What is a Weaver?
The forgotten witches who could weave magic from the hidden threads of the universe
This week, I keep coming back to one question:
What is a Weaver, really?
In the magical world Deborah Harkness created, most witches practice magic that has already been shaped by centuries of tradition. Spells are preserved in family grimoires, taught by mothers and grandmothers, and repeated generation after generation.
A witch typically works with magic that already exists.
Weavers are different.
A weaver does not simply cast spells but instead creates them, assembling magic from its fundamental strands. In the books, this ability is often described as seeing and manipulating threads of power—distinct elements of magical energy that can be twisted, knotted, and woven together into entirely new forms.
The metaphor is an ancient one. Across many cultures, weaving has long symbolized the shaping of destiny and creation itself. Mythological figures like the Fates spin and cut the threads of human lives, while traditional crafts transform simple strands into complex patterns.
In the world of All Souls, the metaphor becomes literal. Magic itself can be woven.
Because of this ability, weavers were historically both admired and feared. A spell created by a weaver had never existed before. Its effects could be extraordinary—but also unpredictable.
Over time, many witches came to see this power as something dangerous.
The Disappearance of the Weavers
By the time the story begins, most witches believe weavers have disappeared entirely.
Their knowledge survives only in fragments of magical history and in warnings passed quietly through witch communities. Few witches living in the present day have ever encountered one.
The disappearance was not entirely accidental.
Within the series it becomes clear that many weavers were deliberately driven out or destroyed by their fellow witches, who feared their ability to create new magic. A witch capable of inventing spells could not easily be controlled by established traditions or magical hierarchies.
In some cases, witches turned against their own.
This quiet culling echoes through Diana’s own family history. Her father, Stephen Bishop, recognized that Diana possessed unusual magical abilities long before she did. His efforts to protect her—and the dangers surrounding her power—ultimately cost him his life.
By the modern era of the story, weaving has become something close to legend. The magical world still practices spells, but the ability to create entirely new magic has nearly vanished.
The Hidden Genetics of Magic
As the series unfolds, a deeper explanation begins to emerge—one that connects witches and daemons in unexpected ways.
Within the lore of All Souls, daemons are often associated with creativity and intellectual intensity. Artists, musicians, philosophers, and scientists frequently appear among their ranks. Their minds move quickly, generating ideas and insights that sometimes feel overwhelming even to themselves.
When this creative spark intersects with the magical inheritance of witches, something unusual can happen.
Weavers often appear in families where daemon and witch bloodlines intersect, suggesting that weaving magic may arise from the combination of creative and magical traits. In this sense, weaving resembles artistic creation as much as traditional spellcasting.
The weaver does not simply repeat knowledge.
They invent.
Magic becomes something closer to composition or craftsmanship—an act of creation rather than preservation.
Threads, Patterns, and the Structure of the Universe
The idea that magic might appear as threads woven together feels like pure fantasy, yet the image echoes a much older way of thinking about the universe.
For centuries, scholars tried to understand reality by searching for hidden patterns beneath the surface of the visible world. Renaissance thinkers believed that mathematics and natural philosophy revealed the underlying structure of creation. Numbers, geometry, and symbols were not merely tools of calculation but clues to the deeper design of the universe.
Modern science approaches that mystery from a different direction, yet it often arrives at imagery that feels strangely familiar.
Astronomers have discovered that galaxies are not scattered randomly through space. Instead, they form enormous interconnected filaments stretching across the universe in what scientists now call the cosmic web. These vast strands of matter link clusters of galaxies together, forming structures that resemble threads woven across unimaginable distances.
If you want to see what scientists mean, NASA and astrophysicists have produced remarkable visualizations of these structures:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-matter/
At smaller scales, modern physics also describes reality not as solid objects but as interacting fields and patterns of energy. Some theoretical models even imagine fundamental particles as tiny vibrating strings.
The language is different from the magic of All Souls, but the imagery is strikingly similar.
In both cases, the universe is imagined not as a collection of isolated things but as something closer to a fabric—an interconnected structure where individual strands combine to form larger patterns.
Within the world of the novels, a weaver sees these threads directly and learns to shape them.
In the real world, scientists use mathematics and observation to uncover the patterns that hold the universe together.
Both begin with the same instinct: the belief that beneath the visible world, there is an order waiting to be understood.
Learning to Weave
Because weavers became so rare, the knowledge of how to train them nearly disappeared as well. Few witches in Diana’s own time understand what weaving magic is, let alone how it works.
This is why Diana must travel back in time to find a teacher.
In Elizabethan London she encounters Goody Alsop, the powerful elderly witch who leads the St. James Garlickhythe gathering. Among witches of the period she is widely respected for her knowledge of ancient magical traditions, and she quickly recognizes Diana’s true nature.
Under Goody Alsop’s guidance, Diana begins to learn the foundations of weaving magic.
Instead of traditional spells, Goody Alsop teaches her to work with ten colored cords, known as the weaver’s cords, which allow Diana to practice tying intricate magical knots. Each knot represents a different way of combining the threads of magical power, gradually teaching Diana how spells themselves can be constructed.
Through these lessons Diana learns to shape increasingly complex forms of magic. The Ninth Knot becomes essential to the spell that will eventually allow Diana and Matthew to return to their own time. Goody Alsop also teaches her about a far more powerful Tenth Knot, associated with both creation and destruction.
During her training, Diana weaves a powerful forspell that calls forth a rowan tree, whose magic allows her to tame and bind her firedrake familiar, Corra, a creature of fire and ancient power.
These acts of weaving hint at something even larger. Diana’s ability to create living magical structures connects to an alchemical idea sometimes described as the Arbour Dianae, or “Diana’s Tree,” a concept associated with the creation of life through the union of different forces.
Goody Alsop herself belongs to an older lineage of magical teachers. She is described as an apprentice of the fifteenth-century seer Ursula Soothtell, better known in English folklore as Mother Shipton. Through this chain of mentorship, the nearly lost knowledge of weaving survives long enough to reach Diana.
Other Weavers
Diana is not the only weaver in the story.
Another powerful witch, Satu Järvinen, also possesses weaving abilities. Unlike Diana, however, Satu grew up aware of her powers and learned about them from her mother.
This difference shapes the paths both witches take.
Satu understands early on what she is capable of and seeks to control her power. Diana, by contrast, must rediscover weaving almost entirely from scratch. Without the intervention of Goody Alsop and the Elizabethan witches, she might never have understood her abilities at all.
The contrast between them highlights how fragile magical knowledge has become.
Some traditions survive within isolated families.
Others must be rediscovered across centuries.
Why the Weavers Matter
Within the larger story of All Souls, the return of weavers hints at something much deeper about the future of magical creatures.
For centuries, witches, vampires, and daemons believed their species existed as separate and stable groups. Yet the mystery of weavers suggests that these boundaries may be more fluid than anyone realized. The ability appears at the intersection of different bloodlines, hinting that magic itself may evolve when creatures who were once isolated begin to connect.
In that sense, the rediscovery of weavers is not only about Diana’s personal power.
It may signal the return of something the magical world nearly lost: the ability to create new magic rather than simply inherit it.
And like many forgotten traditions, it survived just long enough to be found again.
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