One of the stock-in-trades of the countless village wizards, wise women, local spirit-workers, service magicians and folk practitioners across the British Isles known as cunning-folk has always been working against theft and those who commit theft.

In this class, we will examine various folk magical methodologies for detecting lost and stolen items by a range of traditional computational, visionary, and object-led divinations: from astrology and geomancy, to scrying a crystal or even an oiled thumbnail, to sieve-and-shears, book-and-key, and bobbing balls of clay in water; indeed, even to the use of various rods and wands of detection.

We shall take stock of the wealth of cunning means employed across the pre-modern British Isles for identifying thieves and even working magically for the return of stolen goods and to coerce the thief to reveal themselves.

We will consider the use of charms, amulets, and other sorcerous assemblages to protect goods, livestock,…