Culture
A Witch’s Harrowing Sorrow: A Review of Hamnet
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Lyonel Perabo reviews Chloe Zhao’s film, a moody, witchy exploration of grief and art that incorporates the medieval Nine Herbs Charm into its story of Agnes Hathaway and William Shakespeare.
Living
Ten Years of Wildly Hunting: Reflections on Pagan Journalism
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“Ten years already!” writes Lyonel Perabo in this retrospective. “This anniversary of sorts made me think back a little bit about both my “career,” The Wild Hunt, and Pagan journalism in general, and how it has all evolved in the years I have been a part of it.”
Europe
Bright Forest Longing
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The woods around my home in Arctic Norway were few and far between, mostly small birches barely taller than your average adult. Here in Åland, I met with real woods: tall bone-white birches, spruce, thick pines, bushy walnut groves. This vibrant life was everywhere, and all the while I was searching for graves.
Living
Green Woods and Stone Ships: The Second Skåne Pilgrimage
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Exhausted, sweaty, and painfully hungry, I take my back into the gravel road of what must be Sōdra Ugglarp. On the horizon a long earthen-colored brick building stands against the deep blue sky, like a wall. In front of it, I notice a concrete-pit filled with horse manure. Closest to me, nearly as long as the barn, lies the stone ship, shaped by dozens of massive standing stones, like teeth of a giant rising from the green earth.
Arts & Culture
Practical Advice for Discerning “Cunning Folk”
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Ed Simon reviews Tabitha Stanmore’s new book, “Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.” “Stanmore enumerates the sorts of practical rituals that cunning folk offered in the plying of their trade. A thief might be discovered, for example, by making suspects eat chunks of cheese in which various charms had been carved, whereupon the guilty party would choke on their morsel. (This must be hard cheese, Stanmore emphasizes.)”