Author & Researcher
Exploring the real history behind British folk magic, medieval charms, and the traditions we thought we knew.
Sophie Buchanan
Author · Researcher
Sophie Buchanan is a researcher and writer with a deep interest in the documented history of British folk tradition — the Anglo-Saxon charms, herbal remedies, and cunning folk practices that survive in manuscript rather than modern imagination.
Her work takes seriously the gap between what medieval and early modern people actually believed and practised, and the reconstructed spirituality that often gets sold as ancient inheritance. She draws on primary sources, archaeological evidence, and academic scholarship to explore what we genuinely know — and to be honest about what we don't.
She lives in Somerset, in the landscape that much of this history inhabits.
She has completed Ritual and Religion in Prehistory through the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education — a course examining the archaeological and anthropological evidence for prehistoric belief, burial practice, and sacred tradition across the ancient world.
Her writing is not designed to tell readers what they want to hear. It is designed to be accurate.
Each book approaches British folk tradition from the ground up — beginning with what the sources actually say.
Vol. III
Tracing Modern Magical Practices to Their Historical Roots
Not a fan of medieval history? This one's for you. Takes the practices all over TikTok — cinnamon doorways, bay leaf manifestation, moon water, salt in corners — traces where they actually came from, and finds what British folk tradition used instead. Accessible, honest, and occasionally surprising. For the oldest layer of all, see Basic British Animism.
Find on Amazon →Vol. I
Volume I: Heritage and Tradition
Prehistoric and ancient British magical practice traced through the academic record, with full citations. Based entirely on historical sources from the British Isles — not modern invention dressed as antiquity.
Find on Amazon →Vol. II
Volume II: Folk Magic and Practice
Apotropaic marks, ritual protection symbols, folk remedies, and cunning folk traditions — drawn from primary sources and presented for scholarly understanding. The real thing, not the romanticised version.
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An Introduction to the Science of the Living World
In the Bronze Age, communities along the Thames gave their finest swords to the river. They bent the blades, snapped the spearheads, and placed them in the water where they could never be retrieved. They did this for centuries. Why? Not because they were primitive. Not because they were irrational. Because the river was someone, and you do not take from someone without giving back. Traces this understanding across thousands of years of evidence — from the antler masks of Mesolithic Yorkshire to the well-dressings still practised in Derbyshire today. Honest about what the evidence can tell us and what it cannot.
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A Historical and Practical Guide to the Traditions of the British Isles
Pick up a bone. Hold it for a moment. Something happens, doesn't it? Humans have always known that bones are different — they endure when everything else decays, and they sit at a boundary between life and death that practically every magical tradition in history has found interesting. A guided tour of what the people of the British Isles actually did with that knowledge: from the skull-cups of Gough's Cave at the end of the last Ice Age, to the East Anglian horsemen who sought the toad bone at a midnight stream, to the cunning women who read shoulder blades in farmhouse kitchens. Nearly fifteen thousand years of practice, drawn from archaeology, court records, and folklore — honest about what the evidence can tell us and what it cannot.
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Strange Traditions of the British Isles
Over 130 British folk customs explored seasonally — from the Mari Lwyd and Mummers' Plays to Tolling the Devil's Knell and Tom Bawcock's Eve. History, not heritage-industry mythology.
Find on Amazon →Coming Soon
A Scholarly History of Western Plant Knowledge
Currently in preparation. Use the contact form below to be notified when this and other new titles are available.
Get notified →Longer-form research documents and essays written as standalone works — rigorously sourced and intended for readers who want to go deeper.
Research
Cultural Appropriation, Indigenous Sovereignty, and the Protection of Sacred Practices
A detailed research document examining the 1993 Lakota Declaration — still in effect and never rescinded — its historical context, legal framework, and why the appropriation of Indigenous spiritual practices constitutes ongoing colonial harm. Rigorously sourced throughout.
Find on Amazon →Essay
The Misidentification of the Ancient Britons
The people who built the hillforts, forged the torcs, and held Rome at bay for decades never called themselves Celts. Neither did the Greeks and Romans who met them. The word was reserved for the peoples of Gaul — and applied to the inhabitants of these islands only in 1707, by a well-meaning Welsh scholar making an understandable mistake. Three centuries later, millions are still living inside it. Drawing on classical sources, archaeology, and the latest ancient DNA research, this essay traces how a linguistic theory became a romantic myth — and recovers the real name for the inhabitants of these islands: the Pretani, the painted people. It became Britain. It became us.
Find on Amazon →Corrections, additions, and considered disagreements are welcome. If you've found an error, a better source, or a tradition this work has missed — please say so.
Correspondence is read, though a reply is not always possible.
Please note: this is not a forum for debate about the validity of personal spiritual practice. Questions about the historical record are always welcome.