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.

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, and wellbeing, including talismans and protections for warding off thieves and even “freezing” home intruders in place.

We will examine not only the occult mechanics of popular anti-thief rituals such as the Eye of Abraham for naming and shaming thieves but also the underlying social and interpersonal conditions of public justice, community cohesion, and much more.

We will also analyse and compare various iterations of the operations of the Demon Bishops of the cardinal directions across cunning-folks’ working-books and grimoiric resources to send spirits after those who have robbed us or our clients.

Finally, we shall consider how such anti-theft workings also influenced and were influenced by other forms of magical protection, from operations against witches and their imps, fairies, and the restless dead.