A field guide to the old material
A field guide to folklore, plants, stones, and the old calendar.
This is a reference site. It collects what folklore, plant lore and the historical record actually say about a set of subjects that are usually written about badly, and it tries to be clear about which of the three any given claim comes from.
There is nothing to buy and nothing to sign up for. Start anywhere.
Start here
The grimoire
Six plants, what was believed about them, and where the belief came from.
Stones
Six minerals, their folklore, and the geology underneath it.
The wheel of the year
Eight festivals, their attested origins, and which names were invented in the 1950s.
Moon phase
Work out the phase for any date, with the arithmetic shown.
Tarot
The twenty-two major arcana and what each is conventionally read as.
History
The trials, the cunning folk, and where grimoires actually came from.
Quizzes
Three of them. Entirely unscientific and quite short.
Glossary
Sixteen terms, defined plainly.
A note on sources
Folklore is not history, and neither is a nineteenth-century revivalist writing about folklore. Where a tradition is attested in an early source, this site says so. Where a name or practice was assembled in the twentieth century, it says that too, which is more often than the popular literature admits.