Musical instruments appear scattered throughout various folktales. A drum lies at the centre of the Tedworth Drummer story. Pipers and drummers try to follow underground tunnels, only to mysteriously vanish. But what of the instruments themselves? What folklore or stories swirl around the physical items?  A listener requested the folklore of musical instruments some time...

Going to the theatre can often feel like a magical experience. You sit in the dark, watching a story unfold in front of you, with your imagination filling in the gaps between the sets. It’s unsurprising that theatre superstitions would be so plentiful. Intended to bring good luck or ward off bad luck, some of...

Folklore and the arts are almost natural bedfellows. As we saw with the work of Newcastle-based painter Ralph Hedley, artists can capture local traditions for posterity. The Pre-Raphaelites created some of the most enduring depictions of myth and legend. Even creating art becomes a part of folk life, with various arts and crafts part of...

Studying the shapes of things is a popular means of divination, relying on human pattern recognition abilities. Look at reading tea leaves and coffee grounds, or tasseography, which rely on spotting symbols in the cup. The symbols often hold near-universal meanings (like a ring for marriage), but they can also be deeply personal to the...

Divination is a beautifully varied practice, with a plethora of tools and practices designed to give insight into situations. Practices like reading tea leaves or tarot cards already appear on this podcast. But what about those forms of divination that rely on ‘randomness’ in order to work? You might cast lots, throw dice, or interpret...

Last week, we looked at the use of dowsing to find treasure or criminals. Like water dowsing, this method requires the use of a rod that twitches in the hands when the target is close. But the other method of dowsing involves a pendulum. That is, an item suspended from a chain, cord, or hair,...

Morgan Daimler is a witch who has been a polytheist since the early 1990s. Following a path inspired by the Irish Fairy Faith blended with neopagan witchcraft. Morgan teaches classes on Irish myth and magical practices, fairies, and related subjects in the United States and internationally. Morgan has been published in multiple anthologies as well...

Dowsing is often used to find water, minerals, or even lost items. Where divination usually seeks to provide information, here the information is of a directly practical or tangible sort. Rather than telling a fortune, or providing a prophetic dream that must be interpreted, dowsing relates information about the presence of something the dowser is...

When it comes to the walnut tree, we’re probably more familiar with their produce than the actual tree. Walnuts are easily recognisable, and present in everything from nut selections to coffee cake.  We might even know that classic Jaguar cars often feature walnut veneers on their dashboards. Many guitars also feature walnut in their construction....

Poplar trees are perhaps one of the lesser-known trees that I’ve featured on this blog. Many people can recognise an oak tree on sight, but how many could recognise the poplar?  Indeed, how many would realise John Constable added a black poplar to the background of his famous painting, ‘The Hay Wain’? We find these...

Joanna Tarnawska is an animist, folkloric witch, and psychologist residing in the mountains of Lower Silesia, Poland. Her practice intertwines animism, bioregional traditions, and lore, drawing inspiration from the early modern period of Polish witch trials and Slavic folklore. With a strong foundation in anthropology and ethnography, Joanna’s work explores the deep connections between pre-...

Back in November 2020, I explored the folklore of the yew tree; specifically, the common yew, or English yew (Taxus baccata). Yes, it’s a poisonous tree. Yes, it’s linked with death. And yes, people like to say they pre-date the churchyards in which we find them. But in the intervening six years, my library of...