A practitioner's research desk
An open archive of folk magic & its sources
Cross-tradition synthesis of folklore, history, and contemporary practice1,2 — cited, compared, and kept honest.
The collections
Six standing departments
I
Correspondences
Herbs, crystals, colours, moon phases — cross-referenced and sourced.
II
Spells
Documented workings, each traced to the tradition it comes from.
III
Rituals
Liturgical structures across folk and ceremonial paths.
IV
Sabbats
The Wheel of the Year, read back to primary folklore.
V
Guides
Long-form introductions to the practical questions.
VI
Field notes
Essays and observations from the research desk.
From the desk
Recently catalogued
- Aconite (Wolfsbane / Monkshood)Aconitum — queen of poisons. From Theophrastus and Ovid's Medea through flying-ointment recipes to the modern werewolf myth: what the historical record actually says.
- Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade)Atropa belladonna in the documentary record: classical toxicology, the bella donna pupil story, flying-ointment sources, and what its alkaloids actually do.
- The Malleus Maleficarum: What It Actually IsHeinrich Kramer's 1486 witch-hunting manual: what it argues, who really wrote it, how contemporaries condemned it, and what historians say about its actual role in the hunts.
- The HareThe witch-hare who steals milk and evades lead shot — and the older moon and three-hares symbolism — sourced from trial records and folklore collections.
- HyssopHyssop carries the longest purification pedigree in Western ritual — but the plant of Psalm 51 is almost certainly not the Hyssopus officinalis sold in herb shops.
- Poppets and Image Magic: The Documented HistoryImage magic — Egyptian wax figures, Greek kolossoi, English trial poppets — documented across three millennia and distinct from the Hollywood 'voodoo doll' construct.
- VenusVenus as the lesser benefic: copper, Friday, green, and the correspondences Ptolemy established and Agrippa systematized—grounded in the historical record, not romance-astrology.
- AmberFossil resin, not mineral: tracing Baltic amber from prehistoric trade routes to Pliny's Rome, and separating the genuine amuletic record from modern crystal-healing claims.