on cunning folk and the lie that magic was ever separate from labor — the historical record is pretty clear if you actually read it: the people doing the work we now call "witchcraft" in early modern england were not robed figures in candlelit towers. they were midwives. cattle-keepers. women who knew which hedge plant stopped a fever and which one ended a pregnancy. men who could find lost objects, set bones, read weather. they got paid in eggs and bread and the occasional coin. cunning folk were tradespeople. their magic was a service economy. the trial records — owen davies has done the receipts on this, go read *popular magic: cunning-folk in english history* — show clients across every class. gentry hired cunning men to recover stolen silver. farmers hired them to un-hex a sick cow. the church hated them not because they were "evil" but because they were *competition.* what got reframed as superstition or devilry in the witch trials was, materially, working-class knowledge labor that the emerging professional classes (doctors, clergy, lawyers) wanted to monopolize. the witch hunt was, among other things, a guild war. i think about this every time someone tells me magic should be "free" or that charging for readings is unspiritual. the cunning woman charged. she had to eat. sources in reblog if anyone wants the reading list.