Folk Around & Find Out: A Panel of Folk Magicians Discuss What We Do & Why

Folk magic is everywhere. From the small everyday practices and observances – the horseshoe over your door, the salt over your shoulder - to ‘helping yourself’ with more specific rites, charms, and ‘tricks’ of empowerment against struggles, to the myriad magics performed around the special occasions of births, weddings, and funerals (“hatches, matches, and dispatches”) by community magical workers. The problems folk face – both the day-to-day grinds and the acute crises - are often similar, but the spiritual and magical strategies for solving such human problems – for securing health, prosperity, success, love, and so on – can both accord and differ widely between specific traditions. So it is with great pleasure we invite you to join us for what promises to be not only a collegiate but downright lively panel discussion between experienced conjure doctors,

contemporary cunning-folk, professional magicians, practitioners and scholars all, from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions. So come and pull up a digital seat as Dr Alexander Cummins convenes and chairs our panelists Professor Charles Porterfield, Doc Beverley Smith, Jesse Hathaway Diaz, Brandon Weston, and Aerinn Hodges to discuss the practices of folk magic, folk healing, folk spirituality, and more!

About the Presenter:

Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning man and historian. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires.  He received his doctorate on early modern magical approaches to the passions. Dr Cummins gives classes and workshops online and in person in the US and the UK, and co-hosts the podcast Radio Free Golgotha and co-convenes Speakeasy of the Dead.. His work and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

Professor Charles Porterfield is an old-fashioned, no-nonsense, Old Testament reader and rootworker. A well-known cartomancer, he is the author of A Deck of Spells: Hoodoo Playing Card Magic in Rootwork and Conjure and regularly lectures and teaches on cartomancy and cartomantic methods throughout the United States. He writes, teaches, and lectures on hoodoo and conjure to help preserve and pass on the roots of the work as well as consults, prescribes, and divines work for those in need. He and his wife currently live in Denton, Texas.

Doc Beverley Smith is a mother and a wife, a yogi, a social justice advocate, and a two- headed “conjure doctor” who enjoys living in the mountains in Southern California with her family and two cats. She specializes in Sangoma-style Bone Reading and intuitive divination. Beverley Smith enjoys West African and Caribbean literature and folklore, and the ancient art of storytelling - both as a listener and a storyteller. She is an old-style Rootworker, an empath, an organic gardener, and a relentless advocate for restorative justice.

Jesse Hathaway-Diaz is a folklorist, artist, and performer living in New York City. With initiations in several forms of witchcraft from Europe and the Americas, he is also a lifelong student of Mexican curanderismo, an initiated olosha in Lucumí, and a Tatá

Quimbanda. For the last decade he has been a member of Theatre Group Dzieci, an experimental ensemble based in NY dedicated to the search for the sacred through the medium of theatre. He is half of Wolf & Goat, a store specializing in both Traditional Craft and Quimbanda materia magica and magical art, a co-host on the Radio Free Golgotha podcast, and a co-editor on the Folk Necromancy in Transmission Series through Revelore Press.

Brandon Weston is a healer, writer, and folklorist living in the Arkansas Ozarks. He is author of Ozark Folk Magic: Plants, Prayers, and Healing and owner of Ozark Healing Traditions, a collective of articles, lectures, and workshops focusing on traditions of medicine, magic, and folklore from the Ozark Mountain region. As an active healer, his work with clients includes everything from spiritual cleanses to house blessings and all the weird and wonderful ailments in between. He comes from a long line of Ozark hillfolk and works hard to keep the traditions that he’s collected alive and true for generations to come.

Aerinn Hodges is an artist, magician, and animist excavating the role of women and trans feminine people in magic, religion, and healing. Her work is inspired by the embodied mysticism of medieval visionaries, the community-based sorcery of early modern

cunning folk, and the haunted medicine of charming traditions.

*This class is part of the General Admission & Sunday 8/15/21 Day Pass registrations, if you are interested in attending all of the events during this festival, or all of the events offered on Sunday 8/15/21, please select the appropriate registration type on our Events & Registration page.*

**Attendees will have access to this recording until the end of 2021 - class recording links will be emailed to attendees within 7 business days of the conclusion of the festival. To protect the IP of our presenters, class recordings will not be downloadable.**

***Your class link will be emailed to you in your confirmation email. If you have not received your registration confirmation email within 24 hours please email info@salemsummersymposium.com***

****PLEASE NOTE: We cannot guarantee that any class registration within 24 hours of the class start time will be admitted to the livestreaming of the class. You will however receive the class recording link within 7 business days of the conclusion of the festival and will have access to the recording for the remainder of 2021****