Cunning Women: A feminist tale of forbidden love after the witch trials

Product Information

If worms be in the eyes, score inside the eyelids, put celandine juice into the cuts, the worms will be dead and the eyes healthy. Then Jeremiah lamented over Josiah, and to this day all the choirs of men and women sing laments over Josiah. They established them as a statute for Israel, and indeed they are written in the Book of Laments.

How many contemporary white-witches regularly practice both thief magic and unbewitching on a commercial basis? A self-styled wise-woman today who does not deal with bewitched clients is not a wise-woman as defined historically. [Malevolent] Witchcraft was the glue that held the concept of cunning-folk together... This is not to belittle the role of modern magical healers. They continue to provide relief and comfort to people, just as cunning-folk did. Rather, it is an attempt to clarify where they really stand in relation to those formerly described as cunning-folk. People who refer to themselves as such ought to be fully aware of their relationship to their historical namesakes, and be aware of the conceptual and social differences that separate them. [88] Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820744-3. This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: “Consider all this, and call for the mourners. Send for the women who mourn at funerals. For the following few decades, the magical practices of the cunning folk remained legal, despite opposition from certain religious authorities. It was a time of great religious upheaval in the country as Edward's successor, his sister Mary I, reintroduced Roman Catholicism, before Anglicanism was once again reimposed under Elizabeth I. In 1563, after the return of power to the Anglican Church of England, a bill was passed by parliament designed to illegalise "Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts", again being aimed at both the alleged witches and the cunning folk. However, this law was not as harsh as its earlier predecessor, with the death penalty being reserved for those who were believed to have conjured an evil spirit or murdered someone through magical means, whilst those for whom the use of magic was a first offence faced a year's imprisonment and four stints in the pillory. [73] Nonetheless, this law would have little effect on the cunning folk, as "the attention and focus of the courts shifted away from the activities of cunning-folk and towards the maleficium of supposed witches" [74] – the Witch Hunt that had been raging in Scotland and in many parts of continental Europe had finally arrived in England.Amongst the common people who often went to the cunning folk for aid, these magical practitioners were seen as being very much distinct from witches; as Davies noted, to the average person "witches were evil but cunning-folk were useful". [27] Some theologians and figures of Church authority nonetheless believed that the cunning-folk, in practising magic, were also, like the witches, following the Devil, a malevolent supernatural entity in Christian mythology. Such a viewpoint was not constrained to any one particular form of Christianity in this period, but was found amongst the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of England and also various forms of Protestantism. Some early Quakers, a Protestant denomination founded in the seventeenth century, were particularly vocal against the cunning folk, perhaps because they themselves were accused by their critics of using sorcery to attract new members, and so wanted to heavily distance themselves from such practices. [28] Locating property and criminals [ edit ] Unwilling to yield their heathen traditions, however, Alfred devised a cunning plan: Re-brand the troublesome Hwicce as evil until their very name embodies the worst blasphemy against Christ – satanic sorcery. Cunning-women, so respected and powerful, were to be specifically targeted. Maple, Eric (December 1960). "The Witches of Canewdon". Folklore. 71 (4): 241–250. doi: 10.1080/0015587X.1960.9717250. The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic in Britain, active from the medieval period through the early 20th century. As cunning folk, they practised folk and low magic – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial magic – which they learned through the study of grimoires. [1] Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love. Belonging "to the world of popular belief and custom", the cunning folk's magic has been defined as being "concerned not with the mysteries of the universe and the empowerment of the magus [as ceremonial magic usually is], so much as with practical remedies for specific problems." [2] However, other historians have noted that in some cases, there was apparently an "experimental or 'spiritual' dimension" to their magical practices, something which was possibly shamanic in nature. [3]

At the start of the nineteenth century, the popularity of cunning folk continued, and there was still a large and lucrative market for their services, for instance in 1816, there were eight different wise women working independently in the English coastal town of Whitby. [80] Nonetheless, the nineteenth century also saw an increase in the numbers of those cunning folk being prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act of 1736, possibly because "members of the social elite came to perceive that a faith in magic [far from having been eradicated as they had hoped,] seemed to be as prevalent among the populace as it had been a hundred years before, even while a growing political turbulence among commoners gave their rulers a new interest in the idea of education and civility as stabilizing forces." [78] Soon after this, in 1824, a new law commonly referred to as the Vagrancy Act 1824 was introduced, bringing about a further blow to the cunning profession by outlawing "persons pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means and device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose." The enacting of the law led to the increased prosecutions of cunning folk, something that would only begin to wane in the 1910s. [81]In Scandinavia the klok gumma ("wise woman") or klok gubbe ("wise man"), and collectively De kloka ("The Wise ones"), as they were known in Swedish, were usually elder members of the community who acted as folk healers and midwives as well as using folk magic such as magic rhymes. [10] In Denmark, they were called klog mand ("wise man") and klog kone ("wise woman") and collectively as kloge folk ("wise folk"). [11] Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skilled women to come; Then it’s a bit like a warm, coiled tension, and you feel your muscles start to tense up in anticipation. Wilby identified many similarities between the familiars recorded as serving cunning folk and those serving witches, with a general, though by no means universal, attribution of cunning folk's familiars with being benevolent and helping people, whilst those belonging to witches were more often thought of as being malevolent and causing harm. Again, in general the former were often referred to as " fairies" and the latter as " demons". [58] Wilby noted how both British cunning folk and witches often described similar scenarios for how they had first encountered their familiar: most prominent of these was the claim that the familiar had simply appeared spontaneously whilst they went about their everyday activities, whilst other claims held that the witch or cunning person had inherited it from another magical practitioner, who was usually a family member, or that they had been given it by a more powerful spirit. [59] The magical practitioner and the familiar then set about establishing a working relationship, sometimes solidified in a pact. [60] The cunning folk were also commonly employed to locate missing or stolen property and uncover the perpetrator: this was of particular importance throughout the Early Modern period, when peoples' possessions were far more valued than in later centuries as they were expensive to replace, particularly for the poor. [29] There are recorded cases where the cunning folk would also promise to ensure that the stolen property was returned, and in some of these they did prove successful, with the thief promptly returning what they had taken, something which may have been out of their own fear of being cursed by the cunning folk. [30] At times, such cunning individuals were also known to locate missing persons: an example of this was reported in 1617, as John Redman of Sutton discovered that his wife had left him, and "went from wizard to wizard, or, as they term them 'wise men', to have them bring her again". [31]