Occulture as Method Symposium

September 10-11, 2026

Manchester Metropolitan University

Manchester, UK

Submission deadline: 10^th July 2026

“Thee Process is Thee Product” (Temple of Psychick Youth)

Esotericism, alternative spiritualities, and the occult, have increasingly been recognised in academic work as significant cultural forces that shape histories, aesthetics, and ways of knowing. Given the peculiar specificities of the esoteric studies field, new methods of inquiry have been formalised by scholars identifying the value of a more direct involvement with the field of study, beyond textual analysis alone (Otto, 2026; Howard and Patterson, 2024; Crockford and Asprem, 2018). Here, the occult is not only studied but experimented with, experienced and reflected upon as part of the research process.

‘Occulture as method’ is a provocation that underpins this symposium. The event seeks to explore these new and emerging types of scholar-practitionership in three principal ways. First, we wish to explore how occult epistemologies and ways of doing have, and can be, mobilised in the creative practices of (for instance) filmmaking, performance, and the visual or sonic arts. Second, we wish to examine how occult practices and worldviews can be used as experimental techniques that supplement or even displace ‘traditional’ social-scientific methods while researching both occult and non-occult phenomena. Third, we wish to investigate how occultural practices and knowledges, often based on intuition, correspondences, and other non-deterministic approaches, may be used to generate alternative, non-dualistic, or marginalised identities, ways of knowing and imagined futures.

Occulture as Method will open a space for critical and experimental reflection on how occult practices and esoteric philosophies can be employed as creative research methods, understanding their opportunities, applications and limits. While the Western world embraces – and often weaponises – procedures of classification, tokenisation and quantification, how can the diverse epistemologies of the dark arts imagine or generate new worlds, and ways of doing and thinking that celebrate that which escapes and that which is hidden?

We welcome scholars and practitioners from any field, both within and beyond academia, to participate in the symposium. Contributions can take the form of academic papers, film screenings, workshops, or other alternative approaches to conference presentation.

We are interested in, but not limited to, the following themes or topics:

• Convergences and divergences between art methods and occult practices
• Historical perspectives on occultural research
• Reviving, reperforming, remediating occult archives
• Ethics, consent, and risk assessments in occultural research
• The space for esotericism and occulture in academia
• Post-colonial studies involving occultural practices
• Queering research methods with occulture
• Countering the weaponisation of occultural discourse by far-right ideologies
• Technology and occultural methods
• Research on subcultural and countercultural practices
• Intuition, divination, and synchronicity in academic research

• Exploring new knowledge through the para-normal, estrangement and speculative practices
• Rituals, magic practices and séances as epistemological tools

Submission Details

Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words, together with a short bio, for academic papers, practitioner talks and workshop proposals. We welcome submissions involving alternative forms of presentation or participation, whose requirements and feasibility will be discussed with the symposium organisers.

Send submissions to: dvrk@mmu.ac.uk

Deadline for submission: 10^th July 2026

Notification of acceptance: 24^th July 2026