In The Wind & Rain: Weather Magic in English Cunning-Craft - Tuesday August 22nd, 6:30PM

The English can be said to be a people perpetually “under the weather”, and the traditional folk magics of the various wise-women, village wizards, service magicians, and local spiritworkers collectively called cunning-folk are full of weather lore: especially a huge range of regionally-specific ways of predicting weather patterns by natural magical means, omens, auguries, and ‘secrets’.

In this class, contemporary cunning-man and historian of magic Dr Alexander Cummins will guide us through considerations of such traditional weather cunning. We begin with analysing folkloric weather prognostication, demonstrating manners and means of interpreting the intricate choreographies of the seasons’ turning  by bird flight, beast call, and myriad other sensitivities of nature; reading sunsets like palms, harkening to what the shifting winds whisper.

Whether practiced by almanac meteorology and astrological elections, passed on in the experiments and tables…