Hidden like Viking gold under the landscape there is a rich body of nearly lost folkwitch tradition hiding in plain sight on the internet. Particularly in the 18th and 19th century antiquarians, folklorists and ethnologists documented the rural and occasionally urban folk beliefs of practically all of the UK and much of Europe. Organizations like the Folklore Society, founded in 1878, were created to help catalog and publish this body of collected ethnological data. A vast repository of a spectrum of witch and cunning craft practices.
Below are a list of links to various sources on the internet. The non Abramhamic roots of British folk traditions date from an era of Celtic settlers, and thus much of the spirit tradition concerns beings we now collectively call “fairies”, though their origins and nature differ greatly.
Books Available Online for free:
Folklore Society/Folk-Lore Journal:
Over 100 publications made by the Folk-Lore Society can be found on Archive.org. Unfortunately these are mostly unsorted, although they represent a massive amount of folkwitch information. Particularly in the realm of curses, hexes, salves, second sight, and boundary magic.
I will be launching a separate blog dedicated to delving into the contents of the Folklore Society’s publications in the next few weeks. In the meantime – Happy digging: Link to archive of FOLKLORE JOURNAL
Books whose content focuses on first-hand accounts of folk traditions, alpha by author. (* denotes particularly important titles)
Benjamin Thorpe
-Northern Mythology, Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3
Lady Wilde
– Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland * Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3
vanhalenofficial 