Folk Magic

I get asked “what is a Folk Practitioner or what is folk magic?” on many occasions. I also get asked “what is the difference between what you do and what a witch does?”, “Is it witchcraft?”, “Are you religious?”, “Do you worship a lord and lady or speak to the de’il?”, “Do you follow the immanent and emanant mysteries of your gods?” and finally “Do you worship nature? Do you bang your drums and dance around?” This is no fault of anyone. Folk practices have been adopted in a lot of modern magico-religious approaches. This has caused a lot of confusion …

I’m sitting on a train.  It’s like a liminal space, I’m not moving but rushing forward at the same time. Travelling through the amazing Scottish landscape, it’s always a joy.  Even though a brown, white and green dusk coloured blur beyond the window. The sound of the train, the rock of its carriage, always makes my mind drift.  It gets me thinking.  Back to old conversations and thoughts. I have pondered questions around animism and the dead a lot recently. In discussions, its been one of many topics raised over whisky, late into the evening. I thought the friendly debates and these unformed threads of ideas …

Winter time is always a time for me to ponder on those who have passed. Their missing faces from the celebration table hit pretty hard at this time of year. I don’t mean to be maudlin but it’s a reality we will all encounter at some point. It got me thinking. As this is the darkest time of the year, what those who came before us thought of at this time of year? What were the beliefs of the folks who saw fairies and ancestors as ever-present. Is it animism? Is it fairy faith? This is a thought piece rather …

It’s the time of the year when I start thinking about the more witchier side of life and the name Nicneven and Hecate starts to be whispered of. Wrapped in warm blankets,  looking out across to Fife and beyond as the grey clouds stream past, the apple trees shaking free their russet, yellow and golden leaves and sweet steam from my tea fogging up the window as it warms my hands. I always feel that Scotland is ideally itself in this Autumnal weather, there’s something that seems to suit it, the land stands proud as it loses it’s summer gloss, …

In a earlier post, I discussed the Cailleach and her associated role in Gaelic culture. She represents a power as vast and as wide as the Scottish landscape but a role that is also nurturing  and intimately fruitful as the role of the wise woman (or man) in Scottish folklore. Unlike scottish witchcraft as a catch all term we have phrases that cover a wide variety of roles so called witches used to do. The bean/fear fease (wise women/man) bean ghlúine (midwife) bean chaointe (keening women) and the death midwife are all roles that derive and inspire their performance from …

We have grown up with this myth that broomsticks, athames, crystals and the like are synonymous with witchcraft. However, this is not really the case in folk magic practices and these tools are, if seldom, mentioned in the trials of folk magic practitioners that we have access to. I hope this post might help in understanding where some of these ideas come from and how, in fact, they might not be as synonymous as people think they are to practicing folk magic in Scotland or for that matter witchcraft.