We feature listener feedback of the macabre, morbid, and magical in this episode. We’ll hear tales of nighttime peepers, Wild Hunt taunters, creepy floating lights, and more!
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’re also working with the Wylde Faun candle company to offer a special discount to our supporters! You can buy anything from their catalog and get 20% off by using the code “NewWorldWitch” at checkout!
Image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson (c) 2020
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 consider supporting us by purchasing our promotional items in the New World Witchery Threadless shop or by joining our Patreon supporters.
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 conclude our annual #AllHallowsRead with a spooky tale of New Year’s Eve terror adapted from one shared by a listener, one we’re calling “He Likes It Loud.”
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.
This is the last of our spooky tales for the season (unless you’re a Patreon supporter, where you’ll get a bonus tale and all the stories in a single episode format). Special thanks to listener “New Year’s Eve” for sharing this one!
Huge thanks to everyone who participated in our recent surveys, including the one where many of our tales this year will come from! We’ll have announcements of contest winners soon!
We’re also working with theWylde Faun candle company to offer a special discount to our supporters! You can buy anything from their catalog and get 20% off by using the code “NewWorldWitch” at checkout!
Image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson.
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 tofollow us at Twitter! And check out ourFacebook 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 onInstagram or check out our newYouTube 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
Music for this episode includes works by Colin Scudder, Christopher Norman, Randall Crissman, and Paul Avgernos, and is licensed fromAudio 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! Please think about checking out our Audible Trial program. VisitAudibletrial.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
Summary: We continue our tales around the bewitched bonfire with our second installment this #AllHallowsRead. This time, we hear “The Avenging Voice,” a tale adapted from Midwestern folklore.
This tale is read by Laine, and adapted from a story found in Richard Dorson’s Buying the Wind, a collection of North American regional folklore.
Huge thanks to everyone who participated in our recent surveys, including the one where many of our tales this year will come from! We’ll have announcements of contest winners soon! You can now also pre-order Cory’s forthcoming book, New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic! (also available from Amazon).
We’re also working with the Wylde Faun candle company to offer a special discount to our supporters! You can buy anything from their catalog and get 20% off by using the code “NewWorldWitch” at checkout!
Image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson.
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
Music for this episode includes works by Colin Scudder, Randall Crissman, Jamison Hollister, and Paul Avgernos, and is licensed from Audio Socket.
Please consider supporting us by purchasing our promotional items in the New World Witchery Threadless shop or by joining our Patreon supporters.
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 begin our annual All Hallows Read tradition by visiting our local campsite, Camp Splitfoot. Tonight, we hear the tale of “Junior,” inspired by a local legend from author Victoria Raschke.
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 begin our annual All Hallows Read with the theme of campfire tales in 2020. Our first tale is a story called “Junior,” inspired by a local legend shared with us by author Victoria Raschke. You can also hear an interview with Victoria in our previous episode.
Huge thanks to everyone who participated in our recent surveys, including the one where many of our tales this year will come from! We’ll have announcements of contest winners soon!
We’re also working with the Wylde Faun candle company to offer a special discount to our supporters! You can buy anything from their catalog and get 20% off by using the code “NewWorldWitch” at checkout!
Image by Cory Thomas Hutcheson.
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
Music for this episode includes works by Colin Scudder, Nicole Reynolds, and Paul Avgernos, and is licensed from Audio Socket.
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
We talk with author and conjure worker Jake Richards about folk magic in the Southern Highlands, the many magical-cultural influences found throughout the mountains, and what people get right and wrong about Appalachia.
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 can highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Jake’s book, Backwoods Witchcraft, from Weiser Books. You can also check out his very informative blog, Little Chicago Conjure, as well
You might be interested in some of our other posts on Appalachian and Southern mountain folk magic, too:
Cory introduces the episode with a story adapted from Richard Dorson’s Buying the Wind.
We’re also working with the Wylde Faun candle company to offer a special discount to our supporters! You can buy anything from their catalog and get 20% off by using the code “NewWorldWitch” at checkout!
Image via Red Wheel/Weiser (promotional).
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. Incidental music is “Who’s Gonna Shoe” by Paul Avgerinos, and is also licensed from Audio Socket.
Please consider supporting us by purchasing our promotional items in the New World Witchery Threadless shop or by joining our Patreon supporters.
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
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!
We are joined by geophysicist, volcanologist, and magical friend of the show Kathleen Borealis to talk about rocks, gems, and geology for witchy folk.
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, of course, recommend checking out Kathleen’s excellent podcast Borealis Meditation, which is all about geology for pagans and other magically-minded folk.
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. Incidental music is “Brushed Bells – Leaving Home” by Daniel Birch (Free Music Archive).
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 are joined by author and world-traveler Gwion Raven as we discuss the ways in which food, cooking, and sharing a meal add some enchantment to the world.
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.
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).
Want to buy some New World Witchery merch, including face masks, tee shirts, and more? Visit our Artist Shop on Threadless!
Promos & Music
Title and closing music are “Woman Blues,” by Paul Avgerinos, and is licensed from Audio Socket. Incidental music is “In Memoriam Soproni Tendl Pal,” by Meta & Kalman Balough; and “NYC,” by Wolfram Gruss, 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
We open the pages of literary witchcraft one more time, but this time we look at magic and literature from the author’s point of view. We talk with urban supernatural mystery writer Victoria Raschke about how she weaves magic into her words, and how her magical experiences in real life influence what winds up on the page.
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 are discussing Victoria Raschke’s books in this episode, particularly her Voices of the Dead series. She reads an excerpt from Our Lady of Various Sorrows. You can also visit her publication company, 1000 Volt Press, for more information.
Image courtesy Victoria Raschke/1000 Volt Press (used with permission).
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. Incidental music is “NYC” from Wolfram Gruss and “In Memoriam Soproni Tendal Pal,” by Meta & Kalman Balog, 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!
