Talking with the Land: Walking Magic, Storytelling, and the Imagination around the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

Abstract

abstract:Relations between people and places can be understood through the metaphor of conversation. Contemporary Pagans and Witches who visit the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall often take walks into the surrounding countryside. By tracing three walks (Rocky Valley labyrinths, Saint Nectan's Waterfall, and the memorial to Joan Wytte in Minster Woods), this article showshow assemblages of walking, places, and stories can be configured through expanded temporalities and magical consciousness. Practitioners move between the land, the collection, and the museum, where empirical histories and materiality are entangled with sensory, emotional, and imaginal experiences.