Part of Series
From the Witch of Endor to Aleister Crowley, from the Satanic feminism of the suffragette era through to the current occult revival, The Summoning Issue delves into the history of witchcraft, magic, and the occult to analyse the impulses behind acts of conjuration: the thirst for forbidden knowledge, the pursuit of liberation, and the desire for wealth, status, and fame. Spirits or deities, angels or demons. The calling of a supernatural agent may bring power, but also comes with many risks. In these pages, games of cards usher in cloven-footed strangers, runic inscriptions conjure up demons, a communal warning is uttered every Bonfire Night, and the pagan dead rise from ancient barrows. Hellebore is a collection of writings and essays devoted to folk horror and the themes that inspire it: folklore, myth, history, archaeology, psychogeography, and the occult. Featuring words by Christine Ferguson, Victoria Anne Pearson, Per Faxneld, Efram Sera-Shriar, John Reppion, Katherine Weikert, Verity Holloway, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, and Francis Young. Artwork by Courtney Brooke (Lightwitch), Ellen Rogers, and Nathaniel Winter-Hébert.
Authors
Per Faxneld is Swedish Historian of Religion he holds a ph.d. in History of Religions (obtained in 2014). his field of specialisation is Western esotericism, new religions and "alternative spirituality" (e.g. Satanism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, New Age, the sacralization of physical excercise, etc), with a particular emphasis on how they are formed in tandem with processes of modernization (especially secularization). he has also worked from a sociological perspective with questions pertainng to strategies of legitimation, religious authority and identity formation. Other interests include religion and popular culture (reflection my background in cinema studies), folk religion (e.g. editing a critical edition of a folkloristic classic), gender issues, globalization and religion and violence. A key theme in his research is the relation between Western esotericism and art/literature. My doctoral dissertation (Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture, awarded the Donner Institute Prize for Eminent Research on Religion, and later re-published by Oxford University Press) adresses how anti-clerical feminists – primarily during the time period 1880–1930 – used Satan as a symbol of rejecting the patriarchal traits of Christianity. I emphasized how these women were inspired by the period's most influential new religion, Theosophy, and how the anti-religious discourses of secularism impacted feminism.
JOHN REPPION is an author, Fortean essayist, and Weird Fiction writer, born in Liverpool in 1978. He has written articles for the likes of Fortean Times, Strange Attractor Journal, Darklore, and Paranormal Magazine, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Grail online. In 2008 The History Press published 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool - John's weird history/paranormal guidebook to the city. His fiction has been published in anthologies from Combustion Books, Ghostwoods Books, PS Publishing, Snowbooks, Swan River Press, and Vagrants Among Ruins. He and his wife, Leah Moore, have been scripting comics together since 2003, writing for the likes of 2000 AD, Channel 4 Education, Dark Horse, DC Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, Electricomics, IDW, and Self Made Hero. They have written established characters such as Doctor Who (The Whispering Gallery, 2008 with Ben Templesmith) and Sherlock Holmes (The Trial of Sherlock Holmes, 2009 with Aaron Campbell, and The Liverpool Demon, 2012 with Matt Triano), as well as creating their own including Brit-Cit Psi Division, Judge Lillian Storm (Storm Warning, 2015 with Tom Foster). Together they have faithfully adapted notable works by Lewis Carroll (The Complete Alice, 2010), H. P. Lovecraft (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, 2012), Bram Stoker (The Complete Dracula, 2009), and M. R. James (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Vol 1, 2016) into comics and graphic novels.
