Do you know your First Footing from your wassailing? Your Imbolc blessings from your Beltane flowers? What nights to bake dumb cakes, sleep naked or anoint yourself to see your future spouse? When to stop eating nettles or blackberries due to unpleasant infernal interference? What days can predict the weather? Or how to divine what the coming year has in store for you?

The ritual year is full of moments that can bring us joy, amusement, luck, protection, warnings and love – the key is knowing when these are and what to do when they come round. Join Liza Frank as she takes a spin through the delights and pitfalls of the folklore of the ritual year.

On 7 January 2020, Liza Frank started The Everyday Lore Project a yearlong exploration into the folklore of the ritual year. Every day for a year she researched, performed and posted about the folklore attached to that day, month or season. Due to unforeseen lockdown restrictions (although it was foggy on 25 January…) she recreated the ritual year in her house and surroundings from building and burning her own wicker man, to baking Heg Peg Dumps, to foraging in hedgerows, to performing exorcisms and love divinations, to making philosopher’s stones, to predicting the weather, to hunting fairies. There was never a dull moment. Since then she has published Everyday Folklore a book about ritual year folklore and her new book Household Folklore is publishing in November and is, strangely enough, about the folklore you find in your home.

Image: Four Seasons in One Head by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) (link opens in new page).