graveyard – New World Witchery – The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft

Episode 136 – Graveyard Lore Part II

Summary:

We return under cover of darkness to the creaky gates and mossy tombstones of graveyards and crypts for this show. We cover a witch ring in a New York cemetery, spooky teenage trips to haunted graveyards, and holding your breath as you pass the local churchyard.

Please check out our Patreon page! You can help support the show for as little as a dollar a month, and get some awesome rewards at the same time. Even if you can’t give, spread the word and let others know, and maybe we can make New World Witchery even better than it is now.

Producers for this show: Heather, WisdomQueen, Regina, Jen Rue of Rue & Hyssop, Little Wren, Khristopher, Tanner, Achija of Spellbound Bookbinding, Johnathan at the ModernSouthernPolytheist, Catherine, Carole, Debra, Montine, Cynara at The Auburn Skye, Moma Sarah at ConjuredCardea, Jody, Josette, Amy, Victoria, Sherry, Donald, Jenni Love of Broom Book & Candle, & AthenaBeth. (if we missed you this episode, we’ll make sure you’re in the next one!). Big thanks to everyone supporting us!

Witch Ring in Fort Hill Cemetery, New York

Play:

Download: Episode 136 – Graveyard Lore Part II

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-Sources-

Big thanks to many of our listeners, including AthenaBeth, Michelle, Katie, Emma, Annie, and Thornwald who submitted to this show. We definitely expect to keep mining this topic for more, as we still have tons of great listener submissions to share with you! Keep those coming!

Some of the graveyards mentioned include the Fort Hill Cemetery in New York and Simsbury Cemetery in Connecticut.

If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!

Don’t forget to follow us at Twitter! And check out our Facebook page! For those who are interested, we also now have a page on Pinterest you might like, called “The Olde Broom.” You can follow us on Instagram or check out our new YouTube channel with back episodes of the podcast and new “Everyday Magic” videos, too! Have something you want to say? Leave us a voice mail on our official NWW hotline: (442) 999-4824 (that’s 442-99-WITCH, if it helps).

Promos & Music

Title and closing music is “Homebound,” by Bluesboy Jag, and is used under license from Magnatune.

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Episode 134 – Graveyard Lore Part I

Summary:

In this episode, we visit the crypts and churchyards to bring you some of our favorite graveyard lore. Huge thanks to those who submitted ideas for this! We’ve got more than enough for a part two another time, so if your submission isn’t here, don’t worry. We’ll be resurrecting it soon!

Play:

Download: Episode 134 – Graveyard Lore Part I

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-Sources-

Much of the lore in this episode was submitted by our listeners. Huge thanks to Arrow Claire, Sam Silver, Polly Lind, Devon K, Bambi, and Annie who were featured in this episode, and thanks to all who sent in lore (we’ll be getting to yours in a future episode, too).

Listener Sam Silver, whose lore is in this show, has also written a book on cemetery stories called Grave Gossip.

We mention a lot of movies this time around, including Hocus Pocus (which both Laine and Cory are ambivalent about), Poltergeist, and the new Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!

Promos & Music

Title and closing music is “Homebound,” by Bluesboy Jag, and is used under license from Magnatune.

Quick Update – Graveyard Lore Contest!

It’s been too long since we did a contest, hasn’t it? But we have a great one up and going, because we want to feature your some of your local lore from your local graveyards! In October, Laine and Cory will be discussing the ways that graveyards factor into both supernatural beliefs and magical practices, and we thought it would be fun to have you all share your graveyard stories with us! And if you do send something in, you will be entered to win one of two prizes, too!

To enter, all you need to do is get us your graveyard lore. You can send it to us via email at compassandkey@gmail.com (the easiest way) or leave us a voice mail at our hotline (442) 999-4824 [442-99-WITCH]. Tell us a name we can use on the show, your approximate area/location (you don’t have to be too specific, just a state or even “the Pacific Northwest” would be fine), and your piece of lore! It can be a ghost story from a local boneyard, a tradition observed in your area (such as leaving stones or pennies on certain stones), or even a bit of info about magic you’ve done in the graveyard! Put “Graveyard Lore Contest” in the subject line to make it easy for us to keep track of your lore, too, if you don’t mind. By sending the lore to us, you’re agreeing to let us read it on the air and use it in other projects, so make sure you’re okay with that (and that you use a name that you’re okay with sharing). You can see a video going over the basics here:

Don’t have any graveyard lore to share? That’s okay, you can still get an entry into the contest! Here are the alternative ways to enter:

Patreon – Do you already sponsor us on Patreon? Great! You’re in! Anyone who sponsors us at any level by the closing date gets at least one (1) entry into the contest.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel – We’ll pull a list of all subscribers on the last day of the contest, and if you’re subscribing to us (make sure we can see a user name of some kind), we’ll add your name to our sorting hat!
Share Your Favorite New World Witchery – Share one of our articles, videos, or episodes somewhere on social media and tag us! We’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, so you have lots to choose from. When you tag us and share your favorite piece of New World Witchery, we’ll add you to the drawing as well!

So what can you win if you enter? Well I’m glad you asked! We’ve got two prize packs for two winners:

The Wild Magic Pack – This pack features a copy of Aidan Wachter’s excellent new book Six Ways: Entries and Approaches for Practical Magic, a poster print of the poem “Sometimes a Wild God” written by Tom Hirons and illustrated by Rima Staines, a bottle of Conjured Cardea’s Abre Camino road-opening oil, and some bits and bonuses thrown in by us as well.
The Hills and Hollers Pack – This is a mountain magic based pack featuring Appalachian Folklore by Nancy Richmond and Misty Murray Walker, the first two volumes of Cullen Bunn’s chilling Harrow County graphic novel series, a book of mountain holiday lore called A Foxfire Christmas by Bobby Anne Starnes, and a bottle of our own Compass & Key Black Cat Oil (for luck and other good things to come your way).

Winners will be chosen at random from the total list of names we compile at the end of the contest, and prize packs will be selected randomly for the winners. The contest will close at midnight on September 1^st, 2018, so get your entries in ASAP!

We hope you’re already thinking about the chilly days of autumn and picturing yourself among the gravestones, and we can’t wait to hear from you!

-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 18^th-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