Phil Legard- The Shadow Over Ilkley

When twilight shadows fall across Ilkley Moor, strange things happen. Torches flame, flute music meanders beneath darkened boughs, heralding rites of Baphomet, Choronzon, and Yog-Sothoth. Elsewhere people camp at a newly discovered stone circle, beholding apparitions and glowing earth energies. Do they have something to do with the UFOs and Earth Lights that haunt the place? Magical rites, visions, and awakenings all happening in an area of 1670 acres.

Giants, cunning men, hermits, UFOs, witches, occultists, fairies: Ilkley Moor has attracted its own share of curious lore and esoteric characters over the centuries. This talk, by Phil Legard, explores the use of Ilkley Moor by West Yorkshire’s occultural milieu from the late 1970s to the 2000s, illustrating how the moor drew together loosely connected groups of chaos magicians, Ley Hunters, UFOlogists, witches, and Psychic Questers, whose presence can be felt to this day.

Phil Legard is a musician, lapsed chaos magician, lecturer, and PhD candidate with the Leeds School of Social Sciences. His current research explores the lived experience of occultism through autoethnography, phenomenology, and discourse theory. With Al Cummins he is the co-author of An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke: The Magical Works of Humphrey Gilbert and John Davis (Scarlet Imprint, 2020)

This event will be in the downstairs event space in the Tea Room who will be serving afternoon tea until 3.30pm.