Todd Elliott farms 30 acres on a ridgetop in Owen County, Kentucky, and his magical practice grows directly from that land. His book The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magic, Mythology and Folklore (Inner Traditions International) is the ground this conversation rises from, but the roots go much deeper.
Chaise and Todd begin in the practice of utiseta, the Old Norse art of sitting out on the land at night to receive what comes, and find immediate common ground. From there the conversation moves through bird language and the ecology of silence, the intelligence that lives inside wind and weather, Scandinavian folk magic traditions including trolldom and the art of the charmer, and what it means to tend relationships with the dead on the land you work. Todd also speaks about his encounters with the ancient inhabitants of his land, the Adena and Hopewell peoples, and how those contacts have shaped his practice over years of sitting out.
The episode closes on the question of who this book is really for. Todd is clear that while farming is the lens, the deeper subject is a way of seeing, an animistic worldview that runs from soil and root up through the planets and the super-celestial forces beyond them, and that almost anyone willing to attend to the world as alive and speaking will find something here to work with.
The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magic, Mythology and FolkloreThe Cunning Farmer Substack
Todd Elliott is the author of The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magic, Mythology and Folklore, published by Inner Traditions International. An organic farmer, father of two boys, husband, magical practitioner, earth worker, healer, and astrologer, he has been certified as a Reiki Master by Insight Holistic Health and as an Astrological Magician by Renaissance Astrology. A life-long student of organic agriculture, mythology, religion, folklore, and esoterica, he lives, writes, studies and works the land on a 30 acre ridgetop farm in Owen County, Kentucky, where he and his family run a CSA program, ethically raising vegetables, fruit, and livestock.”
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