T’ween Dusted Pages of Auld
T’ween Dusted Pages of Auld
Selected Witchcraft Books
“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
John Milton
A Cunning Man or Hedge Witch must be a veritable walking encyclopedia with knowledge and understanding of many, many things — not just Traditional Craft. I suggest that you read all you can get your hands on. Never forget that your local library can be a great boon to you on your quest for knowledge and information. If the library near you does not carry the books you are looking for you can always order them as an inter-library loans and you are usually able to keep the book longer than a traditional checkout. Scour new and used bookstores as well. Even places online such as Alibris and AbeBooks can be helpful in locating obscure titles.
Below are some of my favorite titles that may be of some interest to you. The titles include a link to Amazon for your ordering convenience.
- The History of Magic
- The Magic of the Horseshoe
- Leechdom, Wortcunning, and Starcraft
- Popular Romances of the West of England
- Handbook of Folklore
- Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, chiefly of Lancashire and the North of England
- Pott’s Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster
- Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs
- Magic and Husbandry: The Folk-lore of Agriculture; Rites, Ceremonies, Customs, and Beliefs
- The Folk-lore of the Isle of Man: Being an Account of Its Myths, Legends, Superstitions, Customs, and Proverbs
- Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning Lincolnshire
- Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning the Orkney and Shetland Islands
- Ancient Scottish Ballads: Recovered from Tradition, and Never Before Published
- Wiltshire Rhymes, A Series of Poems in the Wiltshire Dialect
- Shropshire Folklore: A Sheaf of Gleanings
- Old English Ballads
- Fairy tales, from the German, with illustrations by I.R. Cruikshank
- Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology
- Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland
- A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology: Containing a Popular Account of the Two Eddas
- The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland
- Northern Mythology: Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia
- The Fairy Family: A Series of Ballads & Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe
- The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
- Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland
- Myth, Ritual and Religion
- Flowers and Flower Lore By Hilderic Friend
- Plant Lore Legends and Lyrics
- Witch, Warlock, and Magician: Historical Sketches of Magic and Witchcraft in England and Scotland
- A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts on Witchcraft and the Second Sight
- Highland Superstitions: Connected with the Druids, Fairies, Witchcraft, Second-sight
- A Field Book of the Stars
- Folk-Lore of Precious Stones
- The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology: An Inquiry
- A Study of Fairy Tales
- Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore
- Natural History Lore and Legend
- Animal and Plant Lore: Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk
- Folk Medicine
- Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland
- Tom Tit Tot: An Essay on Savage Tradition in Folk-Tale
- Basque Legends
- Folk Memory
- The Darker Superstitions of Scotland
- The Devil in Britain and America
”In the White Goddess Robert Graves asserts that all real poetry is an invocation to the Triple Goddess of Antiquity-She who controls birth, death, procreation-and that which is the poet’s fealty for Her that determines the authenticity of his work. “The main theme of poetry” Graves says, “Is the relations of Man and Woman, rather than those of Man and Man as the Apollonian classicists would have it.” The male poet woos the Goddess with words in order to partake of her magic. He is at once her supplicant and her priest. Where does this leave the female poet? She must become an incarnation of the Triple Goddess herself, incorporating all her aspects, creative and destructive. This is why it is so dangerous to be a female poet. It is a little like being a Witch.”
— Erica Jong, Witches
The Witch
When I was a young girl by Nilus stream
I watched the desert stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
learned all his dreaming from my eyes,
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad
And mistress to a Medici.
And you have heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mein.
Who judged—the wench knows far too much—
And hanged her on the Salem green.© Adelaide Crapsey
Recently there has been a spate of plagiarized materials that have been made available through what are known as vanity press outlets. These outlets such as Lulu (CafePress is another similar venue that allows self-publishing) offer a rapid and inexpensive way to make material available to the masses, unlike corporate and mainstream publishers there is no editing staff, nor are there safeguards in place to assure that plagiarism will not be a rampant problem. Books containing plagiarized material that were made available through these sources have been discovered and these works consisted of content that was originally generated by authors such as Paul Huson and Michael Howard among others (these original authors still maintain valid copyrights to their works).
Examples of this type of intellectual property theft are the book The Hammer of Tubal Cain that was recently removed from Lulu, the entire corpus of this work was drawn from the book Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson. Other titles in the Lulu catalogue are being researched currently and as the plagiarized versions of other works are located I will make the titles available here as well for those who wish to be informed of this information. These and other materials were used without the author’s legal consent or permission so those on the lookout for interesting and illuminating books need to be aware of what they are actually purchasing when selecting books to purchase from these online self-publishing portals.
I hope the above links aid you as you begin your own journey of discovery.
