Conference: Seriously Possessed

Yesterday, I'd planned to see Selma.. but my plans went astray with yet another impromptu post-work drinks evening! So much for that - hopefully, I'll get to see it at some point in the future.

So, as you may have read previously, a friend of mine at work put me onto a social site I hadn't heard of. Meetup comprises several groups with specific interests - so many that the first thing you have to do is enter your interests. The site then presents you with a list of groups matching your interests, and you sign up to whichever sound interesting. I signed up to too many, really, but what the hey. Anyway, so far it hadn't worked out, but the greatest variety of things is available on weekends, so I had high hopes for today.

The most interesting thing happening today in my groups was Seriously Possessed, advertised by the Seriously Strange London group, and run by ASSAP, the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena. A day of talks at Goldsmith College about demonic possession, it sounded right up my street! Sadly, when I checked the website for advance tickets - which were cheaper - it was sold out, except for students. In those cases, I prefer not to leave it to chance on the day - particularly when it's right across town, as this was - and instead, I booked myself onto a walk with a Meetup group called Ken's Events, which runs several events per week. They were running a walk this afternoon around the site of the Great Fire of London.

And then.. I caught a conversation about Seriously Possessed. Someone had mentioned the ticket problem, and someone else had given him the email address to complain to if he couldn't get a ticket. So I tried it myself. And you never know whether that's what did it.. I never did hear back from them.. but a couple of hours later, I caught another comment in the discussion, from someone else who said they'd fixed the problem, and a few tickets were still available! Sod the walk, I hastily booked one of the last remaining tickets. Hadn't had to pay in advance for the walk anyway.

I did cancel my RSVP "yes" reply for that. Interestingly, I got an email today from the administrator of another walking group I'm a member of, saying he's had enough of "no-shows", and from now on he's cancelling the membership of anyone who RSVPs "yes" and doesn't show. Quite right. Of course things crop up, and people can't always go. I don't RSVP "yes" unless I seriously intend to go, and I think it's only polite, if you have said yes and then realise you're not going, to let them know.

ASSAP doesn't seem the best run organisation. They really should have let us know when they fixed the ticket issue - not that there should have been an issue at all. Not only that, but the only programme available online as late as yesterday was marked "Draft" - even though it was identical to the final programme, which was available at the venue..

Anyway, so it was that I found myself getting up early on a Saturday morning to traipse all the way across town. ASSAP did at least provide a handy campus map, including the nearest stations, and Google Maps helpfully informed me that I should get a train from Cannon Street to New Cross. The first Tube to come to West Brompton wasn't heading into town, but it's always advisable to take the first and change, if necessary, at Earl's Court - trains from other destinations come through there, heading into town. It so happened, however, that the first city-bound train to arrive in Earl's Court had come through West Brompton anyway. Another city-bound train pulled in at the adjacent platform shortly after, and when our driver kindly told us that we'd be waiting a few minutes, we all decamped to the other one - which, gratifyingly, left first.

Cannon Street Railway Station is right above the Underground Station, as you might expect. And I was just nicely in time - just over five minutes early, in fact - for the next train stopping at New Cross, which is just two stops from there. As I left the train in New Cross, I could see a building in the distance with "Goldsmith's" on top - which was encouraging. I also had my map. And indeed, it really isn't too far to the campus. However, I'd never been there before, and thought, given where the building is that we had to go to, that I should be able to cross over from a road that runs along the side. And that that would be easier.

Big mistake. I don't think there's a single entrance on that road. I had to retrace my steps to the main gate, where I joined a woman poring over the campus map outside the entrance building, and comparing it with hers.. which turned out to be the same as mine. Not surprising, as we were headed to the same place! She's an ASSAP member, rather than a Meetup member - and was the only person I spoke to all day, apart from the guys serving me food. And the people I had to squeeze past to get a seat. Not much effort from the Meetup people that apparently attended to actually meet up, then!

Anyway, we headed off in what seemed like an appropriate direction - after figuring out that our maps were upside-down in relation to the campus one. It's a confusing campus, full of roads and houses that don't look much like university buildings. When we finally found the Stuart Hall building, we discovered that all we'd had to do was cross through the front building and around the green! Ah well. We registered, and were slightly late for the first talk, but never mind. (Oh, and we had to put our own name badges into the holders. Honestly..)

Well, this was a fascinating and varied day. There were seven speakers in all, each of whom spoke for about 50 minutes (including questions). The first was a sceptic - good way to start. "There's no such thing as possession," in essence. I think he was one of the organisers. He spent his time explaining away possession as either psychosomatic, psychiatric, or socially conditioned. Unfortunately, he was one of the worse presenters of the day, displaying slides consisting of huge blocks of text, which he duly read to us verbatim. As if we couldn't read. Yawn. On top of which, he completely ran out of time, and had to omit large blocks of his prepared talk.

Cue the first break. I might have liked to grab a hot chocolate from the café upstairs that we'd passed on the way in, but there were people either side of me who showed no indication of moving, and it seemed too much effort. Anyway, the preparations for the second talk looked interesting. This talk was given by an occultist, who started by placing three strips of police-type tape on the ground in the form of a triangle - a candle on each corner, and an empty jar in the middle. The tape read - "DANGER - HAUNTED AREA". This was already looking more promising.

So, he eventually explained to us that the jar was to contain any demons in the room, and invited us to participate in a demon-banishing ritual, whereby any demons present would be banished to this jar. Which, as he promised, he'd dispose of safely afterwards. He was a bit of an odd fish.. his talk was very entertaining, but I did wonder why someone who spent his time rationally explaining away what was happening was actively involved in occult rituals! Anyway, he did explain the difference between magic and magick (which I thought was a typo) - apparently, "magick" is the ritual version. The summoning of demons, and such. Which he gave us a guideline on how to do.. instructions are in a book called the Goetia, FYI, most of which is concerned with the descriptions of 72 different demons. Available on Amazon, of course.

..which he debunked, before telling us the story of a time he summoned one of them. Really, as I say, somewhat contradictory. But highly entertaining. And he did let us in on the secret that you don't need to reproduce the magic circle exactly as depicted in the book - any old circle will do. It's for your protection, though - you stay in the circle, the demon stays in the aforementioned triangle, you wear a pentacle for protection, and a ring of safety (on your finger) as a last resort, holding it to your face if you're in peril.

Lunchtime, and I was hungry and excused myself past the gents to my right, and headed upstairs to the caff. Where I joined a very long queue, at the end of which were.. sandwiches. And confectionary. And hot chocolate.. tasteless as ever in this part of the world, and which I supplemented with two sachets of sugar, making it drinkable. I also had a sandwich and a bag of Hula Hoops, and between that and a quick run to the toilet, just made it back in time for the post-lunch talk; they don't give you much time. I must just give kudos to the toilets there, which have the softest hand towels I've come across!

After lunch, we had a well delivered talk from Dr Ciarán O' Keeffe, a parapsychologist who again presented both the paranormal and the psychological sides of the argument. Both he and the previous speaker had nothing good to say about the tv show "Most Haunted", which includes a medium guaranteed to pick up paranormal activity while the cameras rolled. Indeed, this wasn't surprising in this case, as he was the consultant parapsychologist on the show, and helped to expose the first medium on the show as a fraud.

After another break, we had a Dutch woman (I'm guessing by her long surname, which was full of "van"s) - a lecturer at the LSE. She regaled us with tale after tale of "possessions".. which were interesting, but there were just so many I started to drift off! I wasn't the only one, either. In contrast with the first speaker, she had far too little information on her slides, which bore little relation to what she was saying. Another one incapable of managing her time properly, she was shocked when the organiser came in, as he did towards the end of each talk, and she made efforts to shorten it, but just kept embarking on story after pointless story.. I think she had a thread in mind, but mustn't have made the slightest effort to estimate how long the talk would take to deliver.

When she finally finished, in a blur of confusion as she tried to squeeze her conclusions into one sentence, we had another break. And mercifully, the rest of the talks of the day were excellent! Next up was the actual practitioner. Susan Leybourne is a medium, an exorcist, a teacher in pagan studies. A Leeds lass, she was the only one with no slides at all, and gave one of the most entertaining talks of the day. She told us of her time among the shamans of Brazil, she told us about the exorcism she performed in Preston. What I found really interesting was, for the duration of her talk, the guy sitting right in front of her was the sceptic who gave the first talk of the day. Now, that must have been tricky.. and she did give some time to agreeing that people would have different reactions to possession in different "paradigms". For example, go into a fit in a marketplace in Haiti, people will gather round to hear your wisdom.. do the same in a marketplace in Manchester, they'll call an ambulance. Different paradigms.

Dinnertime. Unfortunately, our only food venue was the same where we'd had lunch, and didn't have anything extra on the menu. I didn't fancy another sandwich, so didn't have much for dinner - there wasn't anything else in the vicinity. I waited until I got home, instead. After "dinner", we had a talk that would have been fascinating to anyone familiar with Lovecraft, and in particular the Cthulu Mythos. To anyone not familiar with this, it concerns the colonisation of the Earth by a malevolent race of aliens, some 250 million years ago. And they're BACK.. and they have tentacles. Anyway, we listened to an engrossing talk about how this mythology is now used by a number of modern groups, as a handy way to describe the modern malaise of capitalism, of the pace of progress. We are turning into Cthulu, basically, and eating ourselves. The idea of possession by Cthulu has been adopted by practitioners of something called "chaos magick", which the speaker fully accepted is primarily attractive to adolescent males, and encourages regular possession as a normal state of being. The idea of possession by Cthulu is also used by the Church of Satan, as a matter of interest - again, the idea that humanity is the embodiment of the cold, unfeeling Cthulu.

For light relief, and after another break, the final talk was about the religious history of exorcism. This guy had a perfect compromise with his slides, which showed some information, while he filled in the gaps. I've seen that done before with bullet points, but with something more literary, such as this subject, he managed it quite well by inserting "..." at appropriate points in the text, and fleshing it out in spoken words. Other speakers, take note! Again, he ran out of time, and uttered, "Oh crumbs!" when he saw the organiser come in. But he made a fair job of galloping to a close. And that ended a unique day.

I didn't stay for the drinks reception afterwards. After a day full of speaking to practically no-one, I didn't fancy carrying it on with a drink in hand - I could drink alone cheaper at home. And I was hungry. The walk back to the station was quicker than in the morning, although still took me three times as long as ASSAP claimed in their directions. But I did enjoy the day, which was quite a unique experience.

For tomorrow, I think I'll skip Meetup and go to the cinema. On my own. Top of the list, by IMDB ratings, is Citizenfour, the documentary about Edward Snowdon. Executive producer Steven Soderbergh. Showing at 1.45 in the Prince Charles and 2.10 in the ICA, it just depends how early I get ready!