Agriculture formed an essential basis of the pre-modern economy, and while the early modern period in Britain saw increasing urbanisation, it was in the fields and country lanes that many cunning-folk remained – both in actuality and in the popular public imagination – tending animals, crops, and the humans that farmed them: from folk magical means of the cultivation of soil to the cunning husbandries of raising and caring for beasts, trees, and crops; and from astrologically-based almanac instructions on gelding lambs and coppicing woodlands to wise cattle-keeping and the talismans and techniques of making herds prolifically fertile.

In this class contemporary cunning-man and historian of magic Dr Alexander Cummins will guide us through these workings of the earth and the tending of its creatures. For we find plenty of workings for prosperity and protection of fruit and fowl alike – never mind the veiled and profound mysteries of bee-keeping.…