I’m thrilled to be one of the speakers at the Glastonbury Occult Conference 2025, a weekend event February 15th - 16th 2025, held at the Town Hall Glastonbury, Somerset. My Talk is Following the Morning Star from Cherry Tree Lane to Brean Down with Mary, Milly and Morgan: Discovering Women’s New Magical Genealogies Within the British Occult Scene 1910-30s Through the Work of P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins) and Dion Fortune (The Sea Priestess).

Sue Terry’s lecture will explore intriguing connections between P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (1934) and Dion Fortune’s The Sea Priestess (1935) and the career of an important but little-known woman of the occult (introduced in this lecture), who has a lasting influence on children’s education today.

Sue offers a new understanding of two classic magical novels through women’s friendships and genealogies within the British occult scene of the 1910s - 30s. Sue will share some discoveries from her original PhD research into the Stella Matutina (‘The Morning Star’, successor to The Order of the Golden Dawn), P.L. Travers’ Theosophy and Rudolph Steiner’s schools - and what she uncovered by poking around in local history. Flying under Mary Poppins’ enchanted umbrella, we’ll take a wild ride from occult circles in London, to Dion Fortune’s visionary West Country and to Wales, overseas to the Antipodes and to the in-between zones of myth and magical imagination. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

I hope to see you there. Bookings are now open and the link to the Conference website is here