Folk and village custom magic and ritual

Folk and village custom is the large body of belief and practice that belongs to no organised religion: the charm against the evil eye, the cure for warts, the fairy hawthorn, the household spirit, the lucky day. It is passed within families and communities and exists in every society. This page looks at how it is kept, who keeps it, and why it is both valued and dismissed. It is also called popular religion, vernacular religion or lived religion by scholars.

Keepers and settings

Keepers are often older women, farmers, midwives, shepherds and craftsmen. Settings are the house, field, well, crossroads and church porch. European cunning folk offered help for fees and kept charms and books. In many Asian and African villages the specialist is a healer, a diviner or a spirit medium working beside religion. The same grandmother may light a candle at church, tie a thread on a child and say a charm for a burn, and see no conflict between them.

Names and labels

The same thing carries many names: the evil eye is the nazar, mal de ojo and ayin hara. Folklorists collected such customs from the nineteenth century, sometimes as relics of a vanished past and sometimes as living culture. The label folk also marks class, since the term often implies rural, poor or uneducated, a bias that modern scholars try to avoid. Where the village has a wise woman or a bone-setter, the community knows what to ask of her and what she will refuse to do.

Religion, state and reform

Churches, mosques and temples have absorbed, tolerated and condemned folk practice in turn. States have banned it as backward: Chinese campaigns against superstition in the twentieth century closed local temples and shrines, and Soviet policy targeted village healers. At times governments have turned to it as national heritage, as in revived festivals across Europe and Asia. Historians and folklorists note that it often keeps old customs alive within newer religions, such as lighting fires at midsummer within Christian saints' days.

Change and commerce

Urban life and migration thin out folk knowledge, while heritage projects and the internet gather it. Customs reappear as products, such as protective charms in shops and festival tourism. Some folk practice carries harm: village accusation of witchcraft, treatments that delay medical care, and fees charged to relieve fear. Illness needs real medical care. In places with active heritage movements, folk custom has become a source of pride, and young people record songs and cures from grandparents before they are lost.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Sampo: Väinö Blomstedt, Public domain, source

Grimoire: Bengt A. Lundberg, CC BY 2.5, source

Numerology: Pietro Bongo, Public domain, source

Nicholas Culpeper: Richard Gaywood, Public domain, source

Fairy: Henry Fuseli, Public domain, source

Necromancy: Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, source

Slavic Native Faith: Union of Slavic Rodnover Communities (Союз Славянских Общин Славянской, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Beltane Fire Festival: Stefan Schäfer, Lich, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Dusios: Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 2.5, source

John Dee: Unidentified painter, Public domain, source

Axis mundi: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Valknut: Sacrificial_scene_on_Hammars_(I).JPG : Berig derivative work: The Man, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Icelandic magical staves: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Sun cross: National Museum of Denmark, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Triple-headed eagle: Неизвестный автор. (фото обложки сборника: Александр Храмов), Public domain, source

Folk and village custom: magic in this belief world