Folk Around & Find Out II - Back in the Habitat - A Folk Magic Panel Discussion

Folk magic and the magic of folklore isn’t just anywhere: it is everywhere. From the herb you hold over your heart in dreaming of a future lover, to the well into which you throw a wishing coin, and from the many witching ways of working a hagstone, to making and keeping allegiances with the various spirits lurking in the bushes and the beyond.

What unites many of these folk magical practices are their interdependences upon the land, upon a wider ecology of living Spirit expressing fundamental interrelationalities of Nature, including humanity’s positive and negative impacts. How the land reminds us who we are and what we have done, and how we may honour and celebrate right relationships.

The all-too-human problems that folk face – both the day-to-day grinds and the acute crises – are faced with spiritual and magical strategies derived from earth, root, leaf, fruit and so on that help situate us in our contexts. With the proper husbandry and care, health, prosperity, success, love, and so on may indeed grow on trees.

It is with great pleasure we invite you to join us for the return of SWFF’s closing Folk Around & Find Out panel, a 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!

This is a 120 minute foundational level panel discussion.

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.

His published works include An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Scarlet Imprint, 2020) with Phil Legard, The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press 2012), A Book of the Magi: Lore, Prayers, and Spellcraft of the Three Holy Kings (Revelore Press, 2018) and contributions to collections by Three Hands Press, Hadean Press and Scarlet Imprint. He is a frequent speaker on the international circuit, co-hosts the podcast Radio Free Golgotha, and is a founding editor of Revelore Press’ Folk Necromancy in Transmission series. Dr Cummins’ work, classes, and services can be found at www.alexandercummins.com

Jesse Hathaway Diaz is a folklorist, artist, performer and independent scholar with a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU. With initiations in several forms of witchcraft from Europe and the Americas, he is also a lifelong student of Mexican curanderismo, an initiated priest of Obatalá in the Lucumí Orisha tradition, and a Tatá Quimbanda. He co-hosts an occult themed podcast called ‘Radio Free Golgotha’, and edits the ‘Folk Necromancy in Transmission’ imprint through Revelore Press. For the better part of two decades, he has been involved with Theatre Group Dzieci, a New York based experimental theatre ensemble which explores theatre and ritual as a way, blending service with self-exploration and performance. Dividing his time between the Bronx and a farm in the Hudson Valley, his artistic and written work navigate the world-as-magic through exploring orality and transmission, decolonialism, ritual theory and praxis, herbalism and healing modalities through private study, apprenticeship, and community involvement.

Aerinn Hodges is an artist, magician, and animist excavating the role of women and trans-feminine people in magic and religion. Her work is inspired by the mysticism of medieval visionaries, the community-based sorcery of folk magicians, and trans priestesses of the ancient Mediterranean.

Professor Charles Porterfield is an old-fashioned, no-nonsense, Old Testament reader and rootworker. He is the co-author of Hoodoo Bible Magic: Sacred Secrets of Scriptural Sorcery, and author of A Deck of Spells: Hoodoo Playing Card Magic in Rootwork and Conjure and The Sporting Life: How to Help Yourself with Hoodoo from the Streets to the Sheets. 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 currently lives in Denton,  Texas with his wife and two cats.

Beverley Smith - known in some circles as “Doctor Beverley” - 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 Max and Sweet Puss. She  specializes in Sangoma-style Bone Reading and intuitive divination.  Beverley Smith enjoys West African and Caribbean literature &  folklore, and the ancient art of storytelling - both as a listener and a  storyteller. She is an old-style Hoodoo (Conjure) Rootworker, an  empath, an organic gardener, a lifelong student of herbalism, and a  relentless advocate for racial and restorative justice.

Brandon Weston is a folklorist, spiritual healer, and writer living in  the Arkansas Ozarks. He is author of "Ozark Folk Magic: Plants, Prayers,  and Healing" and the forthcoming "Ozark Mountain Spell Book." He is  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.