Context
Folk traditions, with the lights on
Household custom is real, local, and not a single witchy brand. Name the people whose custom it is.
“Folk magic” means practices carried in households and communities, often beside official religion, sometimes against it. It is not a synonym for Wicca, and it is not one European cottage. English charm traditions, Scottish and Irish quarter-day customs, African American conjure and hoodoo, Appalachian and Ozark practice, and countless others are not interchangeable spices.
What this library will do
We teach original household rites and we describe, in plain context, a few historical shapes: threshold charms as a widespread idea, the English horseshoe debates, the fact that hoodoo is a living African American tradition with its own experts and is not a menu for bored pagans. We do not reprint conjure recipes as if we owned them. We do not call kitchen-herb smoke “smudging.”
What to do instead of collecting cultures
- Learn the custom of your own actual family if it was offered, and notice if it was Christian, skeptical, or both.
- If you are a guest in a tradition, read writers from inside it and stop when they say stop.
- Make an original rite for your real hallway rather than a costume of someone else’s grandmother.