Category: General Information

Blog Post 89 – The New World Witchery Guide to Cartomancy

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Greetings everyone!

I know that I’ve been a bit scanty on blogging lately, for which I apologize most profusely.  Unfortunately, I’m likely to stay busy with many irons in many fires for quite some time to come, but I feel like you readers are wonderfully patient with me when the blog and podcast have dry spells and I want to reward that.  And so, I have put something together for those of you who have been taking an active interest in the recent cartomancy posts.

I’ve put together those posts with some additional material in an e-book, which I’m making available for download free from the site:

The New World Witchery Guide to Cartomancy

It’s a PDF and should be easily readable with Adobe Reader.  Like I said, it’s totally free.  Feel free to save it, copy from it, distribute it, etc.   Please do attribute any citations, excerpts, or references back to me, but otherwise, I hope you enjoy it!  And if you do like the book, consider making a donation here, or with the button on the sidebar.

I’m also planning to revise this material, with some additional sample readings, expanded information, a quick-reference chart, and improved graphics and release it as a chapbook sometime in the near future.  The printed chapbook will have a cost of some kind (and will probably be sold through our Compass & Key Etsy shop, which I’m hoping to revamp and relaunch soon), but I’ll try to keep it very reasonable.  The e-book will remain available through the site, however, and I intend to keep it free/donations-only for all to download.

I know it’s nothing spectacular, but I hope it is useful to some of you.  Thank you all so much again for your patience and your patronage of New World Witchery, both blog and podcast.  We really appreciate your support!

Thanks for reading, and be well!

-Cory

Blog Post 86 – StrowlerFest

Those of you who’ve listened to Podcast 14 already know about this, but over the coming months there will be a series of concerts/events taking place across the nation called Strowlers.  These are part musical concert, part sideshow, part pagan festival, and sound like they will be all fun!  What are Strowlers, you might ask?  According to the Dictionary of Theiving Slang, 1737 cited on the event website, they are:

“n. Vagabonds, Itinerants, Men of no settled Abode, of a precarious Life, Wanderers of Fortune, such as Gypsies, Beggars, Pedlars, Hawkers, Mountebanks, Fidlers, Country-Players, Rope-dancers, Jugglers, Tumblers, Shewers of Tricks, and Raree-show-men.”

There’s a whole fictionalized back story associated with the event in which America never won the Revolutionary War and thus is still subject to the whims of the English king, but I’ll leave the storytelling to the professionals.  You can read more about it here.

The series of festivals is sponsored in part by bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton and folk-rocker SJ Tucker.  The actual events will contain performances by a variety of artists, writers, and performers, including:

  • Musical performances from SJ Tucker, Tricky Pixie, Gypsy Nomads, Wendy Rule, Heather Dale, Traveling Fates, Sharon Knight, Alexander James Adams, and more!
  • Workshops on Astrology, Poi Dancing, Juggling, Arthurian Bardic Singing, Aromatherapy, and other topics, too!
  • A History of Fencing (with just a touch of magic)
  • A Maker showcase featuring “inventors and tinkerers and artists that work in physical, touchable media, as well as traditional art media”

Strowler events will take place in:

These events sound like a great time, and offer a good bit more than a standard Pagan festival in terms of diversion and community.  If you’ve listened to our most recent podcast, you know that we’ve got a special promotion going on that will get you 10% off tickets when you use our passcode.  If you can’t listen to the podcast for some reason, simply email us with the subject line “Strowlers” and we’ll supply you with the discount code that way.

Please do go and see these events if you’re anywhere near them!  They are going to be a lot of fun, I know, plus you’ll be supporting the Pagan entertainment community.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

Success!

Thank you all for bearing with me.  I think I’ve finally got the feed situation sorted out, and all episodes of NWW are now showing up on iTunes and Podcast Alley.  If you happen to see errors showing up in those places with these episodes, please let me know, but otherwise I think we should now have back episodes listed along with our most current ones.

Again, thanks for putting up with the crazy posting today, and hopefully not unsubscribing and writing me hate mail!  🙂

All the best to our wonderful readers and listeners,

-Cory

General Information Post – Podcast Adjustments

Hi everyone.  This is just a quick update to let you know I’m trying to get the podcast feed retooled so that more episodes (or preferably, ALL episodes) will show up at places like iTunes and Podcast Alley.  This may mean that those of you subscribed to the feed will get a sudden burst of files in your queue, and if that happens, I apologize.  Hopefully this adjustment will be done by Friday.

Future shows will have separate posts for show notes and actual podcast episodes, and the episode posts will only have a quick cursory summary of whatever is in the show.  Hopefully this won’t throw people off too much, and will allow users who like getting all the shows through one service or another to do so.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to let me know!

Thanks for your patience!

-Cory

Blog Post 75 – A New Look!

Hi everyone!

So you may have noticed a subtle change or two to our page today.  We have a new look here at New World Witchery, which hopefully makes us look a little more interesting.  Our fantastic web designer is none other than the lovely Sarah, Witch of Forest Grove (and The Pagan Bookworm and Hedgefolk Tales and proprietress of Forest Grove Botanica)!  Many many thanks to her for putting together such a neat design (especially that banner at the top—the old one was kind of sad looking).

If you run into pages or buttons that don’t work, please let me know so we can get those fixed.  Likewise, if you suddenly find one of your comments missing from a previous post, let me know that, too.  Some of them wound up being sent back into “hold” status during the update.

Again, a thousand thousand thanks to Sarah, and we hope you like our new look!

Thanks for browsing!

-Cory

Blog Post 71 – How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Hello everyone!

We’re almost at the end of this hiatus, and I haven’t posted anything really since right before I went off to grad school for the summer.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been up to some witchy business in the meantime.  Today I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve been doing over the past six weeks (well, other than performing detailed exegeses of 18th-century English poetry and seeing about 27 different versions of Shakespearean performances).

The first thing I should tell you is that I was living on campus, and this campus just happens to be a beautiful rural campus right at the edge of Appalachia.  My access to folklore primary sources was much abetted, and my opportunities to get out in the woods increased a good bit.  Secondly, my dorm was immediately across from a beautiful old cemetery.  As you can probably guess, I spent a good bit of my time there.  Here are some photos of the amazing graves and other funerary décor found in the old boneyard.The graves here date back to around the mid-nineteenth century, so they aren’t incredibly old, but many of them are gorgeous.  And they are certainly older than lots of other cemeteries in the area.

This also happens to be a religious school, so there are plenty of beautiful crosses here, too.  Since it’s as close to Appalachia as it is, the cemetery has a strong Celtic influence in the stonework.

The time I spent here mostly involved taking late night (or often midnight) walking tours of the area.  Among all those graves and under a very starry sky, it was pretty amazing.  If you’re wondering whether or not I encountered “anyone,” though, I have to say the answer is no.  I did bring offerings of food and whiskey several times, leaving them near the small side gate rather than any specific grave (since I wasn’t trying to contact anyone in particular, that made sense to me).  Wildlife abounds near this cemetery, so I often heard things wandering out in the dark just beyond the light’s cast.  I even occasionally met other folks taking late night constitutionals among the headstones.

Since I wanted to do well in my schoolwork, I also made up a potent little mojo bag, which I carried in my pocket.  I anointed it daily with either Crown of Success oil or some local whiskey, depending on what seemed appropriate for the day.  As far as I can tell, it worked magnificently (though I’m still waiting to get final grades back…mojo don’t fail me now!).  I may outline just how I made this specific mojo bag later this week in case there are other students looking for a little “oomf” in their studies.

Of course, a huge portion of my time was dedicated to reading completely non-magical texts (Paradise Lost, vast quantities of Shakespeare, a number of Restoration-era authors like Swift, Pope, and Dryden, etc.), but I also had time to work my way through a few magically inclined books as well.  I’ll be posting some reviews of those as time permits this coming week, so stay tuned for those.

The beautiful natural surroundings of the school also afforded ample opportunities to get outdoors.  Though the heat was stifling some days, trees always provided comforting shade and occasional mountain breezes helped cool me off, too.  So many of the plants that grow in that area have magical connections:  elder, sumac, sweet gum, passionflower, poke berries, and blackberries all grow wild.  I did some harvesting, particularly a good bunch of sassafras, so I’ll try to get some info up on that at some point, too.

Last, but certainly not least, I also had long drives to and from school on the weekends, so I filled up my iPod with lots of witchy podcasts and caught up on some of my favorites.  I also got to hear some new ones (at least new to me) that were excellent.  If you haven’t checked out Pagan Hooligans yet, it’s a great show and the hosts are a lot of fun.  They’re recording their adventures in paganism from day one, and it’s really a refreshing perspective!  I’ve also started really listening to and enjoying Iron Powaqa Radio, which has a decidedly sassy side and always makes me smile.

So that was my summer in a nutshell, I suppose.  I’m going to be trying to get back in the swing of regular posts as soon as possible, and hopefully there will be another podcast up fairly soon, too.  Until then, thank you all for your patience and support!  Feel free to post, email, discuss, and generally share your own New World Witchery here, and we’ll look forward to hearing from you!  Thanks for reading!

All the best, and be well,

-Cory

Blog Post 68 – Be Our Guest?

So running with an idea (and a title lovingly borrowed) from Juniper over at Walking the Hedge and Standing Stone and Garden Gate, I’m putting out a call for submissions to our wonderful readers.  I know we probably have at least a couple of writers out there as well, and we’d love to have you do a guest post for New World Witchery.

We’re going to have about 6-8 weeks of low posting from me, and we’d like to be able to post at least 3 articles per week if possible.  So that means we need 18-24 well-written, proofread, researched, reasoned, resonant, and remarkable entries.  Something tells me we’ve got a few folks who might just be up to the task, so if you’re interested, here’s the submissions guide:

1)      Each article should be no less than 300 words, and no more than 2000.  500-800 words is usually ideal length, but there is some flexibility.
2)      MS Word (.doc) attachments are ideal, with inline email text being a secondary preference.
3)      Please include all links with your submission.  I may have to tweak them slightly to get them on the site, but I definitely can’t chase down links for you.  Footnotes or endnotes should be similarly included.
4)      Any artwork must be in the public domain (try Wikimedia Commons to start) or your own original picture/art with authorization to use it on the site.
5)      All work must be your own.  Citations are fine, along with short passages of material presented in a scholarly fashion, but please, no plagiarism.
6)      Please proofread your work.  Excessive typos and grammar snafus will not be corrected or posted.
7)      You retain all publication rights to your material other than the first-time online publication rights.  In other words, you’re free to submit this on a site like Witchvox or to a print publication, as long as you say that it was first published on this site.  (I’ll also assume the right to reprint passages or references to your work in future publications, but I will not publish your article in its entirety without your permission).

Of course, I’m always happy to get nice, scholarly articles on the topics of hoodoo, pow-wow, curanderismo, witchcraft, etc.  But what I’d really like is to get articles on the following topics, specifically:

  • Personal or family magical lore (such as magical practices, divinations, weather signs, etc.).  Please include your family background (such as region or ethnic heritage), too, so we know where these things come from.
  • Regional magical lore, including things like witch stories, magical places, spells, famous witches, etc.  Of course, please let us know which region you’re writing about (you don’t have to be too specific—“Appalachia” or “New England” would be sufficient).
  • Spell-work hits and misses.  Tell us about spells you’ve done, ingredients you’ve used, charms you’ve said and what your results were.
  • Botanical or animal curios and your personal experiences with them.  Are there ones you favor?  Ones you shy away from?
  • Favorite spells and practices.  Do you particularly like working with the dead?  Do you have a favorite way to communicate with the Ancestors?  Are you a sharp-shooter when it comes to love mojos?  Tell us what you do and how you got so dang good at it!
  • Magical book reviews are also welcome, especially ones dealing with North American folk magic and witchcraft (not Wicca—there are lots of reviews on Wiccan books, so we don’t really want those here).  History, folklore, and regionally specific spellbooks (like conjure or brujeria books) are all excellent candidates for review.

Other topics are welcome; just email and ask about them first.  Not every article may get published on the site, so if we don’t select yours or if we suggest some revisions first, please don’t take it personally.

“Geez!” you say.  “That’s an awful lot of work for not getting paid!”  Ah, but there’s the twist in the plot!  While we’re still a relatively poor blog and podcast, we’re gearing up for another contest.  Anyone who writes a guest article that we post on New World Witchery will be entered for that contest.   We’ve still got to work out just what we’re going to give out, but right now we’re looking at having three winners drawn at random.  If you submit multiple posts and we publish them, you get an entry for every article we put up!  Each winner will get a different, unique prize, so this could shape up to be a very interesting contest.

So, yes, technically you’re still not getting paid exactly, but you may wind up with something cool in the end.  And you’ll be adding to the wealth of knowledge found here, so you are benefitting a whole wide world of witchy folk.  Isn’t that a nice feeling?

So, if you’re interested in being a part of New World Witchery, email us your articles and maybe win a prize in the process!  In case you can’t get the email from that link, it’s compassandkey@gmail.com.

Many thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you!

-Cory

Blog Post 65 – Thanks for Voting!

This is just a quick thank you to all of the folks who voted in our first polls.  We had a very substantial response to the questions I asked about improving the blog and podcast, and some heartening feedback on the question of a New World Witchery book, as well.

It looks like, on the whole, there are a lot of readers who want more practical and hands-on segments in both the blog and podcast.  For example, the question about what would improve the blog was answered “More Practice and Technique” more than any other choice, by a margin of 11 votes (out of a total of 121 votes).  Likewise, in the podcast question, 48% of respondents said they wanted more Podcast Specials or Practical Segments like Spelled Out or WitchCraft.

While I can’t guarantee that the blog will undergo drastic changes and feature a vast majority of practical elements, I will say that going forward I think I will attempt to include more hands-on and how-to information for you all.  It will be my goal to put up one practical segment per week at a minimum, eventually, and quite possibly more than that.  The podcast will likely continue to follow a similar format (other than the desire for more practical segments, most other answers were pretty evenly split across the board), but we may try to increase the length of the practical segments a bit.  And since the specials are so popular, we may try to make those a bit more frequent, too.

Finally, with the hugely positive feedback I got on the idea of a New World Witchery book (nearly two-thirds of respondents said “yes” to it, and the other third was “maybe” with only one “no” in the mix), I’m happy to say that I’ll be working on that project soon.  I’ve been asked to contribute to another author’s work on folk magic first, but I think that there may be room in the occult market for a New World Witchery book, too.

So thank you again to all who responded!  It was great to get that feedback, and I’m really looking forward to some of the directions this blog and podcast will be taking soon.  Please feel free, as always, to comment or email us with your suggestions, questions, ideas, rants, raves, and stories!  We do love hearing from you!

All the best, and thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 64 – City Spirits

Today’s post is going to be a little different.  I’m not going to cite any outside sources (at least, I don’t think I will…I may not be able to fight the urge).  Instead, I’m going to present some thoughts I have had which were spurred on by discussions about modernization last week, and in particular a comment from Crystal on Podcast 10.  She mentioned that as a city witch, she often feels the pull to get back to nature, which got me thinking:  can cities, buildings, and skylines be a part of nature, too?

Now, I know this isn’t an original thought, and that there are deeper philosophical questions here about whether people are a part of nature and therefore whether their creations are also a part of nature, but that’s not really what I’m getting at.  When I talk about “nature” above, I really mean the whole of nature, encompassing the spiritual dimension as well.  I’m thinking more in terms of whether the Otherworld might well have city elements in it.

Do buildings have specific spirits?  Like spirits of the land do?  Can you tap into a building’s spirit and use it in magic?  These are the questions that are swirling about in my head.  For example, there are definite precedents in hoodoo for using things like dirt from a courthouse or a bank or a hospital, because it’s assumed that the land upon which those structures reside will have absorbed a particular type of energetic influence which the root worker can then use for his or her own ends.  Is using that energy akin to using a little bit of the spirit of those places, or is the conjurer simply using accumulated human energy?

Even more to the point, are there places in cities that echo the kind of spiritual resonance found in locations like the Rollright Stones or Stonehenge?  After all, those structures were, at least to some extent, man-made (though I won’t begin to deny that they may be sitting on top of very particularly powerful places that have nothing to do with people).  But why can’t the Empire State Building or Beacon Hill in Boston or the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville have their own resident spirit (or spirits)?  And moreover, why not use places like that to do magic—not just in terms of collecting dirt or knick-knacks for spells, but actually deploying spells there, or finding subtle ways to contact spirits and interact with them in those locations?

For me, train stations have always had this very powerful Otherworldly significance.  I imagine that after death, there’s this sort of “waiting” place which always seems like a train platform to me.  Trains come and go, taking each person off to different post-mortem existences, or sometimes allowing them to just ride and enjoy the scenery for a bit.  There are food cars, drinks, other passengers to play cards with if being dead gets boring…er, at least, that’s how I envision it.  But lately I’m thinking that going to a train station is a lot like going to the Crossroads in traditional hoodoo practice.  I think I may try out a few things at our city train station and see how it goes.  If I do, I’ll be sure to post on that and let y’all know about it.

This is, of course, not an extensive discussion of this idea.  And there are probably lots of better sources for reading and thinking about urban magical practice than our little blog.  In fact, Velma Nightshade over at Witches Brewhaha recently did an episode discussing city witchery that’s well worth checking out (I couldn’t resist the opportunity to link to something).  But I just had to let some of these thoughts out, as they were making a lot of noise in my head and the gerbil that lives there was getting upset.

What about your thoughts and opinions?  Any strong inclinations on city magic?  Does it depend upon specific places?  Is there some way to turn a city landscape of concrete and steel into the same kind of magical place an ancient grove might be?   Do you practice this kind of city magic yourself?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

PS – I will be closing the current polls at 5pm today, so if you still haven’t voted, please do!  See the top right of the sidebar to vote.

Blog Post 61 – What do you think?

Good morning and good Monday everyone!

We’ve got another podcast almost ready which should be up in the next day or two.  I thought I’d start off the week, though, with a set of polls for all our readers here at New World Witchery.  They’re nothing fancy, just a couple of questions about what you like best or would like to see more of with regards to the blog and podcast, and a question about whether a book on New World Witchery is something that would interest folks.

These polls are really guides for us to help make the site and show better for our listeners and readers.  The results may or may not change the content of the blog or podcast, but at the very least they will help us figure out a little bit more about what people want from us here.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the polls:

The polls will probably close in about a week, so you’ve got some time to answer.  I’ll also keep them up on the sidebar throughout the week so you don’t have to use only this post to answer.  We really appreciate your opinions, and your readership!  Thanks so much!

Be well,

Cory