Meeting The Devil's Drink: Coffee Folklore in Legend and Ritual
Coffee is an incredibly popular drink all over the world. Director David Lynch reportedly said, "Even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all". From Ethiopia to Yemen, and then on into Eu...
23 Apr 202221min
Wine and Witchcraft: A Beverage fit for Apotropaic Success
Like beer, wine has enjoyed a long and prosperous history. It's been enjoyed by the ancients, used as a safe alternative to water, prescribed as medicine, and offered in ritual. And like beer, wine al...
16 Apr 202221min
The Folklore of Tea: Magic, Predictions and Poison
The folklore of tea is woven through the history of this fascinating plant. Well-known for its use in fortune-telling, through reading tea leaves, it also has a range of magickal uses and appears in m...
9 Apr 202222min
The Legends and Folklore of Beer: Remedies, Witches & Saints
Beer is a popular drink in many parts of the world. In the US, it's the most popular alcoholic beverage. Throughout the centuries, beer becomes the drink of choice in eras and places where drinking wa...
2 Apr 202220min
The Lily and the Lady: Plants of Purity and Protection
There are few flowers quite as recognisable as the lily. Yet despite its beauty, the lily is a toxic plant. In some ways, this goes to show the contradictory nature of the flower, used in both bridal ...
26 Mar 202218min
Lavender Folklore: The Tales Behind The Calming Plant
From cleaning wounds to repelling plague, lavender has had a myriad of uses throughout the centuries. It’s come to represent devotion, purity, luck, cleanliness, compassion, constancy, faith, humility...
19 Mar 202217min
From Medicine to Murder: How the Apothecary Garden Found Its Dark Side
The Alnwick Poison Garden is the modern descendant of the medieval apothecary garden. Find out how these healing gardens found their dark side—and explore some poisonous plant folklore—in this week'...
12 Mar 202218min
The Victorian Language of Flowers: Hiding Secret Messages in Plain Sight
If a bouquet of flowers arrives at our door, we’re more interested in who sent them. The Victorians were more concerned with what it meant. The Victorian language of flowers, also known as floriogra...
5 Mar 202215min
