Grimm-oire
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
“I’ll text Lauren. She’ll know what to do,” said the screen capture a friend sent me mid-way through a Saturday.
I was surrounded by dusty occult books that I was sorting into “read” and “leave in mysterious places for people” piles.
“Thought you’d appreciate that,” my friend said. “We need your help.”
My friend knows exactly how to schmooze my ravenous ego.
“What’s the problem?” I texted back and got up to peruse the rest of my personal library for the book I was going to need.
I grew up reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I was given the collection by my Oma at six years old, and like most kids who read faster than their parents, I was able to read just about everything with little to no supervision. Which is how I became fascinated with stories where children had their heads whacked off my wicked step parents (in a stunning reveal, I disclose I was a creepy child).
I tend to be a bit of a collector of Grimm's work. Well, collector makes it sound sophisticated, when really it’s just me peering in Little Free Libraries for fairy tale collections in any condition. I still have my original paperback, but I like a hearty hardbound for dramatically flipping open and divining with.
I read my friend’s text on the problem. Fear of hexing, elaborate and repeated medical challenges, a string of bad luck that hadn’t yet knotted. Circumstance mounting so it felt deeply personal.
I flipped through my Grimm and my finger hit the story of The Singing Bone, one of the many tales of fratricide.
“Envy is her problem,” I said, reading the story to grab any key elements or suggestions. “She should do the following…”
Nothing empowers evil magic like oppression. It takes every bad turn and makes it more costly or deadly.
As much as I would love to be a normal or accessible kind of diviner, it’s just never panned out for me. I’m a good tarot reader and I mess with runes, but it’s the weird stuff that sticks. I’ve always been a story hound, and flipping through books and interpreting the application of the lesson, whether Grimm or the Bible, has always felt fairly natural.
Spellwork feels more significant to me when it’s creative. It’s not enough to get the recipe, I have to doubt about it. Riff off of it. Add my own things. I do this with cooking, and I do it with magic. Penciling in suggestions and frustrations in the corners as a personal diary to track my process. When I created Spells for Success, I thought about giving a person space to get creative with their magic. Offer questions for the reader to ask themselves as a practitioner. Giving bones of the spell but allowing for personal space and expression.
Bespoke fairy tale magic works the same. And is often really insightful not just to you and your problem, but of the other people at play. The systems that are at work. Nothing empowers evil magic like oppression. It takes every bad turn and makes it more costly or deadly. It’s why you must always watch how the kings and queens behave. How noble service is rewarded. The stories are the tea leaves.
If you haven’t got 50 copies of Grimm's fairy tales at your disposal, I found this great number spinner that can assign you a tale. Full warning, I didn’t make it myself.
I just got Sweetheart Roland.
Oh…
Oh dear…
Attention NEW ENGLAND! Calling all poets, witches, and rabble rousers who love independent bookstores. I’ll be back in September at Gibson’s in Concord, NH for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s monthly shindig. There’s a poetry open mic after, and I’d love to hear your work.
Let’s get spooky!
Find me by sending a crow to the only streetlight in the smallest town you've ever heard of.
Or by checking out my website laureneparker.com