smug birds – New World Witchery – The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft

Special Episode – Folk Magician’s Notebook – March 2023

Birds, diamonds, discs, squeaky wagons, and wishing lanterns!

Summary:

We look at the cards and moon for the month, hear a story about a trio of competitive friends from Slavic lore, watch some birds in the sky, and send up some wishes!

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:

ConjuredCardea, AthenaBeth, Jen Rue of Rue & Hyssop, Achija Branvin Sionach, Catherine, Jamie, Ralph of the Holle’s Haven Podcast, Christopher, Montine of Book of My Shadows, Victoria & Keifel of 1000 Volt Press, Heather, Sherry, Fergus, Jennifer, Donna, Stephanie, AromaG’s Botanica, Benjamin, Matthew Venus of Spiritus Arcanum, Mark, Vee, Meg, Liz, Donna, Lisa, Jacob, Sierra, and Jen!

Our sincere thanks to everyone supporting us!

Play:

Play: Special Episode – Folk Magician’s Notebook – March 2023

Stream:

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We highly recommend that you find an almanac or lunar-oriented datebook to help you with planning out your own magical year. Some we can recommend:

The Witches Almanac

Llewellyn’s Witches’ Datebook

Benebell Wen’s Metaphysician’s Planner

Montine’s Book of My Shadows

Or your local Farmer’s Almanac!

You can find a transcript of this episode at our Transcripts page.

The story this episode is “The Carpenter, Perun, and the Devil.” found in Forests of the Vampire, edited by Charles Phillips.

We also mention The Dabbler’s Guide to Witchcraft by Fire Lyte for the Wishing Lanterns section.

Please note that we’ll be doing our card-readings slightly differently this year. Laine will read for Cory, and Cory for Laine, but we’ll also share general information on the cards we pull, too. If you are interested in playing card divination, you can check out our Cartomancy post or pick up Cory’s book, 54 Devils.

You can now buy Cory’s book, New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic! (also available from Amazon)

Image via Pixabay (CC 2.0)

Don’t forget to follow us at Twitter! And check out our Facebook page! For those who are interested, we are also on TikTok now. You can follow us on Instagram (main account, or you can follow Laine as well) 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 and Music:

Title and closing music are “Runaround (AM Radio),” by Aaron Solomon, and is licensed from Audio Socket. (License #1273). Additional incidental music Kevin Macleod, from Free Music Archive and used under a CC 2.0 license; and additional music licensed from Audio Socket including: “Lost Souls,” by Aaron Solomon; “Finally at Peace,” by Colin Scudder; “Baluji Shrivastv,” by Raag Maru Bihag; and “Underwater Astronomy,” by Tear Ceremony.

Sound effects from Freesound.org and in the Public Domain.

Please consider supporting us by purchasing our promotional items in the New World Witchery Threadless shop or by joining our Patreon supporters.

If you like us AND you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you will love our new show: Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast, now available through all the podcatchers! You can also check out Cory’s folklore show, Chasing Foxfire, where he explores the intersection of folklore and topics like history, medicine, science, nature, literature, pop culture, and more!

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

Episode 224 – (Smug) Bird Lore

Ca-CAW!!! Feather your nest with some egg-cellent lore!

Summary: They may be smug, but there’s a LOT of folklore about them! We’re talking bird-based folk beliefs, magic, superstitions, and more this time.

Producer for this show: This episode is supported by listener Cathy, to whom we offer an egg in these trying times.

Play: Episode 224 – (Smug) Bird Lore
Stream:

We draw upon a variety of sources for information this episode, including:

De Divinatonae/On Divination by Cicero (augury in the ancient world)
What the Robin Knows by Jon Young (the science of bird-watching)
Folkloric American Witchcraft & the Multicultural Experience by Via Hedera (blue jays and the devil)
Earth, Air, Fire, Water by Scott Cunningham (the passage that inspired this episode)
“The Goose Girl” and “Frau Holle” which appear in the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
The Crow by James O’Barr (massive childhood inspiration) and The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (adult inspiration)
“Odds and Ends of North American Folklore on Birds,” by W.L. McAtee (Western Folklore 1955 article)

The transcript for this episode is available on our Transcripts page.

Some upcoming publications from us:

Cory recently contributed to The Gorgon’s Guide to Magical Resistance, edited by Jenn Zahrt and Laura Tempest Zakroff (which includes his “penis trees” article along with a lot of other great pieces) and the upcoming release of the Llewellyn’s Complete Book of North American Folk Magic, out in Spring 2023. Also be on the lookout for our upcoming collaborative book Conjuring the Commonplace: A Guide to Everyday Enchantment and Junk Drawer Magic also coming in 2023 from 1000Volt Press.

You can now buy Cory’s book, New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic! (also available from Amazon)

Please note that clicking on links may provide some monetary compensation to New World Witchery.

Image via Pixabay (Used under CC 2.0 License, modified by New World Witchery)

If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us at compassandkey@gmail.com or newworldwitcherypodcast@gmail.com or leave a comment at the website: www.newworldwitchery.com . 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 are also on TikTok now. You can follow us on Instagram (main account, or you can follow Laine as well) 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 and Music: Title music is “Woman Blues,” by Paul Avgerinos. All music is licensed from Audio Socket (#35954).

Please consider supporting us by purchasing our promotional items in the New World Witchery Threadless shop or by joining our Patreon supporters. If you like us AND you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you will love our new show: Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast, now available through all the podcatchers! 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

Episode 217 – Magical Mail Time

We answer listener messages about magical marbles, dreams of smug birds, mixing divination systems, and more!

Summary: We look into our mail bag and pull out a half dozen or so messages we’ve gotten over the past year to answer out loud, with words! We talk about magical marbles, dream states (including some with smug birds), and Czech folklore. Plus we do our card readings and Cory suggests a way to use cards to magically work through a problem.

Producer for this show: This episode is supported by AromaG’s Botanica. We greatly appreciate your ongoing support and currently sending you our very finest fleet of choreographed ravens to do an eerie aerial dance of gratitude on our behalf. Please do not make eye contact with them. That doesn’t usually go well.

Play: Episode 217 – Magical Mail Time
Stream:

Sources:
Big thanks to our listeners who sent in messages for this show! Some of these messages were in response to previous shows including the January 2022 Folk Magician’s Notebook, Episode 163 – Dreams, and Episode 205 – Death Lore.

You can now buy Cory’s book, New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic! (also available from Amazon)

Please note that clicking on links may provide some monetary compensation to New World Witchery.

Image via Pixabay (Used under CC 2.0 License, modified by New World Witchery)

Promos and Music: Title music is “Woman Blues,” by Paul Avgerinos. All music is licensed from Audio Socket.

Episode 163 – Dreams

Summary:

This time we’re looking at dreamscapes and discussing sleep-based magic and folklore. We talk about lucid dreaming, dream interpretation, mara/nightmares, and ways to boost dreaming. We also discuss Air in our Cunningham Book Club (as well as the smugness of birds).

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, Jenni Love of Broom Book & Candle, Jennifer, Jen Rue of Rue & Hyssop, Little Wren, Khristopher, Tanner, Fergus from Queer as Folk Magic, Achija of Spellbound Bookbinding, Johnathan at the ModernSouthernPolytheist, Catherine, Payton, Carole, Payton, Staci, Montine, WickedScense, Moma Sarah at ConjuredCardea, Jody, AthenaBeth, Bo, Scarlet Pirate, Tim, Leslie, Sherry, Jenna, Jess, Laura, & Clever Kim’s Curios (if we missed you this episode, we’ll make sure you’re in the next one!). Big thanks to everyone supporting us!

Play:

Download: Episode 163 – Dreams

Play:

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Much of our discussion comes from personal experiences, but we do discuss dreams a bit in one of our posts on Signs and Omens.

We also mention the phenomenon of lottery “Dream Books” in African American communities, and you can read more about those in Jeffrey Anderson’s Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure: A Handbook and Yvonne Chireau’s Black Magic: Religion & the African American Conjuring Tradition. You can also download a copy of one of the better known dream books, Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book for free.

We discuss nightmares and the phenomenon of the mara/hag riding, which is the subject of a great book by David Hufford called The Terror that Comes in the Night. The lucid dreaming tips Cory mentions come from a great digital graphic project on Chaos Magick called The Psychonaut Field Manual (HIGHLY Recommended!).

Oh! And shout-out to the excellent Cursed! Podcast, who partly inspired this topic.

If you’re interested in participating in the book club, check out the post introducing it.

Image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (2019 – CC 2.0 License).

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.

If you like us AND you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you will love our new show: Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast, now available through all the podcatchers!