Folk Radio (of all places) posted an article about venerable 18/19th century cunning man John Harries who has inspired a short film, The Cunning Man. Have a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YZVxGF6qfs.
The article begins:
“Among the many manuscripts, you can peruse online at The National Library of Wales is a manuscript volume, a Book of Incantations, from the library of John Harries (d. 1839), of Pantcoy, Cwrtycadno, Carmarthenshire. He was an astrologer and medical practitioner. The manuscript contains the spirit lists and seals of the 17th-century grimoires Goetia and Theurgia-Goetia (view it here) and details of “how the ‘cunning man’ could cause benign spirits to appear, listing the attributes of each spirit, with diagrams that represent the named spirit to be conjured.”
“The Harries family became renowned for their ability to predict the future, recover lost or stolen property, combating witchcraft, and invoking benign spirits, and as a result, were severely condemned by the mainstream religious people of the 19th century.
“He was a cunning man…a term (also cunning folk) used when referring to “practitioners of folk medicine, folk magic, and divination“. If you want to learn more about folk magic and cunning folk, pay a visit to the independent Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, more details can be found on their website here: https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/.”
Read the entire article:
https://www.folkradio.co.uk/2021/08/john-harries-and-the-cunning-man-film/.
