The Getting of Inside Information

The book Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History by Owen Davies is a good book to have. It truly fills a gap in understanding the history of cunning people, those who used folk magic for hundreds of years to help their clients in their communities. His research draws from a wide range of sources, and is particularly useful in illuminating who had access to magical texts and how they were used in folk magic.

BUT. There seems to be a big black hole in Davies’ understanding of HOW cunning people gained their information, and he presents them repeatedly as using illusory methods or charlatanism in their dealings with clients. From a shamanic perspective, Davies misses the mark on several vital aspects of this subject.

Of particular note is Chapter 7, which makes some major missteps regarding folk magic practice and shamanism.

“Moving further westwards, the link with shamanism becomes even more culturally tenuous, despite similar concepts and motifs being found. This is because the idea of soul travel or communication with the spirit world was not culturally specific, let alone definably shamanistic.”

As has been too often the case during the last twenty years of study of the folk/spirit experience, we have an overly narrow, squished definition of shamanism hobbling a larger, necessary point of inquiry. Davies aligns himself with the camp that believes that shamanism is confined to deep trance states (visually observable, resembling epilepsy or catatonia) that are only brought about by drumming, and that are witnessed by the community, ala Siberian shamanism.

This means the author discounts all other ways that Europeans had of communicating with the spirits or taking trance journeys: oneiric practices/dreaming, simple spirit talking, relationship with the familiar, fetch or fairy, solitary (what is now called) meditation—these are all methods for inducing varying degrees of trance which put people into contact with the spirits. And none of them count, here. Because they don’t fit the definition of shamanism which is confined to one remote part of northern Eurasia. What is wrong with this picture?

“Once such widely shared core beliefs and experiences such as soul travel, spirit communication and fairy gatherings are recognized, referring to the shamanistic characteristics of magical practitioners loses its relevance in a European context.”

This statement utterly baffles me. It seems that the opposite should be true: that once we recognise how widely shared core soul/spirit experiences are, then in the European context (given the long, post-Christianization history of fragmentation and persecution) it becomes even more fertile and revealing to ascertain the shamanic relevance of these experiences in practice, expression and result.

Davies presents the case of Chonrad Stoecklin: “Whether he made up the stories of his soul journeys, or whether he really experienced some form of altered consciousness, is not important because the purpose of his stories was to legitimate his claim to special knowledge...” (my italics)

Oh, I believe it is important. Davies appears to believe that every cunning person or healer made use of stories and claims merely to enhance their reputations, to attract clients—as merely a cynical but practical ploy. And by failing to dig deeper, he seems to say that charlatanism and self-promotion were the main focus of all folk magicians.

Surely, he makes a good case that cunning people often made performances out of their special and rare skills. (I will explain why.) Because: shamanic skills are interior to the shaman. The voices and promptings are relayed on the inside, and blended with integrating the observation of signals in every day life. (In the shamanic experience, the spiritual and corporal merge.) Even Siberian shamans (like many others) enhance the performance quality of their healings, for two reasons. One, to create a deeply liminal, resonant atmosphere so that he/she can hear the spirits and respond to what they require. And two, so that all the people present are let in on the shaman’s private experience, so they too can touch the numinous, in case their spiritually-perceptive abilities are dulled, as most undeveloped people’s are. The exterior performance helps folks realize the interior healing which has occurred to them.

By Davies’ own research we see that folk magicians were paid to place and remove spells, write charms, find lost cloaks, heal dry cows, et cetera, and that they were integral parts of their communities. Because Davies at no point explains HOW they did these things, the key is missing.

Were they all just clever? Shall we say that at least a thousand years of the cunning profession points to just a collection of wily characters who were brilliant at self-promotion? Of course, those pellars who were found to be fraudulent had their works examined in court. So if a pellar simply tried to ascertain who had placed a spell simply by cleverly asking the right questions of the client, that might be revealed in these records. What hasn’t been left behind, besides good reputations, are those records concerning pellars who were able to make magic or heal without clever tricks, but with the aid of supernatural guides. When every voice or friend or fairy or animal who spoke to a pellar on the inside of their mind could be called a demon, few were ever motivated to share how they received their “inside information.”

Davies also misinterprets the relevance of fairy belief and interaction.

“Yet, while the notion of fairy fraternizing was certainly a vibrant aspect of English popular belief, it was not as integrated into the world of popular magic as elsewhere.”

This statement is absolutely unsupported. How could an important part of folk belief not have its counterpart or expression in the medium best meant to convey it: namely, human cooperation with spirits to create magic? Or: If English folks believed in fairies, danced with fairies, met fairies, and spoke with fairies...why would they have not naturally expounded on that relationship by shifting realities in our world, with fairies' help? When hundreds of years of folk myth reveal that fairies helped people spiritually and materially, giving them inside information...at what point would this have become inapplicable to cunning people? How then did cunning-people get their magical information?

“...unlike other continental fairy healers, English meetings with the fairies, like those confessed to by John Walsh, were usually conducted corporally and not spiritually.”

This displays a basic misunderstanding of the experience of walking-between-the-worlds, which would have been a necessary part of obtaining otherworldly guidance. In the strongest moments of trance-contact, experiences with fairies and spirits is often corporal and spiritual at the same time. Is Davies saying that John Walsh physically and concretely danced with supernatural beings? Could he have caught them in a cage? The shaman knows that the deepest contact with supernatural beings occurs simultaneously in the space between our world and theirs. It is corporal and spiritual, at the same time, and usually has to be experienced to be understood. (This is why in-their-heads western anthropologists started drinking ayahuasca in ceremony, because it became obvious they were missing the experience of this merging of the physical and spiritual worlds.)

So. The greatest question posed by this book is the invisible goliath in the room: How did English cunning folk do all the magical things they did, how did they actually accomplish satisfying their customers...if they had neither the shamanic abilities nor the relationship to supernaturals with which they could gain help and insight from the spirit world? A shaman’s answer would clarify everything. Despite the wide range I assume they displayed with regard to talent and power, cunning-folk were only able to help customers for hundreds of years because they had shamanic abilities, and because they were in relationship with spirits who helped them.