Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby

If I had the opportunity to go back to school and study 'Cunning Magic,' I would.  But I do have access to a lot of books, so reading and personal study is the next best thing. I've had this book on my Amazon wishlist for months and months, then a few weeks back, it became unavailable through Amazon, and I knew that if I was going to get a new copy for a decent price, I would have to buy it now from an independent dealer. So, I just went ahead and bought a lot of the folklore books that I am using for research and study. You can see some of them down at the end of the blog. Cunning Magic is the kind of magic that commoners practiced in the medieval ages and early modern times. Traces of it have evolved today into very new things. The thesis of this book is one I've long embraced, but it's not a popular viewpoint.  As a Catholic, I've long explored  the power of mysticism and how ordinary folks from past times have viewed lingering 'old ways' within their new perspectives with their  religion. Yes, because religion is always in a state of flux.

It is safe to say that this state of 'flux' did not happen overnight.  This is how history works, some things fade, others linger, some morph, some are rewritten, and a lot is a mix and mash of all of those. It's never what we think.  It never happens for the expected reasons. Sometimes it's subtle. It's especially never what we think for ordinary people.

Wilby is looking at people accused of witchcraft and why? But what she explores differently is why these people made the confessions that they did. Were they hysterical fictions or did these confessions hold some kind of personal truth?  I certainly believe in the latter for a lot of women who died, excluding the women who suffered in the religious wars of the Reformation, which added a new dimension and has no place in this discussion.

I am interested in women who believed in magic, mystics whose late medieval minds embraced the darkness in the same manner as prehistoric people did, as in darkness was an entity, yes, a 'thing' that could swallow their existence. These were women who lived in the borderlands of folk magic, cunning magic, and the religion of the Church.

As Emma Wilby wrote of Bessie Dunlop, "In her role as a 'cunning woman', or popular magical practitioner, Bessie Dunlop worked at the rock face of the sixteenth-century Scottish life: she delivered babies, healed the sick, consoled the bereaved, identified criminals and recovered lost and stolen goods."

Bessie had a familiar spirit who helped her in these tasks, one she confessed to knowing. A note in her trial records says she was convicted and burned. Most likely she was strangled prior to burning.

From this distance, it's difficult to view witch confessions as just created fictions when cunning folk were involved. It's even more difficult to speculate on what cunning folk really believed. Wilby's book is a wonder, it's thoughtful and provocative. It asks us to step back if we can, in time, and look at the the power of the human mind and how it connected to nature and the world around it.

Highly recommended.

The Hardy Hibiscus

Blue River 1

Pink Rose Mallow

My favorite flower is now the hardy hibiscus. I bought two new plants this year that are small and have almost a dozen of these (above). Next year I'm going to go searching for some special breeds, and try to find the deep pinkish red dinner plates that my father gave me. Roses die in a southern garden these days, due to Black Spot, which is a terrible disease and one that is difficult to get rid of, once it makes its home in your yard. The only way to attempt " control" it is to spray all the time and to monitor fallen leaves which means picking them all up and changing out the mulch frequently. I used to have a yard full of roses. Now I only buy old fashioned ones, what people call cemetery roses, because they are stubborn and Black Spot doesn't like them as well. But they do not bloom but once or twice a season. Since my garden is now organic only, I don't use a lot of sprays. SO roses are out. That's why I have fallen in love with the hardy hibiscus, which is not to be confused with the pretty tropical ones. The hardy comes back year after year and even multiplies and can be divided out. The more akin to the mallow family it is, the hardier it is, meaning, nothing can kill it. I am determined to have a yard full of them. They need little to no care and bees and butterflies love them. Gardening is one of my greatest pleasures. I prefer cottage gardens to formal ones, lots of perennials and old fashion flowers. I don't like things too neat. Smiling.