TALES OF CHARMS AND CUNNING FROM THE FAR WEST!

Originally appeared in “The cauldron” journal 3013

One night in the autumn of 2008 a great storm blew off the Atlantic, sweeping over the Lizard and buffeting the granite crags of the upland moors of west Cornwall. As it raged a slate was brought crashing down from the roof of an old granite barn in the Parish of Mabe. In the grey light of the morning the eagle eyed farmer spotted a series of barely discernible scratches on the surface of the fallen roofing slate. On closer inspection it transpired that the scratches were actually writing. A short verse had been incised in to the tile. The verse read –
“MAY HE WHO STEALS
MY ROUND STONES
MAKE EARLY DRY BONES.
REPENT AND RETURN
AND LIVE FOREVER.”
Maybe sometime in the not too distant past one of the old inhabitants of that very place was driven to distraction by the theft of their valuable “round stones”. However after all inquiries as to finding the identity of the perpetrator and all attempts to recover their possessions were of no avail, no other alternative was left open but to call upon greater powers. Perhaps on the instruction of a local cunning man or woman, or perhaps even drawing upon knowledge that was current in their family and community they worked a charm to do their bidding. Whatever story lies behind this classic example of traditional Cornish folk magic we shall never know, only the shadowy hints that lay inherent in its form remain.
The actual verse may have been inspired by Proverbs 17.22 –
“A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a down cast spirit dries up the bones.”
But in terms of known magical charms it appears to be original. The composition of the charm itself however follows an old tried and tested, time honoured formulae; A simple statement of intent is written down on a surface such as stone, metal, wood or parchment it is then subsequently ‘ empowered’ and sent off to the spirit world to do its work. This particular formulae was a mainstay of much of the magical practice of the medieval period (As it was represented in many the Grimoires) and commonly used in the cunning practices of the early modern period. It goes back at least as far as the classical period, where in graeco-roman magic it was known as”defixio”. That is to say a written or inscribed charm that was used to ‘bind’ or constrain its recipient to a particular end, whether that be for good or for ill!
Often magical words of power or specific magical sigils were incorporated in to the text in order to lift the charm from the ‘ordinary’ and to imbue it with specific magical virtues. In this particular example no such overt magical tools were used, its power being drawn from the liturgical tone of its language. A language of which its author would have been all too familiar with from the church and the chapel pulpits. In the technology of magic, for a charm to be active its physical form it must be imprinted in the otherworld … for that is where the magic actually takes place. The method by which the Defixio charm would have been ‘activated’ would be to nail it to a gods shrine , to drop it in to sacred waters or to post it in a grave in order for a cooperative ghost to take it over to the ‘other side’. In the British medieval, early modern and indeed modern magical systems there is also a tradition of the use of such liminal spaces as a kind of ’psychic post-box’ from which to send our desires off in to the magical realm, whether that be crossroads, graveyards, the branches of a holy tree or as in this particular case, the fabric of a building. Walls, floors, hearthstones and chimneys are a common and well documented repository for such charms. To the magical mind they are a hidden space neither outside nor inside, neither sacred nor profane, a place that is indeed in many ways a crossing over of the worlds.
The barn in question first appears on the 1906 OS map of the area, which suggests it was built sometime between 1880 (the date of the previous map) and 1906. The roof may have been repaired at some stage though appears to be original. From this we may surmise that it is likely that the charm was made in this period. During the late C19 Cornwall was far from a rural backwater; it was a centre of industry and commerce, indeed it provided much of the raw materials and the knowhow that facilitated the industrial revolution. The barn in question was situated in a place that was at that time Britain’s greatest producer and exporter of granite (much of which was used in the constriction of the bridges, monuments and the embankment in London). For too long our understanding of magic has been labouring under the misapprehension that magical practice is a relic of an irrational past, practiced by the uneducated and the illiterate who live on the periphery of our society. The unknown author of the charm would have probably been educated, certainly literate and a member of a forward thinking outward looking community.
It is unclear what the “Round stones” to which the charm refers actually are. These may well give use a clue as to the author of the verse. I can find no such objects specifically named that were used in the industries of the area. The area was a centre for the production of monumental masonry, so they may have been a specific commission he was making. One is tempted to think that they may have been the stones of a long forgotten and unrecorded megalithic stone circle or possibly an example of the small smooth round magical stones known as “kenning stones” used by the cunning folk of the time. These are referred to by the folklorists William Paynter and William Bottrell, and there are some fine examples are in the Museum of witchcraft in Boscastle, but without any corroborative evidence one may only speculate.

“It is humiliating to think say that there are such characters …as gipsies, witches, conjurers, fortune tellers and charmers living now, in this nineteenth century, and artfully learning a livelihood out of the credulity of mankind.”

- WEST BRITON 2nd May 1856

It is the paradox of magic is that although its inner nature is completely and utterly ‘other’, it is also at the same time firmly rooted in the ordinary. From the ordinary world it is formulated and it is to the ordinary world to which it ultimately returns. As Plotinus, the father of magical philosophy once said “The starting point is universally the goal.” And so even up in to the C20 we find the Cornish magical tradition firmly rooted in the ordinary lives of the people of Cornwall. What we now consider to be as exotic magical beliefs seem to have been widely held as a normal part of people’s lives. As a testament to this belief, one C19 Clergyman, The Rev Hawker once observed “That two thirds of the total inhabitants of Tamar side implicitly believe in the power of the Mal Occhio, as the Italians name it, or the evil eye.” … and as we shall go on to see, he himself was a great believer in the objective presence of a magical otherworld. Implicit in the idea of a belief in magic is necessarily a system of techniques of how to interact with this magical world, so thus we have a ‘technology’ of magic- of which the fallen slate is a classic example. For the day to day dealings with the magical world many charms and fragments of knowledge were in general circulation, but for the practice of more complex and demanding magical tasks such as exorcisms, healing, cursing or acts of divination a professional class of practitioners emerged.
Sometimes there appears to be a crossover of roles in which a specialist practitioner would instruct a layperson in the arts. A fascinating letter dating probably from the late C18 came to light in 2013 in the Cornwall record office in which the instructions for the construction of a witch bottle were given presumably to a client. It begins …
“For Thamson Leverton on Saterday next being the 17th of this instant September any time that day take about a pint of your own urine and make it almost scalding hot then emptie it in to a stone jug…” (Graham king of the Museum of Witchcraft calculated that this was the full moon and the day of Saturn.)
The witch bottle was a commonly used apotropaic charm used to reflect any malefic magic back to its sender. In the early modern and medieval period much illness and bad luck was attributed to “the Evil eye” or “ill-wishing” from a malefic witch. The treatment was invariably the identification of the sender and the neutralisation or returning of the magic. Like the slate charm, the witch bottle was activated by burying or placing within the fabric of the house.
Just as it is misleading to consider magic to be only the possession of some kind of secret society or elite, it is also misleading to role all kinds of magic and magical practitioner in together as a homogenous block. What we now tend to put under the blanket term of “Witchcraft”, in its heyday they would have considered themselves to be of a quite different stock.
Most common seem to have been a class of charmers or folk healers who practiced a form of hands-on healing. This was achieved with a simple laying on of hands. Sometimes this was accompanied with a spoken charm (usually muttered under the breath) or the use of a stroking or “Kenning stone”. The ability to heal in this way was usually considered a divine gift and was rarely practiced for money. Often it was handed down in families and the practitioners would often specialise in one or two specific applications, such as bloodstaunching or the removal of ringworm.
At the other end of the spectrum were the gentleman ghost layers. These were often members of the clergy. They generally used more ceremonial magic techniques and learned their skills from the study of magical texts. Their aria of expertise was communion with and the exorcism of ghosts and spirits of the otherworld. Examples of this are the C17 Rev Thomas Flavel of Mullion and the C19 parson Woods of Ladock. Though closer to our own times and more thoroughly documented is the late C19 Rev Hawker of Morwenstow who was just as at home in the windswept cliffs of north Cornwall, the spiritual rapture of the mass and in the realm of spirits, angels and demons …and some say that he had rather too much to do with the local witches than is befitting for a man of the cloth!
Somewhere in between the two were the white witches, the cunning folk …or as they were known in Cornwall, the “Pellars”. The word “Pellar” emerges in the C19 and is of uncertain origin. The Pellars seemed to have acquired their skills by both study and by magical means, various hints at arcane initiation rites exist within the folklore record. They have a varied repertoire of skills including divination, the making of spells and charms, the making and breaking of curses as well as the skills of the ghost layers and the charmers. They were a professional class, one famous Pellar Tammy Blee even had a Practice on the main street of the well-to-do market town of Helston in the Mid C19 and was considered to be of great renown.
Just as the practitioners of magic were a ‘mixed bag’ so too were people’s attitude towards them. An obituary in the ‘West Britain’ (Feb26, 1874) entitled “Death of a Wizard” states “On Thursday last, at park bottom in Illogan, John Thomas better known as “The Wizard”, ended his mortal career …rich and poor families around have honoured him with a visit (in times past) and the contributions poured in upon him, if report be true, have been considerable” and then goes on to list a glowing account of his miraculous cures. However a previous article printed in May 2nd 1856 states “It is humiliating to think say that there are such characters …as gipsies, witches, conjurers, fortune tellers and charmers living now, in this nineteenth century, and artfully learning a livelihood out of the credulity of mankind.” And then goes on to name and shame several practitioners of the art, Including one Mr ---Thomas of the parish of Bodmin apparently “Seldom goes home from the fair or market sober, and withal is an immoderate snuff taker.” !
Above and beyond these however, upon the heaths and cliff top perches, brooded the shadowy semi-mythical figure of the witch. Who rode the storm on their ragwort stalks; dancing with the wind in the arms of the Bucca…the old god who presided over their Sabbatic realm. In their carnate forms they descended to haunt the ports and harbours in order to sell the wind in knotted chords the sailors and fishermen who came their way.
One skein that bound all these disparate threads of magic together was the doctrine of “Virtue”. Virtue was a kind of essence that inhabited the being of the magical practitioner. It was that which was passed on to them that allowed them to be Magical, and it was that which gave their magic life and efficacy. Virtue could be handed from one practitioner to another and it could also inhabit objects such as charm or talisman. Paradoxically it has the qualities of an essence such as prana or reiki, but it is also ontological in nature. The host pare excellence of Virtue to the Pellar is the enigmatic “Milpreve” stone; the lapis Exilis and holy grail of the Cornish cunning tradition, said to be formed by the secretion of serpents and to impart the gift of magic. It is the Milpreve that makes the pellar but it is the Virtue that heals the cow, that rests the ghost, that opens the sight and rocks the Logan stone that sings to the heartbeat of the land.
Let us not make the mistake of thinking of the tradition of magic in Cornwall as something locked in the dim and distant past. As our slate charm demonstrates it certainly went on in to the C20. The old cunning practitioners always were an eclectic and peripatetic bunch. And so accordingly, like the serpent, the Cornish magical tradition sheds its skin and as the world changes it manifests itself according to the needs and perceptions of its practitioners. The magical tradition seemed to have thrived in industrial world of C19 Cornwall, but it was the two world wars and the prevailing materialism of the C20 that seemed to herald the swan song for its traditional form. It was the growth of the spiritualist movement, the theosophical society and the hermetic order of the golden dawn and their many offshoots that seemed to manifest the old tradition in a new incarnation. Now we see the role of the charmer replaced with the numerous new-age Therapists and the spiritualists practicing the arts of healing and communing with the spirit world, whilst the art of cunning and spellcraft seems to have passed in to the hands of the ceremonial magicians and their country cousins the neo-pagans. Ironically it is through the latter that a revival of the old Pellar traditions have re-emerged …bur that is another story!
No account of Cornish magical traditions in the C20 would be complete without reference to Cecil Hugh Williams (1909-1999), the founder of the Museum of Witchcraft, now in Boscastle, Cornwall. He was a colourful character who had worked for M16 and the film industry, who devoted his life to the study of the old “West country Wayside Witches”, of whom he spent a great deal of time amongst. Much of his researches have been sadly lost but much still remains in his museum- which is still going strong today. For a brief period whilst the museum was in its original incarnation on the Isle of Man, he was visited by the charismatic fantasist Gerald Gardner who was experimenting with using witchcraft as a base for fusing his interests in ceremonial magic, tribal religious practices, classical paganism and his own personal sexual peccadilloes in to the his new religion of “Wicca”. By a strange quirk of history Wicca spread like wildfire and within the world of paganism and witchcraft it became the prevailing paradigm, whilst Cecil Williamson and the old traditional witches were all but forgotten. I strongly believe however one should not underestimate the influence Mr Williamson has had in preserving and breathinglife in to the old ways …and neither should we underestimate the extent to which we now regard our magical heritage through Gardeners eyes and the assumptions of Wicca have become ‘fact’.
In the latter part of the C20 an unexpected interest in the traditional magic of Cornwall as an operative system came from the surrealist art camp. Ithell Colquhoun began linking the concepts of magic, paganism, earth energies and the sacred landscape of Cornwall. Peter Redgrove, the Tantric-Bardic-Pellar delved in to his subconscious and pulled the serpent goddess of the Lizard peninsula, whilst Tony ‘doc’ Sheils conjured up Morgawr, the owl man and all manner of beasties from the ‘Vasty deeps’. At the turn of the new millennia once again the wheel turned and the old traditions took on a more overtly magical turn. Andrew Chumbley magister of the Essex Based Cultus Sabbati was on a mission in the south-west to “reify and enflesh the Pellar tradition”, Cheryl Straffon was promoting a vision of goddess centred paganism and the and the megalithic landscape, Cassandra Latham - The idiosyncratic gothic witch of Buryan, was promoting her own brand of village witchcraft and Gemma Garry magistra of another traditional clan (Ros-An-Bucca) published “A Cornish book of ways” in which she synthesised a cohesive system of pellar praxis under the auspices of the Bucca.
The old tradition of magic in Cornwall is a twisted skein of many threads. I have heard tell of some of the old witches still working their ways on Bodmin Moor and the Glyn Valley, in the orchards of St Austell and the old granite quarries of west Cornwall. I was once given the phone number of a charmer who “Sorted out all the Fishermen” in Mevagissy and was even treated by one in Portreath. The old slate charm is still in the possession of the farm where it was found and is considered to have a talismanic protective value. Beyond the farm looms a hill once known as Pella stone cairn. The old cairns that once graced its crown have long since been queried away, but something of their virtue I feel still remains. In its shadow on the far side stands an old megalith. Recent excavations showed that surprisingly it dated not from the Bronze Age as one would expect but from the C6, and at its foot lay buried a badge from a Bellarmine witch bottle from the C17. Nothing in the world of magic is ever as straightforward as one initially imagines it to be! It takes its own twisted serpentine course down through history and often its mysteries lie closer to home than one thinks. Let us not be like Schliemann who in his enthusiasm to dig down ever deeper in his quest for Troy, dug straight through the mythical Troy of King Priam reducing it to rubble and spoil heaps. To focus our gaze on only its remote history and faraway places we risk the loss of probably the most interesting material on our very doorsteps. In this otherwise seemingly unremarkable parish the fields surrounding the standing stone from the age of Arthur yield another treasure. Around the same time as the slate charm was fabricated local farmers walled off the corner of a number of fields. These are known locally as “Devils Corners” and are considered to contain the malefic forces in the land and keep them out of the fields. A little further along the road however resides its strangest treasure. Some years ago the new owners of a house in the vicinity commissioned a new house sign. Whilst delivering the sign I commented that due to its name it must have been connected to the quarries. They said that when they had moved in to the house it had previously been occupied by an old lady who had lived only in one room. The rest of the house had been sealed up and left like a time capsule from the 1950s. They said that there had indeed been a barn full of old tools. Having an interest in such things I enquired as to whether they still had them, to my disappointment they informed they had been put on the skip. He then leaned over and said in a low voice that that was only the half of it! There was also a room filled with “Wands and robes and weird stuff.” ..That too they informed me had gone on the skip. Sometimes one is presented with an open portal to a mystery, and sometimes instinct tells you it is a blind alley. In the quest for magic one learns that sometimes one has to just put on a poker face and walk away.

© Steve Patterson 2021