Thomas Watersさんのイラストまとめ

Four demons, in watercolour.

From a c. 1775 German and Latin grimoire (book of spells, rites and incantations). Roughly translated title = A Rare Compendium of the whole Magical Art, by a Celebrated Master of this Art.

Courtesy of @ExploreWellcome.

#FolkloreThursday

To make money from magic, you needed a good story. A striking bio, like the c19th Irish 'fairy doctors' and fortune-tellers who said they'd spent years in the subterranean worlds of the wee folk.

'They were all gentleman there' one magician claimed, in 1837.

#FolkloreThursday

@harbottlestores It's potent myth. I reckon The Victorian Asylum: Myth and Reality, could really work as a popular or crossover history book.

'The Fairy Doctor' by Edmund Fitzpatrick.

'The Fairy Doctor, or Fairy Man ... a somewhat analogous character to our White Witch ... never stirs out by day, but like an old spider, remains crouched in a corner.'

Illustrated London News, 31 December 1859.

How witchcraft can kill.

Believing you're ill can make it so - it's known as the nocebo effect. 'Voodoo death' (physiologist WB Cannon's 1942 term) is similar but scarier. The fear of being magically attacked causes an adrenaline surge, which can damage the heart, lungs & gut.

'Psychic attack' is a witchcraft like concept - that bad people use esoteric powers to cause exhaustion, depression & nightmares.

1900s psychiatrists actually coined the term 'psychic attack'. But occultists adopted & adapted it, esp Dion Fortune in Psychic Self-Defence (1930).

Georgian satires - coloured etchings of grotesque characters - are iconic artworks. Many were political; yet witchcraft and magic also featured.

'The Dog & the Devil' (1807) depicts a magician's assistant, who dressed up as a devil to fool a client, but was attacked by his dog.

'Humbugging, or Raising the Devil' by Thomas Rowlandson (1800), from @metmuseum.

Cunning-folk were the sort of wizards who knew how to put on a good show. Arcane objects filled their consulting rooms: skulls, strange animals, herbs, & mysterious manuscripts, as shown here.

The art of folk remedies...

'A Certain Cure' by John Callcott Horsley (1817-1903). I love the mysterious title and feel of this painting, which is from the collection of the College of Optometrists. Would you trust the wise woman and her cure?

Emma, Countess of Mount Edgcumbe (1729-1807) was a famously plain Georgian Lady. But she was proud of the fact that she had 'no common face', as she told the painter Joshua Reynolds. Emma featured in many caricatures, including one as a toad-commanding witch.

From the @NPGLondon