For those who are interested in attending the upcoming 54 Devils Cartomancy Class but who may not be able to do so for financial reasons, we have a solution!
We’re offering a lottery-style scholarship to five (5) people that will let you attend the course for free. There are a few general conditions you’ll need to be able to meet:
You must be able to attend at least the first live session (on July 7th from 7-9pm Central Time). You can do the video recordings for the last two if you need to, but are highly encouraged to attend all live sessions.
You must be able to access the Google classroom independently (have your own Google account) and agree to not share the information from the class with anyone outside the class without express written permission.
You must abide by class rules which will be sent out to all students (of course).
You are requested to participate in at least half of the discussion posts in the Google classroom.
I would very much like you to fill out the end-of-course survey as well!
With this you’ll get access to the class, a digital copy of 54 Devils, and all the bonus content that comes with the course, too.
We’ll pick five random winners from the pool of applicants by Sunday, July 6th, and contact you via email with further information (please make sure to enter your email address correctly when you apply). You do not have to disclose any financial information to be eligible for this scholarship, either.
If you’d like to apply, just fill out the Scholarship Application by no later than midnight on Friday, July 4th!
Have you ever wanted to learn practical cartomancy (fortune-telling with playing cards)? Well here’s your chance!
We’re running a 3-class course on card reading (and more) and you can sign up at our website! Link in bio or visit http://www.newworldwitchery.com
Greetings all!
As some of you may know, Cory wrote a book some ten-plus years ago called Fifty-four Devils: The Art and Folklore of Fortune-telling with Playing Cards. Last year, he released the Tenth Anniversary revised edition, which expanded the original text to include more depth on readings, revised options for non-binary readers and clients, ways to read playing cards in conjunction with other divination methods, and even some guidance on spellwork with cards!
Early in 2025, Cory also test-ran a three-session cartomancy course for New World Witchery Patreon supporters, which got some great reviews!
Cory Hutcheson’s The Fifty-Four Devils cartomancy course was a delight from start to finish. Cory is a very knowledgeable and experienced playing card reader who has devised a method that is simple, effective and practical. He also teaches the system in a clear and engaging manner with lots of humor and charm. Besides learning the card reading system, you get history, folklore, mythology, and magic! It is a great way to expand your cartomantic reading skills -Karen C.
So now we’re opening that course to the public! Here’s the details:
Dates: July 7, July 14, July 21 (Monday evenings 7pm-9pm Central Time) – All classes are held by Zoom and recorded so if you miss one you’ll be able to watch it later
Cost: $64 per student*. That includes:
Three live and video-recorded sessions covering the history, folklore, and practice of playing card cartomancy
Access to our online classroom which will include discussion forums, practice prompts, no-pressure quizzes to self-check your learning progress, and more!
A copy of the e-book version of the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Fifty-four Devils
Additional bonus materials like video sample readings and printable PDFs
How Do I Register?
Good question! All you need to do is go to our Patreon page and purchase the post “54 Devils Cartomancy Class.” (You don’t have to be a monthly Patreon supporter to purchase this class, as you can do just a one-time purchase). When you purchase that post you’ll be able to open the entire thing and get the link to our online classroom to join us!
Registration will stay open until the first day of class, July 7th, 2025.
I already knew that Cory is an exceptional teacher and storyteller, but I was still pleasantly surprised by how skilled he was at engaging with the class and making cartomancy feel accessible and fun. The after-class lessons and quizzes he provided made me think carefully about readings and how to practically apply these new skills. -T. King
The course will be limited to a cap of fifty students for the sake of manageability. If you want to take the course but know you can’t afford it at this time, never fear! We’ll have a scholarship option available soon and open up five no-pay slots for students who will be selected at random from our pool of scholarship applicants.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn to do practical cartomancy with someone who’s been reading cards for decades while also engaging with a cartomancy learning community and getting some additional bonuses and perks, this class will be the one for you!
I hope to see you there!
Be well,
-Cory
*Please note that while the flat fee for the class is $64, some apps and platforms (such as iOS apps) may charge additional processing fees. The best way to ensure you get the $64 price is to visit the Patreon purchase site from a web browser.
Our book, Conjuring the Commonplace–which looks at the folklore and magical uses of a wide variety of household objects–is now available for e-book preorder!
It’s a very cottage-y, cozy sort of book that will let you see the magic in a cup of tea or a butter cookie tin full of buttons, and we’re incredibly proud of it. If you’ve ever wanted to know about fortune telling based on falling silverware, love divinations with burning matches, or the myriad portable spell ingredients in your purse at this very moment, this book will be one you want to pick up. We collaborated on every chapter and Cory did most of the internal illustrations, too, so this is really a labor of love (and maybe a hint of enchantment).
You can order e-book copies during pre-release from:
Cory shares some thoughts on being a published author one year (plus a bit) after releasing New World Witchery, why publish witchy books in general, and what’s coming next from him in terms of writing.
It’s been a loooooong time since I did one of these (like seven years!). Partly that’s because a lot of our social media now fills the purpose that these cartulary posts used to, and partly it’s because I usually wind up trying to write more in-depth examinations of folk magic for the website that are finished and complete, so these peek-behind-the-curtain posts slip my mind. Oops, my bad, and sorry in that order!
For those who haven’t run into these before, a cartulary is essentially a scroll of information where new material gets added by attaching it to the bottom of existing scrolls, functioning as a sort of hodgepodge of ideas that get rolled up together because they don’t belong anywhere else. Given that the dominant reading mode for the internet is scrolling, I use these posts as a sort glimpse into my working notes on current witchcraft research, as well as showing you some things that may be of interest to you as well (since you’re here, you probably like at least some of the same witchy things I do, right?).
A lot of what’s here is piecemeal and incomplete, or at least a bit rough and unfinished, and some of it may not have to deal with witchery directly but will give you a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes between episodes/posts/books/etc. And you may discover something new that you love, too!
Let’s start with what I’m reading, which is always “everything,” I suppose. More specifically, though, I’ve got a slew of witchy books in my “just-read,” “now-reading,” and “soon-my-preciouses” piles. I was gifted a book from the Ackerly Green publishing house called The Book of Briars by my friend Heather, and I’ve been exploring the tangled world created by author C.J. Bernstein (essentially the engine behind the press) through the book The Monarch Papers: Flora & Fauna as well. This whole press and the world it’s creating are INSANE and delightful. It’s a fusion of fairy tales, lost magic, Mandela effect, murder mystery, and more. There are elements of Neil Gaiman, John Bellairs, Margaret Atwood, Charles de Lindt, and Diana Wynne Jones in these pages, and what’s even more wild is that you, the reader, can directly interact with the world as it is being written, helping to shape the story that already exists and the books yet to come.
I’ve also been working through some folklore collections that I’ve loved a lot lately. I picked up a really interesting collection called Myths of Magical Native American Women by Teresa Pijoan, who worked with tribes like the Lakota, Hopi, Cheyenne, and Creek to retain some of the tales that were potentially about to be lost with the passing of elders. Most notable are the “Salt Woman” stories, which can be very hard to find and which tell of the tragic-but-generous figure of the Salt Woman in several tribal mythologies who brought the gift of salt to the people. I also received a wonderful signed copy of the Tel que Dit stories done by podcast guest Erik Lacharity, which recounts a number of magical tales and legends from French Canadian history and lore. Many read like fairy tales, and there’s a wonderful series of stories about the folk hero/clever trickster Ti-Jean as well. For my birthday in June, I was incredibly happy to finally receive a copy of the Greenwood Handbook on The Pied Piper, which is one of my all-time favorite fairy tales/legends (it has some very strange elements of historical fact within it). It was edited by my folklore colleague Wolfgang Mieder, and goes through dozens of variants, sequels, artistic representations, and the historical context of the story as well. Finally, my kids turned me onto a whole series of graphic novels that are collections of world folklore, called the Cautionary Fables & Fairy Tales books. They feature collections like The Night Marchers (Oceanian lore), The Nixie of the Mill-pond (European lore), The Girl Who Married a Skull (African lore), and The Tamamo Fox Maiden (Asian lore). They are SO GOOD, and each volume features a variety of storytellers and artists to keep things varied and interesting. Great for both adults and kids ages 8+ (some stories are a little spicy or scary).
I also should mention that I’ve been on a bit of a mushroom kick lately, too. I’m enthusiastically listening to the audiobook for Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, which explores in depth how fungi are inextricably interwoven with every aspect of life on earth. It’s a science book, but it reads like a travelogue, a meditation, and an adventure tale at times, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I…I think I might be bordering on obsessed with mushrooms and fungi, and actively looking to join a lichen cult if possible. In that same vein, I recently watched the Netflix documentary called Fantastic Fungi, which does a nice job giving a mile-high overview of some of the same things Sheldrake explores in much more depth.
On to the world of witchy books, of which there are so many in my life right now, I have to say I’m delighted at how many people I consider friends or colleagues are putting out good work at the moment. I’ve read and recommended Fire Lyte’s forthcoming book, The Dabbler’s Guide to Witchcraft, which essentially takes his skeptical, critical eye and looks at witchcraft in a way that can help a newcomer to separate the useful bits from the bunkum claims and absolute dreck that sometimes winds up in intro-to-the-craft type books. In a similarly scientific vein, I am absolutely in love with J.D. Walker’s book A Witch’s Guide to Wildcraft, which walks the reader through exploring their local flora both as a witch and a gardener (she’s a Master Gardener and spent thirty years running her own landscaping business, so she knows what she’s talking about).
On the more esoteric side of things, I also really loved Star Child, by Bri Saussy, which demystifies some of the complicated elements of astrology by also looking at what a parent might be able to glean from looking at the astrological placements of their child. There’s also Anatomy of a Witch, by Laura Tempest Zakroff, which dives into the sort of visceral experience of witchcraft by looking at it through the lens of a person’s body, breath, and movement (Zakroff is also a long-time professional dancer, so those elements are very important to her and it shows!).
I have to say that I wish I’d discovered Moon Dust Press long ago when my own kids were little. They didn’t exist then, but if they had my kids would have been getting lots of witchy, magical kids’ books like Sunday the Sea Witch and Brina: A Pagan Picture Book.
In terms of books in my “I shall devour you soon” pile, I’m really excited about a couple of new releases I hope to get my hands on in the next month or so. Thorn Mooney has just released her latest book, The Witch’s Path, and it aims for an audience that is a little different than most witchy books: advanced practitioners. Mooney looks at everything from group leadership to burnout, and apparently provides guidance based on individual learning styles, which I’m very excited about! I’m also hungrily eyeing Lisa Marie Basile’s latest book, City Witchery. I loved her Light Magic for Dark Times so much, and this one is tackling urban witchcraft, which I don’t see done nearly enough. I’ve got them both on pre-order so….soooooooon.
Our latest live cartomancy session!
I’ll close up with a couple of other witchy bobbins that I think are worth spinning. Firstly, for those who haven’t been watching our live cartomancy sessions, you’re missing out! They’re a load of fun! And we’ve discovered the wickedly honest power of the Mildred Payne’s Oracle of Black Enchantment from Deviant Moon. These cards are designed to look like woodcuts taken from a nightmarish and gleeful history of witchcraft, and they do NOT play around (well, they DO play around, but in the same way a cat plays with a bird it’s just caught)! We’ve gotten some of our most honest readings from them!
I also have been falling back in love with witchy podcasts, because there have been a whole spate of amazing new ones to come out this year. I can’t get enough of Invoking Witchcraft, featuring Britton and J. Allen, who remind me a lot of Laine and me because they are exploring folk magic through ongoing conversations and interviews. I was a guest on there a while back, but I’ve been totally hooked on them for months as they cover things like shoe magic, magical bathing, and whether or not to join a coven. I also ADORE the Southern Bramble podcast, which brings traditional folk witchcraft out through a queer perspective while also digging deep into its southern roots (and getting dirty and dangerous in the process). Austin and Marshall are just so engaging, funny, and also wicked that I can’t help but be drawn in! And finally, I’ve fallen for the Jewitches podcast, exploring Jewish folk magic and witchcraft with host Zo. This is a podcast that is built upon research and cultural investigation, and it deals with topics both delightful and very, very heart-breaking. Zo explores the overlap between Jewish persecutions and the early witch trials in Europe, the myth of the dybbuk box, and the horrific Blood Libel legend (which is still in circulation today). It’s really thought-provoking and also highly informative!
So those are the things that are currently getting free rent in my brain, and that are likely to influence some of the research and show-planning I do over the next few months. You’ll probably see some of these authors show up as guests on the show, or hear me talk about topics involving new veins of folk magic or curiosity that these little rabbit trails open up (who knows, maybe I’ll even have something to tell you about fungi and folk magic someday!).
This is just a super quick update to let you know that our Patreon tiers have been updated/changed this week. We’re trying to streamline the work process for Laine and me, while also adding a few extra perks for most levels!
The new tiers are:
Tier 1 (Omen Readers) – $1/mo. – You get the monthly newsletter, early access to any shows we release, and Discord access
Tier 2 (Fairy Doctors) – $5/mo. – You get the physical #54devils #cartomancy book (after 6 mos. of support) and a digital copy of the annual #witchyzine. You’ll also get priority during our NEW live reading cartomancy sessions, which we’ll do every six weeks or so (priority means you get to submit questions early). You’ll also get bonus episodes released on Patreon.
Tier 3 (Doodlebugs) – $10/mo. – Access to bi-monthly live chats. A digital review copy of the NWW Book by Cory. Plus a physical copy of annual zine. AND you’ll get an Annual Cartomancy Report done by either Cory or Laine (as an emailed PDF)
Tier 4 (Bone Shakers) – $20/mo. – You’ll get an Annual Swag Mailer (usually a book of some kind, a physical copy of the zine, and a few other little bonus gifts). You also get a signed copy of NWW Book (one time after 6 mos of support). We’ll also be featuring one Bone Shaker as a “Sponsor of the Ep” each month, and if you’ve got a business/podcast/project you’d like us to mention as part of that we’ll be glad to do so (some restrictions apply—no racist or homophobic stuff, for example). PLUS you’ll get access to a Live Zoom Cartomancy session with us twice a year where only patrons are invited and get to ask questions and receive readings!
So, yeah, that’s it! Hopefully it makes it easier for Laine and I to streamline some of the work while also adding more benefits for supporters.
HUGE thanks to everyone who has and does support us, too! We are incredibly lucky to get that support and we are so thankful to everyone who chips in to make this possible.
I realize we’ve already started discussing some of our reading selection for the first half of 2021, Ann Moura’s Green Witchcraft II, on the show (in Episodes 183 and 184 so far). But I forgot to post the reading schedule for you all to follow along! So I’m rectifying that right now by outlining the plan below. You can follow along, and interact with us on our social media (like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook) or even just leave comments on this post as you read with us!
Reading Plan for Green Witchcraft II by Ann Moura
January: Choose book, brief background and introduction to our approach.
February: Chapter 1 – What is Green Witchcraft? (Activity – Circle Casting and/or Releasing Fears)
March: Chapters 2 & 3 – Who Are the Goddess & God? -and- Who Are the Elementals? (Activity – Meditations; Dark Moon Ritual Consecration; -or- Creating an Elemental Bottle) (Also, Appendix B on Names of Gods & Goddesses will be covered)
April: Chapters 4 & 5 – What are the Dark Powers? -and- How are the Dark Powers Used? (Activity – Meditations -or- Sidhe Moon Ritual/Companion Quest) (Also, Appendix A on Terminology will be covered)
May: Chapters 7 & 8 – What are Dark Power Herbal Magics? (Activity: Dark Power Exorcism) -and- How are Stones and Crystals Used? (Activity: Crystal/Stone Dedication Ritual)
June: Chapters 6 & 10 – How is the Celtic Ogham Used in Divination? -and- What about Familiars and the Tarot? (Activity – Elemental Tarot Spread; Passing the Midhes; -or- Dedicating a Familiar) (also, Appendices C & E on the Sforza Tarot Deck, Black Mirrors, and Ogham Sticks will be covered)
July/Wrap-up: Chapter 9 – What are Green Witchcraft Meditations? (Activity – Tree Blending) AND Final thoughts on this/retrospective
As you can see, we’re pushing through this pretty fast, but we’re also planning to try out some of the activities along the way. Sometimes we’ll do something directly from the book, and sometimes we’ll use it as a springboard into another form of practical spellwork (such as one that might show up in an episode like the one we just did on bottle spells).
Also, if you’re interested in getting the book, you can get an exclusive discount at Llewellyn’s site on that or any of her Green Witchcraft books by using the code “GREENWITCH20” at checkout.
We hope you’ll enjoy reading along with us and share your thoughts as we go!
One of the kind of cool perks to creating New World Witchery is that we often get access to lots of books coming out on magical topics, and sometimes publishers even send us an extra copy or two of some books so we can give them away. I have been very lax in doing these sorts of giveaways, but I’m chalking it (loosely) up to Fate. Well, okay, and a touch of being a little overwhelmed with all the projects I do. But why Fate?
Because I have a few projects that I need your help with, and I thought why not combine those projects with an opportunity to give away a whole bunch of books? Maybe I’ve just been stockpiling these so that I would have a good cache of verbal treasures to send out as potential “thank yous” to a few lucky folks who help me out with my work!
So how can you help (and also get a chance to win one or more of these books)?
I’m currently doing a few research projects and I need people to share their experiences with me, so I’ve decided that if you participate in my project, you can also enter to win a book! Here’s how to participate and enter:
Fill out our “Campfire Tales” survey with your favorite spooky/funny/weird/eerie tale from around the old campfire! Importantly, please make sure it’s one that you’ve actually heard told to you, and not just read (or one that you’ve told and not just read) as I’m trying to get stories from the oral tradition. It’s totally fine if they’ve also been written down somewhere, too (and if you grew up reading the Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories series, you’ll know exactly what Campfire Tales are!), but definitely tell me the story in your own words! Make sure to leave a good email address with the survey so we can contact you if you win (we do NOT share your email address with advertisers or third parties).
Fill out our “Research Survey: Slumber Party and Supernatural Games” form. It will ask you questions about any spooky, weird, or slightly supernatural games you might have played/still play, including everything from “Bloody Mary” to using Ouija boards to newer versions of games like Midnight Man or Three Kings. Again, if you fill out this Google Form survey, make sure to provide an email address if you want to be considered for one of the books as a prize; we don’t share those with third parties or advertisers).
You can participate in one or both of these surveys to get an entry into our contest! If you’re one of our Patreon supporters, you’ll also get an automatic entry as well (just one of the perks of being a patron!).
So what are some of the books up for grabs?
Making Magic, by Briana Saussy (at least three copies) – A lovely guide to working everyday magic into your life through ritual, art, craft, and intention
Outside the Charmed Circle, by Misha Magdalene – All about magical and ritual explorations of gender and sexuality
Urban Magick, by Diana Rajchel – A great look at working funky, potent, animistic magic in a cityscape
What is Remembered Lives, by Phoenix LaFae – A book about working with ancestors, the Fae, and spiritual powers
The Magick of Food, by Gwion Raven – A marvelous overview of magical cookery, including historical recipes, ritual menus, and more
The Crooked Path, by Kelden Mercury – An introduction and orientation to Traditional Witchcraft
Besom, Stang, and Sword, by Chris Orapello and Tara-Love Maguire (not pictured, but a great book!) – A wonderful introduction to animistic, locally-rooted witchcraft by two amazing witches
Fifty-four Devils, by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (at least two signed copies) – My guide to the folklore of playing cards and a basic system of cartomancy
I may also add more books into the mix, depending on what I get/find/mysteriously find under a rock between now and when these contests end. Speaking of, get your entries in by no later than midnight, October 2nd, 2020 by EST to be considered for one of the book prizes!
You can win a prize in both contests, but only one book per survey (and multiple survey responses don’t increase your chances of winning). I’ll be picking the books and winners at random when the contest is over, then contacting winners to confirm a shipping address for any and all books you win.
There is no cost to you to participate in this contest, and you can also choose to do the surveys and not be entered into the drawing for the books if you like (but seriously, free books, why wouldn’t you?!?!)
Huge thanks to Llewellyn, Weiser, and Sounds True publications for all their generosity in offering these texts!
Best of luck, and my immense thanks to everyone who participates!
The madness continues (both the madness of the world in general and our own strange little plot to keep revisiting Scott Cunningham’s two “Natural Magic” books, Earth Power and Earth, Air, Fire, & Water). We’ve fallen a teensy bit behind on discussing the books on the show (just by a month or so), but we’re also a bit behind on catching up with the blog posts that let everyone participate in the discussion. Back in Book Club Discussion #3, we combined our questions and comments on two sections: Air and Earth. This time we’re doing the same for questions on the sections for Fire and Water (which balances quite nicely).
Some of the questions we wound up asking of ourselves and our Patreon supporters are below, and we’d highly welcome any feedback or responses (civil, please please please!) in the comments.
Fire
What form of fire magic do you practice most often? Is it candle magic? Do you use fire as a “cleansing” force in ritual, or does it serve more of an “animating” role in your spellwork?
Where do you think incense falls in the big picture of spells? Is it just Air? Is it also Fire? Do all spell elements inherently draw upon multiple elemental energies?
Have you ever done a purification spell like the one Cunningham mentions (the ritual burning)? Did it work for you? (Feel free to share juicy details of burning an ex-boyfriend’s stuff if you like!)
Do you ever do any fire-based divination practices (like scrying)? Have you tried his “fire writing” method with bark or paper?
Cunningham warns about the potential destructive forces of Air and Fire, but is less concerned with that problem in the Earth/Water chapters. Why do you think that is? Do you work with “both sides” (or “many sides” if you prefer to be nondualistic about it) of the elements?
So many myths have fire stolen from the sky, and Cunningham also connects fire magic with solar magic. Do you do this as well? Why or why not?
Water
Cunningham warns that we should “beware the tricks of the conscious mind” when doing things like water scrying. Do you treat the conscious mind as something that works against magic, or something that has a place in the magical process?
What forms of water magic do you do most often? Spiritual baths? Wishing well magic? Water gazing/scrying?
Do you consider any weather magic to be within the realm of water magic? Why or why not?
Have you ever heard of/used the “crossing water” folklore that supposedly puts a barrier between you and evil/ghosts?
When making offerings to elemental spirits, is it more appropriate to bring something of your own or use what you find in the area? (Thinking here of Cunningham’s use of the coin to pay the tree for leaves to use in a ritual).
Should you always “pay” for the natural materials you use in magic? Can you ever simply use something and assume it’s okay/a gift/expected to be used for magic?
Have you ever taken a “water vow” as Cunningham describes it? What was it for/about, and did it feel like it was more potent because of water’s role in the vow?
We obviously get into a good bit more detail in both of our discussions (and we even have a few questions here we didn’t really cover). We would really love to hear/read your answers on some of these, though, if you’re interested in responding!
We’ll be back talking about things like Stone magic in the next book club discussion, and moving into the more detailed, “smaller” elements of magic. We hope you’re enjoying the chance to read along with us and that you’ll share your thoughts!
It’s strange, isn’t it, that at a time when so many of us are being asked to stay home that it feels like we have so little time to do things like read? At least, that is how it’s felt around our neck of the woods of late. But we have been managing to make headway in our ongoing Book Club, featuring the work of Scott Cunningham and focusing on the concept of folk magic in connection to nature and elemental associations.
In the past two regular episodes (on Safe Hex and Dreams) we covered the first few chapters of both Earth Power and Earth, Air, Fire, & Water. Those chapters began unpacking two of the major elements: Earth and Air, as well as sharing a group of spells that Cunningham associated with each of them. We talked about the use of things like sand and dirt in jars as a common folk magical trope for keeping evil at bay, and we still see that in some forms of charm work today with people leaving bottles or jars of rice, beans, pins, or more by their front doors or windows. Sprinkling salt has a similar effect when done at a threshold and that fits well with Cunningham’s ideas. We also chatted about Cunningham’s point that getting out into spaces without urbanization can be very good at connecting us to our landscapes and our planet, but that we should also be mindful that having that access is a privilege and we shouldn’t make others feel bad if they are doing the same work in a big city by going to a park or keeping potted plants.
On the Air side of things, we talked about how odd it was to see a warning in Earth Power specifically saying to be careful with air magic–why is that admonition so strong here, but not with something like earth magic? Does it have to do with the fast-changing nature of wind and storms? That also got us into the point that Cunningham makes about Air as a “twin of Fire,” which we’re still not strongly convinced about but makes for an interesting thought experiment. We noted that a lot of air-based spells have had their own evolution, with sailors likely using knot charms a lot less in an era of non-sailing ships and a recognition that spells involving tying things to trees need to be largely adapted so they don’t damage the tree (Laine and I both suggest the idea of using hair, which works well and biodegrades easily).
In ourPatreon Discord discussion, we also tackled a few more particular questions on these chapters and concepts:
What do you think of the differences in style between the books? For example, we talked about how Earth Power is obviously pulling from a lot of very practical folk magic (such as potato/apple wart curing charms) while EAFW seems to be more focused on rituals (including more incantations and rhymes). Which style works better for you, and why do you think that is?
What do you think the magical “theory” behind some of these spells would be? For example, why does throwing a handful of dirt after someone protect them (or in a similar folk magic tack, why would throwing a handful of salt after them keep them from coming back)? What about those counting spells? Why do witches/vampires/etc. have to do all that counting? (DON’T MAKE ME DO MATH!!!)
What do you think about including knot-magic in “Earth”? Does that make sense to you, or would you put it somewhere else?
Some of these are clearly very short-term spells, but a lot of earth spells are longer-term. Do you prefer to do spells with short, immediate bursts of activity and results, or longer and more sustained spellwork (or do you mix it up a lot)?
Is there a distinct difference between “air” and “wind” as a magical element or force to you? Why or why not, and how do you use air if you’re not also using wind?
Do we also see distinctions between “elements” and “transmission” or “medium” in other forms of magic? So for example I can see water as a medium with waves and tides as transmission methods. With earth, there are the seismic waves, but are there other forms of earth “transmission” that are fairly regular? I am sure mudslides, etc. would count but in terms of the way we can let a leaf go in air or water to carry a spell is burial the earth transmission method? Similarly with fire–is fire the medium and “burning” the method? Or are light and heat the transmission forms (so a spell using light is technically a fire spell then?).
And finally, why are birds so dang smug?
We would love to hear your thoughts on any or all of these points, so feel free to leave a comment below (or you can even shoot us an email if you’d prefer to share your ideas that way).
We’ll be tackling the powers of Fire and Water next, and then hopefully summoning Captain Planet to combat the avian smugness we will inevitably encounter. Or, at the very least, posting more questions and ideas to discuss.
For now, we hope you’re getting by okay, and we wish you happy reading and magic every day!
New World Witchery - The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft 