Folklore and the arts are almost natural bedfellows. As we saw with the work of Newcastle-based painter Ralph Hedley, artists can capture local traditions for posterity. The Pre-Raphaelites created some of the most enduring depictions of myth and legend.

Even creating art becomes a part of folk life, with various arts and crafts part of enduring traditions. As we saw with the humble proggy mat, making items can be a way to engage with history and heritage in a very tangible way.

So it seemed only natural that when I had three art-related episode requests, I would dedicate a month to Folklore and the Arts.

The requests were for: superstitions connected to artworks; haunted portraits; and stories about the creation of certain artworks. Unfortunately, in the case of the last request, there was no indication of which artworks they wanted to know about, but hopefully, I've included them here anyway!

In this article, we’ll explore a supposedly cursed painting, an apparently haunted portrait, and a painting at the heart of a weird urban legend in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/cursed-artworks/

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Studying the shapes of things is a popular means of divination, relying on human pattern recognition abilities. Look at reading tea leaves and coffee grounds, or tasseography, which rely on spotting symbols in the cup. The symbols often hold near-universal meanings (like a ring for marriage), but they can also be deeply personal to the diviner.

And let’s be honest, we live in an often chaotic and unpredictable universe. Divination using pattern recognition methods offers a way to make sense of seemingly senseless things. Perhaps you believe the brain loves connecting patterns between unrelated information to find a meaning. Known as pareidolia, it explains why people see faces of dead celebrities in the burned parts of their toast.

Or perhaps you think we see shapes in smoke because a spirit or a god is manipulating form to pass on a message. Either way, there is a whole range of methods involving pattern recognition. There’s an entire chapter about them in the book, so let’s focus on finding symbols in the air, in fire, and in dreams in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/dreams-divination/

Buy Fate or Fortune: The Art and Folklore of Divination: https://amzn.to/41SkWOF

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Divination is a beautifully varied practice, with a plethora of tools and practices designed to give insight into situations. Practices like reading tea leaves or tarot cards already appear on this podcast.

But what about those forms of divination that rely on ‘randomness’ in order to work? You might cast lots, throw dice, or interpret the connections between items that fall where they may.

To what extent you believe the result is 'random' depends on your belief system. For some, the message comes from deities or spirits, and the tool is their communication method of choice. For others, the results come from the universe itself. Other diviners don’t accept ‘random’ as a concept, and their meanings come from the statistical results of divination. For others, the result might be truly random, but the diviner creates meaning by seeing associations between apparently disparate items.

But how it works is not our issue here. Instead, we’re going to explore the folklore of casting lots, casting stones, and throwing dice in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/random-chance-divination/

Buy Fate or Fortune: The Art and Folklore of Divination: https://amzn.to/41SkWOF

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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Last week, we looked at the use of dowsing to find treasure or criminals. Like water dowsing, this method requires the use of a rod that twitches in the hands when the target is close.

But the other method of dowsing involves a pendulum. That is, an item suspended from a chain, cord, or hair, that swings in one direction or another to give you an answer. For example, people suspended keys over the Bible as a form of bibliomancy. They asked a question, let the key swing, and checked the verse the key indicated.

This form of pendulum dowsing appears in a range of folklore, from the famous ‘sieve and shears’ practised by cunning folk, to wedding ring-based love divination! Let’s explore them further in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/pendulum-dowsing/

Buy Fate or Fortune: The Art and Folklore of Divination: https://www.crossedcrowbooks.com/shop-crossed-crow-books/p/fate-or-fortune-the-art-and-folklore-of-divination

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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Morgan Daimler is a witch who has been a polytheist since the early 1990s. Following a path inspired by the Irish Fairy Faith blended with neopagan witchcraft. Morgan teaches classes on Irish myth and magical practices, fairies, and related subjects in the United States and internationally. Morgan has been published in multiple anthologies as well as in Witches and Pagans magazine, and Pagan Dawn magazine, and is one of the world's foremost experts on all things Fairy.

In this chat, we talk about the fairy courts from Scottish folklore, how Seelie and Unseelie as terms entered the international chat through fiction, what a fairy might actually want with you if you ever met one, and why it's not a great idea to sanitise supernatural beings who once taught our ancestors valuable lessons...

Buy The Fairy Courts: From Folklore to Fiction: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781803418384

Find Morgan's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/morgandaimler

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Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7

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Dowsing is often used to find water, minerals, or even lost items. Where divination usually seeks to provide information, here the information is of a directly practical or tangible sort. Rather than telling a fortune, or providing a prophetic dream that must be interpreted, dowsing relates information about the presence of something the dowser is looking for.

We’ve already looked at dowsing for water, also known as water witching. In this post, we’ll look at dowsing for treasure and criminals in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/treasure-dowsing/

Check out Fate or Fortune: The Art and Folklore of Divination: https://www.crossedcrowbooks.com/shop-crossed-crow-books/p/fate-or-fortune-the-art-and-folklore-of-divination

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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When it comes to the walnut tree, we're probably more familiar with their produce than the actual tree. Walnuts are easily recognisable, and present in everything from nut selections to coffee cake.

We might even know that classic Jaguar cars often feature walnut veneers on their dashboards. Many guitars also feature walnut in their construction.

Yet we're probably less familiar with their superstitions, legends, and even remedies. The fact that they appear in folklore shows they were important to our forebears, even if we've forgotten their uses now.

Let's put that right and get to know the walnut tree in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/walnut-trees/

Buy Bring Me Love: Finding and Keeping Love Using Divination and Folk Magic: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781786789747

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Poplar trees are perhaps one of the lesser-known trees that I've featured on this blog. Many people can recognise an oak tree on sight, but how many could recognise the poplar?

Indeed, how many would realise John Constable added a black poplar to the background of his famous painting, 'The Hay Wain'?

We find these trees in the willow family, and for a tree that's less common now, they have a surprising amount of folklore. The trees even gave their name to the London borough, Poplar, due to the number of black poplars in the area.

There are also different types of poplar, though this article will focus on the black and white varieties. So how did people use the tree in their remedies, and what superstitions surround the poplar? Let's find out in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/poplar-trees/

Check out the Woodland Trust: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

Donate to Secure The Rothbury Estate: https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/rothbury-estate-nature-and-nation

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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