Lorelei Rivers, Asian indigenous wise woman, spirit worker, ancestral herbalist, land healer, caretaker of critters, folk magic practitioner, cottage witch and feral homemaker, permanently exhausted pigeon and certified sloth, summoner of demons and adopter of haunted dolls. The townsfolk call me the mother of cats. She/her.
Grimoire Pages
Advice for New Witches
Animals and Nature
Baneful Magic
Cleansing, Banishing, Warding, Protecting
Decolonizing Witchcraft
Divination
For Pagans/Witches to Beware of
Hellenic Polytheism
Herbalism
Magical Things
Magical Topics
My Posts Related to My Practices
Otherworldly Beings
Religions and Deities
Rituals and Spells
Sigils
Spell Jars and Spell Bags
Spirit Work
Spoonie Pagans/Witches
Tarot/Oracle Spreads
The Goddesses In My Life
*My inbox generally stays open. Please read before sending asks.
*I keep my blog discourse free.
*I'm a witch, but I'm not a Wiccan.
*I'm spiritual, religious, and polytheistic.
*I'm a childfree homemaker, but I'm not a "tradwife".
*I'm a democratic socialist and I support the Xenia Declaration.
I have officially reached the age where one of my priests is almost a decade younger than me. So it's only kind of hilarious when he does the priestly address of me in the form of "my child".
I am a devout, humble, modest, pious, virtuous bride of Christ.
It reminds me of my duty as a good Catholic woman to not judge God's congregation when everybody is being an epic pain in the mighty rear at Mass (that being said, I'm not going to the one at noon on Sunday again).
I need an embroidered diaphanous force field around my head to serve as a barrier that shields me from the chatty parishioners who go to church to socialize when I just want to pray.
There are days when you just gotta write your enemy's name on a slip of paper in black ink, put it into a jar, chuck the whole thing into a garbage bin at a gas station when the clock strikes midnight, and let Hecate deal with them.
1500s: The arrival of the Spanish, who brought with them enslaved Africans from the Old World. The Spanish Catholics who settled in North America practiced Roman humoral medicine and Christian traditional medicine.
The Europeans who came to the New World encountered Native Americans and subsequently colonized many diverse groups of indigenous people. The traditions of the European immigrants began to combine with Native American folk healing, as well as the traditional practices of the enslaved people (who largely came from West Africa) whom the Europeans had brought with them.
1700s - 1800s: More cultures from Europe arrived in the area to add to the growing mixture. The English, the Scots, the Irish, the Germans, Catholic and Protestant, all brought their own things to add to and influence Appalachian folk magic. There was one thing that all these different peoples had in common: the Appalachian Mountains. A mountainous climate and the ailments that came from these mountain regions brought about the final shape to the folk magic and traditional medicine of the inhabitants and their descendants.
Of course, Appalachian folk magic is not simply boiled down to just a mishmash of African, European, and native American origins. The folk culture and people's practices of the Appalachian Mountains are both unique and diverse. While there are common customs that may come to mind, they certainly do not fit into one singular definition that covers all.
The advice that I will give everyone who asks me how to advance in witchcraft-related research (which is, I believe, a separate advancement from praxis) is always going to be to branch out beyond the witchcraft section. Look through the bibliographies. Find the reference texts. Read the boring books, engage in the application of academic materials to real-life practice, and learn how to come to your own conclusions.
“[…] there can be said to exist two types of practitioners—the specialists or wise ones (Sw. klokfolk) and the common persons who are sometimes clients of such specialists, but who can also perform certain procedures on their own, as long as certain ritual prerequisites are met. For this reason, there are some rituals that seem accessible to both the specialist and the common person.” - Dr. Thomas K. Johnson, Svartkonstboker
Notes: This post, like all of my posts, is written from the background of diasporic European folk magic. This post largely deals with historical magic and is not intended as an admonition of purchasing “fixed” or “charged” spell items; nor is it intended to categorize such purchases in contemporary use as layman’s magic or the practitioners who purchase them as non-practitioners.
A large portion of the known body of traditional folk magic is what is known as “service magic”, magic that was bought from skilled practitioners by non-practitioners. In many cases, these services were rendered directly by the practitioner in the form of spells, rituals and remedies. Here, the magic, healing, or other working was performed entirely by the practitioner at the request of a client. This magic, although performed on behalf of a non-practitioner, still falls into the realm of specialist magic because it is performed by a practitioner in its entirety.
On the other side of the spectrum of service craft is “layman’s magic”. This was magic that, despite being purchased from a specialized practitioner, was both easily enough performed by an outsider to the craft and also somewhat reliant on an element of client participation for best results. In layman’s magic, the practitioner lays the groundwork by performing any complex or specialist tasks, and then hands the work to the client for completion. It is the layman’s participation in such magic that activates the working and binds it into its place.
How Did Historical Layman’s Magic Work?
In our modern magical community, we tend to think of magic as something that is exclusively performed by practitioners (or, at the very least, by dabblers). In our world, magic is performed by witches and mages. We can find it packaged up and categorized into clear designations of what can be done by whom, and what qualifications must be met before the performance of certain magics is appropriate. Sometimes it is even further divided into what magic is suitable for beginners vs. advanced practitioners, and so on. Factors like travel and immigration, culture-sharing, the rise of literacy and published materials, and accessibility of information through resources like the Internet have made international and intercultural interaction much more common for the average person. They have also made the development and expression of such categorizations and boundaries necessary for the protection and maintenance of closed practices.
For the early modern practitioner, however, magic was much less divided. A given area or culture would typically only have one or two folk magical traditions living within it. So there was much less of a need for boundaries about who could and could not practice magic in its many forms. Occasionally there were gender-focused rules or rules associated with the circumstances surrounding one’s birth—but even those were flexible and sometimes fluid. If an aspiring cunning person didn’t have access to a willing mentor of the appropriate gender, for example, they could still become a practitioner of magic by stealing or finding a Black Book or by being mentored by spirits directly. Magic was practiced by all genders and ages; it was taken up by both the poor and the wealthy. The only separation that truly seemed to exist in early modern folk magic and folk medicine was the divide between the cunning person/skilled practitioner and the layman.
The layman of the early modern era was different from the non-practitioner that we might come into contact with as contemporary practitioners of magic and witchcraft. In our own day and age, we might assume that every non-practitioner that we encounter is also a non-believer. We know that, as a general rule, Joe Average neither practices nor believes in magic to any significant extent. This wasn’t the case for the historical non-practitioner. Although belief in magic and reliance on both folk magicians and folk healers gradually declined between the 18th and 20th centuries in Europe, belief in magic and spirits was an ingrained fact of life for the majority of human history. Whether a person was able to practice magic or not, they were almost guaranteed to believe in it. Prior to the scientific advancements of the 19th century, anything that altered one’s fate, caused illness, and created misfortune were believed to be the work of unseen spirits, devils and magical afflictions rather than germs, gases, and other mundane causes. Non-practitioners believed in magic and the supernatural, though they also believed that the world of the spirits and control over spirits was inaccessible to them, limited (at least to some extent) to the purview of the skilled practitioner.
Magic was a necessary part of the spiritual landscape of the early modern era and a means of obtaining healing, happiness and control for both skilled practitioners and their clients. The service magic economy created a sort of magical situationship in which the non-practitioner client base could rely on the folk practitioner’s cultivated relationship with their craft, the spirit world, and the land around them to help navigate issues of fate, health, wealth, and livelihood. But they did not always need to rely on the practitioner’s direct action to be the solution to their problems. Sometimes, magic could be prescribed rather than performed on the layperson’s behalf. The same way a doctor with the necessary skills to diagnose illness and the credentials to prescribe medications might assess a sore throat, diagnose it as strep and prescribe an antibiotic, the folk practitioner had the ability to assess problems caused by spirits, devils and other supernatural forces and determine the best course of action for solving them.
Some historical service magic is comparable to the “Etsy witches” of the contemporary age, where the entire magical working is performed by the practitioner with little assistance or action required from the client. Most of the surviving examples of service magic, however, fall into the category of layman’s magic. These include examples of rites in which something was required of the client, such as procuring certain items believed to have innate magical powers, making ritual journeys or nightly repetition of charms and prayers. They also included physical items which were intended to be worn or used by the client, as is the case with many amulets, prayer and charm scrolls (Breverl) that were meant to be sewn into clothes or worn in charm bags, and magical ointments. Such examples of layman’s magic were activated by the practitioner and then sold to the client who could apply or use them for their own purposes. It was not necessary for the practitioner to place the working directly on the client, their home, loved ones, farm, etc. It was enough that the magic had been placed on the amulet, written into the parchment, or otherwise activated.
Layman’s Magic Today
This tradition of service magic is still alive and well today, despite the gradual decline of many people relying on folk practitioners for help with their daily lives. The clientèle, however, has changed with time. In Western culture, many non-practitioners no longer believe in magic and many that do avoid interaction with practitioners and artifacts of magic out of fear or contempt. In my own experience (having both owned a witchcraft shop myself pre-pandemic and having collaborated with other retailers), the vast majority of what would once have been charms, amulets and tools intended for non-practitioners are now purchased by practitioners themselves. Fixed/charged candles, amulets, spell kits and other such tools are no longer considered the domain of the non-practitioner. Instead, they are readily available in witchcraft shops everywhere and (after being created and activated by one practitioner) are worked alone or incorporated into larger workings as magical support/enhancement.
The evolution of these charms in this way is not an end to the tradition of participatory elements of service magic. The use of what would have once been layman’s charms by contemporary magical practitioners is something of a natural continuation of the tradition, which reminds us that such the participation of the client in the workings of service-oriented folk magic was not an odd exception to the rules of folk magical practice. This participation was (and still is) one of the defining features of European service magic. It is also a reminder that such folk magic has always been something done not just for our communities, but with them.
I love witchcraft community. I love witchcraft friendships. But I don't have any use for friendships or community where the conversation and connection is centered on what we're posting online. Like, I know I have a blog and occasionally I'll make a post that is intended for other people. And I do care about what people are into. I just don't want every conversation to be about what's going onto our blogs or Instagrams or websites.
I beg you to tell me about your craft. Tell me what your spirits said in your dream last night. Tell me what omens the starlings brought you. Tell me about the offerings you're working on. Tell me what books you're enjoying. Tell me how your practice is growing and changing. If all we ever talk about is what we're posting or planning to post, that's a blogging network. And I'm not interested in that.
I dislike seeing nature characterized as Light and Loving Nature Mommy in spring and summer and Dark and Unforgiving Nature Mother in the autumn and winter. Thou liest!
Nature is nature and the forces we've been taught to see as "light" and "dark" exist year round. The summer is full of rattlesnakes and parasitic insects. The sun is high but the heat can be as deadly as the cold. The winter is teeming with softness and life, and things are sleeping softly underground. The night is dark and the sunlight is short, but the snow glows and the ice sings.
The thing about radical kindness (or any kindness, for that matter) is that there are going to be times when someone or something makes you regret it. There are going to be times when you show someone empathy and grace that they don't "deserve". There are going to be times when someone takes that kindness and uses it against you. The world doesn't magically transform into a perfect place when you decide to choose kindness and people will take advantage of it. People will continue to be shitty.
But the thing is...that's not a flaw of kindness. That's not a you problem. That's a them problem. People who are happy with themselves and their lives don't go out of their way to misuse someone's kindness or grace. The "normal" response to kindness or empathy is not to find a way to exploit it. People who are happy with themselves don't look for ways to hurt people for no reason. Kindness will never be the problem. No matter what some shitty person decides to do with it. It should go without saying not to be a doormat, yes. Don't allow people to treat you badly just for the sake of being kind. But also don't let shitty people make you bitter because of how they treated you when you were kind.
