Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Coolest Thing I've Seen This Week

I remain interested in the Non-Wiccan Witchcraft efforts moving through the movement today, and interested in the modern cunning-folk and professional magic users. While there can be a needless resistance to religion in some of them, there's also quite a lot of good research into what folk-magic actually looks like, and how some kinds of modern magical techniques can be adapted to traditional forms.
In my web wanderings I came across the site of one Sarah Lawless, an artist and modern spae-wife from British Columbia. She's got great articles on a variety of Scots magical topics, all pretty late period stuff, but surely retaining bits of an older lore. It's a great combination of scholarship and inspiration, with good charms and invocations of some unusual Scots spirits.
I don't think us Druid types should be scared away by the Witch word. The reg'lar ol' Druid, living in a village or in his own little steading, would have been offering a menu of services including land-blessing, divining for the efforts of the people, turning aside the ill-will of spooks and sorcerers, love-spells and profit-spells. Even the sacrifices would often have been specific blessings for their village patrons. So the kinds of skills being developed by these practical witches is directly related to what a Druid might be today.
Articles that are directly interesting to Druids might include How to Create a Genius Loci Profile, Nicnevin and Cunning Folk, this last with a great list of links to later Scottish lore.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, thank you so much for the feature! Lovely place you have here and some great articles, I'll have to steal some time to read them all!

Slainte!
Sarah