Just as there are many plants to which one might resort to inflict magical harm, so too are there many botanicals with whom we can work to protect ourselves from the harmful spells, hexes, sorceries, and spiritwork of our enemies.  

While far from the only service that both pre-modern professional and amateur magical practitioners offered, unbewitching – that is, the warding of the evil eye, the removal of curses, and even the reversing of the harm done by malefic sorcerous assailants, witches, and the imps and demons they sent forth – was an important and popular service to which many English folk resorted.

In this presentation, we will meet some of early modern England’s astrologer-physicians and astrological magicians, geomancers and chiromancers, doctors and folk healers, service magicians and cunning-folk who used their herb-craft to prevent, heal, and dispel the harmful maleficia of enemy magical practitioners and their baneful spirits. We will consider their methods of diagnosing malefic witchcraft and spiritual attack, and explore their arsenals and herb-closets for the potent plant allies they employed to empower these unwitching works.

In the course of our investigations, we will survey not only a range of herbs, leaves, trees, roots, fruits, and seeds used to treat bewitchment and demonic possession, but the specific manners of their countermagical preparation, application, and deployment: from carrying-talismans to threshold bouquets, from ‘dyet-drinks’ to herbal washes, from pillow-packets to spoiling-rods, and from simple charm-bags to sophisticated astro-botanical sigils.

 This class-bundle includes:

·        An illustrated 90-minute lecture recording
·        Slide-deck of source citations
·        Information about further cunning classes and courses

A full table of contents of the lecture itself runs:

·         Unbewitching Maleficia
·         Pre-Modern Contexts & Sources
·         Countermagical Practitioners
·         Worn & Carried Herbs, Roots, & Seeds
·         Herbal Preparations & Applications
·         Vegetalia with Animalia & Mineralia
·         Home Protections
·         Dyet-Drinks & Potables
·         Unbewitching Man & Beast Alike
·         Herbal Suffumigations
·         Countermagical Starry Cunning
·         A Botanical Arsenal for Spoiling Witches
·         Transference to Trees
·         Alliances of Simples

By purchasing this class recording, you agree that you understand that no part of the material dictated or provided throughout the duration of the presentation may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any other form (neither electronic nor mechanic, including photocopies and recordings), without the direct and written consent of the instructor, Dr Alexander Cummins.