Adrian Bott Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Legends persist of British magicians and witches using spells to prevent invasion by sea. Dr John Dee was credited (erroneously, after his time) with raising the storm that scattered the Spanish Armada. #FolkloreThursday
Gardner claimed that witches 'raised the great cone of power' to prevent Hitler crossing the sea and landing on British shores, 'just as their great-grandfathers had done to Boney and their remoter forefathers had done to the Spanish Armada'. #FolkloreThursday
The legend of 'Operation Cone of Power' lingers on, despite the lack of supporting evidence for it. mentalfloss.com/article/86145/… #FolkloreThursday
One aspect of the legend is that some of the witches (who allegedly worked naked, because they had to or the magic wouldn't work) suffered from exposure as a result of the cold weather and died as a result, laying down their lives for the security of Britain. #FolkloreThursday
No evidence of any such heroic deaths has ever been found, however; researcher Philip Heselton did a lot of work trying to find such evidence, but as yet has found nothing conclusive on this point. #FolkloreThursday
From Wikipedia: 'Gardner also noted that several of the older and frailer practicing Witches died after practicing the ritual, something that was confirmed by Louis Wilkinson, who claimed that it was because they had performed the ritual naked, without goose grease on the skin...
... to keep them warm, & that as such they had contracted pneumonia. Investigating these claims, Heselton found two locals who died soon after the ritual: a reporter, Walter Forder (1881–1940)...
& a blacksmith, Charles Loader (1864–1940), whom he speculated were involved in the rite.'

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More from @Cavalorn

Mar 18, 2023
Yearly reminder that while the idea of a goddess called Ostara has been around since at least 1797 and was later independently postulated by Grimm, the pagan festival called Ostara that falls precisely on the Spring Equinox was invented by Aidan Kelly in the early 1970s.
The Anglo-Saxon festival of Eostur that gave its name to Easter was *not* associated with the Spring Equinox, and is far more likely to have been marked by a full moon, meaning the date would shift rather than being fixed.
St Patrick's Day is therefore not a Christianization of the old pagan Spring Equinox festival of Ostara, because there was no old pagan Spring Equinox festival of Ostara.
Read 12 tweets
Mar 17, 2023
Once again, if you believe that St Patrick must have driven out 'the pagans' because 'Ireland never had snakes!' then you are missing something very basic

We only discovered that Ireland had never had snakes VERY RECENTLY.
Back in Patrick's time they didn't have access to 20th Century studies of the fossil record to tell them it has ALWAYS been like this.

They only knew there were no snakes in Ireland in their time. So they explained that with a saintly myth.
And it wasn't even an original myth. And it was added centuries after Patrick's life.
Read 6 tweets
May 1, 2022
oh hey, happy Bealtaine to those who celebrate
As usual, 99% of what we think we know about this is wrong, but who cares

The historical record is not a measure of canonicity, and there is a certain joy in remembering things that never were

See the all-important story of Queen Ynci of Lancre
"where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom*"

*Made it up and extrapolated from associated sources**

**had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.
Read 5 tweets
Mar 27, 2022
people stop assuming pagans were obsessed with 'fertility' challenge
things pagans depended upon that had nothing to do with 'fertility':

- successful hunting
- successful fishing
- crops not blighted
- prosperous trade
- successful raids
- living to old age
- recovering from illness
- house not falling down
- food stores not being eaten by rats
euphemisms prudish Victorians employed used in order to avoid mentioning sex:

- 'fertility'
Read 9 tweets
Mar 21, 2022
"A dreadful hybrid has of late years appeared in the Berlin Easter markets and shops - a monster defiant of all known classification laws, subversive of the Darwinian theory, and infinitely perplexing to the student of animated nature. This is an astounding combination...
... of the two leading Easter symbols, a nondescript creature, half hare, half egg, which plunges the spectator into dire doubt, never to be resolved by any trustworthy authority...
... as to whether the hare is hatching the egg or the egg producing the hare from a tenancy in itself inconceivable.'

'A Journalist's Jottings', William Beatty-Kingston, 1890
Read 8 tweets
Mar 20, 2022
In Britain and Ireland, Celtic Pagans who converted to Christianity celebrated the festival known as 'Pascha', which is why it's called Cáisc in Irish, Pasg in Welsh, Pace in Scots and Pask in Cornish

All well and good until the Anglo-Saxons buggered it all up
These comparatively late arrivals to Christianity would also have been told to celebrate Pascha, but as fate would have it, they already had a word for that time
Because once we have grown used to a habitual way of reckoning time, it sticks. We still say Woden's Day and Thor's Day even now. We have months called July and August long after Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.
Read 8 tweets

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