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Witchcraft, From Druids To Wicca Part 1
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Secrets don’t vanish; they change costumes. We open the cupboard of British “witchcraft” and find not pointy hats but a living history of healers, timekeepers, and storytellers—people who read the weather in birds, brewed medicine from hedgerows, and helped neighbours through birth, grief, and bad harvests. From Roman notes on druids to the alignments at Stonehenge, we follow the clues that show how nature, ritual, and community once fit together.
As we move through Anglo‑Saxon charms and Norse echoes, fairies and familiars step into view—not as cartoon sprites, but as the language people used to explain intuition, second sight, and hard‑won herbal knowledge. Then the winds change. Between the 1400s and 1700s, church courts recast local care as a pact with the Devil. Scotland’s trials turned fear into policy; England’s “evidence” often meant gossip in a courtroom; the Pendle cases and the Witchfinder General reveal how jealousy, property, and power hid behind piety. Most accused were women. Many were midwives or widows. The pattern looks less like sorcery and more like social control.
And yet, resilience remains. In Wales and Ireland, folklore buffered communities from the worst excesses, and by the 1700s scepticism finally took root. The 1735 Witchcraft Act declared witches fiction while prosecuting frauds, a strange halfway house that still hints at modern debates about belief, evidence, and care. Along the way we spotlight the Cunning Folk—the village healers and counsellors who feel, frankly, like an early NHS with charms and salves. We close by teeing up the Victorian revival and the birth of modern Wicca in part two, where the fragments of folk practice become a new religious identity.
If you’re curious about how myth, medicine, and power shaped each other—and what that says about us now—press play. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who loves history and folklore, and leave a review to tell us what challenged your assumptions.
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By Bonus Dad Bonus DaughterSend us a Comment, Question or Request, we'd love to hear from you
Secrets don’t vanish; they change costumes. We open the cupboard of British “witchcraft” and find not pointy hats but a living history of healers, timekeepers, and storytellers—people who read the weather in birds, brewed medicine from hedgerows, and helped neighbours through birth, grief, and bad harvests. From Roman notes on druids to the alignments at Stonehenge, we follow the clues that show how nature, ritual, and community once fit together.
As we move through Anglo‑Saxon charms and Norse echoes, fairies and familiars step into view—not as cartoon sprites, but as the language people used to explain intuition, second sight, and hard‑won herbal knowledge. Then the winds change. Between the 1400s and 1700s, church courts recast local care as a pact with the Devil. Scotland’s trials turned fear into policy; England’s “evidence” often meant gossip in a courtroom; the Pendle cases and the Witchfinder General reveal how jealousy, property, and power hid behind piety. Most accused were women. Many were midwives or widows. The pattern looks less like sorcery and more like social control.
And yet, resilience remains. In Wales and Ireland, folklore buffered communities from the worst excesses, and by the 1700s scepticism finally took root. The 1735 Witchcraft Act declared witches fiction while prosecuting frauds, a strange halfway house that still hints at modern debates about belief, evidence, and care. Along the way we spotlight the Cunning Folk—the village healers and counsellors who feel, frankly, like an early NHS with charms and salves. We close by teeing up the Victorian revival and the birth of modern Wicca in part two, where the fragments of folk practice become a new religious identity.
If you’re curious about how myth, medicine, and power shaped each other—and what that says about us now—press play. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who loves history and folklore, and leave a review to tell us what challenged your assumptions.
Support the show