ecosophia | Magic Monday

Midnight is almost here, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.2 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

The image? I field a lot of questions about my books these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. This was my fifty-righth published book, and the last contribution (so far) to the Cthulhu mythos to come from my keyboard. I hadn't planned on writing The Seal of Yueh Lao at all, but there were too many loose ends left hanging when I'd wrapped up The Weird of Hali, and this story took shape as I considered them. It's the shortest of my tentacle novels, a quiet little coming-of-age story with Asenath Merrill, the oldest daughter of the central character of The Weird of Hali, as its protagonist, and a tangled web of events borrowed from H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers for its mainspring. All in all, it worked surprisingly well. If you're interested, you can get a copy here if you're in the US and here elsewhere.

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~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no more comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Greetings JMG,

In Spain, there used to be a kind of lay, more or less professional healers called "saludadores". I don't know that much about them, but they where recognized and accepted by the church and the inquisition, on the condition of obtaining a license from the local Bishop first.

They were supposed to be able to reliably heal rabies and other ailments by touch, and to withstand red-hot metals, burning water etc.
Aparently,Town-councils routinely hired them, and the documents have survived.

Some of their "traditions" survived among common folk, albeit in an increasingly fragmentary form. For example, a book i've read contains some eye-witness off the power of cutting hemorragies instantly using sacred rhymes, being passed among common, non-professional housewives during the first decades of the XX Century.

My question will be if you know of equivalent lay traditions in England, France or other European countries existing before the arrival of the modern world.

Fascinating. No, I don't happen to know of anything along the same lines.

This sounds a bit similar to Braucherei in the Pennsylvanian German tradition (see The Red Church by C.R. Bilardi - the production quality of the book leaves a lot to be desired, but it gives a lot of info and practical guidance on the tradition).

Possibly also of interest would be the Merseberg charm from Germany, and more broadly, the tradition of Cunningmen/women and Leechcraft in England (though the latter were as much herbalists as users of spoken charms). Leechcraft by Stephen Pollington is the best book on that English folk-healing tradition I know.

Oh, also, Spellcraft by Robin Skelton gives a number of traditional rhymes/charms from many cultures (but lots from the Irish and Scottish), with a whole chapter devoted to healing, but it's a bit tough to find at a reasonable price these days, though occasionally one pops up on alibris.com for non-ridiculous amounts.

Cheers,
Jeff

Magic Monday

"Salutators"

Re: "Salutators"

Re: "Salutators"

Re: "Salutators"