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Practical magic: curses, spells & cunning folk
Episode 2064

Practical magic: curses, spells & cunning folk

From casting love spells to lifting curses, Tabitha Stanmore explains how practical magic was once a part of everyday life in medieval and Tudor England

HistoryExtra podcast · Immediate

August 18, 202433m 55s

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Show Notes

From love spells to enthral the object of your desires, to charms to influence the outcome of a trial, people turned to cunning folk for all kinds of practical magic in medieval and Tudor England. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, historian Tabitha Stanmore reveals the amount of power these magical people could have within their communities, and explores some of their methods for altering the world around them by supernatural means.


(Ad) Tabitha Stanmore is the author of Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic (Bodley Head, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cunning-Folk-Life-Practical-Magic/dp/1847927319/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty.


The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.

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