Nibelrun

"Testa di Ragazza"

Bill Mayer, “Winter Solstice (The Witch)”

It’s the First Day of Spring, and Persephone is preparing to depart for the upper world.  A century may have passed since she made the famous compromise, but saying farewell is still far from easy.

Bringer of Spring is a collaboration between me and my lovely friend kata-chthonia, awesome writer and author of Receiver of Many.  It’s been three months in the making, so I’m very excited to finally show it to everyone.  Please click the “Read More” to see the rest, and I hope you enjoy! :)

(Apologies in advance to mobile users. There are lots of images!)

Edit 8/5/14: Finally posted the art that was originally planned as the ‘cover’ for the comic. :)  Check it out!

Bearing in mind that, just because they're not relevant to most lives today doesn't mean they're not relevant to any. I, myself, grew up in a farming family, so I am only a generation separated from their usefulness. But a large body of folk magic is focused on farm life and hunting. Of course, we love our farmers and sustenance hunters, but they do make up about 2% and 6% of the United States population respectively. The numbers for farming are much larger in other areas, but I am speaking on my own experience in participation and contact with bioregional traditional magic and folk magic communities in areas of Europe and the United States. Assuming that there is no overlap between the hunters and the farmers, that makes those bodies of charms useful (in their unmodified form) to about 8% of us living in the US and about 5.4% of the population in broad Europe.

As for examples of how these can be repurposed as non-farming and non-hunting charms: - There is a nineteenth century Swedish charm that attempts to summon three entities to bless one's gun sight for hunting. I won't include the entities because 18th and 19th century Swedish practitioners loved their Latin and Hebrew pseudo babble and, frankly, only one of them appears to be an actual name while the others appear to be the result of a bad cipher. [I am still waiting to hear back from Kabballah guy about this charm.] The spoken charm translates to "I, [nomen nescio], conjure and beseech you [entities] that you do not let this animal run, flee, or fold from my shot" (Gårdbäck). I have used this for baneful work with witch bullets by adapting the charm to something like "Spirits of Blood and Hunt and Prey, I do conjure and beseech you that you do not let [nomen nescio] run, flee or fold from my shot." It has seemed to work very well. - There is another 19th century Swedish charm used to "shame a rifle". In its original context, this would have been useful to someone breaking into a home, trespassing on property, or just wanting to cause someone a rough winter. But it can also be adapted for use as protection against a specific hex you're aware is being cast, for example if you've dreamt or divined it, or someone has threatened harm against you. The original charm translates as "Come Devil and all the evil spirits that are in the abyss, And withhold stone and fire from the gunpowder in the name of Evil" (Gårdbäck). It can be reworked into shaming a curse by saying "Come Devil and all the evil spirits of the abyss! Withhold life and power from curse as you would withhold stone and fire from gunpowder. Shame the book, the dagger, the candle, oh Devil, as you can shame all weapons in the name of Evil." - A final charm is an agricultural warding remedy for when there is a suspected hex on one's seeds and land that is causing them to go "a little bad". It is translated as "Take 3 spoons of sulfur, 3 spoons of salt, 3 spoons of sewing needles; put them in the center of the field, them no one has the ability to take power from the growth. Bury the same outside the seed barn" (Johnson). This can be used in a witch bottle to protect one's garden or in a witch bottle to protect any form of prosperity from magical interference.