- Series Of Old Magic Spells Discovered In Serbia – these 2000 year old spells engraved on tiny silver and gold scrolls are delicate and beautiful but translation is incomplete as of yet.
- How Witchcraft On Facebook Is Helping People Grieve – spells cast through Facebook Live. The author found her online ritual unsatisfying but allows that others may find solace in online pagan communities.
- A Huddersfield witchcraft shop has banned Harry Potter fans because wands aren’t toys – originally I thought the shopkeeper a snob but then had it pointed out to me that wands are the ritual objects of a genuine faith. Thoughts?
- Bad Witch Workout Is Where Squats and Spells Go Hand in Hand – while some parts I don’t get (makeup while working out??) the bit about “so many exercise classes…feel alienating if you’re a weirdo or a goth or a punk-rock kid or a riot girl or a feminist” does sound familiar. Workouts for the weird with a dose of spirituality can’t be a bad thing.
Category: witchcraft
biweekly links 6-15-2016
- The Material Culture of 1970s Paranormal Researchers: “Into the Unknown,” Reader’s Digest, Part 2 (and part 1) – I remember these sorts of imagery from perusing my grandmother’s bookshelves as a child: serious men with horn-rimmed specs and strange, clunky electronics searching for evidence of ESP, ghosts, and the like. Oh yes, I knew of zener cards long before Venkman played with them in Ghostbusters. Good times, good times…
- Edward Kelley Day in Most, Czech Republic – if you read Czech there’s a bit about the upcoming “Magister Edward Kelley Day” festivities in Most this weekend, including “fair, theater, concerts, magic show, falconers, jugglers, swordsmen and competitions” (lurve Google Translate). Includes an image of an actor portraying Kelley rappelling down the Castle Hnevin’s wall; a quick whip around Google.cz found photos from 2014’s celebration (scroll down).
- Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland – “The first rigorous academic overview of witchcraft in Ireland”, this appears to be a chunky academic tome addresses the legal, ecclesiastic, and cultural importance of Irish magic between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and his Alchemical Sources – new paper by science historian Jennifer Rampling on the theories of the influential fifteenth century alchemist.
biweekly links 5-4-2016
- Supernatural Safeguarding: hidden objects in the post-medieval home – the superstitious reasons for concealing clothes, shoes and even dead animals in various parts of the house. From my historic costuming circles I’ve also found a whole blog dedicated to deliberately concealed garments. Such finds are a great source of extant clothing, but I could do without the desiccated cats.
- What it says on the tin: Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft. Don’t try these at home!
- Call for papers: Histories of Magic and Sexuality – another Twitter find, for academic sorts. 1000-1500 word essays on this subject “[relating] to any geographical area and must have a strong historical focus. Essays exploring the premodern and early modern periods and regions outside of Europe and the US are encouraged.” Closing 5/15.
biweekly links 4-20-2016
- The sci fi and fantasy genres jumped on serialized fiction awhile back, but with Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia and SerialBox’s Whitehall it seems historical fiction is finally getting in on the act. Looking forward to both and seeing if this presentation format proves popular.
- Hadn’t heard of Carlo Gesualdo until news about a one-man play about his life popped up in my Google alerts. Pity it’s not local – Gesualdo’s messy story of musical genius, vicious murder, and alleged sorcery is fantastic storytelling fuel!
- The seventeenth century shipwreck with incredibly well preserved clothing story has popped up everywhere on the costuming interwebs. Beautiful closeups are available at the Kaapskil museum site.
- Cornell University’s witchcraft collection is the largest in the world, and they’ve helpfully put 104 digitized books from the collection online.
a few of my favorite things
Haven’t got much news this week. Rewrites continue with the odd bit of research, and I spent much of the past weekend on the fencing strip.
So I thought I’d share a few of the books I’ve been reading (and wanting to read):
The Witch Who Came in From the Cold – I find the episodic format of SerialBox’s offerings positively addictive, and this series has two things I love: Cold War spycraft and magic.
A Day of Fire and A Year of Ravens are both collaborative novels by the Historical Fiction Author’s Co-op and both take historical events where we know the outcome (Pompeii is destroyed, Boudicca is defeated) and still create so much tension that you can’t put them down. They do this with characters so skillfully drawn that you care passionately about their fates.
David Bowie Is – I’ve never been a diehard fan but I was always impressed by Bowie’s ability to re-invent himself over and over and over again. This catalog accompanied a V&A touring exhibit of his infinitely varied career. My main interest is, of course, the costumes.
Doreen Valiente: Witch, Pan’s Daughter: The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton, and Wormwood Star: The Magical Life of Marjorie Cameron – it seems most histories of 19th-early 20th century magick revolve around men: Crowley, Regardie, Parsons. Only in the past month have learned that women were also prominent in this tradition. I gather these names are familiar to modern pagans but they’re news to me and I look forward to reading these…later. Smells like a potential research rabbit hole I can ill afford right now!
What are your current/future/favorite reads?
biweekly links 4-6-2016
- Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages – lengthy abstract with link to the full article. Short version: natural magic enacted through physical objects, demonic magic through ritual – and the latter was worse because it used humans.
- How Witchcraft Is Empowering Queer and Trans Young People – religions are always adapting to the times, and the practitioners described in this article discard the traditional (? I’m not a witch or pagan, so I can’t speak to accuracy) male-female binary to create beliefs and rituals meaningful to their queer identities.
- Tudor controversialists and the Catholic faith – Propaganda and counter-propaganda between the Elizabethan government and English Catholics. Relevant to my WIP as I’m writing Edward Kelley as a recusant. The review suggests a “crunchy” academic book, but in the best possible way.
- Following Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone Cost $199.23 – Roejen over at Project Archivist put me onto this story last week, and I mused wouldn’t it be great if someone tried this out? Behold, a tidy how-to in modern English! Let me know if you give this a whirl – I’d end up burning my house down.
biweekly links 3-23-2016
Early modern English Muslims, 20th century occult collections, and fin-de-siècle French Satanists for you:
- The first Muslims in England – article in BBC Magazine by Jerry Brotton, author of new book This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. In the Guardian, Brotton also suggests that the Moroccan ambassador to Elizabeth’s court might have been the inspiration for Othello. I’ve read lamentably little about what non-white, non-Christians were doing in London in the sixteenth century so I’m looking forward to this book, and hope to find something similar for Prague. Speaking of Prague:
- Nazi occult books found in Czech National Library depot – Himmler’s private collection of books on witchcraft have evidently been in storage since the 1950s. Initially reported in a tabloid, this story seems to be getting more reputable coverage as the days go on.
- Occult collection of “mother of modern witchcraft” Doreen Valiente to go on display, in a haunted house, no less. I’m overly familiar with 20th century occultism but she seems to be the place to start. Or you could go earlier:
- Satanism and Magic in the Age of the Moulin Rouge – French literary figures threaten to duel over accusations of assassination by sorcery. And it’s all true – this is from JStor’s blog.
link dump
In lieu of a proper blog post (I was sick last week) I’m sharing links related to the book:
A Portrait of the Artist as a (Wild) Young Man: My Life with Berti Spranger, a novel by Eva Jana Siroka – Rudolf II didn’t just support alchemists like Dee and Kelley but promoted art and artists as well. Spranger was one of his favorites; evidently he liked the artist’s mythical nudes so much he kept him a near prisoner, but Spranger still managed to get in a lot of trouble. The eccentric characters of Rudolfine Prague are so ripe for fictionalization it’s sad they aren’t played with more often (or are they? Please leave book recommendations in the comments!)
James VI and Witches, both Friend and Foe – James I hated and feared witchcraft – Dee wrote him a long, desperate letter in 1604 attempting to clear his reputation for conjuring – but paradoxically allowed known witches into his inner circle, to the extent of having one help in his wife’s birthing chamber. Illustrative of the gray area witchcraft occupied in Elizabethan/Jacobean England; high status practitioners of useful magic got a pass.
A magical walk in the footsteps of the Pendle witches – this second of a two-part series discusses Alice Nutter, one of the wealthier of the twelve accused. Nutter appears in fictional form in Jeannette Winterson’s “The Daylight Gate” where she’s presented as an associate of Dee’s and Kelley’s. Hey, it’s fiction, so why not?