the Witchery Society

Hello, I’m Colleen

So, this site used to be “Dr. Folklorista” as a result of my deep interest in folklore, especially spirituality and material culture. My interest was so deep that I completed a folklore heavy, theologically-oriented doctorate in the hope of understanding how people engage with spirituality but outside of “official” frames, and the material culture that results (with a heavy focus on textiles but not exclusively).

My coursework focussed on personal and “unconventional” spiritualities (including incidental spirituality) married with cræft/making, domestic arts lore, and subjective wellbeing. My dissertation was an ethnography encompassing the previously mentioned elements as coping strategies in the context of chronic health conditions and a bunch of other theoretical stuff (that I can get into, or not). All of this was married with my other academic passion – social work. Does that seem disparate? Trust me, it wasn’t, and it was great fun. I now teach classes on this and present at conferences but, I think it’s important information just to have out in the world and since not everyone can or will take post secondary classes or go to those conferences, I’ll also write about it here in the hopes of sharing the information a bit more broadly.

So, why change it to the Witchery Society? There were a few reasons. One is that people have some feelings about what “folklore” is and I spent a lot of time replying to people about that. My favourite were the reply guys who would tell me I was wrong but also who had no education in folklore, theology, or social work with a “everyone knows” or “this [LLM/AI] says that…”. The other reason is that this site is moving away from teaching about folklore to supporting people to embody what my research found, to share the why of it, as well as highlight other people who are doing similar things. I call that witchery.

The goal here adheres to the tagline “the magic of making and the making of magic”.

And yes, I am absolutely open to your questions and requests though I don’t claim to be a generalist in folklore – my interest and studies were focussed on my areas of interest (one of the privileges of being a doctoral student, I guess). That said, I know a tonne of people in the folklore community so if there’s something you’re interested in, even if it’s way outside of my areas, let me know and I will try to point you in that direction.