*\ (^_^)

Hello! I am a möbius snakeperson, partially-wired ^_^

b. Chhotanagpur Plateau. currently based in Birmingham Plateau & South Pennines.

he/him/it/its

Dilan Dagaz is an unsettling witch and queer mystic who practises magic at the intersection of land, body, technology, and otherworlds with the intention to unsettle settler* realities. With PhD summa cum laude in Legal Sciences from Humboldt University of Berlin (2022), Dilan understands magic as a supra-legal form that negotiates and maintains relationships between the natural, technological, human, and supernatural realms. Concerned by the deepening hold of modern settler* magic that exploits the connection of these realms to create a reality of empires, accumulation and totalising control, Dilan deploys unsettling witchcrafts as a practical strategy to unsettle deep-seated settler* concepts of reality-building. Such unsettling practice involves witchcrafts that help reconnect the rational and the irrational of the body, mind, land, and spirit through techniques of trance, spellwork, divination, landwork, lore, wandcrafts, and touch.

Since 2019, Dilan has offered séances and magical consultations in 1:1 sessions and led multiple collective divination and witchcrafts events in UK (Wolfland, London 2023; Unsettling Rituals, Bidston 2022), Germany (Bewitching Futures, In*Vision Festival 2021; Tales of a Tilismi City, Berlin 2021), and online (Speculative Machine Learning, Real ML 2020; I am AI, Mozfest 2022). He has also pioneered the development of divinatory play, an unsettling witchcrafts tactic explored through UKRI/ESRC-funded research on magic, law, technology, and land (2024-25). Working in collaboration with international partners, it led to the development of projects that combines elements of gaming with magical techniques of cartomancy (Bewitching Technologies, 2024) and runic divination (Posthuman Art Wars, 2025). Dilan is the founder of #WitchcraftIsPolitical, a left-leaning, trans-centric gathering at the intersection of witchcrafts and queerness that is interested in exploring the political dimension of magic and spirituality. With #WitchcraftIsPolitical, he led the drafting of “What do we want? Land Justice! When do we want it? Now!”: An Open Letter from witches, magical, and pagan communities in solidarity with Congo, Palestine, Sudan, to spark discussion and self-reflection in pagan, witchy, and magical communities.

Previously, Dilan served as Lecturer at the University of Exeter, where he taught, mentored, and supervised postgraduate and doctoral projects on topics of law, technology, queerness, media, and land. Dilan holds extensive international research, consultancy, public advocacy, teaching and facilitation experience through work with civil society, academia, and grassroots organising in India, Germany, and UK. He is a Fellow of Advance HE/UK Higher Education Academy (2025), having graduated with a dual Bachelor honours degree in Humanities and Law from NLIU Bhopal (2013) and Master summa cum laude in European Studies from University of Hamburg (2017). To develop his unsettling witchcrafts approach, Dilan has further trained professionally in fascial bodywork, massage, tarot-based coaching, embodied activism, hypnosis and trancework, and is studying past life regression and permaculture design.

Alongside his witchcrafts practice, Dilan remains involved with writing and research. His first book, Unsettling Data (2025), is a political-philosophical exploration of representationalism as a settler legal form in the context of data governance. Moving away from settler cultures of academia, which separate intellectual knowledge from knowings of the body, land, and spirit, Dilan is keen on promoting magical education and is committed to experiencing and sharing magic, love, and the nature of reality in unsettling ways.

Image of baba yaga flying in a mortar pestel. Says: Gender is not the difference between the wizard and the witch... The difference is respectability politics #witchcraftispolitical

Lived Experience

• Person of colour (South Asian)

• Grew up in a third world small town

• Immigrant, 10 years in Western Europe

• East Indian middle class privilege (Bihar)

• Birth family were settlers on Adivasi land (Jharkhand)

• Complex-PTSD/Autoimmune/Chronic illness

• Suicidal ideation & attempt/Self-harm

• Marriage & divorce

• 30+ years of Sufi & Vama-Tantric practice

• 33+ years of performance and participation in folk ceremony, ritual magic, animist and syncretic religious practices

• Reframing codependency & enmeshment

• Grew up with Yoga, Kirtan, Sufi, Tantra, and Bhakti practices

• 18+ years of mystical love & twin flame journeys

• 20+ years of lucid dreaming & dreamwork

• 7+ years of active community/Communication with plants, trees, and rocks

• 26+ years of astrology studies

• 7+ years of tarot, automatic writing & intuitive channelling

• 3+ years of Ogham wandcrafts, divination & Runic spellwork

• Transsexual/Transgender/Man/Nonbinary

• Neurodivergent (AuDHD/c-PTSD)

• Financial precarity/Secondary homelessness (as adult)

• Adult family estrangement/No/low contact

• Queer/Pan/Bi/Poly/Ace/Treesexual/ Robosexual/Pervert/Sex-Positive

• Depression/Mania/Anxiety/Therapy

• Burnout/Alienation/Procrastination

• Sudden death/Bereavement by suicide

• Learning accountability with physical & sexual abuse (as survivor, witness & enabler)

• Sex and Porn Addiction/Experience with sexual shame and sex-positivity struggles

• Learning accountability with domestic violence (as survivor, witness & perpetrator)

• English-medium primary education & colonial language upbringing (English+Hindi) /Euro-linguistic privilege/Language loss

• Non-dominant urban caste privilege

• 22+ years of séance & spirit communication

• 6+ years of intentionally reconnecting with and reparenting the inner child

• 30+ years of regular reflective journaling for self-deconstruction/destruction

• Pilgrimage/Solo/Spiritual Travel

Selected Formal Training

• Dip. Therapeutic Massage (Distinction, School of Bodywork, accred. UK NQF 3)

• Dip. Anatomy, Physiology & Pathology (School of Bodywork, accred. UK NQF 3)

• Cert. Myofascial Energetic Release, Self Empowerment with Satyarthi Peloquin (Elemental Bodywork, Montbrun-Bocage)

• Cert. Embodied Activism (The Embody Lab, Vancouver)

• Cert. Psychic Tarot Coaching (Strange Way to Living, accred. International Association of Therapists)

• CPD Community Herbalism for BIPOC (Mujer de la Tierra, Puebla)

• Cert. Permaculture Design, UK Permaculture Association (in training)

• Cert. Past Life Regression Therapy, Past Life Awakening Institute (in training)

• Cert. Hypnotherapy (Past Life Regression Academy, accred. UK General Hypnosis Standards Council)

• Fellow, Advance Higher Education (UK)

• PGCert. Academic Practice (Distinction, University of Exeter, accred. UK NQF 7)

• PhD Legal Sciences (summa cum laude, Humboldt University of Berlin)

• LLM European Studies (summa cum laude, University of Hamburg)

• BA, LLB (Hons.) Humanities and Law (National Law Institute University, Bhopal)

• Sangeet Visharad (BA), Hindustani Vocal Classical (Pracheen Kala Kendra, Chandigarh)