Jacquelyn Marie Shannon is a ritual artist, occult scholar-educator, and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City. Her work explores dramaturgies of magic, witchcraft, haunting, and the supernatural, with a particular interest in artistic and ritual processes that engage spirit(s), alternative temporalities, altered and liminal states, hypnosis, visions, and dreams. Her dissertation explores the relationship between theatricality, embodied technique, and ritual efficacy in producing experiences of magic and transformation in The Witch’s Dance. Jacquelyn has performed, presented research, taught, and facilitated ritual experiences across the US and internationally. Her work draws on more than 20 years of training and practice across Japanese butoh, expressionist dance, physical and psychodramatic theatre, contemporary performance, and ritual. For the past 11 years, she has developed and taught “Ghostly Practice,” a constellation of movement and ritual techniques for working through the body with memory, haunting, spirit, and the more-than-human. As a practice-based extension of her dissertation research, she has also developed “The Witch’s Dance” as both a ritual movement practice and an embodied magical system, which she shares through performances, workshops, and retreat intensives. Her research and artistic practice also inform her work as a magic and ritual consultant across theatre, performance, and public ceremonial contexts.
Our conversation begins with Jacqueline’s early memories of hauntings as experienced with her grandfather and how that prepared her for her life’s work. She shares her relationship to witchcraft and magic and how they are pathways to shifting reality and embracing the impossible. We hear about her work in ritual performance and how for her it’s important that it do something, not merely represent something. Her care for creating the container and guiding participants through Ghostly Practice and The Witch’s Dance is apparent in the way she allows us a peak into that ineffable work. She’s hosting a Winter Solstice Retreat: A 5-day immersion into the mysteries of embodied magic and ritual movement through the force of the witch Dec. 18-22, 2026 in Texas Hill Country. https://jacquelynmarieshannon.com/winter-solstice-retreat To learn more about Jacquelyn and her work, or to get in touch, visit jacquelynmarieshannon.com.
Our Show music is from Kelli Scarr. https://www.greatermysteries.com/
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