We look back at the past ten years to see how we’ve grown as a show and as practitioners of witchcraft. Then we launch our book club for 2020 with a look at Cunningham’s Earth Power.
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.
Laine brings up the excellent movie Arrivalas part of the discussion, so go check that out if you can!
We also launch our monthly podcast book club, which will focus on Scott Cunningham’s Earth Power and Earth, Air, Fire, & Waterfor 2020. Keep an eye out for our upcoming website post with the full reading plan. You can get 20% off those two books if you order from www.llewellyn.com and use the code SCOTT20 at checkout! Thanks Llewellyn!
Promotional image modified from image via Pixabay, public domain.
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 (as well as most of our contest announcements)! 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 are “Woman Blues,” by Paul Avgerinos, and is licensed from Audio Socket.
Please think about checking out our Audible Trial program. Visit Audibletrial.com/newworldwitchery to get your free trial of Audible, where you can download over 180,000 titles (including some narrated by Cory). Your purchases help support this show, and there’s no obligation to continue after the free trial
I like the books to feel cozy and relaxed when I read them
Greetings all, and Happy New Year!
Lately I’ve been doing a good bit of cleaning and organization of my library and my altar spaces (all one in the same room) along with my annual New Year’s cleaning, and that has me in a reflective mood. I’m sure you’ve seen any number of “Best of 2019” lists or “Year/Decade in Review” sorts of posts, but I wanted to take a moment to look at what’s gone on in the past year or so for me in my study of witchcraft (as well as my broader witchy reading trends). I’ll also look a little bit forward to what’s coming this year for us at the end, so if you are sick of retrospectives, feel free to bounce to the last few paragraphs instead. Go on, I won’t mind, I promise!
If you are sticking around for the look back, I will say that many of the books I’ve read are not “new” in 2019, although some are. Some I also was lucky enough to read in advance of 2019, even though they came out this year officially (one of the perks of having lots of great, bookish occultists in my social circle is being asked to do advance readings sometimes). A few of these books I’ll want to review in more depth at some point, and several I’ve reviewed already (I’ll link to those reviews when I mention the books). So let’s pull some of those spines out and dog-ear some pages! (I know, I’m a monster).
In the category of practical witchy books, there were a few that really stuck with me this year. I got the opportunity to do advance readings for bothBesom, Stang, & Sword, by Chris Orapello & Tara-Love Maguire, andSouthern Cunning, by Aaron Oberon. We did shows and interviews with those authors this year, and I’ve got a full review ofBesom as well (sorry, Aaron! I did mean to review your book, which is excellent, but just haven’t found the time–for those who haven’t read it, if you have any interest in Southern folk magic, it’s one to pick up posthaste!). Both of these books tackle personal systems of folk magic rooted in particular traditions, folklore, and practices. At the same time, the authors all write about these systems in ways that are flexible enough to offer insight into any practical system of witchery or magic a reader might be pursuing. I read several other books that do similar work this year, including Bri Saussy’s Making Magic, Lisa Marie Basile’s Light Magic for Dark Times, and Mallorie Vaudoise’s Honoring Your Ancestors. Saussy’s book takes the idea of magic as a daily practice and wraps that in an enchanted worldview, one informed by fairy tales, to transform personal and domestic spaces. The home becomes a locus of lived enchantment, with doorway altar spaces and connecting a magical kitchen with potential plant helpers and ingredients from the front and back yards. It’s very much written in a self-guided tutorial way, and governed by a retelling of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” at its heart, which is a charming lens through which to view the work in the book. Basile’sLight Magic was something of a revelation when I read it, pulling from a type of contemporary feminist witchcraft rooted more in the inner world of the practitioner than the old dirt-and-bones magic I usually write about. Yet, I was very much impressed by the way Basile made rituals and spells action-driven rather than purely reflective exercises. Her “Make your own Underworld Spell” is one that will stick with me for a long time to come, I think. Finally, Vaudoise’sAncestorsmay well be one of the best books I’ve read on a lived spiritual practice. I was absolutely thrilled by the combination of research, narrative, and practical work found in her pages. Her framework of ancestral practice is not condescending, but serious and thoughtful. She isn’t afraid to ask the reader to get a little uncomfortable and she doesn’t coddle them, but she also refuses to browbeat anyone for not doing things exactly as she does. Ancestral work happens on the reader’s time (and on their ancestors’ time, presumably), rather than by running through a checklist or exercise worksheet.
In a more historical and research-heavy vein, I also did a good deal of reading as I researched my own book (more on that in a bit), but a few new (or new-to-me) sources are worth mentioning here. Firstly, I should start with the Oxford Illustrated History of Magic & Witchcraft, which is exactly what it purports to be. Edited by one of my scholarly favorites in the field of witchcraft writing, Owen Davies, the book covers (mostly European) witchcraft studies from Antiquity to the twentieth century (it goes just a little bit beyond those markers in both directions, too, but the bulk of the book covers about 2,500 years of history). The material is dense, but useful, and while I quibble with a few specific points here and there (which I will hopefully get into with a fuller review sometime soon), as a handy reference it’s quite good. The “illustrations” are photo reproductions of various engravings, artifacts, and other similar ephemera, and it isn’t particularly heavy on images, but again, there are some real nuggets of gold in there, too. I was also absolutely bowled over by the truly excellent Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky, by David Bowles (who we interviewed last year about borderlands lore). In this book, Bowles essentially weaves together the Mesoamerican mythology of the Olmecs, Aztecs, Mayans, and others to create a loosely unified story following two rival siblings as they pass from civilization to civilization in different forms. It reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythologyretelling, and while it’s not exactly a direct transcription of the Popol Vuh or any of the other surviving codices, it does a marvelous job of enlivening these often-overlooked myths. I also felt that way about sections of The Annotated African American Folktales, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Maria Tatar. This is a collection of several major groups of folklore found in African American sources (both oral and literary) with some excellent notes by African American historian Gates, Jr. and fairy tale scholar Tatar. The section on Boo Hags is absolutely marvelous, and much of the material on Zora Neale Hurston made my heart sing. My only complaint with this book is that I want more of it, and a wider variety of tales, but truly this is essential to African American folklore studies in so many ways.
I’ll also note that I read Sabine Baring-Gould’sCurious Myths of the Middle Ages this year–a very old book dating back to the late nineteenth century and containing a wide variety of myths about everything from dowsing detectives to wandering Jews and hidden crusaders and kings. It was a bit out of my wheelhouse in some ways, and Baring-Gould is delightfully opinionated (one might even say salty) about some of the sources and stories he shares. It’s a fun read, however, and will reveal to a discerning mind just how long certain stories have been in circulation.
Somewhere between the researched witch study and the personal memoir falls Pam Grossman’s Waking the Witch. I’m sure a lot of people know Grossman for her podcast The Witch Wave, and she’s done a lot of good bringing contemporary feminist witchcraft to the forefront along with writers and social media personalities like Kristen Sollee and Bri Luna. Waking is an exploration of the witch as an icon more than any sort of deep historical dive or spellbook, although I definitely liked the way Grossman pulled from historical sources and connected them to literature and popular culture (and folklore at times). I’ll be doing more of a full review of this one at some point, but I can definitely say this book will have some impact and likely be cited and referenced a lot in future conversations on witchcraft.
Bridging to the world of fiction, I had the joy of reading several great pieces this year with an abundance of witchy ambiance. I already mentioned The Hidden Witch, by Molly Ostertag, when I wrote about graphic novels and witchcraft a few months ago, but if you want a brilliant illustrated story to connect folk magic, witchcraft, inclusion, diversity, and empathy (as well as something you can share with kids in your life), I’d highly recommend it. One of the best books I’ve read this year (and I know I’m late to the game here) is Children of Blood & Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi. It’s a fantasy novel, primarily geared at young adults but really for anyone, and it focuses on the quest of a magically gifted young woman named Zelie as she tries to restore magic to the land of Orisha. It’s heavily influenced by African religious, spiritual, and magical traditions, and both the telling and the world are completely engrossing (spells in Yoruban feel incredibly natural the way Adeyemi writes them). The sequel just came out, so I’m excited to continue in this series this year. I also cannot recommend The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste highly enough. Another work aimed at a younger audience but really ready for anyone to read, Baptiste’s book uses the Haitian tale of “The Magic Orange Tree” as its source, but manages to expand upon that story and make a marvelous story of a girl named Corrine who must defend her island from the local spirit beings known as “jumbies.” In the process, she learns a great deal about just how complicated spirit relationships (and human ones) can be. It’s rife with Caribbean folklore and a thrilling, sometimes even scary, read.
I also wandered into the pages of history with my fictional reading this year, too, and finally dug into Shirley Jackson’sWe Have Always Lived in the Castle. Jackson is probably best-known for writing “The Lottery,” about a small New England town with a hellish secret, but Castle is astounding. I don’t want to open up too much of the story here, because it is so twisted and subtle and strange, but I will say that if you are a fan of folk magic, this book is stuffed with it. The rituals and spells used by the narrator are hauntingly real. This book may well be one of my absolute favorites now.
Weirdo builds book fort. Film at 11.
So that’s the year that was, but what about the year yet to be? Well, we’ve got a lot of good things in store. Most of you probably know that I’ve been writing a book, which is due out from Llewellyn sometime later this year (probably sometime in Fall). I posted a photo of me with my enormous stack of research books on social media (see above), so you can probably guess this one is jam-packed with footnotes, and will be looking at North American folk magic from a folkloric, historical, and practical perspective. If you like the blog and the show, you’ll probably enjoy the book. With that coming, it’s likely I will also be showing up on a few other podcasts as the year wears on, so I’ll try to keep everyone up to date as that happens. We’ve also got a few authors on the docket for interviews in the coming months, ones with newly released books or books that will be released in the near future (and some of them are VERY exciting). I’ve also got a stack of books on my shelf that I plan to plow through in the next couple of months, and at that point I may start seeing if any of the authors are interested in coming on to talk about their work (I’ll put a little hopeful energy and a hint of who I might be asking in a photo of my “to read” stack below).
Finally, Laine and I have decided to add a fun segment to our show this year (it’s our ten-year anniversary of podcasting, so we’ve got a few fun things planned, so stay tuned for more in the coming months). We will be discussing Scott Cunningham’s books of folk magic–Earth Power andEarth, Air, Fire, & Water–and reading through different sections of those books each month. We’ll post up a reading plan in the next week or two so you can join us if you like (and we’ll have a chance to win a copy of both books, plus a discount for ordering them, so definitely keep an eye out for that post). We chose Cunningham because he in many ways represents where Laine and I started, and we each grew in distinctly different but complementary ways from his roots, so looking more closely at his work feels like both a homecoming and a new frontier for us. You’ll hear all about that in our next podcast episode.
That’s a lot of words about things that are already full of words, so I’ll pause for now. We hope you’ve had some great witchy reads over the past year, and if you have any recommendations (or have read some of the ones I mention here), please leave us a comment below and let us know!
We return to our divination workings from back at the beginning of 2018 to see how everything came together (or in some cases, didn’t). Then we throw some cards to see what the year ahead will bring.
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.
We base a lot of this episode on the readings we did in Episode 122 – Divining the New Year. Some of the divination tools we used in that episode were:
Big thanks to listener Rorie for reminding us to do this episode!
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 (as well as most of our contest announcements)! 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.
Please think about checking out our Audible Trial program. Visit Audibletrial.com/newworldwitchery to get your free trial of Audible, where you can download over 180,000 titles (including some narrated by Cory). Your purchases help support this show, and there’s no obligation to continue after the free trial
We look back at 2018’s witchy highlights and talk about some of our upcoming projects for the new year, then discuss folk magical approaches to self care for the new year as well.
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.
In the realm of magical self care, Laine draws from Cunningham’s Earth, Air, Fire, & Water. Cory is largely drawing from folklore related to magical cleansing rites and cutting and clearing away negative influences in your life, which have been the focus of several articles on the site, including:
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 (as well as most of our contest announcements)! 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.
Please think about checking out our Audible Trial program. Visit Audibletrial.com/newworldwitchery to get your free trial of Audible, where you can download over 180,000 titles (including some narrated by Cory). Your purchases help support this show, and there’s no obligation to continue after the free trial
Greetings everyone and hope you’re having a lovely New Year so far! What’s more, we hope to make it even lovelier for you by giving you the chance to win some truly marvelous journals from one of our friends and supporters, Cat at Datura Dreamings Etsy shop. She makes gorgeous journals and sketchbooks with astoundingly lovely cloth covers that would be perfect for any grimoire or spellbook you might be putting together. She’s also giving our listeners a 15% discount if you order from her by January 31st, 2019, and use the code “NWW15” at checkout!
We announce our winner of this contest (congrats Abbi C.!) and also launch a new contest in which you can win one of these two beautiful journals from Datura Dreaming:
So what do you need to do to enter?
Contest Rules:
As always, if you’re a Patreon supporter, you’ve got an automatic entry for this one. Thank you for stoking our cauldron fires!
Comment on this post (or reply with a comment on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and tag us) with your favorite witchy book/read from the past year. What book really made an impact on you, and is it changing your practice for the future?
Share your witchy goals with us! Are you engaging in any new practices? Recommitting to your existing practice? Do you have magical self-care rituals you can share? Will you be trying to learn something new as a part of your witchcraft? Comment here (or reply with a comment on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and tag us) and tell us all about it!
You can get up to three entries through any of those three methods. You’ll have until midnight on January 11th to get these in to us! Please remember that we’ll be announcing the winner online and that we often share the lore and ideas we get from listeners, so make sure to let us know if you need your name changed for any reason.
We launch our eighth year of podcasting with an episode that looks forward to the coming months through divination. Lots and lots of divination! Laine and Cory try out several different divinatory methods (some they’ve used before, and some they haven’t), then break down what they see in the cards, beans, bones, or stones for the year ahead. Plus we do our Magical Object, which seems like child’s play but also has plenty of magical uses, too!.
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.
Both of us use Cory’s method of cartomancy for one of our readings. You can find out more about that in his book, 54 Devils, or by reading these posts from our past:
Rune Stones given to him as a gift, read using some of the information in Diana Paxton’s Taking Up the Runes
The Haindl Tarot pack, by Hermann Haindl (Rachel Pollack’s books are the top recommended interpretation guides)
His personal “bones” collection for bone readings. He uses elements of the technique in cat yronwode’s Throwing the Bones, as well as drawing on his experience. Some photos are below:
Cory’s rune from his divination, “Hagalaz” Cory’s reading using the Haindl tarot Cory’s “bone” collection for readings Cory’s playing card divination
Thank you to listener Maria, who suggested the Everyday Magical Object of marbles for this episode. Please feel free to send in your own suggestions for future objects!
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.” 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.
Incidental Music is “Laid Ten Dollars Down,” by the Black Twig Pickers, and is used under a Creative Commons License from the Free Music Archive.
In our latest show, we talk about what our plans are for the coming year; about getting out of our heads and into our incantations; and about the exploding presence of witches in media lately. We also have our NOLA swag bag contest winners announced!
Other recent media featuring witches includes: Beautiful Creatures, Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem, Witches of East End, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, The Magicians (by Lev Grossman), Frozen (okay, she’s not a witch, but a sorceress/queen, and a good one at that!), Maleficent, Once Upon a Time, and Grimm. I mentioned and linked many of these in a recent cartulary post, too, if you’re interested.
We announced a NOLA swag contest winners in this episode! Listen if you want to know who the lucky three were.
If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!
There’s a bit of folk superstition about New Year’s Day that says whatever you want to be doing for the next twelve months, make sure you’re doing it on January 1st. You’re also not supposed to start anything you can’t finish, which brings me to this quick-n-dirty little blog post. I intend (dare I say hope?) that I will be doing a tremendous amount of writing over the coming year, including finishing several writing projects I’ve been working on for a while, so I wanted to make sure I wrote something for New World Witchery before midnight tonight. But I also have been using the day to accomplish a dozen other New Year’s magical traditions (cleaning, black-eyed peas, collard greens, etc.) so I thought a short and simple giveaway post might just kill the proverbial twin birds.
For this giveaway, we’ll be handing out a doozy of a divination prize pack. It includes:
A mini-altar kit and pair of mini-dowsing rods from Franchesca at The Texan Heretics
A bottle of Psychic Boost Oil from the lovely Magnusons of Candlesmoke Chapel
A stunning javamancy board from Chas Bogan of Carnivalia
A five-card email card reading from me, complete with card report
Pretty stellar, huh?
So what do you have to do to get an entry into this contest? It’s incredibly simple! Just answer one or more of the following questions:
What are your magical/witchy/Pagan New Year’s resolutions? What magical projects do you hope to get off the ground? Are there areas you want to learn more about? Are you going to get more involved in the community? Just give us a brief snapshot of what you hope to accomplish from a magical standpoint in the coming year.
What is your favorite magical/witchy/Pagan holiday and why? What do you do for it? Has it always been your favorite? What will you be doing to make it special this year?
What (if any) practices, spells, etc. has New World Witchery been able to add to your cauldron? Are there specific regions of folk magic you’ve begun to explore more (like Conjure or Powwow)? Do you find the info here useful on a practical level or is it more of a general information site for you?
That’s it! All you have to do is write to us at compassandkey@gmail.com and answer a question or two or three. You get one entry per question answered, so you have a chance to get up to three entries just by writing to us (you can combine all answers into a single email, as long as you make it clear you’re answering multiple questions somehow). Make sure to use the subject line “Three Questions Contest” so I know what you’re writing us about.
The deadline for this contest will be Friday, January 31st, so get your answers to us by then!
Also, please check out and/or enter our other current contest for one of three NOLA swag bags, which will be ending January 17th!
Thanks everyone for a great 2013, and here’s looking forward to a very enchanted new year!
I hope you’ve all had a festive holiday season and are looking forward to a fantastic 2013! I’m working hard on a number of projects at the moment, including new posts for the blog, getting new show topics and guests lined up, starting a New World Witchery contest, finishing a school project and an assignment for an academic journal, finding PhD programs, continuing work on any of the books I’ve got in the works (and looking for publishers for those books), planning out some second-half-of-the-year classes for my local magical group, keeping up with my reading list, learning a couple new languages (and refreshing my Spanish, too). Not to mention working a day job, being a father to two brilliant kids, and a husband to a very patient and very loving wife.
All of which is to say that life is very busy, but not so busy that I don’t decide to take on MORE crazy projects! (As a Gemini, having too many irons in the fire is par for the course, apparently). During the latter part of last year, I was listening to a conversation between Fire Lyte and Velma Nightshade on their joint podcast about the lack of witchy apps out there, and specifically how there isn’t anything that can integrate with their calendars like an almanac app. Well, I’m not a programmer of any kind, but I do know how to go through and use Outlook to generate iCal files, so I started working on something to fill that need. And here it is!
The calendar includes witchy holidays with lore, links, recipes, etc. I’ve included a number of the days I personally observe, and the full and new moons. Many of the links will bring you to the New World Witchery site for posts on the topics highlighted in the calendar alert, and some will send you to book recommendations, other sites with related lore and/or products, and so forth. For example, the calendar entry on New Year’s Day (which is when the whole thing starts…sorry for the delay in releasing it) includes a link to our entry on that day’s practices, a link to Sarah Lawless’ post on Hogmany, and a click-through to Lucky Mojo’s Chinese Wash, so you can start your year with a clean and lucky house.
It’s in a zip file, so please make sure that you can open those and that you know how to add an iCal file to your favorite calendar (a quick Google search will probably help you figure out how to do that).
I should point out a few caveats:
This is only for the first quarter of 2013. I’ll be working on getting other quarters up as soon as I can, but I wanted to get at least the first three months out there.
There may be one or two of these dates that have an entry with no links, or which are blank in some way. I’ll be correcting those in future versions.
It’s totally free and you can share it as much as you like, but please let folks know where you found it.
It’s sort of a New Year’s/Twelfth Night gift to y’all for being so spectacular, so I hope it’s useful to some folks out there. If someone out there is more technically gifted than I am and wants to undertake any improvements that integrate with this calendar, I’m a-okay with that. Just send me an email and let me know! And if you find this useful and all that, we’d certainly welcome donations to help support future work.
Here’s wishing you a very happy New Year! Thanks for all you’ve done for the show, and for being a spectacular audience!
If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you know we’ve passed some milestones recently and have been thinking of fun ways to celebrate. So what are we excited about?
We just passed 666 followers on Twitter. Who doesn’t get excited about nefarious numbers?
We’ve received over 100 reviews on iTunes, making us one of the top-reviewed magical/pagan shows there. Can we just say how much y’all rock for that?!?
We’re entering our 4th season, which means we’ve got three years of New World Witchery under our belts!
It’s a new year! Lucky 2013! What’s not to celebrate about that?!?
Laine recently taught my wife and I how to play Cards Against Humanity. It’s sort of the cherry on the sundae of celebration we’ve got going on.
With all that cause for excitement, we thought it would be high time for a contest. We’re going to have a somewhat broader focus this year, and hopefully spend some time looking at spiritual and magical paths from places across the country, so in order to do that, we want some of your lore and magic! We’ve done this before for holiday lore, but this time around we want lore related to the following categories:
Love (example: “When your nose itches, someone wants to kiss you”)
Luck (example: “Babies born at 12:12 on 12/12/12 are considered extra lucky”)
Money (example: “An itch in your left palm means money’s coming your way soon”)
Health & Healing (example: “Putting a wad of chewing tobacco on a bee sting will stop the pain and heal it faster”)
Fortune-telling/Predicting the Future (example: “Monday’s child is fair of face…”)
Protection from Harm: (example: “Putting a piece of lightning-struck wood in your rafters will prevent storm damage and fires”)
Now, obviously, don’t use any of the ones from that list, but otherwise, it’s pretty much fair game what you want to send in. Each bit of lore gets you an entry in the contest. Just make sure that if you send multiple entries in the same email, you number them separately (i.e. in a numbered list, if possible).
When you do send your entry in, please use the following format guide:
[Name – preferably one we can use in the show, but let us know if you’d rather us keep it anonymous]
[Region/Location – as localized as possible; we don’t need an address, but “Southern Illinois” or “Foothills of the Rockies” would be lovely]
[Ethnic/Cultural Association – if applicable; such as “Italian-American” or “based on something my Lakota Sioux grandmother told me”]
[Type of Lore – love, luck, money, etc.]
[Your bit of lore]
So a sample entry might look like this:
Nigel Aloysius Gimmelschtump (but call me “Smackdown” on the show, please)
Western Kentucky
Something from my German-English grandfather’s family
Money
“You should always hold on to the first dollar you make at any job. As long as you have it, you cannot be fired from that job.”
That might seem a little complicated, but it will be enormously helpful if you can follow that format. And, hey, free contest, right? Also, my apologies to Nigel Aloysius Gimmeschtump, wherever he may be. And to anyone calling themselves “Smackdown,” for any reason at all.
So what’s in it for you? Good question! Well, we’re putting together three prizes, based on three areas of North American folk magic:
The Braucher Basket – featuring a copy of Hex & Spellworkby Karl Herr, a copy of the new translation of The Long Lost Friend by Daniel Harms, a small folio of hand-written/painted charms, and a few other little goodies.
Granny’s Gunny-Sack – featuring a copy of Ozark Magic & Folklore, by Vance Randolph, a copy of The Candle & the Crossroads by Orion Foxwood, and a little sack full of curios, herbs, and magical charms from the Appalachians.
See? Good stuff! Send us a couple of emails and you could win one of these awesome prizes! Just because I’m nitpicking, here are some other rules though:
You can only win one prize. If your name comes up after you’ve already won once, we’ll pull another name for the next prize. Let’s not get greedy.
No entering under multiple names/emails. If we catch you doing that, you get no prizes. Possibly we will also curse you. Or sell your name to telemarketers. Sort of the same thing.
While we are looking primarily for North American lore, we welcome lore from around the world as well.
This contest is going to have a deadline of March 31st 2013, so please get your entries in by then!
Thank you all so much for three great years of New World Witchery! We love y’all to bits and pieces, so good luck in the contest!
New World Witchery - The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft 