Episode 2 - Myth and the Insular Imaginary

Another Fly-on-the-Wall Episode. 
This is the introductory lesson in a course I started teaching at the Invisible College in Paris, and the Institute of Superior Mechanisms in Saint Ouen, in the Plague Year, 2020. It was a Masters Seminar, entitled Myth, Magic, Fantasy, and Faery - On the Origins of the Insular Imaginary. The idea was to trace the History of the Imaginal Heritage of Ireland and Britain, from, as they say in France, "its beginnings to our days". When I told people who were not academics about this, they said "Oh cool, sign me up!" When I told people who were academics, they shook their heads sadly and wisely and said "First time, is it?" Yes, it was indeed my first time designing a Masters Seminar in which I had free reign. And my programme was impossibly broad, to the point of being comically Quixotic. 
With the students, therefore, we spend ten weeks on the first three lessons I had planned, and then zipped through the rest of the material in the last two weeks. It was wonderful. I was deliriously full of ideas, and desperately short on actual preparation. As you will hear, this is absolutely seat-of-the-pants, Fire in the Head teaching. And, while I will never cease from admiration for those who properly prepare their classes ... I have always walked in with three lines scribbled on a piece of paper, and then just ... Started a discussion. Many thanks to my wonderful, intelligent, curious students, both the Artsy ones and the Mecha-Makers. These lessons (which I recorded and now diffuse with their express permission) were absolutely not "Mine" ... They were Ours. We created them together. And I think that that ... is Magic. 
Please enjoy. 
A second episode in this mini-series on Myth to be posted directly next ...

THE HOLLOW PATH IS A MEETING OF MINDS AND HEARTS, TO FOSTER EXHANGES AROUND MAGIC, ART, ENCHANTMENT, CULTURE, POLITICS, AND POETICS ...
RE-ENCHANTMENT. RE-WILDING. RE-MEMBERING.
RESISTANCE.