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I've been thinking for a while about this, partly prompted by a couple of threads in the past few months on Christian witchcraft and such.

What I'm wondering is whether it would be a good idea for a website or (maybe) a book to collect together the charms and spells from primarily English/British folklore and the witch craze trial material, and put it together in one place? So that would be things like the peel of an apple thrown over the shoulder revealing the name of your husband, to the charms written in the Carmina Gadelica and the "White Paternoster" of Agnes Sampson and the North Berwick witches.

Does that sound like a good idea? Can you think of any problems with it?

The only problem I can think of off-hand is to do with using the Carmina Gadelica, as I have no Gaelic (though I could learn).

What do you think?

EDIT: I forgot: if you know of someone who has already done this on a site/book then please let me know!

Ah, that would be a problem, especially if I rely on the witch trial reports. I was rather thinking of being deliberately credulous and taking everything, and adding a caveat lector to the whole thing.

Ah, sorry Tea, I didn't define well enough smile

I was thinking of using witch trial records and folklore from England/Britain only. So from the early modern period to...lets say 1947. and not as a specifically Christian thing, I had that in my head because I know a few of these charms - or many - will have Christian imagery, of course. I'm not intending it to be a specifically "follow this path", religious-type thing but more, out of interest, to show the different ways people wrote, spoke or used charms which could be of interest to more than just me, I hope.

Is that clearer? Or still muddy?

That is clearer. It's just a lot of information. I mean- a LOT of information because of the time frame being covered.
If I am understanding this correctly, it would include accounts of bewitchment from the different witch trials of the UK over the last five hundred years as well as any of the stuff that was brought into UK folk magic traditions with the rise of the Victorian era to say nothing of the influence the turn of the century Spiritualist tradition had on such practices.

I think I'm in deer in headlights mode. Five hundred years of actual and fictitious witchcraft... pretty much ending at Wica... eek

If I was a publisher I would break it up into at least three groups, possibly more based either on the style (such as witch trial accusations, objective folk culture of the ages and the Christian influence thereof and Victorian Era mysticism/spirituality).

Or do it by century and divide it by "accounts" and actual cultural traditions.