#folkmagic — Public Fediverse posts

Put It Back

Years ago, at the yard where I kept my horses, an old outbuilding gave up something a little bit unexpected.

A dried cat.

I don’t know exactly how old the building was. I believe it may have once been part of a row of terraced cottages that had otherwise been demolished, but I have never established that firmly enough to state it is fact. Nor can I now prove that the cat had been placed their deliberately. Mostly because… well, cats are cats. They chase mice, they crawl into holes, they investigate places from which they later discover they can’t get out. Sometimes, they hide away because it’s their time to die. So finding the naturally mummified remains of a cat inside an old building does not automatically mean somebody put it there to ward off witches.

Nevertheless, I remembered it. Because finding a dead cat preserved within the fabric of an old building is not something you easily forget.

Then, years later, I met another one. This time, I was volunteering at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

In early January 2017, renovation work was taking place at the former Post Office in the Quadrant in Buxton. During the work, the workmen disturbed part of the ceiling. And a dried cat fell out. Literally, it just dropped from the ceiling cavity during the work.

The owner of the building, Maxine Chuwen, saved it being thrown into the skip and eventually took it to the museum. I can vaguely remember it arriving. By then I’d already encountered one dried cat in an old building. Now someone walked into the museum with another. This one subsequently became part of the museum collection as DERSB:2017.1, it was cleaned and stabilised, researched and eventually, displayed. Since then, it has made it’s way into the archaeological history on something I think is absolutely wonderful.

Magical House Protection.

Welcome back to Old Magic. Pull up a chair…

When you start dismantling old British houses, occasionally you find things that have absolutely no business being where they are.

A single child shoe inside a wall…

A bottle beneath a hearth…

Marks carved beside a fireplace…

A horse skull underneath a floor…

A bundle of clothing above a ceiling…

A dried cat in a roof.

Sometimes, several objects appear together, and once archaeologists started to record where these things were found, an intriguing pattern emerged. They frequently occur at the vulnerable parts of buildings – chimneys, hearths and doors. Windows, roofs and floors. Thresholds. The places where the outside world could get in.

For people living in a world inhabited by witches, fairies, spirits, demons, illness, bad luck and things that went bump in considerably less metaphorical nights, a house was more than shelter. It was a boundary. Inside was us, outside was everything else. And boundaries needed protecting.

Let’s start with the shoes, because there are an extraordinary number of them. So many in fact, that Northampton Museum and Art Gallery maintains a ‘Concealed Shoe Index’, established by footwear historian June Swann, recording shoes discovered deliberately hidden within the buildings. They have been found in chimneys and behind fireplaces. Under floorboards and inside walls. Above ceilings and around doors and windows. Sometimes there’s a pair but very often there isn’t, just one worn shoe. Adult shoes, children’s shoes, boots, slippers – footwear that somebody could apparently have thrown away, but chose instead to place somewhere very difficult to retrieve.

The practice is particularly fascinating because we have the physical evidence but very little contemporary explanation from the people who actually did it. Nobody seems to have thought:

“I’d better write down why I’ve Just bricked up Ethel’s left shoe in the chimney in case somebody finds it in 250 years…”

They just did it. And that silence has left researchers with several theories.

Perhaps a worn shoe retained something of the person who had worn it – this would fit very well with the magical logic that we’ve already encountered this week. A shoe gradually takes on the shape of it’s owner. It contains the impression of the foot. It is intensely individual. Perhaps it functioned as a substitute for the person. Perhaps it attracted or trapped something harmful. Perhaps it brought luck or protected the household. Perhaps different people concealed shoes for different reasons – we don’t know. Old Magic is full of wonderfully neat explanations invented long after the people performing the ritual had stopped explaining themselves. But the honest answer is sometimes considerably more interesting:

Somebody thought that this mattered. We just don’t know precisely what they thought it did.

The earliest examples stretch right back into the medieval period, while the practice continued for centuries afterwards. By the time researchers began seriously recording concealed footwear, examples had turned up across Britain and much further afield. One nineteenth century child’s shoe in Northampton’s collection was discovered in a ground floor ceiling beneath a beam. A single little shoe, hidden where nobody was supposed to see it.

The there are the bottles.

The so-called witch bottle is perhaps easier to interpret because some historical accounts actually describe the practice. From around the seventeenth century, bottles and jars could be filled with combinations of urine, pins, nails. thorns, teeth, hair, nail clippings and other materials. Sometimes they were heated, sometimes burned, sometimes buried. Sometimes they were concealed beneath hearths, thresholds or floors.

The logic was counter-magic. If someone believed they had been bewitched, bodily material from the victim could be placed inside the bottle alongside sharp objects. The magical connection between witch and victim could supposedly be exploited in reverse. The witch who had reached into the house magically could be hurt through that connection.

Other bottles appear to have functioned more generally as protective deposits. Again, the location matters. The hearth, chimney and doorways were openings. The threshold marked the precise place where outside became inside. Put protection there and maybe whatever was outside stayed outside.

Sometimes the protection wasn’t hidden at all. Look closely at old buildings and you may find curious marks scratched or carved into the timber or stone. Intersecting circles. Daisy wheel or hexafoil designs. Repeated V’s. Mesh like patterns and burn marks. These are often described as ‘apotropaic marks’ from a word meaning something intended to turn away or avert harm. They occur around fireplaces, doors, windows and other openings with suspicious frequency.

Historic England’s public survey of these so-called witches’ marks generated hundreds of reports and one of Britain’s most spectacular concentrations was discovered somewhere very familiar to Derbyshire readers.

Creswell Crags.

The caves on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border contain an extraordinary collection of marks interpreted as protective, including numerous designs around holes and crevices. Places something might emerge. Once again: boundary. Opening. Protection.But houses sometimes contain rather larger surprises.

Like horses. Or at least their heads.

Horse skulls have been discovered beneath floors and within walls in Britain and Ireland and their interpretation is complicated.

Some appear to have been deliberately deposited. In Ireland particularly, there is a longstanding explanation that horse skulls placed beneath floors improved the resonance for music and dancing. In other contexts, researchers have suggested ritual or protective meanings. The two explanations need not necessarily apply to every find – that is another useful warning. Finding an unusual object hidden in a building doesn’t automatically make it magical. Context is everything.

Which brings us back to the cats.

Dried or naturally mummified cats have been discovered in old buildings across Britain. Some may simply be unfortunate animals that crawled into cavities while hunting rodents and never escaped. Others are considerably harder to explain that way. Cats have been found in sealed locations. Some appear to have been deliberately positioned. There are even reported examples associated with rats or mice in arrangements suggesting that the animals were already dead when placed there.

Various explanations have been proposed. Perhaps the cat symbolically continued hunting vermin. Perhaps it protected the household. Perhaps it deterred supernatural intruders. Perhaps the animal itself had some apotropaic significance.

Again, nobody left us the instruction manual.

And that is why I’m cautious about my first cat. I saw it. I know it came from an old outbuilding. But without knowing enough about the precise building, its date and the exact context in which the cat was found, I can’t tell you that somebody deliberately put it there. It might have been Old Magic. It might have just been an unlucky cat.

The Buxton cat is more intriguing.

The building in The Quadrant dates from the nineteenth century, and the cat was found in a ceiling cavity during restoration. Newspapers dating from the 1890s were reportedly found in the same general space, although that does not prove that the cat was deposited at the same time. It is now catalogued among documented British examples of dried cats discovered within buildings.

And here’s the part I particularly love. These traditions didn’t necessarily end when we stopped believing in them.

Because sometimes modern people find these objects. And put them back.

During renovations begun in 2012 at a historic building in Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland, three individual children’s shoes were discovered hidden in separate walls. The owners researched them. They learned about the tradition of concealed shoes. They registered their finds with the Concealed Shoe Index. Then the building was converted into three houses. And they put one shoe back into each house. They hoped the shoes would continue to bring luck.

Think about what has just happened there.

A ritual is performed. Its original meaning is forgotten. Centuries pass. The building is opened.

Modern people discover the objects. They research the lost ritual. And then they perform it again.

The tradition has effectively resurrected itself.

Research into concealed footwear has found this reaction repeatedly. People discover an old shoe and feel strangely uncomfortable about simply throwing it away.

Some give it to a museum.

Some display it.

Some keep it near the place where it was found.

And some put it straight back into the wall.

Research on concealed deposits records June Swann’s observation that English finders often instinctively returned shoes to their original locations. Some reportedly became genuinely uneasy at the thought of the shoe leaving the building, as though removing it might also remove whatever protection it had provided. And I completely understand them.

Imagine it.

You’re renovating your house. You remove some plaster and behind it is a tiny, worn child’s shoe. Nobody has seen it for perhaps two hundred years. You discover that people once hid shoes inside houses, possibly for protection or luck. You are a rational twenty-first-century human being. You do not believe that witches enter through chimneys. You do not believe malevolent spirits lurk behind the skirting board. You do not believe a battered old shoe has spent two centuries standing supernatural guard over the spare bedroom. Obviously.

So you throw it away.

Do you?

Because the moment somebody tells you that the shoe may have been protecting the house for two hundred years, another tiny voice appears.

“It’s not hurting anything. It belongs there. Why risk it?”

And suddenly the plasterboard is going back up with the shoe behind it. That may be the most beautiful example of Old Magic we’ve found yet. Not because an eighteenth-century family believed in magical protection, we expect people in the past to have beliefs different from ours. What fascinates me is the modern hand putting the object back. The person who knows the history, knows the archaeology, knows there is no demonstrable mechanism by which an old shoe can protect a building from supernatural attack. And still thinks:

“Leave it where it was.”

Maybe that isn’t belief exactly.

Maybe it’s respect. An unwillingness to break a chain. Maybe old objects acquire authority simply by surviving. Maybe knowing that another human being deliberately placed something there centuries ago makes removing it feel intrusive.

Or maybe, beneath all our electric lights, central heating, video doorbells and home insurance policies, the old magical map of the house still makes a peculiar kind of emotional sense.

There is inside. There is outside. There are openings between them and we want the things we love to be safe. So we lock the door. Check the windows. Leave a light on.

Hang something beside the entrance. Keep particular objects because they make the house feel right.

And if we discover that somebody long dead left something inside the wall to protect the place?

Well.

Maybe it can stay.

I’ve encountered two dried cats from old buildings in my lifetime. One remains a mystery. The other fell out of a Buxton ceiling in 2017 and ended up in the museum where I was volunteering. Neither proves that every dried cat in every roof was deliberately concealed. Neither gives us a neat explanation for why people placed animals, shoes, bottles and other objects inside buildings. But together with thousands of other discoveries, they remind us that our ancestors sometimes constructed houses with more than timber, stone and plaster.

They built beliefs into them. Protection beneath the floor, luck inside the wall, warnings beside the door and something watching the chimney. Most of it was never meant to be seen again.

Until somebody renovates the kitchen.

So if you live in an old house and one day the builder calls you over with a peculiar expression and something dusty in his hand, take a photograph. Record exactly where it came from. Don’t immediately assume it’s witchcraft, find out what you’ve actually got. And whatever you do, treat it with respect. Then decide what happens next.

Museum? Display case? Back inside the wall?

I know what plenty of perfectly sensible people have chosen.

They put it back.

And between you and me?

I probably would too.

Hello #fedicoven! I’m considering trying to get a community project rolling: Community writing topics for witches, folk magicians, occultists, and similar practitioners. The idea would be to engage with topics in long-form (like blog posts, articles, or long posts) with the topic in the context of a greater conversation, encouraging responding to each other’s ideas.

If I were to kick off such a thing, what kind of cadence would be good for you?

#witchcraft #pagan #folkmagic

Deathcap surfaced in today's reading, for everyone taught early to stay quiet, compliant, small. The card's turn: that smallness was survival once. It was never who you are.
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↳ (reply) Full reading → https://twp.ai/4hs0fD

Hexing the Bomb

Hot on the heels of my little foray into the Battle of the Beanfield I decided to dig a little deeper into another important and largely forgotten nugget of social history. This one incorporates a couple of my favourite subjects, neither of which is politics. It does, however, have women standing up together and achieving the seemingly impossible and witches.

Pull up a chair… 🙂

There are moments in history when politics, folklore and belief collide in ways that seem almost impossible to imagine. One such moment unfolded on the windswept perimeter fences of Greenham Common during the final decades of the Cold War, when thousands of women gathered to oppose the presence of American nuclear missiles on British soil. Among the banners, songs and acts of civil disobedience was something few journalists expected to find at the heart of a major political protest. Witches.

For nearly two decades, Greenham Common became one of the most significant centres of peace activism in modern British history. It was a place of arrests, demonstrations, campfires and confrontation. It was also a place where ancient symbols found new life. Women danced in circles, wove webs across military fences, invoked goddesses, cast symbolic spells and drew upon centuries of folklore to challenge one of the most powerful military alliances in the world.

To understand why, we must first return to a Britain gripped by fear.

The early 1980s were shadowed by the threat of nuclear war. Relations between East and West had deteriorated. The Soviet Union and NATO were engaged in a dangerous arms race. Television viewers watched films such as Threads and The Day After, which depicted the horrific consequences of nuclear conflict. Schoolchildren grew up with the knowledge that a single political miscalculation could end civilisation in an afternoon.

Against this backdrop, the British government agreed to host American cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire. To supporters, the deployment was a necessary deterrent. To opponents, it made Britain a target and increased the likelihood of nuclear confrontation.

In September 1981, a small group of Welsh women marched from Cardiff to Greenham Common. Their intention was straightforward. They wanted a public debate about nuclear weapons. When their concerns were ignored, some chose to remain.

Few could have imagined that their decision would create one of the most influential protest movements in modern British history.

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp became a permanent presence outside the military base. Women arrived from every corner of Britain and beyond. Some stayed for days. Others remained for years. Grandmothers camped alongside students. Teachers shared fires with artists, nurses, activists and travellers. The camp developed its own culture, traditions and rituals.

Media coverage was often hostile. Newspapers portrayed the women as scruffy, eccentric or dangerous. Politicians dismissed them as naïve. Yet Greenham continued to grow. By December 1982, around 30,000 women joined hands around the nine-mile perimeter fence in one of the largest demonstrations Britain had ever seen.

As the movement evolved, some participants began drawing upon folklore, mythology and spiritual traditions to express their opposition to nuclear weapons.

For many women involved in the peace camp, the figure of the witch held profound significance.The witch has never been simply a character from fairy tales. Across European history she has represented independence, resistance and the refusal to conform. She is the village healer, the wise woman, the outsider and the scapegoat. She embodies knowledge that exists beyond accepted authority.

Many women at Greenham recognised parallels between historical witch hunts and contemporary attempts to dismiss or marginalise female voices. The image of the witch became a powerful symbol of protest.

Some protesters identified as pagans or practitioners of modern witchcraft. Others were not religious at all but embraced the symbolism. Together they transformed folklore into a political language.

At various demonstrations, women dressed as witches, carrying besoms and wearing pointed hats. They conducted symbolic rituals outside the base gates. Circles were formed. Chants were spoken. Songs echoed through the Berkshire countryside.

Perhaps most striking were the webs.Women frequently attached ribbons, wool, photographs, toys and personal objects to the military fences. These creations resembled enormous spider webs stretching across the perimeter. They symbolised connection, community and the fragile threads linking humanity together. Military planners saw security barriers. The women transformed them into canvases for storytelling.

One protest became known as the “Embrace the Base” demonstration, during which thousands of women encircled Greenham Common. The act itself echoed ancient traditions of protective circles and boundary rituals found throughout British folklore.In many folk traditions, circles create sacred space. They mark a distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Greenham’s protesters drew upon symbolism that would have been recognised by generations of cunning folk, ceremonial magicians and village communities.

There were also reports of symbolic spell-casting directed not at individuals but at the weapons themselves.

These actions were largely theatrical and symbolic. Yet symbolism has always been one of humanity’s most powerful tools. Flags, crowns, crosses and national monuments derive their power from collective belief. Greenham’s witches understood this. They recognised that ritual could attract attention, build solidarity and create memorable images capable of travelling far beyond the camp itself.Photographs from the period remain remarkable. Women dance beneath military floodlights. Costumed protesters stand before coils of razor wire. Sacred imagery appears alongside anti-nuclear slogans. Ancient archetypes confront modern technology.

The contrast could hardly have been more dramatic.

Behind the spectacle lay a serious philosophical question. How should ordinary people respond when faced with systems that appear too vast to challenge?

For some, the answer lay in petitions or political lobbying. For others, it involved direct action. At Greenham, many women chose creativity. They responded to missiles with songs, fences with artwork and military authority with myth.

It is tempting to dismiss such actions as eccentric. Yet history suggests otherwise.Throughout the centuries, folklore has often emerged during periods of uncertainty and upheaval. Communities create stories to explain fears, express hopes and challenge power structures. Ballads mocked landlords. legends criticised rulers. Folk customs strengthened communities during times of hardship.

Greenham Common followed the same pattern.The camp generated its own folklore almost immediately. Stories circulated among protesters. Songs were composed. Rituals evolved. Shared symbols developed meaning through repetition. What began as a political protest became something resembling a living folk tradition.

Even the landscape itself absorbed these stories.

Greenham Common is now remembered not only as a military site but as a place of resistance. The fences have gone. The missiles have long since been removed. Yet the stories remain. Visitors still encounter traces of the movement in memorials, artworks and local memory.

The protest ultimately achieved far more than many observers predicted. Cruise missiles were removed from Greenham Common in 1991 following the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The peace camp remained for several years afterwards before finally closing in 2000.

Whether Greenham alone changed government policy remains a matter of debate. Few historians would argue that it was the sole cause. Yet its influence on public discourse is undeniable. The movement helped shape conversations about nuclear weapons, gender, protest and citizenship. It inspired campaigns around the world and demonstrated the power of sustained grassroots activism.

The witches of Greenham Common occupy a particularly fascinating place within that story.

They remind us that folklore is not confined to dusty books or distant centuries. It remains a living force, capable of adapting to new circumstances and addressing modern concerns. Ancient symbols continue to resonate because they speak to enduring human experiences.

The women who danced around Greenham’s fences were not attempting to retreat into the past. They were using the past to imagine a different future.

In an age dominated by military technology, political rhetoric and the machinery of the Cold War, they answered with stories, songs, rituals and symbols that had survived for centuries.

Whether one believes in magic is ultimately beside the point.

The real magic of Greenham Common lay in its ability to transform fear into action, isolation into community and protest into legend.

More than forty years later, the image remains unforgettable. A line of women standing beneath winter skies, facing one of the most formidable military establishments on Earth armed with banners, determination and the enduring power of folklore.

History remembers the missiles.

Folklore remembers the witches.

Further Reading

Common Women, Uncommon Practices by Sasha RoseneilGreenham Women Everywhere by Rebecca Mordan

Peace Camps: A Study of Greenham Women by Lynne Jones

The archives of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace

CampRecords held by the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics

Imperial War Museum collections relating to Greenham Common

Oral history projects documenting former Greenham residents

Copyright Notice:

© 2026 Mysterious Times. All rights reserved.This article is published exclusively for Mysterious Times. No part may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations used for review, commentary or educational purposes with appropriate attribution.

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It is said that the rowan tree can provide protection against malevolent beings. Hang a sprig above your door and you’re set.

It’s possible we all need to get one. Just saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan#Folk_magic

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