our books are succeeding in both aims.

[EDW] In 1997 you met the famous fantasy author Terry Pratchett at a book signing, and have since become friends, co-authoring a book titled The Folklore of Discworld (2008) together. How did this collaboration come about, and were you a fan of Pratchett’s work beforehand?

[JS] I first discovered the Discworld books when Wyrd Sisters came out (in 1988, I think) and fell in love at once with their cleverness and humour. I read them all avidly, but I was not a ‘fan’ in the sense of going to Discworld Conventions, or collecting Disc-related jewellery, stamps, figurines, craft-work – indeed, I never imagined such things existed. Then in 1997 I learnt that Terry would be coming to Worthing for a book signing, and by good luck I was free that afternoon. Terry’s interest in folklore is obvious from his books, so I decided to give him a copy of my Folktales of Scandinavia as a small thank-you for all the pleasure he had given me. Now, it so happened that he was asking everyone in the queue what rhymes and superstitions they knew about magpies, since he wanted to put magpies into Carpe Jugulum, so he was delighted to find a folklorist standing before him. I told him as much as I could remember there and then, and offered to send him some more once I had consulted books I had at home. That was how it all began.

Not long after, the Folklore Society Committee suggested that I invite him to lecture to us, which he did; it was the most crowded lecture in our history, and a huge success. Meanwhile, he had enlisted me as one of his ‘occasional consultants’, and would ring me up from time to time to check up on some folkloric point he wanted to use. And the phone conversations would then ramble off into a general exchange of news and views, so that although we did not meet again in person, we soon became friends.

Then one day he told me, on the phone, how his fans often asked questions which showed a distressing ignorance of traditional lore, such as, ‘What gave you the idea of having three witches?’ Would it be useful, he asked me, to have a book about the folklore of Discworld, rather like the ones on its science? Certainly, said I, there would be plenty to say. ‘Right,’ said Terry, ‘We will do it together.’ After a moment’s stunned silence, I delightedly agreed.

The collaboration worked very smoothly, by email. I would draft a section and send it to him, and it would return peppered with additional details, jokes, references, footnotes. It is very thoroughly interwoven, so it is just as well that nobody has demanded to know who wrote what. Since 2008 I have been adding further comments on folklore material he has used in more recent books; these appeared in the e-book versions and are now gathered in this year’s second and updated edition of The Folklore of Discworld.

I may say that in 2008 I became a fully fledged fan – I now go to Conventions and Wincanton Gatherings, often in rather crazy costumes, and to book launchings. The whole thing has been a most happy experience.

[EDW] Your most recent book has been Green Men & White Swans: The Folklore of British Pub Names (2010), in which you delved into yet another aspect of Britain's folklore. What was the impetus behind this project, and have you got any further research projects in the pipeline?

[JS] Green Men and White Swans. The suggestion for this book came from the publishers, presumably wanting to build on the success of Lore of the Land, though they said there should be less detail and no scholarly apparatus. It was a fairly easy task, as much of the material is based on what Jennifer and I did for Lore, though presented from a different angle.

I probably will not undertake another book-length project, because I do now find that going up to London is tiring, and working in libraries most frustrating – they are hot, the books are heavy, the shelves either too high or too low for me to read their titles, and in most places (including, alas, the Folklore Society) you have to order the book you need in advance, which means you can never make accidental discoveries or pursue a clue there and then. So I will probably limit myself to small projects which I can cope with in my own home.

[EDW] Given that you have decades of expertise in the subject, I wondered what you felt the current state of folkloristics was like in Britain, and on the wider international stage? Furthermore, what problems do you think that it will face with the current cut-backs in the university sector, and what – in your opinion – will the discipline look like in future decades?

[JS] At present the study of folklore is in remarkably good shape in Britain. Over the past few decades we have seen a succession of well-researched, soundly based surveys of various branches of the subject, regional studies, individual figures (Robin Hood, Spring-heeled Jack, Dick Turpin) and (for the first time) books specifically about London’s folklore, plus Steve Roud’s massive index to folksong and Doc Rowe’s even more massive archives recording the annual performances of our customs over many years. There is no excuse now for wild speculation and woolly theorising – an enormous amount of factual data has been amassed and presented in accessible form, largely thanks to the efforts of members of the Folklore Society and the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 

As for the future, who can tell? At the public level, I am confident that traditional customs and performances will remain popular and will modify themselves whenever necessary to fit in with changing circumstances. The academic future is less clear. Sad experience has shown that when financial cut-backs loom, folklore is one of the first areas to suffer. In some cases, some aspects of folkloristics could find a niche within a faculty of History or English, as it currently has at Chichester. But experience has also shown that individuals have achieved much when researching and writing outside the walls of academia, and I trust this will continue to be possible.

EDW: Jacqueline Simpson, thank you so much for talking to us today - it has been a pleasure, and I am sure that many readers will find your comments to be of great interest. I wish you all the best for the future.

New Publication: "Devil's Stones and Midnight Rites: Megaliths, Folklore, and Contemporary Pagan Witchcraft" in Folklore 125(1)

I am very pleased to announce the online publication of my fourth academic article, which has appeared in Folklore, the UK’s foremost journal of folkloristics. The article is titled “Devil’s Stones and Midnight Rites: Megaliths, Folklore, and Contemporary Pagan Witchcraft,” and started life as a paper presented at the first “Popular Antiquities: Folklore and Archaeology” conference held at the UCL Institute of Archaeology back in October 2011. The (unusually short) abstract is as follows: 

During the middle years of the twentieth century, British pioneers of Wicca, the neopagan witchcraft religion, adopted prehistoric megaliths as ‘sacred sites’ and appropriated the folklore that surrounded them for their own magico-religious purposes. In turn, Wiccan interpretations of such sites resulted in the creation of a new ‘alternative archaeological’ megalithic folklore.

An Interview with Thomas A. Dowson

This month at Albion Calling I am honoured to present archaeologist and rock art studies specialist Thomas A. Dowson, who has formerly lectured at the universities of Manchester, Southampton, and the Witwatersrand. Many will know Dowson for his pioneering work with David Lewis-Williams arguing that the cave art of Palaeolithic Western Europe was the product of a shamanistic belief system, while others will be aware of their important research into the pictographs of southern Africa, where he grew up. Others may instead know Dowson for his equally pioneering work in launching the field of queer archaeology, offering us a radical way of reassessing the discipline. He has since retired from academic archaeology to provide heritage tours of France and now runs the excellent Archaeology Travel website. Here he has taken a little time out of his busy schedule to offer us a fascinating insight into his career and research.

EDW: Growing up on a farm in (what is now) Zimbabwe, you took an early interest in the rock art produced by members of the San hunter-gatherer populations across southern Africa. Did you have direct access to these wonderful pictographs at the time, or was this an interest that was stemmed through school or some other such outlet?

TD: The farm we lived on was about seven miles south of what was then Salisbury, now the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The farm house had been built about fifty or so metres from a granite outcrop typical of that area. And it was in the sometimes very slight shelters of those “kopjes” as they are called that hunters and gatherers painted on the rock surfaces. The kopje behind our house had quite a large shelter with rock paintings in it. As it was north facing it was a great place to hangout. That must have been when I was six or seven. 

Although I can not recall what the paintings in that shelter looked like, they definitely stayed with me. At school, as part of an art project, we were required to find a rock and paint something on it. Although I forget the context of the project (it may very well have had something to do with learning about prehistory), I distinctly remember deciding to try and reproduce what I had seen on the rock back at the farm - or rather what I thought I had seen. I can still see the image I painted. The painful irony is that I painted a man with a spear chasing a zebra. A popular misconception of prehistoric rock art that I would go onto spend many years trying to dispel. I went on to become more interested in rock art while studying archaeology at university.

EDW: What made you decide to study archaeology at an academic level, and at university did you focus your attention on the rock art that had captivated your interest since childhood?

TD: For as long as I can remember I have been interested in evolution and science. And two historical figures, Charles Darwin and Marie Curie, fascinated me from an early age. As a child I almost certainly had a romanticised image of both of these people, which partly derived from a book I read at school about “great lives.” I greatly enjoyed playing with chemistry sets, and anything to do with Charles Darwin. One night I had to get permission from my parents to stay up late one ‘school night’ to watch a documentary about Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle. I was as excited about staying up late as I was about watching Charles Darwin. By the time I went to university then I wanted to be a scientist, more specifically to study past climates.

I enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, with majors in Botany and Geology. Rock art did not feature in my career plans. Geology turned out to be a big disappointment for me. Only because being in the mining capital of South Africa, the geology department was in effect a mining school. Two weeks of Palaeontology was tacked on to the end of the course, and that was all dinosaurs - which have never interested me!

At that time I was working in the campus bookshop with an archaeology student, and he suggested I should consider switching from geology to archaeology. Which I did. One day during my first year of archaeology, I was in the student reading room of the archaeology department and David Lewis-Williams came in looking for help to load up his vehicle for a field trip he was going on to the Drakensberg. The Drakensberg was somewhere I had longed to go to for years. And so I asked Lewis-Williams if he ever took students on field trips. He said I should leave my name and phone number of a piece of paper in his mailbox. It was months before he ever contacted me to join a field trip, and three years before I got to go to the Drakensberg.

EDW: In his recent lectures here in London, a colleague of yours, David Lewis-Williams, commented on his personal experiences with San communities learning about how their ancestors produced rock art and why; did you yourself get to spend much time with these communities?

TD: In December 1989, I visited the large and well known rock engraving site of Twyfelontein in Namibia for my book Rock Engravings of Southern Africa. Megan Biesele, the anthropologist who had taken David Lewis-Williams to meet a San community, was working in Namibia at the time. I had asked her if I could meet her. Megan suggested she come to Twyfelontein. During her brief visit to the site we discussed the rock art with the members of the San community who had come with her. Later Megan invited me to visit her in the Nyae Nyae region in northern Namibia, and to climb the Brandburg. I visited the San in Nyae Nyae for two weeks in 1990, but because I contracted malaria we never got to climb the Brandberg mountain.

Although the people I met through Megan were not direct descendants of the San peoples who made the rock art, the two weeks in Nyae Nyae still had a profound effect on me as a scholar. This was a time when the various misconceptions about San history were still quite prevalent, even amongst South Africa’s historians. After getting off the plane from Windhoek, David Lewis-Williams showed me the proofs of a photography book he had been asked to write the text for. The book was to be called The Bushman, A Vanished Way of Life. I was shocked. This title was the product of just one of the many misconceptions of the San communities in South Africa, that their way of life had long since disappeared and been relegated to study by prehistoric archaeologists. And in fact it was simply not true. It took a few days, but I eventually convinced Lewis-Williams that the title had to be changed. Not only was the title changed (the book was eventually called The Bushmen: A Changed Way of Life), but the publishers had to reprint the cover.

Dowson with David Lewis-Williams

EDW: Given the white supremacist socio-political domination of much of southern Africa at the time, and the effect that this had on archaeological interpretation (the case of Great Zimbabwe being perhaps the best known), did you feel that your interest in indigenous African archaeologies was in any way constrained or threatened by the authorities?

TD: There were always rumours about how the authorities were supposedly spying on us. Apparently, they were watching those archaeologists who were interested in, what was fashionable then, Marxist archaeology. Being at the University of the Witwatersrand during the 1980s this was nothing new, the campus was frequently raided by the security police. Looking back, however, I think I felt more intimidated and disturbed by some of the farmers whose land we had to access to get to rock art sites. Together with colleagues we heard and witnessed some horrific bigotry. That I will never forget.

EDW: You proceeded to work for ten years at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where your research focused on San rock art. While based there, you co-wrote Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art (1989), Rock Paintings of the Natal Drakensberg (1992), and People, Politics, and Power: The Bushman People of Southern Africa (1995) with David Lewis-Williams, also co-editing the volume on Contested Images: Diversity in Southern African Rock Art Research (1994) with him. With Janette Deacon you produced Voices from the Past: !Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection (1995), and you are also responsible for Rock Engravings of Southern Africa (1992). As you must be aware, this was really pioneering, important stuff, exploring shamanistic explanations for these images and bringing in ideas from neuropsychology; looking back at this research now, it seems that it revolutionised the field of rock art studies. What was it like to be at the forefront of research in this area at the time, and how did your research begin to explore this enigmatic realm of shamanism?

TD: Yes, it was an exciting period in the study of rock art to have been a part of. When I read rock art research today, I am still amazed at how some aspects of what is said about what the images might have meant are now taken for granted. Back in the 1990s discussions about these issues, even amongst rock art scholars, were all but pitched battles. I still chuckle to myself when I see certain scholars use the term shamanism in a positive context! As important and pioneering as the work we were doing then was, there is still a long way to go. Our understanding of shamanism and its association with rock art is not without error and Eurocentric misconceptions.

Shamanism aside, I am more proud of the papers I published in the mid-1990s that sought to bring Bushman communities back into the history of South Africa, and not as people who simply made stone tools and hunted. Research that received very hostile receptions at history and archaeology conference in the early 1990s. Even from archaeologists. The idea that rock art is as important to South Africa’s history and any early colonial document might be is now taken for granted. In fact it would be absurd to think otherwise.

One of the popular misconceptions of the time, reproduced by all the leading South African historians in both popular and academic literature, was that the San people had either been pushed out of South Africa by the Black farming communities when they arrived about 2,000 years ago, or they played little role in the unfolding story of the subcontinent. Archaeologists did a lot of work to challenge this view: the San did not get pushed out of South Africa by the farmers, rather they stayed and enjoyed positive social and economic relations with the farmers. I took this idea a step further and showed we could use the rock art as a “historical document” to show that the San communities were as implicated in the various political events that have unfolded over the last two thousand or so years, following the arrival of pastoralists and farmers, up until and after the arrival of the whites in South Africa in the 1700s.

EDW: From there you turned your attention to look at the rock art of Western Europe. In particular you’ve looked at some of the Upper Palaeolithic cave art from modern France, and argued that the origins of these images might well be explained through the shamanism hypothesis. What inspired you to move from Southern Africa and into Upper Palaeolithic Europe?

TD: The Ice Age cave art of Europe was a project I started working on with David Lewis-Williams in the mid-1980s. Then as now, the Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was something of a holy grail for rock art scholars and archaeologists. An obvious reflection of the Eurocentricism that still pervades much of rock art research.

Given our approach to the rock art of southern Africa, what other rock art researchers were saying elsewhere, particularly in North America - notably Ken Hedges, Polly Schaafsma, Solveig Turpin, David Whitley - we thought there was a strong possibility that the rock art in Europe was also shamanistic. And so we set about to establish that - using the neuropsychology of altered states of consciousness. Something else that was received with a fair degree of hostility and derision. Now it’s a given.

EDW: Following your decade at Witwatersrand, you then moved to England, taking up a position at the University of Southampton, where you set up the world's first postgraduate course on prehistoric art. How did this scenario come about, and did you find it an easy experience? What was it like suddenly being transposed from the South African academic environment and being immersed in its British counterpart?

TD: For various reasons I was thinking about leaving Wits University. When the late Peter Ucko, then Dean of Arts at the University of Southampton, got in touch with me and suggested I visit him and Tim Champion, the then head of the Archaeology Department, I stopped over in Southampton on my way to a conference in the US. The idea of starting the World’s first dedicated rock art postgraduate degree programme was seductive and I was seduced. The experience was not as easy as I thought it would be. And I found the move to England to be very unsettling, personally and academically.

EDW: It was in 2000 that the World Archaeology journal published a volume edited by yourself that was devoted to “Queer Archaeologies.” Many of my readers will probably be unfamiliar with the term “queer archaeology”, so for their benefit, could you explain what exactly the term means to you? Did you have a background in queer theory, and how did you come to the decision to bring it into archaeology?

TD: I find it easier to say what queer theory is not, rather than what it is. Queer Archaeology, for me anyway - how I intended it, is not as so many think and use the term, about looking for “sexual deviants” in the past. It is not a gay agenda for exploring homosexuality in the past (not that that is not important - but that is another issue entirely). Because the word “queer” is often used as a short hand for gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, and I am sure I left someone out, “queer archaeology” is thought to be about looking for these sexual identities in the past. In one sense it can be. But I argue it is so much more than that.

Queer archaeology is about challenging an established norm that is somehow based in sexual politics. Although academics (myself included) were quick to appropriate it, the notion of “queer” did not start in academia, but rather in the politics of 1980s sexual liberation in the US. Certain activists were becoming aware of the normalising effect which labels such as “gay” and “lesbian” were having. And this is still powerfully observable in debates about “gay marriage.” Gays and lesbians in the West are now more “normal” than the heterosexuals who once shunned them! What has happened is gay is now to straight as women were/still are to men - subjugated and dominated. In their desire to go running up the aisle in a chiffon white dress, gay men and women have confused recognition with liberation. One only has to consider what the West is doing, or rather not doing, about gay men being burned alive in Uganda to find proof of this.

The queer activists challenged this by arguing that there was no such thing as a stable sexual identity. Queer theorists, and queer archaeology, went on to suggest that not only should we be challenging all that is accepted as the norm, but also to question the sexual politics that often lies at the heart of why something is considered the norm. A good controversial example I liked to use, is the chronocentric nature of archaeological endeavours.

In the 1990s many people, historians and archaeologists alike, said to me that I could not use rock art to construct South African history because I lacked a “firm chronological framework.” This is true, dating rock art is an incredibly difficult enterprise (I would say impossible). But just because we do not have Gregorian Calendar style dates attached to each image, it does not mean the imagery is useless for historical interests (and I demonstrated the possibilities). What interests me is why archaeology is so desperately hung up on having firm chronological frameworks. And I believe chronocentricism in archaeology is a symptom of phallocentricism - just as the lack of a penis renders you weak and of little use, so the lack of a firm chronological framework renders your interpretations useless.

Queer archaeology is about challenging the norm, and in some cases that is about challenging the idea of stable sexual identities in the past, but it is not (as I hope that I have demonstrated) restricted to that.

EDW: Did you feel that there was much opposition to your moves in this direction from within the academic archaeological community?

TD: You know, like most gay men of my age I have experienced homophobia - and of course there has been opposition. But I have also experienced support. I remember being incredibly nervous when I went to the World Archaeology editorial meeting at which I was to make my pitch for the “Queer Archaeologies” volume. I was so nervous I could barely speak, and my colleague and friend Yvonne Marshall had to take over the pitch for me. The idea was immediately accepted, there was not even the slightest murmur of doubt that it would be a topic worth including.

I was even more nervous when the volume was published. But, I received one email that made me think that I had done the right thing. An archaeologist from a Latin American country wrote to me and said “You have balls.” He added that he did not think he could ever come out where he worked, but it was good to know that there were other archaeologists like him. And I had other emails like that. They made it worthwhile because when I came out, I was told by a very prominent South African archaeologist that I could not be an archaeologist if I was going to be “openly that way.”

So the opposition has not really been an issue. I am more concerned, however, at how “Queer Theory” is misused in archaeology. It has become, as many predicted in the early 1990s, something of a bandwagon. But, in true “queer” fashion, that is not for me to try and control. I have had my say.

EDW: I’d be very interested to hear what role you think queer archaeology will have to play in the discipline over the coming decades? Talking from personal experience here in London, there is certainly a great interest in heritage and archaeology among LGBT and Queer communities, and so I’d also be intrigued to know if you feel that queer archaeology could potentially act as a tool to encourage greater LGBT participation in archaeology; a more relateable face if you will?

TD: As I am out of academia, I do not really feel I can comment on this. But I will recount a rather disturbing anecdote. In November 2012 I received an email out of the blue from a mature student who had started a postgraduate archaeology degree at University College London (UCL) in September 2012. This person was openly gay, and hoped to pursue research on some aspect of homosexuality in the past. Although I never met the person, from the email discussions we had, it seemed that they had their head screwed on. S/he had been involved in LGBT politics and counselling, and I was convinced s/he would do well. I was disappointed when in January 2013 I received an email to say s/he had packed it in. One of the reasons cited was the “lack of a LGBT support in archaeology.” For 2013, that is disgraceful, and I find it quite upsetting. That person has gone on to do a PhD in LGBT mental health issues. Archaeology’s loss is another discipline's gain.

I will say, as long as “Queer Archaeology” is seen as a manifesto for looking for homosexuality in the past, it will not be the force for change it could be.

EDW: In recent years you’ve ceased your life as a full time university lecturer and moved to Normandy, managing a B&B and organising archaeological tours of local sites associated with the Impressionist movement. You also run the excellent Archaeology Travel website, through which you provide information for tourists who have a particular interest in archaeological heritage; it’s a great resource and I encourage my readers to make use of it. What brought about this decision to make such a seemingly huge career change, and what do you see as the role of archaeological and art historical tourism in the 21st century?

TD: As a student I had my fair share of awful lecturers. When I started teaching archaeology, I always said that when I no longer enjoyed it on a day-to-day level, I would pack it in. For various reasons, some personal and some to do with the politics of higher education in the UK at the beginning of the 2000s, I no longer enjoyed being an academic archaeologist.

My last lecture was a general lecture on rock art in a first year course on World Prehistory. The lecture was good, not my best but I was happy with it. Walking back to my office I was behind two young guys who were discussing the lecture. One said, “That was the best lecture we have had all year.” The other replied, “Definitely.” Because I no longer enjoyed being in an academic environment, I packed it in - but I went out on a high.

And I look back on my time teaching and researching rock art and archaeology with very fond memories. I had some excellent students, many of whom have gone on to do wonderful things. It would be mean to single out a few, and far too long to enthuse about them all.

Now, I greatly enjoy pursuing my passion for the past by exploring sites and periods of prehistory I never did while I was researching rock art. I love the Romans. Cultural Heritage is becoming big business, as everyone wants to travel the World and see the famous sites for themselves. I think guardians of this heritage have the challenges they have always had, namely conservation and preservation, but on a scale never experienced before. People are still removing bricks from the Colosseum, taking frescoes from Pompeii, spraying graffiti on the amazing blocks of stone at Machu Picchu. And the physical effects of many more tourists climbing around the same sites continues to take its toll, and more so. Archaeology is going to have to play a much more active role in the growing movement of responsible tourism. I hope ‘Archaeology Travel’ will contribute to that, by encouraging people to look beyond the bucket list approach to the past.

EDW: Thank you Thomas for talking with us today!

New ESSWE Regional Network: Central and Eastern European Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism

Just a quick note to announce the formation of a new regional network affiliated with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE): the Central and Eastern European Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism (CEENASWE). As well-known scholar of esotericism Dr. Egil Asprem informed me in his Albion Calling interview late last year, the formation of this new group follows the establishment of other regional networks, such as the Scandinavian Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism (SNASWE), the Israeli Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism (INASWE) and the Centro de Estudios sombre el Esoterismo Occidental de la Unasur (CEEO-UNASUR). Given that three of the main institutions devoted to studying the subject of Western esotericism are located in England, France, and the Netherlands, I wonder if we shall see an ESSWE regional network emerge to cover Western Europe too over the coming years.

To mark the group’s formation, they have put out a public statement announcing a scholarly colloquium to be held in Budapest later this year:

The East-Central European members of ESSWE (The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism) have decided to establish a branch organization, CEENASWE – Central and Eastern European Network for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism

To mark this development, the official launching of CEENASWE will include a scholarly colloquium, hosted by the CENTER FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES OF THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY in Budapest, on 4-5 July (Friday-Saturday), 2014, highlighting the theme WESTERN ESOTERICISM IN CENTRAL- and EASTERN-EUROPE – OVER THE CENTURIES.

20 minutes’ paper proposals should be sent to Karolina M. Kotkowska km.kotkowska@gmail.com and ceenaswe2014@gmail.com (with author’s affiliation and a short abstract) by April 15, 2014. There will be no registration fee and budget accommodation in the dormitory of CEU will be offered.

An Interview with Professor Carole M. Cusack

This week here at Albion Calling I am very fortunate to have an internationally renowned figure in the field of religious studies here with me; Carole M. Cusack, who currently holds a Professorship at the University of Sydney, Australia. Like myself, much of her background is in the pre-Christian belief systems of North-Western Europe; in this area, she has published on both the motif of the sacred tree as well as processes of Christianisation. However, she also takes a keen research interest in new religious movements, having published on such subjects as contemporary Paganism(s) and “invented religions” like Jediism, Discordianism, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We discuss her career, research, and the state of religious studies in today’s world.

Cusack in Sanur, Bali in 2013

[EDW] You are currently Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, having first attained your BA Hons in Religious Studies and English Literature from that same institution back in 1986. You began teaching Religious Studies in 1989, at first as a casual lecturer and tutor, while at the same time working on your PhD, completed in 1996. That year you became a full-time staff member, and from there, you went on to attain a Master of Education in Educational Psychology in 2001. Can you tell us a bit more about this academic trajectory, and what sparked your decision to become a professional academic?

[CMC] My family were working-class Irish Catholics and I was educated at Catholic schools in the Sydney suburbs. It certainly wasn’t a foregone conclusion that I’d become an academic; in fact my late father was not keen on my continuing school to matriculation (I’m the eldest of four). He was persuaded to change his mind, and the rest is history. As a teenager I was passionately interested in music and reading (these are enduring passions, as it happens), and certain books and captured my imagination. A few that were really important are: C. P. Snow’s The Masters (1951), about the election of a new Master in a Cambridge college in 1937; Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945), which is tremendously Catholic and romantic, with being a student at Oxford the formative experience for Charles Ryder (and the television series in 1981, my first year at university, was also important); and also John Cowper Powys’ massive A Glastonbury Romance (1932), soaked as it is in the Grail myth, the re-enactment of the passion of Christ, and so much else as well (the entire oeuvre of John Cowper Powys should be of crucial interest to contemporary Pagans, but I suspect that he is almost unread these days, to everyone’s detriment, not just the Pagans).

It would not do if you thought my group of friends were just toadies to upper-class English culture, colonial wannabes, or would-be sophisticates who were terribly pretentious. We were young and romantic and intoxicated by beauty and art (the Pre-Raphaelites, manuscripts from the medieval era, Classical statuary, and really the gamut of the visual and performing arts, theatre, ballet, opera, and so on). The Middle Ages was one of the preferred eras, possibly – though not entirely – fuelled by the excess of gorgeous neo-Gothic architecture that Sydney (and Australia generally) boasts. The two cathedrals, St Mary’s Catholic and St Andrew’s Anglican, are both beautiful, and the Main Quadrangle of the University of Sydney is exceptionally fine. It was easy to imagine our experience was like that of students at Oxford and Cambridge (I later discovered it wasn’t, of course). Among my close undergraduate friends were about half a dozen who did PhDs on medieval topics (beguines in the Low Countries, early medieval Ireland, Old Norse sagas, the Franks, and so on), and several of us became professional scholars. (It may not come as a surprise that there were some interested in Goth subculture and fashion, and that Goth rock bands like The Mission, The Sisters of Mercy, and The Cult are still great favourites of mine).

My undergraduate work was in English and Religious Studies (with medieval history and Biblical Studies thrown into the mix) and I did two Honours years, as in Australia a Bachelor of Arts is three years, and Honours is an extra year (in Religious Studies, with a thesis on ‘An Examination into the Ideologies Underlying Nineteenth Century Researches into the Viking Age’, and in English, with a thesis titled ‘The Political Implications of Medievalism in William Morris’ The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems [1858]’). I’m also attracted by William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts movement in general (I loved A. S. Byatt’s novel The Children’s Book [2009] and Virginia Nicholson’s Among The Bohemians: Experiments In Living, 1900-1939 [2005]), and through friends, partners, and one sister who is an urban planner with a Masters in architectural design, I’ve gained some familiarity with architecture and planning, typography and book production, and other art and craft sub-fields.

Where does this lead? Well, I suppose that despite the fact I wrote a PhD on early medieval missions I always had a foot in the nineteenth century, and in the 1980s and early 1990s when I was studying, both medievalism and the academic study of Paganism were coming into being as real scholarly fields. Supervision and academic mentorship are tremendously important, too, and I was fortunate to study with Eric J. Sharpe (1933-2000), one of the ‘grand old men’ of Religious Studies, Margaret Clunies Ross, still going strong and a formidable presence in Old Norse Studies (though the late Harold Leslie Rogers taught me Old Icelandic and Margaret taught me Anglo-Saxon), and various other staff in English and History were important influences.

After getting an academic position in 1996, the year of my doctoral graduation, the Master of Education degree was really completed to secure me a continuing job (as I held a five-year contract, and had been told there was no chance of permanent employment unless I was ‘credentialled’ in Education). Still, it opened up a whole new world that has become more important since the cognitive sciences approach to Religious Studies (and literature, art, aesthetics, and a multitude of traditional Humanities disciplines) emerged and has gained momentum. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a scholar working in a university and every day feel grateful that it was possible to realise that ambition. As I was employed in Religious Studies and not Medieval Studies I’ve a very broad range of interests and have taught undergraduates Buddhism, Japanese religions, Hinduism, Islam, even Old and New Testament topics.

Cusack in Neasden, London in 2010

[EDW] What is it that generated your passion for religion as a subject of enquiry, and in particular what was the origin of your interest in early medieval religion and new religious movements? Did you grow up in a religious household, or did you develop such interests independently?

[CMC] I touched upon my family background a little in the response to your first question. My parents were both quite devout, but as is so often the case these days their four children have all drifted away from the Catholic Church and I think would all identify as agnostics or atheists now. Yet defining religion as a supernaturalist attitude or belief in God is limiting for me. I’m an atheist, but a religious atheist. Ritual of all kinds fascinates me, and I’ve done walking meditation (kinhin) at Nan Tien Temple in Wollongong, and my partner Don Barrett and I have taken part in a Hindu funeral procession in Sanur, Bali (where we holiday often), and in Pagan rituals with friends (not to mention Greek Orthodox ceremonies at St Sophia’s Orthodox Cathedral in Bayswater, and the occasional synagogue etc).

As a child my interest in both religions and the Middle Ages was fuelled by reading; the complete Oxford Myths and Legends series was held in our local library, as were the two large-format, beautifully-illustrated books by Edgar and Ingri Parin d’Aulaire, The Greek Myths (1962) and Norse Gods and Giants (1967). I read retellings of the Arthurian legends and the Homeric epics, and loved the novels of children’s authors like Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, and Alan Garner. As I grew older I read historical novels, often on Biblical and ancient world topics (by people like Frank G. Slaughter, Lew Wallace, Henryk Sienkiewicz). One of my teenage boyfriends was deeply interested in film and I was exposed to the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, still probably my favourite director, as well as historical silent films (Abel Gance, D. W. Griffith etc.) and everything conspired to make me fascinated by historical eras and geographical regions that were other than that in which I lived. That includes religion, myth, magic and everything that goes with it (art, literature, costume, architecture, furniture …).

[EDW] Your first monograph, Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998), came out of your PhD thesis, and examined the processes of conversion that the linguistically Germanic pre-Christian societies of Northern and Western Europe went through between the third and eleventh centuries. In my opinion, a large part of its significance was that it offered a study of European paganism and Christianisation from the perspective of a trained scholar of religious studies; this contrasts with the overwhelming majority of studies on the subject, which come from a background in either history or archaeology. Could you tell us more about this particular project and what you see as its repercussions for both medieval religion and our understanding of conversion?

[CMC] The tale of my PhD and the attitude that I took to the conversion of Germanic Pagans to Christianity is a sort of an accident that turned out well. Initially I wanted to do a PhD on Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Professor Sharpe told me I’d struggle (this was January 1986, he was right, actually, in fact it’s still a pretty under-studied area despite the recent great contribution of Richard North, among others). He passed on a project he was working on about conversion, and I took it from there. Being raised Catholic was one huge advantage at that time; Religious Studies as a discipline was under attack for being some kind of disguised version of liberal Protestantism (and Eric Sharpe was criticised for being part of that, and was in fact an ordained minister, though it should be noted that he was deeply suspect among Sydney Protestants who tend to be hard-line, and never had a parish). I was from a working-class Catholic background, so; a) I didn’t really understand what liberal Protestantism was, and b) I wasn’t (and still am not) convinced it’s that important.

Beyond that, I always felt anxious about Christian triumphalist narratives (so much of the PhD research I did was of that kind). What sort of answer is it to say that the late Roman Empire became Christian because a) Christianity was true and was the God-ordained religion, and b) the Pagans were wrong? As an undergraduate (and chiefly in my Religious Studies Honours year, when I was taught by a visiting scholar, the late Dr Vrijhof from University of Utrecht, who was a sociologist) I got excited by the possibilities of social-scientific analysis of religion, the application of sociological models to ancient and medieval societies, and that’s what I did. Later I was praised for giving the Pagans a fair go (thank you, Michael Strmiska), but I wasn’t convinced I’d done enough, and that inspired me to try to right the historical wrong. The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011) is a sort of parallel volume to my PhD, in which I tried to do more for the Pagans, to present their position as being akin to the colonial indigenous cultures that had been destroyed by Christian imperialists in the modern era.

[EDW] One of your (fairly) recent projects has seen a return to the realms of Europe in the Middle Ages, this time offering an examination of the role played by the sacred tree in European cosmology. As part of this you looked at the concept of the tree as both axis mundi and imago mundi, examining instances from various different parts of Europe to explore this theme, which is found in many contexts across the continent. This research resulted in The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011). Could you tell us a bit about this project?

[CMC] Much of my early academic development was assisted by great teachers; after I got a job and was allowed to teach and supervise, my Honours and postgraduate students have been some of my dearest and best instructors and collaborators. Dan Bray, who is now teaching English as a second language, was one of my earliest postgraduates and a Pagan, and he really made it clear to me that European Pagans were indigenous people whose culture was destroyed by Christian imperialism. In my PhD I analysed the medieval texts that discussed the destruction of sacred trees by missionaries (St Martin of Tours, Boniface of Devon), and as I’d become interested in ecological Paganism I wanted to find a way to investigate the early medieval Pagan experience, and the sacred tree became a symbol that I could use.

It ultimately extended to pillar monuments and even Christian standing crosses, and had such wonderful side effects as Don and I walking the Hermannsweg in Germany, from Detmold, in order to see the Externsteine, a remarkable natural site that was a particular context for the Pagan-Christian transition in that region. We love long-distance walking and have completed the Hadrian’s Wall walk in 2005, the St Cuthbert’s Way walk in 2006, the Cotswold Way walk in 2007, and various other walks in Britain. The Hermannsweg was our first walk on the Continent, and the Externsteine is hypothesised by some to be a credible site for location of the Irminsul, the ‘universal column upholding the world’ (according to Rudolf of Fulda), that Charlemagne’s army cut down in the early years of his long and bloody war against the Saxons.

[EDW] Alongside your interest in pre-Christian worldviews and the conversion process to Christianity, you have also devoted much research to new religious movements (NRMs). Recently, this has resulted in Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010), in which you looked at five NRMs – Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Jediism – which you term “invented religions” due to the unique way in which they were created on the basis of self-professed fiction. Could you tell us more about this research and studies into this fascinating phenomenon?

[CMC] This project emerged from two quite different interests. I first heard about Discordianism, for example, through students. Guy McCulloch did a presentation in an undergraduate unit on religious experience on the Principia Discordia, which I immediately purchased a copy of. After my marriage ended in 1992 I was involved for some time with Michael Usher, who had studied Crowleyan occultism for a time and presented me with a House of the Apostles of Eris ‘Pope’ card (that was the first direct contact I had with Australian Discordians).

The interest I felt would have gone nowhere except for the help and support I received from Alex Norman (then a research assistant and PhD student). He and I have worked together for so long it’s hard to imagine that our two brains weren’t forever conjoined, and he convinced me to keep at it, to make it happen, to find methodological models that would enable sense to be made of such anarchic and irreverent materials, and I did. His impressive collective of Flying Spaghetti Monster t-shirts may have assisted, though that’s not certain! I’m proud and happy that Invented Religions has received eighteen published reviews, all of which are positive. I understand that some people, both ‘insiders’ of certain of the traditions examined (mostly Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius) but also some esoterically-inclined scholars, have objected to my etic, outsider approach to these groups, but I can only riposte that a scholarly conversation can only occur when the preliminary documentation of the phenomena has been accomplished, and that’s what I was doing. I still love the book; it’s been the easiest thing I’ve ever written. And the funnest (and yes, I know that’s not a word).

Last year I had the pleasure of co-editing a special issue of Culture and Religion in ‘invented’ or ‘fiction-based’ religions (to use Markus Davidsen’s term) with a friend and colleague, Steven Sutcliffe (University of Edinburgh). The issue has eight pretty good articles that play with the concept and come up – I think – with something new and durable to say about the notion. I’ve written a few shorter pieces on the topic, and later this year I’m co-editing a volume for the INFORM series (published by Ashgate) with Pavol Kosnac. We’ve got a great group of contributors, and I’m quite excited by the possibilities that are emerging for the book.

[EDW] Like yourself, I have spent time researching both pre-Christian European religion and modern Western NRMs; I’d be really interested in learning how you personally understand the connection between the two? If you see a connection there at all, that is.

[CMC] Unlike some of these answers, which have taken some time to get together, this answer is easy. I can just lift it from my 2012 application for promotion to Professor, in which I had to identify my specialist area in fifty words or less. It was: ‘ “Alternative” religion(s) in the West from the Middle Ages to the present, focusing on: 1) Christian marginalization of alternative religion(s); 2) inverse processes of medieval Christianization and de-Paganization, and contemporary de-Christianization and re-Paganization; and 3) the challenge alternative religion(s) pose to definitions of ‘religion’ and the discipline of “religious studies”.’ I hope that helps.

[EDW] Your research has touched on a huge array of different topics – so many in fact that it would be completely impractical to discuss all of them here – but one of your recent research projects that I find particular interesting is that which you have undertaken with Dr Jason Prior of Sydney’s University of Technology, examining spirituality among Sydney’s gay community, in particular with regards to clubs and bathhouses. How did this project come about, and what do you see as the state of research into Queer Spiritualities in Australia?

[CMC] I’ve been fortunate that my friends have created opportunities to work on all sorts of topics. That’s been aided by my ability to be interested in just about anything, and having a low boredom threshold. I freely admit I’d probably never have become involved in GLBTQI studies (despite my ongoing interest in Genesis P-Orridge) save for having known Jason Prior for a LONG time. We initially bonded over breakfasts and dinners with our partners and that morphed into coffees together, and then we started working to put together Jason’s extraordinary sensitivity to and knowledge of, both planning and architecture (which feeds directly into the ‘sexuality and spatiality’ sub-field) and his willingness to step into uncharted territory, and see what we could achieve. We’re currently working on our fifth article together, on love (especially non-normative love) in the Australian urban context, riffing off everything from Augustine of Hippo to raids on gay clubs, and Christian fundamentalist objections to the building of non-Christian places of worship.

I urge everyone to choose their friends because they are intelligent, gorgeous, awesome, and generally just the best to spend time with, but also because (on the failsafe ‘two brains are better than one’ policy) you can immerse yourselves in each other’s specialities and get a whole lot more research going. Writing together isn’t an easy thing to get right, but I’ve done it with Jason, my former PhD student Justine Digance, Alex Norman, Katherine Buljan (with whom I’ve written a monograph on religion and anime) and Dani Kirby, and it’s a great experience. I recommend it! With regard to the future of research into Queer Spiritualities in Australia and in many other cultures – I think it’s a growing area that promises to yield much terrific research… Jason and I are also working on a Routledge reprint series, ‘Religion, Sexuality, and Spirituality’ which is proving to be intriguing and educative, as we have to get across a large body of literature, and make a selection of articles and chapters that include classics, new and ground-breaking, obscure and deserving of a larger audience, etc.

[EDW] Over the course of your career, you have edited such volumes as: Progress, What Progress? (1992, with Jonathan Wooding); They Came, They Spoke, They Progressed (1993, with Avril Vorsay and Jonathan Wooding); This Immense Panorama (1999, with Peter Oldmeadow); The End of Religions? (2001, with Peter Oldmeadow); The Buddha of Suburbia (2005, with Frances di Lauro and Christopher Hartney); Religion and Retributive Logic (2010, with Christopher Hartney); and Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production (2012, with Alex Norman). You currently also co-edit Brill’s “Handbooks of Contemporary Religions” series with James R. Lewis, and the recent Routledge reprint series, “Sects, Cults and New Religions,” with Danielle Kirby. How do you get involved in so many projects on such a wide variety of topics? I can imagine that, accompanied with your teaching and your own research, it must make for a very demanding schedule.

[CMC] I don’t mind admitting I’m a workaholic who usually does 65-70 hours per week. Those edited volumes I did earlier on were concerned to build a career. I was involved in student politics as an undergraduate, and I was President of the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA) for three years. All the publications on postgraduate research and policy issues emerged from that period, 1990-1992. The next phase was when I was a very junior scholar and had the chance to organise some conferences, and a range of volumes came from conferences that the department (which in 1991 changed its name to Studies in Religion) had hosted. Later on, I became more selective and did edited volumes for international publishers like Brill (with Australian colleagues like Alex Norman and Chris Hartney) and Ashgate (with Jim Lewis, we have our first such collaboration coming out this year).

Jim has been a great colleague to me (he is a known powerhouse of research projects and publishing), and I’ve contributed chapters to a large number of his books. When we met in Amsterdam in late 2010 he invited me to become co-editor of the Brill Handbooks of Contemporary Religion series, and it’s been a steep learning curve, but really valuable. Since then I’ve joined the boards of a few book series (Sophia series with Springer, the Sacred and Secular Histories series with Palgrave Macmillan) due to the kind invitations of senior colleagues. (I’ve only been a Professor since January 2013, it’s still hard to think of myself as a ‘senior’ academic …)

[EDW] You have also been involved in running a number of peer-reviewed journals; you were a founding editor of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (IJSNR) from 2010 to 2013, and currently serve as co-editor of the Journal of Religious History. You also sit on the editorial boards of two other journals, the Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review (ASRR) and Aesthetics. How did the IJSNR come about, and what do you see as the significance of this recent blossoming of various peer-reviewed journals specifically devoted to new religious movements (i.e. the IJSNR, ASRR, and Nova Religio)?

[CMC] Publication in academic journals is the bread and butter, meat and potatoes (whatever your favourite metaphor is) of being a scholar. It’s vital that journals are run by dedicated editors and editorial boards, and that the peer-review (or refereeing) process is respected. That’s the hardest part, as the work of giving feedback to authors is unpaid, and even editorship roles are generally not part of any academic workloads discussion with colleagues in your department. Yet it’s terrific to have the opportunity to see new writing as it comes in, to see articles improve as the referees’ criticisms are taken on board by authors, to sometimes even to get an idea of how a whole new field emerges. Pioneering journals in new research areas (like Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism) are hugely influential. Whenever I feel glum about having to proof an issue or write a peer-review, I cheer myself up with these thoughts.

In the field of new religions I’d like to give huge credit and gratitude to Jim Lewis, who solicited chapters and articles from me years before we met and has since been a tremendously supportive colleague. Two of the journals you mentioned, Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review (ASRR) and International Journal for the Study of New Religions (IJSNR), came into existence through Jim’s sheer force of will and skill in introducing colleagues to each other, people who were just MADE to work together (Liselotte Frisk and I had a tremendous four years with IJSNR, and she’s a friend now, he just knows people who will get on). Another body that merits praise is CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions) led by the Italian lawyer Massimo Introvigne. I first met Liselotte (having previously only e-mailed) at the CESNUR 2011 conference at Aletheia University, Taiwan. CESNUR’s annual conference is one of the key places where scholars of new religions can network, and it’s interesting because (like the INFORM series I mentioned above and Eileen Barker, INFORM’s founder and director) Massimo thinks it’s important that scholars of new religions meet and get to know members of those religions, so the voices of believers and practitioners are part of the conversation.

[EDW] In studying new religious movements, you have often looked at particular traditions that fit within the broader categories of contemporary Paganism and/or Western esotericism. The last ten years of so have seen Pagan studies and the academic study of Western esotericism emerge as fields in their own right, with their own journals, book series, and conferences. As someone who is more closely identified with the study of NRMs, how do you feel about the emergence of these two fields; do you for instance fear that they are leading to an increasing ghettoization of scholars who should otherwise be working together more closely?

[CMC] It feels odd to remember that during my undergraduate studies the fields of Pagan Studies and Western Esotericism did not exist. First Year was Biblical Studies, the next three year were Confucianism, Hinduism, Japanese Buddhism, Methodology, Norse Mythology, Roman and Greek Religion, and so on. New religions were in the mix, though only in a very limited way (Professor Sharpe was interested in neo-Hindu movements like TM and ISKCON, and Garry Trompf worked on cargo cults in Papua New Guinea), and the sociological methodology I studied in Honours was most often applied to new religions. The emergence of Pagan Studies and Western Esotericism as defined fields of study presents both opportunities and threats.

First, it means that the field of ‘Religion’ is getting bigger, though it raises questions about whether Western Esotericism is religion (the jury are out on that, though Pagan Studies definitely is). Second, the strongly defined boundaries around some of the sub-divisions within Religion make it harder to hold conferences that have broad appeal and unite all constituents. Third, the newer fields often seem to operate outside the constraints of the wider discipline. I get anxious, sometimes, about the whole idea of ‘religion’ falling apart (to quote Yeats, ‘the centre cannot hold’). That’s why I move from one to another, a bit of the Middle Ages, then a bit of new religions, a bit of Japanese and Ancient World religions, a methodological article, a bit of archaeology, a chapter on a Pagan topic, then some Western Esotericism … I, for one, want to be across the whole lot, and to be able to work on any topic that might conceivably fall within the remit of ‘religion’.

[EDW] What research projects have you got going on at the moment, and are there any big publications coming out that we should keep our eyes peeled for?

[CMC] This is a big year for research projects that I’m involved with, and it’s a bit of a risk to say that any of it is actually going to happen. But I can nail some colours to the mast. Following on from the reprint series I did with Dani Kirby on ‘Sects, Cults and New Religions’ for Routledge, in January Alex Norman and I completed one on ‘Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism’, and Helen Farley and I are in the middle of a series on ‘Religion, the Occult, and the Paranormal.’ The series Jason Prior and I are planning has already been mentioned. I’m also editing the INFORM series volume with Pavol Kosnac on Invented Religions (to which I’ll contribute a chapter and a co-written introduction).

There is also a special issue of the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion on G. I. Gurdjieff that I’m editing (six articles, due early April). My friends David Robertson and Christopher Cotter are editing a book on the World Religions paradigm and I’m writing a chapter on Neolithic archaeology and religion (another passion of mine), and I’ve an entry on ‘Sport and Religion’ for an edited volume due in September. The big-ticket items are two monograph contracts (on the Church of All Worlds and G. I. Gurdjieff, the second co-written with Steven Sutcliffe). I’ve got six months’ research leave in Edinburgh from 1 July 2014, so I should be able to get a fair bit done. I like work, especially writing, especially when there’s time to really concentrate.

[EDW] Where do you think that the field of religious studies stands at the moment, and where do you think that it is heading, particularly when faced with the current reforms affecting the humanities and social sciences? In particular, I wondered what you thought of the present state – and the future prospects – of scholarship on the subjects of early medieval religion and new religious movements?

[CMC] The situation of the Humanities in universities the world over is not that great at the moment. It was noted several years ago that the appeal of a traditional Arts degree was declining, and the growth of professional-sounding degrees is because they are attractive to young people who are anxious about getting a job at the end of their studies. I have talented postgraduates and I always tell them NOT to expect that there will be an academic job at the end of the PhD. Many of them would make excellent teachers and researchers, but the opportunities aren’t there. I believe that critical thinking and academic writing skills are transferable and worthwhile just about any job that you might end up in, but that can sound like cold comfort. If you have a great desire to do research in the fields of Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, Western Esotericism, New Religious Movements, or any other obscure area, I would say that it’s worth it if you enjoy the research, get the PhD and have what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a ‘flow’ experience through the writing and producing of a masterwork (to think about it in the context of medieval guilds, or even Bob Dylan’s ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’). Then you publish the masterpiece and accept ‘post-academia’: http://howtoleaveacademia.com/tag/post-academic/. A few will make it through the hellish process and get jobs (three friends in their early thirties all got jobs in the last three years, a GOOD THING). Others will find another career in which they can shine, and which will be pleasurable and rewarding.

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss my research and career on ‘Albion Calling’. There are a few things people might like to know: I have three lovely cats (Gracie, Ka, and Sam); live in a somewhat rundown Victorian house in Sydney’s inner west (red walls, Persian rugs, lots of art, books everywhere, and a battered Chesterfield scratched to bits by aforementioned cats feature); I have a large collection of teddy bears; I like ironing (it’s meditational), and am very interested in fashion and own hundreds of clothes (though I mostly wear about ten per cent of my wardrobe, a fair number of which pieces are jeans). Don and I wander the world attending performances of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle (we’ll attend our ninth in November 2014), and we are strict recyclers and greenies (no car, rainwater tanks, etc) to overcome the guilt of all those ‘plane flights.

[EDW] Professor Cusack, thank you so much for talking with me here at Albion Calling today; I've really enjoyed reading your answers, and think that many other people out there will too. I wish you all the best!