Posts Tagged: magic

  • Divination and the augur in a domestic setting -- your writer tries his hand at different divination methods--reading coffee grounds, tarot cards and watching the birds

    Augurs well

    I am getting older and I am starting to worry more. I need reassurance. Will I get enough work to pay the bills? Will my wife be satisfied with my domestic duties? Will my children find fresh reasons to criticise their upbringing? As a rugby coach, will enough players turn up on Saturday? I need […]

  • Flibbertigibbet at Wayland's Smithy

    Flibbertigibbet, a will-‘o-the-wisp, a clown

    The misunderstanding In the heat of a moment, and what I thought was great foolhardiness, I called my wife a flibbertigibbet. I was cross with her for trying to do too many things at once and consequently getting nothing done. Surprisingly, she took it quite well, which made me think I had, perhaps, misunderstood what […]

  • Image of a berserker with sword and BERSERKER in large type behind

    Bear-shirted vikings go berserk

    Beserk was a great warrior from Norse mythology. He didn’t fight in armor but in his bera serkr, literally bear shirt or bearskin in Old Norse. He gave his name to the berserks, the wild frenzied shock troops of the marauding Vikings.

  • Cooking with thirteen--13 eggs, a bakers dozen loaves of bread, at 13 past 13 with 13 ibis lurking on the lawn.

    The century turns thirteen

    The twenty-first century is having its thirteenth birthday. Thirteen is a native word to English. It comes to us from the Old English languages, þreotene from Mercian and þreotiene from West Saxon. It is a combination of þreo for three and -tene, -tiene meaning ten more than. Thirteen has a stigma as an unlucky number […]

  • Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

    Nightmare’s lost creature

    There is a whole menagerie of semi-human creatures from folklore that live only in our imagination, in children’s stories and, at their worst, in our nightmares. It is from one particular group of these creatures, that we now call incubi (singular incubus), that truly gave us nightmares. In medieval times incubus was used to denote […]

  • Ogham text in the The Book of Ballymote

    Ogham signed by the Druids

    Understanding where the word, ogham, comes from is difficult but may help substantiate the belief that ogham was a secret Druid language.

  • Mojo bag—full of magic ingredients

    I got my mojo word in

    If all is going well, you are confident and you are achieving things effortlessly, you might say that your mojo is working. A mojo is a charm made of a cloth bag containing folk magic ingredients. The word is probably from Africa.

  • Widdershins Childe Roland runs around the church

    The magic of widdershins

    In the ancient folklore of pagan Britain, to go widdershins (widershins or withershins) was, in a magical sense, to walk around an object against the sun. In the northern hemisphere to walk the opposite way to the movement of the sun, was to walk around an object counter-clockwise.

  • Afraid of the dark, Lagerboy. Photoshopped Hobgoblin advertisement from Wychwood Brewery.

    Advertising hobgoblins

    What is a hobgoblin A hobgoblin is a mythological or magical sprite (an elf or fairy) that is smaller than a goblin but far more mischievous. (It is a common mistake to think that a hobgoblin is larger than a goblin.) The goblin, apparently, originated in France, as a Gobelin, a particular sprite haunting parts […]

  • Wassailing's most common meaning is door-to-door Christmas carol singing - a common practice in England.

    Wassailing—be healthy at Christmas

    Behind the modern rituals of Christmas lurk old traditions tied to our magical, pagan past. Words provide a link to that magic. We have looked at Yule, a word that predates most native languages of Europe. Wassailing is our Christmas word. Wassail arrived in English from the Old Norse salutation ves heill meaning “be healthy” from […]