Powerful is the giving-up of power: The Southwark Mystery of Crossbones Graveyard’s In-casts
Publication information:
Schunemann, Mark. 2023. “Powerful Is the Giving-up of Power: The Southwark Mystery of Crossbones Graveyard’s In-Casts.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Abstract: It is rare for a powerful institution to ritualise an apology for historic abuses of power. At Crossbones Graveyard, each Mary Magdalene day, this happens. This paper is an insider view of the spirituality of these Abram-Pagans in contemporary Southwark – a spirituality couched in history, psychogeography, and ritual poetry. Shelly Rambo’s trauma theology helps to elucidate in three ways: death in life, memory as witness, and the pneumatology of Holy Saturday as an inclusion of what is cast out. Crossbones is based on soteriological scandal – that the bishop who had licenced the sex workers of the High Middle Ages would bury these his business partners in unconsecrated, yet church-owned soil, destined, by medieval psychogeography, for damnation and hell. The eschatological empowerment comes in the perlocutionary power of the poems found within its central metamodern contratext, The Southwark Mysteries, channelled in 1996 from a local spirit, the Winchester Goose.
Presenter bio: As the son of both a priest and a witch, Mark has always been interested in religious intersectionality and syncretism. Having studied Theology at Oxford (MA, Oxon, 1st Class) and Anthropology at St John’s, Durham, he is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter in Comparative Cultural Anthropology. A comparative theology and poetry have been published in print by the Psychedelic Press Journal, and online in Interfaith Now. Mark helped to organise the Vigils and Acts at Crossbones for three years and continues his relationship with the people and spirits of that place remotely from the Westcountry.
Affiliation: Exeter University, Oxford University
Presenter bio: As the son of both a priest and a witch, Mark has always been interested in religious intersectionality and syncretism. Having studied Theology at Oxford (MA, Oxon, 1st Class) and Anthropology at St John’s, Durham, he is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter in Comparative Cultural Anthropology. A comparative theology and poetry have been published in print by the Psychedelic Press Journal, and online in Interfaith Now. Mark helped to organise the Vigils and Acts at Crossbones for three years and continues his relationship with the people and spirits of that place remotely from the Westcountry.
Affiliation: Exeter University, Oxford University