*LIVE REMOTE ONLINE OFFERING* THE COUSIN OF DEATH: DREAM INCUBATION IN EARLY MODERN NECROMANCY with special guest teacher DR. ALEXANDER CUMMINS

ZOOM CLASSES OPERATE THE SAME AS IN PERSON CLASSES. WE DO NOT RECORD CLASSES TO PROTECT THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF OUR TEACHERS.

PLEASE NOTE: This class is not an in-person class. This class is being offered as a LIVE ONLINE-ONLY OFFERING. The zoom link will be attached to your receipt. Please check your junk folder in your email if you do not receive a receipt. If you have not received one please email learn@ritualcravt.com. Please register ahead of time to ensure that you make it to the online session on time! (Class times are in MDT time zone)

Class fees are non transferable, please note that we stick to the student agreements clicked on during registration. Please ensure you are able to attend the scheduled class time.

REGISTRATION WILL CLOSE ONE HOUR PRIOR TO CLASS TIME

A dictionary published in 1656 defined ‘necromancer’ – amongst other things – as one who ‘lodged among the Graves, that the dead might come to him in a dream, and make known to him that which he asked… that clad themselves with cloathes for that purpose, and spoke certain words, burned Incense, and slept by themselves, that such a dead person might come and talk with them in a dream.’

Dream incubation rites seem to have formed a crucial part of interactions between the living and the dead – as well as the gods and spirits – since records began. Certainly the role and meaning of dreams can be attested in historical witch-trial studies and folkloric crafts of the Sabbat alike. Even as the Reformation pushed back against older Catholic notions of Purgatory and the physical locales of deceased souls, the dead continued to return in the night in both unsolicited visitations and at the call of the nigromancers’ “black arts”.

In this class, contemporary cunning man and historian Dr Alexander Cummins will lead us on an exploratory journey through the operations and experiments of pre-modern nigromantic practitioners seeking to the dead in their dreams and half-waking visions. We will cover suffumigation practices, protocols of preparation and conjuration, ritual intersections with planetary timings and spirits, and various talismanic tools and materia employed in necromantic dreamwork, as well as analyse and explicate deeper underlying cosmo-visions of the nature and influence of the dead in the days and ways of the living.

Dr. Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian whose work focuses on magical books, geomancy, and folk necromancy as well as love divination and enchantment. His doctoral research centered on magic and the emotions in the pre-modern world. The Good Doctors publications, classes, and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com