Goody Alsop...the Last Teachers of Weavers
Why did one of the most powerful witches in England choose to train Diana Bishop?
This week, I keep coming back to one question:
Why did Goody Alsop choose to train Diana Bishop?
Diana Bishop does not first learn the nature of her magic in a university or library.
She learns it in a small London house filled with witches.
In Shadow of Night, Diana and Matthew arrive in Elizabethan London searching for knowledge that has vanished from their own time. Their goal is to understand Ashmole 782 and the strange power unfolding inside Diana, but their search eventually leads them somewhere unexpected. Near St. James Garlickhythe, a gathering of local witches meets regularly under the guidance of an elderly woman known as Goody Alsop.
The house is lively and crowded with magical practitioners who live within the rhythms of the city. Unlike the formal covens Diana knows in the modern world, this community feels older and more organic. Magic here is shared through observation, conversation, and practice rather than rules written in grimoires.
It is in this house that Diana’s magic is finally recognized for what it truly is.
A weaver.
Why Goody Alsop Recognizes Diana
One of the mysteries surrounding Goody Alsop is how quickly she understands what Diana is. By the sixteenth century, weaving magic had already become rare. Many witches believed the ability had disappeared entirely, leaving only fragments of its knowledge behind.
Yet Goody Alsop does not hesitate when she sees Diana’s power.
She recognizes the signs immediately.
This reaction suggests that Goody Alsop belongs to an older magical tradition that still remembers the structure of weaving. She is described as having been apprenticed to Ursula Soothtell, the fifteenth-century seer later remembered in English folklore as Mother Shipton. Through that apprenticeship she inherited knowledge that had already begun fading from the wider magical world.
In other words, Goody Alsop is part of a lineage of teachers who quietly preserved a nearly lost craft.
When Diana arrives in Elizabethan London, Goody Alsop may already be one of the last witches capable of recognizing a true weaver.
Teaching the Lost Craft
Instead of beginning Diana’s training with traditional spells, Goody Alsop starts with something deceptively simple.
Threads.
She introduces Diana to ten colored cords known as the weaver’s cords. At first the exercise seems almost childish. Diana practices tying complex knots in the cords, repeating the patterns again and again as Goody Alsop watches closely.
The lesson, however, is not about knots.
It is about structure.
Each knot represents a way that magical forces can combine and interact. The cords stand in for strands of magical energy, and the knots demonstrate how those strands can be twisted together to create something entirely new. Through repetition Diana begins to understand the architecture of magic rather than simply memorizing spells.
This is the difference between reciting a poem and learning how to write one.
Among the patterns Goody Alsop teaches are the Ninth Knot and the mysterious Tenth Knot, both of which carry extraordinary power. The Ninth Knot later becomes essential to the spell that allows Diana and Matthew to return to their own time.
The Tenth Knot represents something even more profound.
Creation and destruction.
The Rowan Tree and the Firedrake
As Diana’s training progresses, she begins to experiment with weaving on her own. One of the most striking demonstrations of her growing abilities occurs when she creates a powerful forspell that calls forth a living rowan tree.
Rowan has long been associated with protection in European folklore, and in the novels its magic becomes strong enough to tame Diana’s firedrake familiar, Corra. The spell combines natural magic, elemental power, and the instincts of a weaver learning to shape threads of energy into new forms.
The witches around her react with astonishment.
For Goody Alsop, however, the moment feels less surprising.
Diana’s magic is powerful, but its structure is familiar. Goody Alsop recognizes the patterns unfolding within it and understands what Diana is learning to do. Her calm reaction suggests that she has seen weaving before, perhaps decades earlier when weavers were still more common.
The moment reveals something important about her experience.
Goody Alsop remembers a world where this magic still existed.
A Lineage of Magical Teachers
Goody Alsop’s presence in the story hints at how magical knowledge survives across centuries. Many spells are preserved in written grimoires or passed down within families, but weaving seems to have survived through a different method.
Mentorship.
The connection between Goody Alsop and Mother Shipton suggests that weaving knowledge once existed within networks of seers and wise women scattered across England. These teachers may have passed their knowledge quietly from apprentice to apprentice, preserving techniques that the wider magical world had begun to fear.
Over time those networks faded.
What remained were fragments of memory carried by a few individuals who still understood the old traditions.
By the time Diana appears in Elizabethan London, Goody Alsop may be one of the last witches holding that knowledge.
Why the Training Matters
Without Goody Alsop’s guidance, Diana might never have understood her own abilities. In the modern era of the story most witches have forgotten what weaving magic is, let alone how to train someone who possesses it.
Diana’s powers would likely have remained unstable and misunderstood.
Instead, the Elizabethan witches give her something far more valuable than spells.
They give her context.
Through Goody Alsop’s lessons Diana begins to see magic not as something fixed but as something that can still evolve. Weavers do not simply inherit power from the past.
They create something new.
In that sense, Goody Alsop’s decision to train Diana may shape the future of magic itself. By passing on the nearly lost knowledge of weaving, she ensures that the craft survives long enough to reach another generation.
And that leaves us with a question worth considering.
Did Goody Alsop teach Diana simply because she recognized a weaver—or because she knew the future of magic depended on one?
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