The Return of the Witches and Cunning Folk: reconnecting with ancestral wisdom

The Return of the Witches and Cunning Folk — panel discussion at the Pilgrimage Gathering 2025

At the Pilgrimage Gathering 2025, the panel titled The Return of the Witches and the Cunning Folk explored cunning folk, witches, healing, and ritual. It was moderated by Daze Aghaji, environmental activist and trustee of the British Pilgrimage Trust. With India Rakusen (broadcaster and creator of Witch and 28ish Days Later), Ruth Dillon (artist and founder of We Are Witch), and Kaz and Fi (The Seed Sistas) — herbalists and self-described "herbal drama queens" — the conversation was a rich blend of storytelling, activism, herbalism, and modern witchcraft.

This page summarises what the panellist covered, but there is so much more to hear. So we encourage you to watch the full video below!

Cunning Folk vs Witches

The panel opened with a key distinction: while witches historically were seen as malevolent, cunning folk were community healers and helpers, practising herbalism, midwifery, and folk magic. Ruth Dillon noted that cunning folk were pillars of their villages but were among the first to be persecuted during witch hunts. India Rakusen emphasised the complexity of witch trials, noting a lack of clear evidence for systematic targeting of midwives or healers, despite popular feminist interpretations. The witch hunts were shaped more by social upheaval, religious reformation, and patriarchy than targeted medical suppression - though power structures increasingly sidelined women’s knowledge in favour of male-dominated medicine.

Plant Wisdom and Resistance

The Seed Sistas offered a powerful reminder: many herbs demonised during the rise of organised medicine - like datura, belladonna, henbane, and mandrake - were vital healing tools. As professional medical herbalists, they shared how herbal knowledge was co-opted by early surgical institutions while simultaneously being outlawed for community use. Their mission is to revive and celebrate this ancestral plant wisdom through education, performance, and deep connection to the land.

“We were taught that the very first law of ancient Arabic pharmacy was to make medicine beautiful. And we’ve taken that on.” Kazz, The Seed Sistas

They described the European brewing tradition that once used henbane and mugwort, but the Reinheitsgebot (German Beer Purity Law) later prohibited herbal fermentation, replacing it with hops, an anti-testosterone depressant. Their work, including ritual ointments and plant-based ceremonies, reframes medicine as a sensory, spiritual, and collective experience. Their modern activism is rooted in beauty, accessibility, and resisting pharmaceutical dominance.

Rituals of Remembrance and Pilgrimage

Ruth Dillon shared a moving account of a summer solstice pilgrimage she undertook to honour women condemned as witches in East Anglia. Wearing hand-stitched 1600s clothing dyed with native herbs, she and her companions recited the names of the persecuted as they walked along the River Yare to Great Yarmouth – a rare site with traceable trial, incarceration, execution, and burial locations. A sound artist recorded the journey, and a reverend at the Minster conducted a joint ceremony of remembrance. Dillon described the experience as wordless, emotional, and ancestral.

Her collaborative needlework quilt, We Are Witch, honours these women and connects their lives to contemporary stories. She sees the project not as an endpoint but as an ever-growing act of reclamation and community.

Healing Through Pilgrimage and Reconnection with Nature

Throughout the conversation, a central theme emerged: ritual is a form of resistance. India Rakusen reflected on the power of everyday practices, such as making rosehip syrup or observing moon cycles, to bring meaning and rhythm to life. 

India Rakusen shared research showing that experiencing awe can reduce inflammation in the body – literally making us healthier. She suggested that pilgrimage, with its moments of wonder, anticipation, and deep connection to place, might work in just this way: as a form of awe – a medicine.

The Seed Sistas reinforced the importance of local plant knowledge, reminding us that when we walk in nature, we are never alone. From hawthorn’s heart-healing properties to the joy of seeing children rediscover nettles and dandelions, their work encourages people to become stewards of, and friends with, their ecosystems. Even urban hedgerows and rosehips between paving cracks can be a path back to nature. The Seed Sistas’ books focus on just this: connecting people to their own health and to local herbal medicines.

Magic and Modern Activism

The panellists framed herbalism, pilgrimage, and witchcraft as forms of creative resistance — responses to despair that are regenerative, rather than depleting. Activism can break people, they noted, but tending the inner world through ritual, beauty, and plant connection helps sustain the outer work.

An invitation to participate in daily ritual

The panel concluded with an invitation to practice magic as a daily ritual of presence, such as making tea with seasonal herbs, noticing what grows along your walk, and reconnecting with your senses. Whether one calls it witchcraft or not, this embodied knowledge links us to the land, lineage, and life.

The Panellists

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