Animals in pre-modern European understandings signified potent natural magics. Long traditions of reading passions across species barriers – from the choleric nature of the wolf to the melancholy of the cat – made proverbs and parables out of the actions and interactions of the various beasts of the field. The animals had lessons to teach us.

 These lessons were heeded in various ways in the traditional folk magics of the various wise-women, village wizards, service magicians, and local spiritworkers collectively called cunning-folk: from reading meanings from these animals’ appearances in waking and dreaming life to the cunning uses of their bodies, and even the conjuration of spirits in their forms.

 In this class, contemporary cunning man and historian of magic Dr Alexander Cummins will consider how animals appear and interact in the traditional English folk magics of cunning-craft. Along with close readings of the professional working-books and spell-collections of early modern practitioners, we will also consider historical and magical contexts for such animal magics.

 We will examine how medieval bestiaries further embellished moral readings of the meanings and magics of animals as both living mandala and repositories of occult virtue; while medical, alchemical, and grimoiric texts experimented with animal components according to principles of sympathia and contagion to affect positive changes as well as regulate instabilities within their patients, their magical operations, and indeed for the cunning operators and their clients. A resurgence in heraldry over the early modern period further intertwined beast in a web of symbols, significations, sorceries, and solutions.

From animal baptisms to bestial demonology, and from unbewitching livestock to protections from wild beasts and charms for hunting and fishing – and much more besides – this class will investigate how animals were worked with (and even worked for) in pre-modern cunning-craft.