The Graveyard Wanderers: The Wise Ones and the Dead in Sweden

by Tom Johnson

The author translated 37 manuscripts books known as “Svartkonstbuchs” [ie black art book} which Scandanavfian practitioner’s of folk magic were expected to possess. This work collects together all those charms and rituals dealing with spirits of the dead and human bones, with the addition of some other relevant material. What emerges is a remarkably coherent and straightforward system that can be simply described.

Genres: History, Occult, Folklore, Spirituality, Death, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Trunatrschild · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small book with the first 80 pages of spells using the bones or graveyard dust etc of the dead to achieve one's desires. Some I've seen before and know to be real, so I will assume they all are legit. The last 20 pages is a short section with a little explanation and a biography.

[Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wide range of folk magic spells recorded between the late 1600s and mid 1900s. As is usually the case with folk magic, I wish there was more of a why explanation for how any of it worked, but this book gave as much of an explanation as it could, which I appreciate. The contents themselves aren’t for me, but it was fun and quick to read about.

[Umrtia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of it was examples of the folk charms and spells which was interesting to read about. I appreciate the small sections of commentary that give a better understanding of what the charms are talking about. As well as The Wise & Their World section, it was very informative.

[Claudia Loureiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnson translated thirty-five books from Swedish.
That’s right, we’re talking about nearly two thousand charms, incantations, home remedies, and other items from across Sweden. They range from invocations of the Faustian demon Marbuel to tricks to scare dragons away from treasure to techniques to make a herring flip itself on the grill when being cooked (that one’s a little heavy on the mercury). Frankly, I’ve tried to read it all and failed, largely because there’s just so much interesting material in here that I never get very far. Overall, it might constitute one of the largest collections of such material ever published in English, and its value in bringing to light the magical traditions of Swedish society cannot be overemphasized.
This book is highly recommended, I loved it!

[November Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't what I expected at all but still fun to peruse? Read it for witchy book club. I found the author's notes at the end more interesting than the spells.