To receive access to all lessons, you must be current with your payment plan.
First payment due to register; Second due 3/15, Third due 3/25, Fourth and Final due 4/5

Cunning Craft Foundation Course
taught by Dr. Alexander Cummins

Six 1.5 hour Tuesday Sessions
Tuesday, Mar 2nd, 2021 (Part 1-Introduction to Cunnning-Craft)
Tuesday, Mar 9th, 2020 (Part 2-Divination)
Tuesday, Mar 16th, 2020 (Part 3-Unbewitching)
Tuesday, Mar 23rd, 2020 (Part 4-Conjuration)
Tuesday, Mar 30th, 2020 (Part 5-Nigromancy)
Tuesday, Apr 6th, 2020 (Part 6-Conculsions for Modern Practice)
Time: 8:00 to 9:30 pm, EST

Cost: $350- payment due at time of registration
Platform: Zoom

Video of each session will be recorded and distributed to those actively enrolled.

Wise Ones. Pellars. "White witches". Sorcerers. Doctors. There are a huge variety of regional names for folk magic practitioners and service magicians in the pre-modern British Isles. These are often collected, by historians and practitioners alike, under the broad umbrella term of cunning-folk: those who practice cunning crafts. 

Such professional practitioners made their trade in the practical magics of divining, unbewitching, treasure-hunting, spirit conjuration, ghost-laying, and the making of charms, talismanic objects, and magical medicines for their clients. These individuals frequently straddled the lines between disapproved witchcraft and pious charming prayers, and between salt-of-the-earth folk sorcery and high learned ritual magic.

In this course, Dr Alexander Cummins will lead us through in-depth examination of the evidence left of pre-modern cunning - from witch trial accounts and legal records to pamphlets and recorded common rumour; and from reports of such cunning-folk's successes and failures in serving their communities, to detailed and exhaustive study of the working-books of such cunning workers.

1. Introduction to Cunning-Craft
2. Divination
3. Unbewitching
4. Conjuration
5. Nigromancy
6. Conclusions for Modern Practice

Particular focus will be made on the stock-in-trades of these practical sorcerers. As such this course will break down the folk divinations of sieve-and-shears, book-and-key, as well as the formal calls and protocols of working a shewstone, scrying mirror, or glass to bring knowledge, visions, detect lost and/or stolen good and people, and to call and compact with spirits. Special attention will also be paid to rites of unbewitching: from charms to countermagic, scissors to psalms, suffumigations to sigils, washings to witch-bottles, and beyond. Cunning approaches to spirit conjuration - from circles to wand consecration, and from ritual structure and the proper calls to kingly senior spirits as well as their ministers - will be assessed, with an emphasis once more upon practical considerations and procedures. Finally, the explicit nigromancy of the working-books - the operations to secure a dead man's assistance or tutelage, the spells prosecuted by conjured demons, and everything in between - will be carefully examined and explored. All the while, the tools, prayers, and texts by which these works were performed and preserved will be presented, assessed, and analysed.

Finally, naming and celebrating a litany of such village wizards, wise-women, and local witch-doctors, we will pay homage to these sorcerous foremothers and forefathers; and even consider how contemporary practitioners might seek and curry favour, tutelage, and empowerment from the Cunning Dead...

This course will also form the basis and prerequisite for planned Advanced Cunning courses, further exploring the sorceries and folk variations of the Cunning Crafts.
 

If you have any questions, please email info@wolf-and-goat.com.