This Spectered Isle: Traditional British Folk Necromancy Class-Bundle

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This Spectered Isle: Traditional British Folk Necromancy Class-Bundle

$35.00

A self-contained one-off class-bundle focusing on the traditional ghost-lore and necromantic operations of pre-modern British practitioners and common folk. This class-bundle includes a two-hour illustrated lecture recording and the accompanying slide-deck.

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The folklore and ritual magic of the British Isles is a deeply haunted body of observances and practices. Its rainy melancholy lands have a long history of ghostly hauntings and apparitions, tales of necromancers prowling old graveyards, and practices of Dumb Suppers, soul cakes, and consulting tutelary shades which all trace a diverse hauntological record etched in pamphlets and headstones alike.

From these encounters and legends emerge rich traditions of operative necromancy: from the use of grave dirt for dream incubation and ghost-laying, to the employment of both grimoiric conjuration and planetary sorcery in various cunning work with the dead.

This illustrated presentation investigates traditional pre-modern practices of folk necromancy, exploring the intersections of ghosts, ghostlore, and both folk magic and ritual magic concerning the returning dead in early modern Britain – from helping souls pass on to calling forth spirits of the deceased to conjuring them to deliver books of magic – concentrating on the magical ways the living and dead can help each other.

This class-bundle includes:

  • A 120-minute illustrated lecture recording

  • The accompanying slide-deck 

A full table of contents of the lecture itself runs:

  • Approaching “Folk Necromancy”

  • The Helpful Dead

    • Warnings & Assurances

    • Mr Culpeper’s Ghost

    • A Benevolently Haunted World

    • Dead Holy Ones & Magicians

  • Churchyard Conversations

    • Post-Reformation Place of the Dead

    • Visiting with Earthly Questions

  • Dreaming with the Dead

    • Tryon’s Treatise of Dreams & Souls

    • Appealing to the ‘Keeper of the Bones’

    • Onyx Rings for Seeing Departed Friends

  • Ghost-Laying & Ghost-Helping

    • Fate of the Dead

    • Early Modern Ghost(busting) Pamphlets

  • The Dead & Other Spirits

    • Devils, Fallen Angels, Fairies, & the Dead

    • Corpse-Raising

    • Spectral Book Delivery

  • A Few Closing Remarks

 

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.

“Necromancer (necromantes) he that practises that wicked Art, a Master of the Black Art, one that seeks to the dead; or consults with Satan in the shape of a dead man. The Hebrews describe him thus; he made himself hungry, and then lodged among the Graves, that the dead might come to him in a dream, and make known to him that which he asked, &c. Others there were that clad themselves with cloathes for that purpose, and spoke certain words, burned Incense, and slept by themselves, that such a dead person might come and talk with them in a dream.”
- Thomas Blount, Glossographia (London, 1661)