I think I mentioned it before but I make witchy stuff and sell it in my online shop.

ancientearth.ca

#Canadianwitch #witchcraft #Pagan #druid

Excavations beneath Cologne’s future Jewish museum have uncovered a rare 2nd-century Roman household shrine: the first lararium found north of the Alp that is reshaping our understanding of domestic religion along the Rhine frontier.

https://wildhunt.org/2026/02/hidden-household-gods-in-cologne-first-lararium-north-of-the-alps-found.html

#pagan #witchcraft #archaeology #germany #lararium #householdshrine #lares #romanreligion

Moon Goddess Hecate Woven Throw Blanket - Wiccan Woven Tapestry - Hekate Witchy Blanket by Printagrams https://www.etsy.com/listing/966680238/moon-goddess-hecate-woven-throw-blanket?ref=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Hecate #Wicca #Witchcraft #Pagan #MoonGoddess

Children do not usually have the self-control to use witchcraft responsibly.

#Switzerland #folktale #folklore #witchcraft
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Toad_Maker_of_Rietheim

RE: https://socel.net/@albaillustration/116131762350494797

Adorable Whimsy Woods Tarot, witches!

#witch #witchcraft #pagan #tarot

Six cards from my personal #Tarot deck, in progress. What I'm doing is that when a card comes up for me in a reading with my usual decks, and it particularly resonates with something going on in my life, I draw my own version. On the back I write my own interpretation of the card, and then the month and the personal context I drew it in. #witchcraft

In the age of divesting from ancient yucktech through its seven exit hells, my purgatory currently includes:

For writing:
bohomofo.substack.com

Coven HQ:
patreon/bohomofo

You can always find me there.

For tarot, shadow, sessions and actual connection and community, get to me through the corner of the web that smiles at me. You just need one.
bohomofo.com

#tarotreader #shadowwork #witchcraft #mystic #covenelectric #covendevotional #coven #imaginaljourney #ladywriter #bohomofo

I'm working on my own understanding of what is and isn't acceptable within #Esoteric #Occult and #Witchcraft spaces and I'm writing here about White people using "Closed off" practices and my own understanding of them.

I am basically white. For practical purposes, keep that in mind. The following is the parts of my article here that I'm uncomfortable with and want some feed back on if you're willing.

I think I have a good stance that's inclusive but nuanced, but I don't generally engage in the religious practices of the Global south, Native Americans, or the Far East. So, anyone smarter than me would be appreciated here.

#PiscesSeasonTarotSpread
1 Which card best describes me currently?

2 What am I holding on to that needs to be let go?

3 What do I most desire?

4 A message from my intuition

5 How do I turn my dreams into reality?

6 Where is my imagination taking me?

#PiscesSeason #PiscesSeason2026 #PiscesTarot #witch #witchcraft #queerwitch #queerwitches #queerpisces #astrology #queerastrology #thezodiac

#WITCHCRAFT: A MANIFESTATION BOX CAN BE A POWERFUL TOOL IN CREATING THE LIFE YOU WANT! THE IDEA IS TO PLACE THINGS IN THE BOX THAT YOU WANT TO ATTRACT OR MANIFEST IN YOUR LIFE. EACH TIME YOU DO, YOU ARE SENDING AN AFFIRMATION TO THE UNIVERSE, AND YOUR INTENTIONS WILL BEGIN TO DRAW YOUR DESIRES.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited Idaho pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist, to deliver a worship service inside the Pentagon. The event has sparked debate over religious pluralism, church–state boundaries, and the role of theology in military leadership.

https://wildhunt.org/2026/02/whose-blessing-defense-secretary-invites-christian-nationalist-pastor-to-lead-pentagon-worship-service.html

#pagan #witchcraft #religion #pentagon #christiannationalism #defensedepartment #dougwilson #petehegseth #prayerservice

The Middle Ages had various superstitions about teeth. English children were told to burn their baby teeth, otherwise they could spend eternity searching for the teeth in the afterlife. Furthermore, witches could supposedly use someone's tooth to control them with magic.

#MythologyMonday #Mythology #Folklore #Medieval #MiddleAges #Occult #Magic #Sorcery #Witchcraft

The Witches’ Tree: the thread about an old mirror in London and an enterprising Edinburgh cabinet maker

This thread was originally written and published in May 2022.

I saw a tweet that had me stumped (ho! ho! ho!) for a bit, as the answer to its question was not in the books. Just why does an old mirror now residing in London have a small plaque stating that it was “Made from the timber of the witches tree, which grew on the bank of the Nor’ Loch, Edinburgh“. Some digging around in other places threw up a few answers!

The “Witches Tree” was an ancient plane tree that grew on the southern shore of the city’s stinking, swampy defensive water feature that was called the Nor’ Loch – as the plaque says, this was “in the shadow of the Castle Rock“.

We best be clear here that in Scotland a “Plane tree” is usually a Sycamore and not a London Plane (which is a Sycamore hybrid). Alexander Nasmyth’s beautifully romantic painting of the loch and castle in 1824 is drowning in artistic licence, but shows us where the Witches Tree was, somewhere on the back there beyond the figures in the foreground.

There’s a good chance this is the Witches Tree, shown in an 1820 engraving “General view of the old town from Princes Street” by an unknown artist in the collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.

We can work this out as it is described as having been cut down at some point in the 1880s to make way for the gardens greenhouses – themselves cleared in the 1890s to double the width of the railway. This puts the tree in the then Ramsay Gardens

Ramsay Gardens were the gardens on the slope below the “Guse Pye House” built by wigmaker and poet Allan Ramsay in around 1740., the name came as a result of the buildings tall, pie-like octagonal main block.

Sycamore trees can live a few hundred years, the oldest are thought to be about 400 years. So in the 1880s when it was cut down, the Witches Tree could possibly date back to the 16th century, and witches were still being tried and executed in Scotland into the 18th century. John Slezer’s sketch of 1673 does indeed show a few mature trees growing down the boundary wall towards the loch.

There’s an 1884 photo by Alexander Inglis that happens to be taken in exactly the right position, looking exactly the right way – the flat ground behind the railway signal pole is where the greenhouses were built. Lo and behold! There’s a big old tree there. Is that the Witches Tree?

Of the tree itself, an 1898 article in The Scotsman describes it.

The Witches Tree it came to be named, for to it were bound the poor doomed crones who had to undergo their cruel ordeal by water, which if they survived, ended in their death by fire. So that plane must have seen many a helpless, aged woman persecuted to death by a dastardly mob. To the Witches Tree were also nailed proclamations and some say prisoners awaiting execution of sentence were fastened to the sycamore by a nail through the ear

Description of the Witches Tree

When the tree was cut down, the huge trunk was left near where it fell for a number of years before it was bought by William S. Brown, a local cabinetmaker “unwilling to let this landmark… pass out of recollection“. Brown used the wood to make a variety of furniture which he gave to friends, with each having a little plaque explaining the heritage. Many of the items were “cutty stools” (short stool) – a traditional 3-legged stool often used for milking, or women to sit in church.

In popular lore, a Cutty Stool thrown by Jenny Geddes in 1637 at the minister trying to preach from the book of Common Prayer started a riot in St. Giles cathedral which would eventually lead to the Bishop’s War and the “English” Civil War. She is alleged to have yelled “De’il gie you colic, the wame o’ ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?” during this act.

Brown’s workmen allegedly pulled lots of ancient nails from the tree and after blunting a number of saws, found a set of Branks within it – also known as a Scold’s Bridle. The Branks were a common form of kirk punishment meted out to unfortunate women in the 16th and 17th century.

It was supposed that the Branks were the long lost property of St. Cuthbert’s or the West Kirk, in whose demise the tree once stood.

The Scotsman further records the donation of one of the stools in 1913 to the Edinburgh Corporation Museum by a Mrs Stirton of Braidburn Terrace and in 1914 a section of the tree itself by W. S. Brown, by then Sir William. Brown himself was recorded as a cabinet maker at 28 Howe Street and Broughton Market in 1877, when he supplied all the furniture under contract to the Craiglockhart Hydropathic Establishment. He participated in the 1884 Forestry International Exhibition in Edinburgh, his display including a a dining suite made from ancient Caledonian oak tree.

In 1885 Brown won the contract to supply all of the furniture to the extension of the City Fever Hospital at Greenbank and relocated to Hanover Street the same year. By 1899 the business was at 65 George Street, and remained there until at least 1911.

The whole Witches Tree story may however have a revealing clue that casts doubt on its authenticity – that is that the most recent opinion is that witches in Scotland were neither drowned as execution or “swimmed” to determine their guilt. Drowning and “dooking” were used for civil capital and corporate punishment, but not for witchcraft. The whole thing may be an ancient local legend or something that was made up by Victorian romanticists to publicise a furniture manufacturer…

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Battles, treachery, murder, witchcraft and execution: the thread about the dark and bloody history of the Quarryholes

This thread was originally written and published in September 2022.

The “things I’d like to write a thread about” intray can get pretty overcrowded so it brings me more than a little bit pleasure to say that it’s only taken me 7 months to get around to my promise of following up on writing about the Quarryholes. This is not one but actually two distinct places, the Upper or Over Quarryholes (blue on the map below) and the Nether or Lower Quarryholes (red below). You can see the tailburn of the loch at Lochend cutting between the two.

As the name suggests, the Quarryholes were areas where quarrying had once taken place and left behind pits in the ground and a hamlet grew up at both of the locations.

In 1554 the Querrell Hollis feature in David Lindsay’s “Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits” as a location where a horse is drowned; the quarry pits had long been flooded and were dark and dangerous bodies of water. The distinct Ovir Querrelholis is recorded in 1588. Quarrel was the Scots for quarrying but obviously in modern use means a squabble or disagreement and that is quite apt given the subsequent history. In the early 17th century, the charter of both of the Quarryholes was in the possession of William Rutherford of Quarryholes, the son of an Edinburgh Burgess and merchant, one Bailie William Rutherford. William junior was a merchant and shipowner in Leith who in 1612 was in trouble for cutting off a man’s finger and in 1617 was back before the Privy Council for illegally exporting tallow and cheese.

A son of William junior, also William, sold the Quarryholes to the City of Edinburgh in 1634, and they in turn passed them on to Heriot’s Hospital (Upper Quarryholes) and the Trinity College & Hospital (Lower Quarryholes). Another Rutherford son, Andrew, was born at Quarryholes in the early 17th century and would rise to become the Lieutenant-General of the Garde Écossaise, the bodyguards to the French Crown, and a favourite of King Louis XIV of France.

On his return to Scotland, Andrew was made the Lord of Teviot by King Charles II and given a regiment to command. Later he was Governor of Dunkirk and arranged its sale to the French on behalf of the King. He died on active service in 1664 as Governor of Tangier, one year after becoming Earl of Teviot.

But links with military violence and the Quarryholes were not just in far off Morocco. In July 1559 the Lords of the Congregation, the Scottish protestant nobility fired up by John Knox, who had been energetically “reforming” Churches in Stirling and Linlithgow now moved on to Edinburgh. At the Quarryholes they parlayed with supporters of Queen Regent Mary of Guise to agree a temporary mutual toleration, avert further conflict and avoid the potential for full blown urban warfare in the city.

Mary of Guise died the following year but things didn’t get much more peaceful as a result in Scotland; or at the Quarryholes. On 16th June 1571, during the ensuing Marian Civil War, “Drury’s Peace” took place at the Quarryholes – which proved to be anything but peaceful. “Black Saturday” as it was also known occurred when pro-Mary Queen of Scots forces under the Earl of Huntly rode out from Edinburgh Castle to confront pro-King James VI forces from Leith under the Earl of Morton and his enormous hat.

There was ample bad blood between Morton and Huntly and their heavily armed parties were spoiling for a fight. To try and negotiate between them, emissaries were sent to meet at the Quarryholes under the mediation of Sir William Drury, the English Ambassador . Drury (of Drury Lane, the Strand) proposed terms which both parties seemed to accept, but neither side could agree which would turn and leave the field first. Eventually he got them to agree that they would leave at the same time when he threw up his hat. The emissaries returned to their own lines and Drury duly threw up his hat.

The Queen’s men under Huntly duly turned and left as had been agreed but the King’s men under Morton treacherously did not and charged at their opponents retreating towards the Canongate and ran them down. They were “pursued with cruel and rancorous slaughter to the very gates of the city. The whole road was covered with dead and wounded“. Lord Home, several other gentlemen, 72 soldiers, colours, horses and two cannon were marched into Leith by a triumphant but treacherous Morton. Back in Edinburgh, the citizenry suspected that Drury had betrayed the Queen’s forces and he had to be protected from the city’s notorious mob.

The Quarryholes were the scene of a second military conflict 80 years later when English forces under Oliver Cromwell arrived in Musselburgh in 1650. Their goal was to try and take Edinburgh and Leith which were fortified and held by the Covenanter government of Scotland under Generals Alexander and David Leslie (no relations). The Leslies were a match for Cromwell and his New Model Army, but it turned out not for the interfering Covenanter ministers on their own side. However their initial plan of throwing up defensive lines between the Calton Hill and Leith, sitting behind them and waiting it out worked surprisingly well.

The Covenanter army was reasonably well armed and equipped and had burnt the lands before it, it could afford to sit firm and let the elements, disease, hunger and dissent take care of Cromwell. Cromwell however, with his usual divine guidance, charged straight at the Leslies’ fortifications on the 24th July 1650. He chose the area of the Quarryholes as being a weak point and made a “furious attack… at the head of his whole army” from the east .

Cromwell’s forces approached from Restalrig and Jock’s Lodge while twelve of his warships fired on Leith from the Forth. The Leslies however were waiting and their artillery opened fire from positions on the Calton Hill and around Lower Quarryholes. Along a rampart constructed on the line of what is now Leith Walk the Scottish foot unleashed “a rolling fire of musketry” towards the English, supported by the cannon mounted on the old walls of Leith. The feared New Model Army was easily beat and rapidly “retired in confusion”

Cromwell’s men left their dead and wounded and two cannon behind in their haste. Unperturbed, Cromwell circled around Arthur’s Seat and tried to attack the city from that direction. He was met by the regiment of Campbell of Lawers, one of the best in the Scottish Army. On seeing Cromwell’s intent, Campbell had marched double-time up the glen of Holyrood Park and taken up position around the ruins of St. Leonard’s chapel in the shelter of the numerous old walls there. Here he ambushed Cromwell’s men and caught them in an enfilade; firing into the exposed sides of his formations. Again the New Model Army broke. “They threw aside their muskets, pikes and collars of bandoleers and fled, abandoning their cannon, which were brought off by the [Scottish] horse brigade“. Cromwell – not used to being beaten twice in one day – retired to his HQ at Musselburgh to lick his wounds. He would rue the day he visited the Quarryholes, but ultimately had his revenge at the Battle of Dunbar – which went catastrophically badly for the Scots forces under the meddlesome interference of the Kirk men.

While this was the last time the Quarryholes was troubled by military matters, its dark and dangerous reputation persisted. Drownings in its dank and lonely pools were commonplace.

As early as 1677 the Trinty Hospital had been ordered to fill up their holes on account of the danger. They did not, however, and in 1691 an English soldier, Lt. Byron, drowned there. The holes were ordered to be filled in again. Again they were not. In 1717, a chaplain by the name of Robert Irvine was found guilty of the murder of two boys in his charge by cutting their throats with a pen knife when out walking with them near the holes. Irvine was found lurking with the bodies that he had dragged into the place. Justice was swift and merciless; Irvine was sentenced to have his hands cut off and then hung until dead at the Gallow Lee at Shrubill. His hands were then placed on spikes on the Broughton Tolbooth and his body cast into the Quarryholes where he had committed his vile crimes.

In 1753 a butcher in the Grassmarket by the name of Nicol Brown was executed for the murder of his wife. He had gained notoriety for reputedly eating, for a drunken bet, a pound of flesh cut from the rotting corpse of wife murderer Nicol Muschet as it hung on the gibbet. Brown in turn killed his wife by setting her on fire. He too was found guilty, executed by hanging and hung in chains on the gibbet at the Gallowlee. But the body disappeared two days later, having been taken down by the Incorporation of Butchers and tossed into the Quarryholes. It was fetched back to the gibbet, but again 2 days later was back in the Quarryholes. It was said that the butchers felt mutual disgrace “thrown upon their fraternity by his ignominious exhibition there“.

In 1598 a court messenger named Thomas Dobie was found guilty of committing suicide by “drownit himself maist violentlie” in the Quarryholes. For such a slight to his profession his corpse felt the full wrath of the forces of justice. His body was taken to the Tolbooth and imprisoned before trial. Found guilty, he was sentenced to be dragged through the town backwards and hung (despite being dead) before being displayed on the gibbet. For good measure he was also handed down a fine of £1,340 Scots – the largest ever recorded in Scotland for a suicide.

“The Quarryholes had traditionally been used for ducking moral offenders or for executing women by drowning“. There are records of a woman being drowned in the Quarryholes over a case of infanticide. In 1585, Marion Clark was condemned “to be drounitt in the Quarrell hollis” for the crime of “going about the pestylens and seiknes beand apone her” i.e. she had caught the plague and had not stayed at home; concealing sickness and breaking quarantine was dealt with severely in the 16th c.

The gruesome history goes on. In 1649 a woman named Magie Bell from Corstorphine was executed for witchcraft. It was said that she had cursed a neighbour’s son to die, that he had fallen sick, and that she had then restored him by an appeal to god. Bell was further charged with making a girl sick who had refused to lend her thread, and then making worms come out of her mouth before she recovered. Under torture, Bell confessed that 18 years previously when living in the West Port of Edinburgh she had “met the Devil at the back of the town wall at the Quarrell Hollis” and was the only surviving witch of that coven, the others dying in the plague of 1646. On moving to Corstorphine she met with the devil “in the Broome” i.e. around modern Broomhall. She recanted her confession but was burned as a witch. Some of her accusers including the girl with worms in her mouth were also tried, convicted and burned.

By the middle part of the 18th century, the reputation of the Quarryholes finally began to improve. After a disastrous farming season in 1715 and relentless banditry and thieving of crops and cattle, the occupiers petitioned for the formation of the Leith Burlaw Court. Burlaw Courts were the lowest form of rural law enforcement, where disputes could be settled without going on to law courts. The farms of both Upper and Lower Quarryholes were entered into the books of the Burlaw Court. Quarrying was restarted at the Lower in the 1730s to provide local building stone but by 1766 those holes are recorded as having been filled in again. From that point on, the Lower Quarryholes was only ever a farm, and the OS town plans show it clearly .

The farm survived until the late 1920s, and an 1887 photograph of it exists in “The Story of Leith” by John Russell, surrounded by new tenements. On the opposite corner of Easter Road is the pub of Tamson’s Bar, which at one time was the Quarryholes Bar.

The farm survived as long as it did due to protracted development of the tenements between Dalmeny Street and Lorne Street, which can be seen in the below 1918 Bartholomew plan for the Post Office.

The late 1920s Corporation housing infill on Dickson Street, Dalmeny Street and Easter Road marks the site of the Lower Quarryholes farm. Funny to think that as late as 1920 there was a farm on Easter Road.

At the Upper Quarryholes, quarrying commenced again in 1761. The holes and the buildings can be seen in the corner of a panoramic sketch by Thomas Sandby from Arthur’s Seat looking towards Leith in about 1751, looking over the roof of Holyroodhouse Palace and its Abbey church.

And the Fergus and Robinson survey of 1759 clearly shows the Upper Quarryholes and circular objects that one might imagine are actual holes!

An 1801 feuing plan clearly shows the Upper Quarryholes farm buildings and at least one hole behind. The pencil lines give an idea of what was about to become of them.

The Upper Quarryholes were in the way of Heriot’s Hospital’s feuing plan for the Calton Hill and of Robert Stevenson’s schme for Regent Road and so they had to go. They would have been demolished around 1819.

Some of the landscape features of mounds and depressions in the London Road Gardens are said to be the remains of some of the quarrying around the Upper Quarryholes.

The Quarryholes, their quarries, holes and farms are long gone now, but the name does oddly linger on. If you walk to the bottom of Easter Road and look at a street sign outside the Persevere pub, you’ll see it pointing to Quarryholes. It’s not actually pointing to the site of the Quarryholes themselves but the name long persisted – both locally and officially – for the lands occupied by the Eastern Saw Mill, now the Leith Academy and its playing fields. A curiously low profile end of days for a placename that has both tumultuous and surprising (but brief) prominence in some key moments of Scottish history – and a thoroughly long and gruesome past.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Making Plantain tincture! The Online Game where you learn as you play! Herbology, Witchcraft, Connection, Nature. Free to join and play! Connect with the wise woman in you. #secondlife #herbandfable #herbalism #witchcraft #theoldways #pagan #gaming

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Using blessed weapons against the supernatural is a long-standing tradition.

#Germany #folktale #folklore #witch #witchcraft #hare
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Two_Frolicking_Hares

Accused in Nurse's Death Cites Witchcraft Beliefs

A man on trial for killing nurse Erin Mullavey in Sydney says he believed in witchcraft. The court will look at his claims.

#ErinMullavey, #SydneyNews, #CourtCase, #Witchcraft, #LegalNews

https://newsletter.tf/man-accused-nurse-death-witchcraft-sydney/

A court case in Sydney involves a man accused of killing nurse Erin Mullavey. The accused has told the court about his beliefs in witchcraft. The judge will consider this as part of the trial.

#ErinMullavey, #SydneyNews, #CourtCase, #Witchcraft, #LegalNews

https://newsletter.tf/man-accused-nurse-death-witchcraft-sydney/