Scotland is a wonderful place, with history and myth woven into a landscape of cairns, stanes, trees, rivers, hills, springs, and wells. These special places comprise our community folk heritage. We want you to enjoy the amazing access Scotland’s land rights provide to our community folk heritage, but encourage you to tread with awareness and respect for these places. Whether you are a regular visitor, a pilgrim, or a tourist, we invite you to take a few moments to connect with the land around you, learn a little about the history, and enjoy your time whilst you are here. During your visits …

On international women’s day First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued an apology for all those accused of Witchcraft in Scotland with a Scottish Witchcraft Pardon on the cards in the coming term. As someone who explores folk belief and practices this, to me adds more nuance to our understanding of the whole situation through a modern lens, well through the eyes of the legal framework. I applaud the work of the group Witches of Scotland to create a Scottish Witchcraft Pardon and all those who have backed the cause through the pandemic and kept these issues alive. However, I’m very interested …

Beyond the Yule breads and celebration Plant lore is the verdant heart of Scottish folk holidays and traditions charring the old wife is a unique Scottish tradition. The Yules are no exception, even though at Yuletide the greenery has all but gone, the ground grasped in winter’s frozen embrace.  If we look beyond this, nature’s gift and sacrifice is found in the burning heart of Yule – the Yule log of ash or birch. “While Santa keeks doon frae the mantle above,the Yule log crackles oan this Christmas Nicht,waurmin’ hearth an’ hame by burnin’ sae bricht.We coorie thegither, my wife …

I am delighted to be able to host a guest writer exploring the subject of Queerness – queer magci and Queer deities in Norse Myth. Please forgive my touch of nepotism as I asked Nate (my other half) to write about queerness and Queer magic as part of the self-making series exploring marginalised identities in folk magic and myth. Nate is a specialist on these subjects and is currently exploring them in depth through a PhD in Scandinavian Studies at Aberdeen University. They have also has appeared in interviews in Huck magazine and others. Nate will also be presenting on this subject …

scapulimancy – Slinneanachd – Slinnairachd – divination by shoulder blade in Scottish Folk magic an exploration of the evidence and method.

Recently I have had the pleasure of speaking to the ever hospitable Professor Terry Gunnell at Iceland’s University all about Guising, Skekling and skeklers. As part of the Taibhsear Collective I had the pleasure of hosting him at our event in 2019 exploring this topic and thought it would be a good idea to follow up with him about some of the topics he wasn’t able to cover in much detail on the day. In the podcast episode we pick on a few themes form his original talk. Such as a brief synopsis of Guising and skekling, an exploration of …

I ‘m currently obsessed with the idea of parts of the self in Scottish folklore. Not just our bodies but what our spiritual DNA or what our sprit was once thought to be made of. It’s not just a mind, soul and body we are talking about here. It’s a convoluted and crooked construct with quite a few areas to explore. These conversations seem entirely missing from Scottish folk magic practice forums and debate. Exploring this topic I have allowed my inspiration to take me through the literature trail and reflected on the experience of those who are “othered” through …

“The sun will rise and set regardless, what we choose to do with the light while it’s here is up to us”. Chris Bickerton In a world heading toward the dark, bent towards our own destruction, creating anything seems an impossible task. People are quick to tear you down. Bringing creative ideas into the light neigh on impossible. They die before they even pass between lips. Becoming nothing but a long exhale. So yeah, building things is never easy. Birthing an idea is hard.  Bringing an idea to create positive change in the community around you … even harder. For …

I’ve been struggling with ideas of Scottish appropriation from our culture for a while now. Some of you may have read Saining Not Smudging. This article explored it in reverse light really. Sadly a lot of hate mail was received because of this article. Though that’s why we write right? To challenge ideas. Scottish Appropriation. What a phrase. You might think it’s not important but recently I’ve been seeing people using words like Dà-shealladh, second sight in a very wrong context. Not only this they are being paid to talk at expensive conferences about it. They use it to describe …