Word charms, cunning folk and living traditions
The magic of ordinary people: ABRACADABRA, the SATOR square and AGLA; the cunning folk and the written charms they sold; the Merseburg charms and Old English healing words; Pennsylvania German powwow and Hohman's Long Lost Friend; the history of Hoodoo and conjure; and the evil eye from Mesopotamia to the blue glass bead.
6 lessons · about 79 minutes of reading · 1 free
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ABRACADABRA written away in a triangle, the SATOR square from Pompeii to Pennsylvania, and AGLA, the four letters that stood against fire and fever.
Britain's wise men and women — finding the thief, lifting the curse, writing the charm — how the law treated them from 1542 to 1736, and why they were not pagan survivors.
The Merseburg charms of the 9th or 10th century, the Old English charms against the sudden stitch and for the barren field, and the formula that travelled from Wodan to the Scandinavian black books.
Braucherei, the Christian charm-healing of the Pennsylvania Germans, John George Hohman's book of 1820, the York "hex murder" of 1928, and the tradition today.
The African American tradition of rootwork — its Kongo and West African roots, Native plant knowledge and European books, its place in resistance to slavery, Zora Neale Hurston's fieldwork — and how to learn about it with respect.
The envious glance that harms, from the eye idols of Tell Brak to Plutarch's theory, the blue nazar, the hamsa and the little horn, and the drop of oil in water.
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