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will o’the wisp pooley

@willpooley.bsky.social

8.2K followers 2.9K following 5.4K posts

historian of witchcrafts, folklore, France 18-20th c ass. ed. French History ed. Cambridge Elements in Magic also #CreativeHistories not *literally* jack skellington

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · Nov 10

My reintroduction: historian of french magic, folklore, witchcraft, tarot. I blog about all that, as well as writing, creative historical methods, quantification and research process.

A surprising number of you sickos can’t get enough spreadsheet chat🗃️
williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/s...

Sheet Happens

When I started working on witchcraft cases in France from 1790-1940, I knew I wanted to count them. This, of course, was my first mistake. The oldest version I have of the Excel spreadsheet I built…

williamgpooley.wordpress.com

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Hannah Elias @hannahelias.bsky.social · 10h

The @ihr.bsky.social Modern Religious History Seminar is now on Bluesky! Follow for updates on our 2025-26 programme ⬇️

IHR Modern Religious History Seminar @ihrmodernrelighist.bsky.social · 10h

👋 Historians! The IHR Modern Religious History Seminar is now on Bluesky. Follow us for updates on our 2025-6 programme. Up next:

Aleph Ross (Birmingham) on Sex, Health and the Anglo-Jewish Body.

🗓️ 15 OCT 2025 5:30pm
📍 @ihr.bsky.social and online

Sign up here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Sex, Health and the Anglo-Jewish Body

This paper will explore the history of discourses around sexual health in Britain's Jewish community across the 20th century.

www.history.ac.uk

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 9h

logging on to this app to find it full of people confessing to Book Murder.

few would do this if they realised it was in fact never formally decriminalized

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Jonathan Healey @jonathanhealey.bsky.social · 12h

I think the University-mandated answer is taking a walk, but I like to do all of these and that seems okay?

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Mattias Brand @mbinzurich.bsky.social · 13h

My new "theory of religion"...

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 2d

My cartoon for this week’s @newscientist.com

A comic strip in six panels. The panels inerlock like a jigsaw with knobs and sockets. Two stick figures walk right to left through all the panels.

Panel 1: Person 1 says "I hear you're working on a new theory."
Panel 2 & 3: Person 2 says: "Yes, I'm calling it the jigsaw model. I think it could change our whole View of reality."
Panel 4: Person 1 says "When Will you publish?:
Panel 5: Person 2 says "But a couple of things are still bothering me." (this piece/panel is a bit squint)
Panel 6: This piece is rotated ninety degees and fits to the others very badly. Person 2 is saying "Soon. I feel like I'm really close"
A second look at the whole comic shows that the last two panels read in the wrong order because the jigsaw has been put together incorrectly.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 13h

For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research.

Reposts welcomed.

Historians dismayed by ‘scandal’ of BBC cutting access to...

Critics say new limit to trove of information sounds knell for independent research

observer.co.uk

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Justin Colson @justincolson.bsky.social · 13h

At @ihr.bsky.social we can now offer PhD by Publication in History! For those with a substantial body of existing published research (within past 10 years), but without a PhD, should be of particular interest to #heritage professionals and independent scholars!

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Joanna Bourke @joannabourke.bsky.social · 13h

Looking forward to speaking at the 20th anniversary of the Centre for the Social History of Health & Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, alongside the incredible Tracey Loughran. I speak about violent women and medical profession. Join us, 29th Oct: from 3.30pm: www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/d...

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

this is not to deny the human cost of this chaos. it is frankly astonishing to watch the wrecking balls swing through institutions and disciplines. as if we wont need archaeologists in a decade. as if history starts in 1950.

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Dr Cath Feely @cathfeely.bsky.social · 14h

A Foundation student wrote in her weekly blog that she wasn't expecting to enjoy History but she had written a line from a speech from Sojourner Truth on a post note and put it on her wall as a personal reminder to herself of what is important. It sounds twee. It's keeping me going.

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

in this sense, i do remain moderately optimistic. there is actually NOTHING that any of these vandals can do to destroy that.

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

“I never knew where this came from”
“Some things never change”
“Some things change beyond recognition”

yes yes all platitudes when i write them out in the abstract. and yet also deeply meaningful experiences to those who’ve had them through the structure of these hundreds of years old institutions

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

“I didn’t know history could be about this [topic I care deeply about]”

“its weird to say but I felt a real connection to [this person who died 700 years ago”

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

there are so many people doing amazing work. we can frame that in the language governments and uni leadership prefer - excellence, innovation etc etc - but mostly it is smaller, specific or personal even. a student was changed/themselves by an educational experience! that’s what it’s actually about

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 14h

one of the astonishing things about working in a UK uni in the last decade is complete DISCONNECT between (on one hand) hostile media stories, ill informed govt policy, end of unis as we know them

and (on the other) the joyful work of actually talking w/students and discovering new things together

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 15h

'It is the third consecutive year the university has announced job cuts, having confirmed a reduction of 40 roles in October 2024 and 100 in November 2023.'

University of Staffordshire proposes to cut nearly 70 jobs

The university says the proposed reduction in staff comes are in response to financial challenges.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · 1d

"History: Was is the new Is"

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

“history: where the past, isn’t”

“history: some of it was real shitty, but on the other hand some of it was not”

“history: we see dead people”

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

“it takes a lot of yesterdays to make a tomorrow” - @smidbob.bsky.social (2025)

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

radddicccal stuff

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

in an archive, with interviews, in a museum, through online collections… it doesn’t matter!

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

revising a research strategy document for an org and part of me thinks every org that has such a strategy and supports historical research should have an item in that strategy which is basically: support historians to actually do research

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C. E. Aubin @ceaubin.bsky.social · 1d

What The Hell Is Going On, a thread:

I’ve seen some thinkpieces and posts about Portland protests that fail to understand the long-term hyperspecificity of Portland culture/humor, and frame it as a sort of shitposting meme-pilled ironic thing. Which is wrong.

So I’m gonna give you my breakdown.

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

“may the carbon monoxide monitor work,”

-old ambivalent academic well-wishing

will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

The newest volume in the Cambridge Elements in Magic is John Callow’s ‘Gerald Gardner and the Creation of Wicca’.

The PDF is free to download and read for 2 weeks!

www.cambridge.org/core/element...

🗃️ #HexTag #Wicca #Witches #Gardner

Gerald Gardner (1884-1964) provided the central inspiration for Wicca, as a modern, revived, form of Pagan witchcraft. As such, his cultural and religious significance has grown exponentially over the 60 years since his death. 'A Rough Magic' re-evaluates the sources of Gardner's inspiration, redefines his early life within the context of colonial Malaya and the opium trade, and emphasises his vision and ability in fashioning an entirely new synthesis of magical beliefs drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions. In so doing, he stripped away the demonic elements of witchcraft and emphasised Wicca as a creative, mutable and undogmatic nature religion, serving as both fertility cult and a unique source of personal empowerment, that was capable of transforming the world.

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 1d

remarkably easy to use!

app.ptm.huma-num.fr/galligeo/geo...

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