Symbiosis

Rosaleen Norton, dubbed 'The Witch of Kings Cross' was an artist, writer, philosopher and practitioner of esoteric arts from the 1930s until her death in 1979. Her treatment by the Australian media was nothing short of outrageous as they sought to chronicle her life via distortion and sensationalism, revealing either deliberate misunderstanding or blatant ignorance. The media coverage of Rosaleen Norton is examined to unearth the prejudices inherent in Australia during her lifetime, the manipulation of the female as the witch and the deviant as opposed to the artist and intellectual, and the role Rosaleen herself played in these (essentially) tabloid dramas.

Dr Marguerite Johnson 's main research interests are the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity, with particular attention to the representation of women. She is currently researching the literary portraits of women as witches in both classical and early modern European texts.  She has recently begun study on Rosaleen Norton, the 'Witch of Kings Cross.'

Katherine Sullivan BAVA (Newcastle), Grad. Dip.ART (Newcastle), Candidate for MA Fine Art-Research (Newcastle).

Diane Donovan
A Rational Disposition: the internalised world of the medieval scholar and the pack of paper tokens.

In the world of late medieval Christendom, when and where the western card-pack of numbers and pictures emerges, the perceptible world was still considered a rational and conscious construction. Order and meaning was assumed inherent in history, in the regularity of the heavens and in the nature of earthly phenomena. Pictures were assumed to embody words and perceptible reality itself was thought to 'speak' to humankind about the nature of God.

In this short talk, we look at the card-pack as an aid to encyclopaedic memory. Its mathematical grid, emblems and imagery are briefly explained. The pack's structure is shown to represent the world as it was apprehended in ordinary, everyday usage.Illustrations and examples are drawn from monastic and from secular works of the tenth to sixteenth centuries, their once well-understood reference shown in relation to the pack as a conceptual model.Particular emphasis will be laid on the role of moralised astronomy in the three encyclical subjects.

Diane O'Donovan read Syriac and Near Eastern history and mythology under Professor Bowman in Melbourne before travelling to Japan, where she studied Japanese and Persian miniatures for two years. Upon her return to Australia, she studied Fine Arts (including semiotics), Near Eastern Studies (including Classical Hebrew), Industrial Archaeology and Ethics of Politics and Science (with emphasis on formal techniques of mass oratory and visual propaganda) at the University of Sydney. Her postgraduate research topic - 'The Host of Heaven in pre-exilic Israel' - led to a continuing interest in the religious and other popular uses for astronomy. She has worked at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and in Administration at the University of Sydney. Happening on an image of the 'Charles VI' card 'Le Fou' in a bookshop in 1990, and recognising it as a mnemonic image for Orion, she began a 'weekend's" essay on the subject. Twelve years later, the area still offers new insights into medieval history and culture.

Gregg Heathcote
"…all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." : Truth and beauty coming out of the anaesthetic?

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." These famous lines by English Romantic poet John Keats typify the great tradition of thoughtful sense and expressive intuition, which has long stressed the integral relationship of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Yet despite excellent evidence of the merit of such a holistic view, the central role of the aesthetic in human experience has been marginalised in much of the modern world, to markedly anaesthetic effect. This paper conjectures what difference it might make to the conduct of modern life, at both deeply individual and broad institutional levels, if the evidence of beauty's true value is now being sufficiently heeded, and this process of disconnection reversed.

Gregg Heathcote is an honours graduate of the University of Newcastle, having submitted a research thesis examining the cultural geography of the cemeteries and crematoria of the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie district. He is now an employee of the University, working in the Auchmuty Library, formerly in its Archives section, and presently in its Bibliographical Services unit. Gregg is a Shin Buddhist, and sometime poet, with a longstanding interest in the religious dimensions and global relevance of aesthetic experience. A germane article and a selection of his poetry may be perused at:
http://www.nembutsu.info/poets/heathcote/index.htm.