Author Archives: rogerjhorne

The Old Black Cat

The Old Black Cat, my latest book, is now available on Amazon and will soon be available via bookstores worldwide. 

It’s not a lengthy work, but a neat, concise little pocket guide full of superstitions from the New World and the British Isles. It’s also a folk-sorcerer’s guide to using superstitious charms in one’s craft. 

I love reconnecting with old ancestral superstitions in my practice, both for their age-old magic and their unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth flavor. I hope that love comes through in this work. 

From my black little heart to yours.

Now Available: A Gathering of Witches – Sorcerous Folktales & Curious Accounts

My latest book, A Gathering of Witches: Sorcerous Folktales & Curious Accounts, is now available via Amazon, and will become available through all other book-type channels and venues in the coming days. This work is a collection of ninety-two folktales of witchery, retold from old tales originating in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, the New World, and England, including the distinct Celtic nation of Cornwall.

Many entries here contain old charms and superstitions, rituals and incantations to various ends–both good and ill. For practitioners of the old folk crafts, these stories carry practical knowledge (sometimes hidden in plain sight), folkloric symbolism, and deep, resonant truths that guide us in our ways. But from any perspective, practitioner or no, I find these stories brimming with curiosity and charm. Each tale notes the originating culture, so that we who are the ancestors of these peoples can peer deeply into its symbols and details, rooting more firmly into the ways of those who came before us.

My heart is full of gratitude for the many generations of human voices that have carried these tales forward. They have been told on dark nights, beside hearths and candles and loved ones tucked into their warm beds. They have been told through ages of oppression and greed, cruelty and turmoil, injustice and suffering, much like the times we are enduring now. Nothing, after all, is truly new.

I hope that these stories can bring to readers that old, good, nourishing magic of delight and reconnection with ourselves, of feeling not alone, but endlessly and immeasurably connected in that great cacophony of voices, echoing across the ages, voices that conjure us forward even now, saying: Look. Look here. Look who has walked into this age with you, beside you, within you. Look at these dreams we have kept safe for you. Look, and see what many hands can carry.

Details:
-Paperback
-352 pages
-92 folktales
-Includes 40 illustrations by the author

In this new collection, ninety-two folktales and historical accounts of age-old witchery are reinvigorated with fresh, vivid language and accessible storytelling. The witches here come in many forms, not only the legendary malevolent practitioner of dark intent, but also the village healer, the seer, the wise man, and the conjuror of spirits.

Among these treasures of antiquity, we find the woodland witch who roams the land as a hare, a cat, a bird, or even a deer. We find sea-witches and wind-witches who can conjure gentle gales or dire tempests at will. We find charmers, cunning folk, and white witches who can return curses back on those who cast them. We find accounts of old charms, spells, and talismans that were once the stuff of legend.

A Gathering of Witches breathes fresh life into these folktales of ages past, many from Scotland and the New World, reflecting the author’s own heritage, but also tales from Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and England—including several tales from the distinct witch lore of Cornwall. These stories of various witching folk, considered together, illustrate the ways the lore of witchcraft has spread its branches over time, being both similar and unique across cultures.

A work of love dedicated to the beauty of old witch-lore, A Gathering of Witches is a treasury of tales that capture the long-held beliefs, customs, and superstitions that shaped for previous ages the magic conjured by the word witch.

Horse Nettle

Here is a thorn among the green,
Sharp and tender as a tooth.
Here are five songs for the dead,
Five movements, five gestures,
Five dances for that dark company
In five ballrooms, every one as lush
As these woods in the long exhale
At the end of summer. The grasses
Yellow, and the flower in the throng
Of barbed horse nettle sharpens
Its bone-white blades, pale as haunting,
Against the grit of forest floor. What
Does the ghost of the poison flower
Dream as she withers around her globe
Of fruit, clutching her green pearl,
Her waxing prize, even as her petals
Dry to husk? Not even the blackbirds
Can conjure the music she hears,
The sixth song, the one no creature
Of flesh can sing, fragile as we are.

Black Nightshade

“Black nightshade is sometimes confusingly referred to as ‘deadly nightshade’ in older herbals due to its fruit, which does somewhat resemble the berries of the belladonna plant. Its flowers are quite distinct, though, being small and very delicate blooms of white and yellow. The American variety (solanum ptychanthum) has glossy berries, while the berries of the solanum nigrum are typically more matte in appearance. Most varieties of black nightshade contain levels of the toxin solanine that are quite dangerous to the body…”

-from The Charmer’s Root: Witching Ways with Common Flora

Original illustration based on a plant found in the wild.

New Occult Art Prints Available

  • Plant Spirit with Bloom
  • Asteriskos Hand
  • Saint Grimalkin

As many of you know, I’ve been in love with woodcuts for the longest time, which prompted me to take a printmaking class years ago. After developing my own process of woodcut-style illustration for the Age of Witchery Tarot, I’ve decided to take another leap and reinstate my old Threadless-powered art shop with some new work. These pieces are now available for purchase in the form of fine art prints, greeting cards, tees, and pins. Visit the shop here.