es by

Prigin of the Gardnerian Cratt

W. E. Liddell
vate MAY, Brelatels) Mls LOny\ecbael
 CLAREMONT
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

LIBRARY

Given by
Rev. Janet (Brigit) Baernstein

ty) 1325 North College Avenue

Claremont, CA $1711
ae. 5

'53 THE PICKINGILL

at PAPERS
George Pickingill & the Origins of
Modern Wicca
by E.W. Liddell

Compiled and Edited by M. A. Howard

 CLAREMONT
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
Claremont, CA

THE PICKINGILL
PAPERS
George Pickingill & the Origins of
Modern Wicca

Copyright (C) 1994 E.W. Liddell & M.A. Howard

ISBN Number 1 898307 10 5

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cover design by Daryth Bastin

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise without the prior written
permission of the author and the publisher.

Published by:

Capall Bann Publishing

Freshfields
Chieveley
Berks
RG16 8TF
CONTENTS
Contents i
Acknowledgement iii
Introduction 1
Preface e 16
Chapter One Gerald Gardner and his detractors 19
Chapter Two Old George Pickingill - the Grandfather of
Gardnerian Wicca 37
Chapter Three Ritual Nudity 44
Chapter Four Medieval French Witchcraft 47
Chapter Five Craft Grades 56
Chapter Six Hereditary Witch Lore 60
Chapter Seven Druidism, Freemasonry & the
French Craft Connection 63
Chapter Eight Leys, Stone Circles & Serpent Power 68
Chapter Nine Masonic Symbolism & the Hereditary Craft 72
Chapter Ten The Saracen Mystery Schools
& the Medieval Witch Cult 78
Chapter Eleven Gerald Gardner & the Hereditary Craft 82
Chapter Twelve The Pickingill Craft 88
Chapter Thirteen Aleister Crowley & Wicca 91
Chapter Fourteen The Cambridge Coven 96
Chapter Fifteen The Gardnerian Charge 102
Chapter Sixteen The Cambridge Rituals 107
Chapter Seventeen The Nine Covens 111
Chapter Eighteen Witchcraft & the Aquarian Age 115
Chapter Nineteen Hereditary Family Traditions 119
Chapter Twenty The Goddess in Ancient Britain 124
Chapter Twenty-One The Saracen Craft 130
Chapter Twenty-Two Gerald Gardner & the Malay Witches 139
Chapter Twenty-three Athames & the Book of Shadows 146
Chapter Twenty-four The New Forest Coven 150
Chapter Twenty-five Aidan Kelly & the Lugh ‘Conspiracy’ 156
Contacts 167
Bibliography 168
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank Leonora James, editor of The

Wiccan from 1979 to 1990, Wiccan Publications and the Pagan
Federation for their co-operation in the publishing of this book.
Also Mick Neale for his assistance in compiling the bibliography.
INTRODUCTION

In 1974 John Score, the late editor of The Wiccan newsletter of the
Pagan Front (now the Pagan Federation), was in correspondence
with a member of the Hereditary Craft called E.W. ’Bill’ Liddell,
who was then living in Auckland, New Zealand. Liddell had
relatives in England who organised covens in Sussex, East Anglia
and the West Country and he later revealed that he had been
initiated in the 1950s into the Craft tradition founded by ’Old
George’ Pickingill (1816-1909), an Hereditary magister or ‘witch
master’ from the village of Canewdon in Essex.

From 1974 to 1977 The Wiccan published a series of articles from

Liddell, described in the newsletter as ‘a well wisher’, which made
some controversial and sensational claims about Pickingill and his
alleged influence on 19th and 20th century occultism and
witchcraft. The articles claimed that the famous (or infamous)
ritual magician Aleister Crowley had been inducted into
Pickingill’s version of the Craft in 1899 and that Pickingill and the
Rosicrucian writer and researcher Hargrave Jennings had compiled
ritual material that had later formed the basis for the foundation of
the famous Victorian magical group known as the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn.

The articles further claimed that the coven in the New Forest into
which Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), the father of modern
witchcraft, was initiated into in 1939 was connected with the
network of Nine Covens founded by Pickingill in the 19th century.
Allegedly when Crowley and Gardner met in 1946 the two men
exchanged notes on their common background in the Craft.
Crowley supported Gardner’s idea to promote a popular nature
religion. How and why these articles were written and submitted is
explained in the Preface that follows.

In 1977 Liddell began a correspondence with me and said his

_’Elders‘ had instructed him to offer any future articles for
publication in my magazine The Cauldron, which had begun
publication only the year before. From 1977 to 1988 Liddell
submitted articles to TC, using his nom-de-plume of ‘ Lugh’, and
these were published up until 1994. These articles covered
considerably more ground then the original TW ones. They
described the differences between the ‘old style’ Hereditary and
Traditional Craft and modern witchcraft or Wicca, the supposed
connection between Celtic druidism, French witchcraft and
Freemasonry and the alleged influence of Saracen beliefs and
practices from the Middle East on the medieval witch cult. They
offered an alternative view of witchcraft that was very different
from modern sources and caused considerable controversy.

The earliest references to George Pickingill that I am aware of are

in an article by the folklore writer Eric Maple published in the
Folklore journal in December 1960, entitled ‘The Witches of
Canewdon’, his book The Dark World of Witches (1962) and a far
more sensational account in Charles Lefebure’s Witness to
Witchcraft (1971, but probably written about 1967). In the 1960
article Maple calls him George Pickingale “) and describes him as
‘the last and perhaps greatest of the (Essex) wizards.’. He says he
was born in Hockley in Essex in 1816 and worked as a farm
labourer in the Canewdon area. 2) He was a widower with two sons
and lived in a cottage near the Anchor Inn in the lane leading up to
St. Nicholas’ church. Maple describes Pickingill as a tall and
unkempt man with very long fingernails and intense eyes. He was
solitary and uncommunicative and practised openly as a cunning
man, restoring lost property and curing warts and other minor
ailments by ‘muttered charms and mysterious passes’.
Maple also says there was a darker side to the old wizard. Villagers
were allegedly in fear and awe of his reputed magical powers and if
he wanted water drawn from the village pump the local boys would
run to do it, because they believed he could make people ill just by
looking at them and they would not be well again until he said so.
At harvest time, Maple claims, Pickingill wandered around the
fields threatening to bewitch the farm machinery. The farmers
bribed him with beer to stay away. However, when he chose to
work, Pickingill could cut a whole field of corn in half an hour
using his familiar spirits, elemental servitors or imps to do the job
while he sat in the hedge smoking his pipe.

In his old age Maple says visitors came from vast distances to see
him and they gave him gifts of money. Brave souls who dared to
peep through the cobwebbed windows of his old cottage say they
saw the wizard dancing with his familiars while, like a scene from
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence in Walt Disney’s film Fantasia,
the clock, ornaments and furniture in the room joined in the merry
dance. Before his death at the age of ninety three, Pickingill
became too ill to live alone and, against his will, was sent to the
infirmary. A woman who visited Pickingill shortly before his
death, says Maple, saw him laying on the bed like a skeleton and
sucking at his dry nipples were his imps in the form of white mice.
The old cunning man was buried in the old part of the churchyard,
but as a last act of defiance it is said he told the village that he
would perform his magical powers at his own funeral. Allegedly as
the hearse drew up the church gate the horses stepped out of the
shafts and trotted away. ®)

One of Pickingill’s alleged magical powers was the ability to call

up and control the seven - or nine or six - witches who lived in
Canewdon by blowing a wooden whistle. As a ‘Master of Witches’
he could will them to dance in the churchyard, which suggests he
was regarded as the leader of the local coven. The witches of
Canewdon were remembered in the village at the turn of the
 century as stereotype old ladies with ugly features and nasty
personalities. In 1896 one of these ladies lived in the smithy and
one day she showed her grand-daughter a bag which heaved and
squirmed. The terrified girl was told it was full of the witch’s imps.
_ That night the old lady materialised in the child’s bedroom and
became such a nuisance that a witch bottle full of the victim’s urine
and some new pins had to be boiled on the fire. When it burst in the
heat the witch’s spell was broken. This witch may have been linked
to the story of the village blacksmith who, in traditional folk legend
style, had allegedly sold his soul to the Devil. On his death bed he
begged his daughter to take care of his imps who had marched up
the bedspread in the shape of white mice. When she took them
away he died and the woman knew she had inherited his witch
powers.

Eric Maple’s chief informant in the village was an old lady called
’Granny’ Garner, who he represented as the last of Canewdon’s
’white witches’. I met Lillian Garner in 1977, when she was
eighty-seven, and she told me she remembered Pickingill from her
childhood as the village character and eccentric. She recollected
him having his photograph taken beside the first car to arrive in the
village. Granny Garner gave me a signed copy of Philip Benton’s
The History of the Rochford Hundred and the original of the
famous photograph of George Pickingill that has been published in
several books since. She also told me that her mother had informed
her that Pickingill was the leader of the Canewdon witches and that
he had “many visitors’ who came seeking his knowledge of occult
arts. A photograph of Granny Garner outside her home at Vicarage
Cottage in Canewdon is reproduced with Maple’s article on the
village in Man, Myth & Magic.

Charles Lefebure’s account concentrates on the more sensational

"Satanic ‘ image of Pickingill in the local folklore. It does however
contain information which is interesting in the light of the later
revelations in the Lugh material. Lefebure states that Pickingill has
 the same reputation in modern witchcraft circles as Crowley and
Gardner. He describes him as ‘the Devil incarnate’ who knew the
secret of the Elixir of Life and eternal youth. He further claims the
Pickingill family were renowned and feared all over East Anglia
. for generations as ‘a race apart’ of witches, wizards and warlocks
with a pedigree dating back to the time of Merlin. In this sense
warlock is an Old English term referring to a cunning man (or
“wise man’) who could deflect spells, banish curses and exorcise
ghosts - a sort of medieval ghostbuster.

Pickingill, according to Lefebure, was believed to have sold his

soul to the Devil and he was alleged to hold nocturnal orgies in the
graveyard of St. Nicholas’ church attended by his Romany kin.
These midnight rites were allegedly ignored by the aged incumbent
vicar who was terrified of the old man’s powers. However, when a
young cleric replaced him for a short time he challenged the wizard
and his gypsy coven. Hearing the sounds of revelry and seeing
flickering flames in the churchyard the clergyman ran into the place
brandishing a riding crop. Silence greeted him and all he could see
were thirteen white rabbits peeping from behind the gravestones.

Lefebure also says Pickingill terrified the villagers with his

supematural powers. Allegedly, if he wanted food he entered the
village shop and took what he wanted. Requests for clothing or a
jug of ale were never refused and he lived for many years rent-free
in his cottage. Anyone who dared cross him immediately fell ill and
could only be restored to health by the touch of his famous
blackthorn walking stick. Lefebure claims that Pickingill
eventually became so infamous that he was visited by black
magicians (sic) from all over Europe for advice and instruction.

The account of Pickingill’s death is suitably sensational and seems

to be based on wishful thinking about divine retribution. It is
alleged that on the evening before his demise Pickingill was sitting
in The Anchor supping his usual mug of ale supplied by the
 landlord. Suddenly out of a calm summery evening sky there was a
clap of thunder and a flash of lightning which set the old wizard’s
cottage ablaze. The next morning he was seen walking through the
village street when a sudden gust of wind blew his hat over the
- churchyard wall. Muttering curses under his breath, Pickingill
went to retrieve it and as he did a shaft of sunlight broke through
the storm clouds and a shadow from a stone cross in the graveyard
fell across his face. Moments later he fell dying to the ground
cursing God and the Church with his last gasp of breath. Both
Maple and Lefebure agree that after his death Pickingill’s cottage
was haunted by his familiar spirits. People who hurried past the
ruined cottage at night crossing themselves saw the red eyes of his
imps glowing in the dark inside.

Canewdon’s reputation for traditional witchcraft goes back at least

to the 16th century. The name ‘Canewdon’ has been variously
written in 1181 as Canewedon, in 1228 as Kenawedone, in 1254 as
Canedun, Canigadun and finally Canewdon. It has been translated
as ‘the hill of Canu’s people’ and the village is believed to have
been the site of a camp founded by the Danish king Canute or Cnut
(1016-1035). The earliest holders of Canewdon after the Conquest
were a family of French birth called de Cancellis, aka Chonceaux,
in the reign of Edward I (1272-1307). During the time of Richard I
(1377-1399) the land passed from one Margery de Chanceax to her
children Elisabeth de Pritelwell and Alice de Sutton. It is presumed
it stayed in their ownership until the reign of Henry VIII (1485-
1509) when records show the manor of Canewdon belonged to a
Thomas Darcy.

It is difficult to know when the village first became associated with

supernatural happenings. In 1847 the Essex historian Philip Benton
says the remains of a huge statue of ‘a heathen deity’ were
discovered in the locality. Buried with it were a number of bones
which crumbled to dust on exposure to the air. This mysterious
stone idol was broken up and used to mend local roads.
During the period known as the witch-craze belief in witchcraft
was widespread in Essex. In fact indictments in the county
outnumbered those for Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex
combined. 4. Between 1560 and 1680 there were 1220 court cases
in Essex involving witchcraft, sorcery and magic. The first
recorded case in Canewdon was in 1580 when the Grand Jury from
the Lent Assizes in Colchester charged Rose Pye, a spinster from
Canewdon, who was ‘notoriously living as a witch’, of bewitching
to death the twelve month old child of a tailor called Johanne Snow.
She was formally acquitted of all charges. There are two other
references to Canewdon women accused of witchcraft in 1580 and
1590. ©

When Maple investigated the folk traditions of witchery in the

village during the winter of 1959-60 he found that stories about
witches had survived to the present day among the farming folk in
the district.© In the second half of the last century witchcraft and
witches were widely regarded as a real threat and a menace to the
village. The alleged witches were believed to have the power to
shapeshift or shimmer into the forms of mice and white rabbits and
for that reason people kept well clear of these animals. It was said
that a man who touched a white rabbit while trying to capture it
was ill for many weeks afterwards because it was a witch in
disguise.

The witches were reputed to be solitary practitioners of the art, but

they were subject to the power of whoever was the local Master of
Witches. They had the power themselves to inflict lice on their
enemies, bewitch the wheels of wagons (and later motor vehicles),
cause minor illness and paralyse people with the Evil Eye or so it
was alleged. To combat the spells of the witches counter-magic
was used including the so-called witch bottles previously
mentioned. Iron knives and scissors were hidden under doormats
to prevent the sisterhood from crossing the doorstep. One well
known family in the village, who laid out the dead and were
 therefore believed to possess occult powers, seem to have been
widely consulted as cunning folk, or “white witches’ who could
practise counter-magic.

_ St Nicholas’ church at the end of the lane to the west of the village
strangely features in many of the witch stories. As we saw earlier,
Pickingill and his Romany clan are said to have danced in the
graveyard. It was also said that there would always be witches in
Canewdon while the church tower stands. Every time a stone falls
from the tower a witch is said to die and another takes her place.
Anyone who walks three times around the tower at midnight will
summon up the Devil. The tower is 15th century and was erected
to commemorate the English victory at Agincourt.

On the outside of the tower are carved the heraldic arms of England
and France. The Lugh articles claim that the original Coven of
Canewdon was founded in the 15th century by a local landowner
who had fought in France and been initiated into witchcraft there.
This is apparently the real occult (hidden) significance of the
church and its environs to local witches and in the folk traditions of
the village.

The actual church, whose first incumbent was Peter de Westham,

royal chaplain to Henry I (1216-1272, is said to be haunted. Maple
refers to a sighting of the ghost by a local woman who was in the
church lighting candles for the evening service. She saw a misty
figure enter and kneel in prayer before the altar. It was a faceless
woman wrapped in a grey shroud. Bravely this woman, who had a
reputation as a white witch, knelt and prayed by the wraith and it
vanished. (7)

On the afternoon of July 19th 1987 a villager called Sybil Webster

was sitting in the choir stalls when she saw out of the corner of her
eye a garment of bright shiny blue material, either a large dress or
pantaloons. She jumped up in shock and the apparition vanished.
It had appeared near the bricked up door leading to a chapel used
by the de Chauceax family who owned the manor at Canewdon
Hall. This chapel was demolished in the 18th century. ®)

Outside in the churchyard local children used to dance around its

precincts as a charm against bewitchment and it was said that the
Devil lived under one of the gravestones. The churchyard has its
own ghost who has been seen in recent years. It is the headless or
faceless wraith of a witch who was allegedly executed in the 17th
century and had some connection with the village. It glides across
the churchyard to the west gate, walks across the road, above its
present level, and down the lane to a stream where it vanishes. The
area near the river is known as “the witches’ field’ because another
witch is buried there and no grass will grow on the site of her
grave, which is haunted by toads. This witch had the ability to
shapeshift into the form of a toad and her grave was visited by local
witches ‘to renew their power.’ At a nearby crossroads yet another
witch is buried with a stake through her heart to stop her walking at
night. |

Canewdon has changed considerably in the last few years with new
housing estates springing up around the old cottages. However
when J visited it on a grey winter’s day in 1977 it still had a certain
atmosphere. A local pointed out to me the cottage where an old
man lived who was said to possess the power of the Evil Eye and
even today the vicar locks the churchyard gate on Hallowe’en to
stop sightseers.

After Hallowe’en in 1975 a pin studded doll was found in a wood

near the village in a ring of white powder and next to a black
candle. This find naturally prompted sensational speculation about
‘witchcraft’ and the legends of Canewdon.®) The heart of a sheep
pierced with pins was also found on a grave at nearby Leigh-on-Sea
and a mock ‘grave’ was dug on a golf course at Rochford decorated
with weeping willow leaves. In 1978 an Essex councillor claimed
 that Canewdon was one of the last places in England where
traditional witchcraft was still practised. He said a coven allegedly
meeting there were planning to cast a spell to stop the then
proposed third London Airport being built at nearby Maplin Sands.
10)

More recently Andrew Chumbley has claimed that a tradition of

cunning folk still survives in Essex. The majority of these are
solitary practitioners of the art, although some come together to
practise and others remain separate, only joining other initiates in
the regional coven when really necessary. The nature of the
coven’s rites are often a mixture of traditional formulae with a
working procedure and symbology dictated by the predilections of
the male or female leader of the group.

Each of the initiates specialises in his or her own area such as

wortcunning (herbalism), mediumship or enchantment. Each of
these specialisations vary from village to village and the teachings
are passed on orally with each successive generation adding to the
myths. It is not known at the time of writing if this tradition has
any connection or past links with Pickingill or the Canewdon
witches. (11)

The version of Pickingill’s career and the activities of the

Canewdon witches in the Lugh articles contrasts with the local folk
traditions and recent media speculation about alleged ‘black
magic’. Pickingill is represented in a way that at is variance with
the local legend of a drunken cunning man and farm labourer who
sold his soul to the Devil and threatened the local peasantry with
curses. The Lugh articles denounce these popular stories as a crude
caricature and in fact Pickingill came from an established
Hereditary witch family whose male siblings had been practising
wizards and priests of the Horned God of the pagan Old Religion
since at least Saxon times.

10
 Implicit in the material gathered here and the description of
Pickingill is that the Hereditary Craft, or at least one branch of it in
East Anglia for we cannot be dogmatic about branches elsewhere,
was male dominated, dedicated exclusively to the worship of the
_Horned God and consisted of a line of hereditary druidic and Saxon
wizards or cunning men who had been working in the area since
pre-Christian times. This idea of historical continuity and the
nature of historical witchcraft allegedly practised in East Anglia,
and indeed elsewhere, contradicts with the views of sceptics who
believe modern witchcraft originated with Gardner and also,
paradoxically with contemporary neo-pagan and feminist ideas and
ideals. The Lugh material suggests that modern perceptions of the
historical Craft have been adversely coloured by neo-pagan and
Wiccan concepts which are recent innovations.

Taken at face value many of the more sensational claims made in

The Pickingill Papers seem too fantastic to be true. During our
lengthy correspondence spanning nearly twenty years Bill Liddell
has always claimed that the information was provided by his Elders
and that he also had doubts about some of it. Although the material
is critical about Gardner it also establishes a historical legitimacy
for Wicca as a descendent of the Pickingill Craft and therefore by
association of the ‘true persuasion’ i.e. the old Hereditary and
Traditional Craft.

Bill has also been very open about his later contacts with and his
membership of the Gardnerian and Alexandrian branches of the
Revivalist Craft, even though this has caused even more
controversy in some circles. He certainly has no illusions about
either of these branches and an associate of his was present when
Alex Sanders received the first degree initiation of the Gardnerian
Craft in the early 1960s.

When in 1977 the Lugh articles transferred to TC, Bill justified this
action by saying that his Elders had done this because (allegedly) I

11
nis, Canewdon Parish Chure
HGelconnantononncer
Ek wore ce

12
was more sympathetic to the Traditional Craft and less pro-
Gardnerian then the late editor of TW. To clarify my own position,
I was initiated into the three degrees of Gardnerian Wicca in the
late Sixties, but since then I have followed a more ‘traditional’
path. My own interest in these matters is as an amateur Craft
historian who is keen to bring together the Traditional and
Revivalist Craft traditions and, as far as anyone can claim to be, has
no particular personal axe to grind.

The possibility has always existed in some peoples minds that Lugh
was and is the front person for some kind of disinformation
campaign either by the Old Craft, to discredit Gardnerianism by
creating a pseudo-history for it which turns out to be romantic
fantasy, or by certain Gardnerian factions to provide their tradition
with a historical legitimacy that is otherwise sadly lacking. The last
suggestion has recently surfaced in the book written by Aidan
Kelly. 2 In this book Bill Liddell faces down the allegations made
by Kelly that he is part of some widespread conspiracy spanning
the last fifty years and involving nearly everyone who ever met
Gardner. He reveals Gardner’s contacts with the Hereditary Craft
in the 1940s and the origin and practices of the New Forest coven.
These revelations will come as a surprise to most modern Wiccans.

Since the initial publication of this material many Gardnerians have

fallen over themselves to accept uncritically the claims made in the
Lugh articles. Others like Doreen Valiente, who was one of
Gardner’s High Priestesses in the 1950s, initially accepted the
claims, but then with hindsight rejected them (3). Others have
jumped on the bandwagon and it has become a bit of a cottage
industry with Pickingill ‘initiates’ popping up all over the place,
especially in Australia! To his credit Bill has been quick to
condemn such developments and has privately expressed his regret
to me that the Lugh material should have spawned this pseudo-
cultus.

13
 This is the first time that all the Lugh articles from TW and TC
have been published in one format. I will not deny that they
represent a challenge to modern Wiccans and neo-pagans and that
they represent a controversial and alternative version of the
historical Craft and the development of the old Religion in these
islands. For this reason much of what follows may be difficult for
some to accept. Ultimately you, the reader, must decide for
yourself how factual this material is despite the lack of
documentary and collaborative evidence to support it at the time of
writing. For my own part I have always tried to keep an open mind
about its origins and authenticity and, as with its previous
publication, I personally welcome serious and informed comment
on its contents from genuine sources.

M.A.Howard NOTES & REFERENCES

(1) In her research into the Pickingill family history Leonara James
identified several different names used by the family. they included
Pickingill, Pickingale, Pettingale and Pittengale. James speculates that
the daughter of the famous Essex wizard Cunning Murrell, Ann Pett,
may have married into the Pickingills. (1982). Murrell, like Pickingill,
was renowned as a ‘Master of Witches’. The name Pickingill would
seem to come from the Old English/Old Norse ‘picing’ or ‘people of
the hill’ and ‘gille’ meaning ‘dweller in the valley’, suggesting
marriage between two tribes or clans in the ancient past. Pett
(coincidentally) means ’dweller in the hollow’, while Pettingale is
someone whose ancestors came from Portugal.

(2) James (above) has traced the marriage records of Charles

Pickingill to Susannah Cudner on 17th September 1813 and the birth
of their first child, George, who was baptised (!?) on the 26th May
1816.

(3) Again, according to James’ researches, the parish record of

14
Canewdon records the burial of a George Pettingale (sic) on 14th April
1909 at the age of 103/ James suggests there may be some confusion
between ‘Old George’ and his son also called George. However, I
think we are dealing with the same person and the apparent
discrepancies can be explained by the use of different family names
and the sloppiness of rural records at the time.

(4) C.L.’Estrange Gwen (1929)

(5) McFarlane (1970)

(6) Maple (1960)

(7) Maple (1962)

(8) McEwan (1989)

(10) Evening Standard, London 8.8.78 “Witches Join Maplin protest’

(11) Chumbley (1993)

(12) Kelly (1991)

(13) Valiente (1978 & 1989)

15
PREFACE
A brief explanation of how the material in this book was written is
required. Between 1950 and 1961 I was inducted into a number of
Old Style Craft ‘covens’. In the early 1960s I settled permanently
in New Zealand. The ‘headline grabbing’ tactics of Gerald Gardner
and Alex Sanders had antagonised both the Hereditary and
Traditional segments of British witchcraft. My own immediate
Brethren sought a public platform to disseminate certain
information. They were primarily concerned with countering the
claims of modern Wicca by showing that it bore no relationship to
traditional British witchcraft. A secondary consideration was to
stress the baleful influence of both Aleister Crowley and George
Pickingill.

The Old Style segments of the British Craft needed a platform to

present their own concepts and practices to a responsible audience.
However nothing was done. My own Brethren were encouraged to
draft articles which could not be traced back to them. This
presented an initial problem until they hit upon the happy idea of
using my services in this connection. My Craft background was
broad enough to include Old Style and Revived Craft affiliations. I
also had the advantage of belonging to an Hereditary’ family.

A careful reading of the Lugh corpus in this book will reveal both
inconsistencies and conflicting views. Brethren from at least four
affiliated ‘covens’ forwarded me basic information which they
wanted presented to a Craft audience. Almost a dozen of my
Elders from such disparate factions as a cunning lodge, Pickingill
covens and Hereditary ‘companies’ used me as a letter box.

16
Many of my Elders were alarmed by inner plane advice that Gerald
Gardner was an instrument to restore the Old Religion. The
Hereditary faction wanted to record their East Anglian rites as a
counter-balance to the heresy of modern Wicca. The Pickingill
-Elders wanted to encourage Goddess worship and female
leadership. They were not trying to combat Gardnerian Wicca.
Their inner plane contacts had convinced them that Gardner’s new
nature religion was the channel for the Goddess worship which
would predominate in the Aquarian Age.

My Elders were not prepared to reveal their identities. They chose

me to be their scapegoat because nothing could be traced to them if
they used my New Zealand address as a letter box. Material was
forwarded to me. I drafted suitable articles from the detailed facts
submitted and returned them to their respective ‘authors’ for
correction and/or comment. The approved article was then returned
to New Zealand and forwarded for publication to a Craft magazine
they themselves had nominated I was the ostensible author because
my nom-de-plume of ‘Lugh’ was appended to these articles.

My Brethren used this subterfuge to protect their own identities and

to ensure that their personal details could not be ascertained by
psychometry. All the editors of The Wiccan and The Cauldron had
was writing paper with my longhand scribbled on it. The Lugh
articles were not initiated by me and they ended in 1988 when my
Brethren believed my work had been done. I was not purposely
creating, as has recently been claimed, a phoney history in order to
throw researchers off the trail.

The misnomers and inconsistencies in the material which will be

recognised by perceptive readers is only to be expected because all
the information emanated from disparate sources and several of
these had a personal axe to grind. My only role was as a sort of
sub-editor. Unfortunately, my Brethren were obdurate on a number
of matters and would not brook improvements or changes in

17
phraseology. One such oversight was to refer to the Book of
Shadows (the book of rituals of Gardnerian Wicca) or BoS when
Gardner had not yet invented the term or the concept. Crowley and
Gardner in 1946 simply compared their respective rituals.

It is a supreme irony that the efforts of my Elders have backfired on

them. So much so that Aidan Kelly can write: “In order to evaluate
Lugh’s claims, we need to place them in the perspective of what at
least looks a purposeful policy of disinformation instituted by
Gardner and carried on by some of his successors in the leadership
of the Craft movement.’ (Kelly 1991 p171).

My Brethren are NOT Gardnerians and I trust that the foregoing

will also dispose of another of Kelly’s assumptions: ‘...I think
Lugh was purposely creating a phoney history to throw researchers
off the trial.” (p173). My detailed reply to Kelly’s allegations that I
am part of a pro-Gardnerian conspiracy is provided by the final
chapter of this book which refutes his accusations.

E.W.Liddell

18
Chapter One
Gerald Gardner and his detractors

Gerald Gardner wrote his own BoS from different sources. My

own people make some very dogmatic and sweeping statements
concerning the Gardner-Crowley controversy. I am not yet decided
whether to accept all of their claims in toto. Their attempted
explanations do seem convincing on a number of issues. I am
inclined to adhere to their views until I discover other explanations
which fit the facts insofar as I understand them.

It is alleged that ‘Hereditary’ (Craft) leaders in East Anglia

deliberately embarked on a course of action which deprived
Gardner of his ‘background’. Their concerted collusion to expunge
the memory of ‘Old George’ Pickingill was deemed essential to
safeguard the admittedly difficult public image of witchcraft. East
Anglian Crafters were allegedly unanimous that Pickingill and
Crowley should never be linked with Gardner. I consider it high
time that Gardner was publically vindicated. Unfortunately the
Hereditary persuasion does not agree. Neither my own people, nor
their Hereditary associates, will confirm the source of Gardner’s
‘Craft authority’.

It is alleged that Hereditary leaders presented a united front to

discourage any investigation into Gardner’s Craft background. they
are mindful that any successful investigation must invariably
associate both Pickingill and Crowley with the Hereditary
persuasion. I will not dwell on Crowley. This unmitigated ‘black’
magician is rightly viewed with approbium by brothers and sisters
of the Art. He would never be accepted as a Crafter (Ca va sans

19
Gerald Gardner
(1884 - 1964)

20
dire!) ©
Crowley did have a fleeting acquaintance with the Craft. He was
admitted into one of Pickingill’s Nine Covens in Norfolk in either
-1899 or 1900. He did not last long in the Craft. He had been
introduced by Allan Bennett, his magical tutor in the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn or GD. ® Bennett is rumoured to have
been Pickingill’s star pupil. One remembers the weird stories which
still circulate about Bennet’s supernatural powers - and his ‘blasting
rod’. Bennett did not come by this from his association with the
GD or the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society.

There is some evidence to suggest that Crowley did have an early

association with the Hereditary persuasion. My late grandfather
claimed he was present on three occasions when both Bennett and
Crowley sought an audience with Pickingill. The late magister of
my parent coven was adamant that Bennett held the Third Rite of
the Hereditary persuasion. However he averred that Crowley had
received only the Second Rite in one of Pickingill’s Nine Covens.
(3) My own people still retain an early photograph of Pickingill and
some of his pupils. Bennett is easily recognised. The young man
beside him is remarkably like a young Crowley. @) Perhaps the best
corroboration of Crowley’s Craft association is Gardner's own
testimony. I cite page 52 of Witchcraft Today (1970). Gardner
assures his readers that Crowley himself claimed that he had been
inside (the Craft) as a young man. ©)

My Brethren claim that Crowley was expelled from his parent

coven. He was not interested in the Craft per se. He was too
occupied with awakening magical powers. He was allegedly drawn
to Pickingill and Bennett - and not to the Craft. This I can believe.
I cite page 93 of Eric Maple’s book Witchcraft. There is a
photograph of George Pickingale (sic) when he was 105. Maple
dismisses him in several paragraphs. This summary dismissal of
England’s most feared and vilified ‘Satanist’ is truly extraordinary.

21
 It is also excellent testimony to the efficient suppression by East
Anglian crafters of Pickingill’s true magical status. Maple contents
himself with repeating only one of Pickingill’s incredible feats in a
favourite anecdote which still circulates among the Essex
peasantry. It is alleged that Pickingill could make his imps harvest
a field in half an hour while he smoked his pipe. One can imagine
why Crowley was attracted to ‘England’s most notorious witch’.

Crowley was allegedly expelled from the Craft because he could

not convene regularly. I cite John Symond’s biography The Great
Beast (1973) to corroborate Crowley’s peculiar sexual problems:
’As he grew older, he found that any description of torture or blood
aroused his feelings tremendously. He even liked to imagine
himself in agony and, in particular, degraded by and suffering at the
hands of a woman whom he described as ‘wicked, independent,
courageous, ambitious’. He never outgrew these fantasies of being
hurt, and especially being degraded by a woman of a certain type.’
(p23).

This does not square with Crowley’s public image. One refers to
his claim that he was introduced to a coven of witches when a
young man, but refused to join because he could not bear to be
bossed around by women. (King 1970) This extraordinary
statement was prompted by his shame at being expelled. Crowley
was a pervert. He enjoyed being ‘punished’ by the High Priestess
of his parent coven and she denounced him as ‘a dirty minded,
evilly disposed, vicious little monster’. Crafters will consider this
an apt summation.

My Brethren confirm that Crowley had been out of the Craft for
over forty years when he was introduced to Gardner. My own
people are unable to confirm that Arnold Crowther first introduced
the two. However I see no reason to doubt his word. My Brethren
are adamant that they first met in either 1945 or 46. This confident
assertion appears to vindicate Crowther’s testimony. ©

22
Unfortunately there was a tenuous Craft association between
Gardner and Crowley, although neither man had ever convened
with the other. Both were technically brethren of the same Craft
persuasion. Crowley had been admitted into one of the Nine
personally founded by Pickingill and Old George was a renegade
Hereditary magister, so the Nine could claim to derive their ’Craft
authority’ from the Hereditary persuasion. Almost forty years later
Gardner was admitted into yet another coven which was numbered
among the Nine. He was subsequently accepted into another sister
coven and could claim to have been affiliated with two of the Nine
professing the Pickingill variant of the Hereditary persuasion.

Certain Craft sources have sought to denigrate Gardner by falsely

asserting that he was only a ‘first degree’ witch (i.e. had only taken
the first degree or stage of initiation into the Craft). A basic failure
to comprehend the correspondences between the modern three
degrees (of Gardnerian Wicca) and the old Three Rites (of
induction into the Hereditary Craft) accounts for this absurd
charge. Both the Traditionalists and the ‘true persuasion’ know
nothing of ‘degrees’.

It is pertinent to consider why Traditional and Hereditary leaders

chose to denounce Gardner and the Gardnerian ‘heresy’. Both the
druidic and the Hereditary leaders are affronted by the central
postulates advanced by Gardner. It is axiomatic that English
covens have always been led by men. Indeed the magister or
master has always admitted candidates of both sexes. It is also true
that the vast majority of English covens convene robed. 7) Many
Traditionalists also repudiate the notion that any Craft persuasion
ever allowed a woman to conduct the rites in toto. Hereditary
leaders in East Anglia are strangely silent on this bitter Craft
wrangling. Many prefer to repeat the unfounded accusation that
Gardner was not lawfully initiated. These leaders are unaware that
Gardner was affiliated with two sister covens. Those Hereditary

23
 Crafters who preserve absolute silence recognise the base format of
the rituals adopted by the Nine. It is pertinent to observe that
Pickingill imparted both his ‘Craft authority’ and his family rituals
to the leaders of the Nine. These respective leaders were personally
initiated by him and each of the covens could thus boast a
continuous and unbroken Craft association of eight centuries.

The Pickingills of East Anglia originated in Saxon times. The first

historically documented Pickingill was Julia, the wicce (witch) of
Brandon in Suffolk who was killed in 1071 ™. Each subsequent
generation of this extraordinary family served as priests of the Old
Religion and were renowned for their allegiance to the Horned
God. They perpetuated many ancient Craft practices which did not
obtain elsewhere in England. The rites adopted in Pickingill-led
covens were an almost unique amalgam of Danish and French Craft
practices. One remembers the Danish settlement of East Anglia
and the later influx of French and Flemish weavers who introduced
elements of the heretical Cathar faith and the pagan Old Religion as
practised in France during the Middle Ages. (®

Pickingill introduced the classic hallmarks of his family’s covens

into the revised rituals he compiled for the Nine. Neither he nor
Gardner invented the central features of Wicca. I cite the French
miniature reproduced opposite page 64 of Pennethorne Hughe’s
book Witchcraft. My own people still adhere to almost identical
practices. My own parent coven was founded by George
Pickingill’s grandfather in the latter half of the 18th century.

The Pickingill-led covens have commemorated a cardinal tenet of

the Old Religion - all of our rites are conducted in toto by a woman.
This derives from the Scandinavian and French models. The
Horned God was always served and honoured by women in
Scandinavia. The Mother Goddess could only be served and
honoured by men. Only women were sacrificed to the God in the
Iron Age at the spring festival. Only men could be sacrificed to

24
 propitiate the Goddess. The fertility religion of Scandinavia
deemed that the priestess was the wife and consort of the God.
Only the priestess approved by the God could call him to descend
into the body of a man chosen as his living representative. Only a
-priest consecrated to the Goddess could call upon her to descend
into the body of a woman chosen asher living representative. I need
hardly add that the priest was deemed the husband and consort of
the Goddess.

Any Crafter should intuite that these fundamental tenets of the

Scandinavian fertility religion have influenced general Craft
practices. The insistence that only a man can initiate a woman and
vice versa takes on a new meaning. The woman initiated by a man
takes on ‘maximum power’, for her male initiator is the living
representative of the God - and the husband and consort of the
Goddess. The man initiated by a woman receives ‘maximum
power’ for his female initiator is the living representative of the
Goddess - and the wife and consort of the God. This ancient and
cardinal Craft tenet is the true reason why every Crafter must
denounce homosexuality. This disgusting perversion is a flagrant
transgression of natural law and negates the Life Force and the
fertility aspect engendered by the God and Goddess. @)) One
wonders whether our practice of Drawing Down the Moon is not
derived from this sexual polarity. In many traditional covens the
Lady calls down the sun on the magister and he reciprocates by
drawing down the moon on her. I can find no published reference
to substantiate our claim that Pickingill devised the basic format of
the Gardnerian rituals. Indeed Maple’s references to Old George do
him little justice. I will not dwell on the unique status of the seven
witches of Canewdon, however please examine Maple’s claim that
Gorge Pickingale (sic) was the leader of the seven witches in the
1890s.

I would refer you to an article on Pickingill featured in Prediction

magazine some years ago. This article does not link him with the

25
Craft or the Canewdon coven, instead it discusses his ancestry and
relates his incredible ‘Satanic’ powers. (2). Hereditary Crafters
understandably view this renegade magister with horror. He was
more famous in his heyday then Crowley was in his. Old George
-was acknowledged as the world’s greatest living authority on
witchcraft, Satanism and black magic. He was consulted by
occultists of every hue and tradition who came from all over
Europe, England and even America.

Pickingill antagonised the Craft by publically calling for the

overthrow of the Christian religion. He was the most vociferous
protagonist of the Horned God since the Middle Ages and devoted
his excessively long life to the destruction of Christianity and the
restoration of the Old Religion. He freely imparted his magical
expertise to witches, Satanists, Rosicrucians and sundry ceremonial
magicians. He did not hesitate to collaborate with Satanists for he
believed by promoting Satanism he was ensuring the destruction of
the Christian Church. East Anglian Crafters were horrified when
he started to launch covens which perpetuated so-called ‘Satanic’
rituals. You are undoubtedly aware that a beautiful young priestess
conducted in toto the rites to honour the Horned God. This was a
central feature of the Scandinavian and French Craft practices.
This “priestess syndrome’ was so widespread in France that the
Satanists borrowed the practice (3).

Many Hereditary leaders in East Anglia repudiated Pickingill’s

Nine Covens, because they feared he was trying to revive Satanism
under the guise of the Hereditary persuasion. The concept of
covens led by female leaders horrified them for the practice of a
High Priestess conducting the rites in toto was quite alien to most
East Anglian Crafters. However, I reiterate that it was ever the
pivot of the Pickingill rituals. Personally, I see no incongruity in
working in Gardnerian circles and convening at Hereditary
convocations. The rites of my parent persuasion are too similar to
the Gardnerian BoS to cause any shift of basic allegiance - or to be

26
coincidence.

Pickingill’s Nine Covens were domiciled in Norfolk, Essex,

Hertfordshire, Sussex and Hampshire. The leaders of these covens
had to meet Old George’s exact standards. Each leader had to
substantiate “witch blood’ and be associated with a reputable (read
Hereditary) coven. He refused to ‘ pass his power' to any but a
suitable candidate. In many ways he anticipated Gardner. He
culled rituals from the most ancient Craft sources and then passed
his brainchild off as the true Craft ritual. He was more vociferous
then Gardner in that he actively campaigned to overthrow the
Establishment. It is not very surprising that no Crafter will
publically link Pickingill with the Hereditary persuasion. Gardner
was the spiritual heir of Pickingill, however Gardner had no truck
with the Left Hand Path. He wisely chose to whitewash the Craft,
but continued the public revival of the Old Religion instigated by
his infamous predecessor.

Gardner and Crowley were both delighted (in 1946) to learn that
each was a brother in the same Craft persuasion. They became firm
friends and each man genuinely liked and respected the other.
They corresponded quite regularly and it was their correspondence
which ultimately led to the ridiculous charge that Gardner was
expressly commissioned to write the Gardnerian BoS (4). Crowley
was naturally interested in Gardner’s determined effort to restore
the Old Religion. They were poles apart, but both men were
anxious to revive the worship of the ancient gods (5), Gardner saw
no incongruity in citing Crowley’s poetry in his rituals. He was not
averse to discussing the best magical means of launching Wicca
and was acutely aware that the collusion of Hereditary crafters had
deprived him of his ‘Craft authority’. Crowley was delighted to be
consulted on the Wicca project. After all he had been a Crafter forty
years earlier and saw himself as the magical advisor.

Crowley was unable to produce the BoS received from his parent

27
 coven. It had been destroyed forty years earlier. However, his
magical papers contained many rites and passages borrowed from
the Pickingill rituals. He volunteered to use ‘magical recall’ in an
attempt to remember the exact rites. Gardner gratefully assented.
. He had two source references from his own Craft affiliations and
was quite anxious to determine whether Crowley’s BoS differed
radically from his own rituals. It must be stressed that Pickingill
launched the Nine at various intervals over a period of sixty years.
He had a basic format, but was invariably amending the wording
and introducing different concepts. Gardner had noted startling
differences in each BoS received from the sister covens to which he
was affiliated. He was most anxious to see whether crowley’s
parent coven used an entirely different BoS.

Gardner’s correspondence and Crowley’s ‘drafts’ were found by

the latter’s executors, Louis Wilkinson and John Symonds. Both
paid little heed to these Craft rituals. However after the Gardnerian
BoS was published (Possibly this is a reference to the version by
Charles Cardell in 1964 MH) Symonds realised that many of
Crowley’s draft rituals were similar in content. Francis King was a
close friend of Wilkinson and noted how Gardner’s letters queried
how Crowley was progressing with the Craft rites. He recognised
the similarity between the published Gardnerian BoS and the
Crowley manuscripts, added two and two together and publically
accused Gardner (posthumously) of commissioning Crowley to
write the Gardnerian BoS.

My own people stress that Crowley destroyed his original BoS.

However he retained many draft sheets of various rites. Crowley
was desirous of implementing Pickingill’s life dream of
destroying Christianity. He was in awe of his ‘Master’ and as a
competent occultist recognised that there was ‘power’ in the
magical rites devised by Pickingill. Crowley was bitter because he
was expelled from the Craft and he used the knowledge gleaned
from Pickingill, and the magical potency inherent in the Pickingill

28
 rituals, to draft his own new magical rituals. You may not be aware
that Crowley drew heavily from Pickingill’s magical rituals when
compiling his own OTO (Ordo Templis Orientis) rituals. They
speak of a volume of secret lore, a magic dagger, garters etc. A
_ dagger is immersed in a sacred chalice as a substitute for the Great
Rite (sexual intercourse between the High Priest and Priestess as
human representatives of the God and Goddess MH).

Francis King noted several similarities between Wicca and the

OTO rituals, which merely confirmed his suspicions that Crowley
had written the Gardnerian BoS. I would add that Wicca has
several similarities with basic Golden Dawn rituals and I believe
that this correspondence convinced King of Crowley’s authorship.
He is honestly mistaken in concluding that Crowley wrote the
Gardnerian BoS, but one concedes that the circumstantial
evidence appears damning. You may not know that Pickingill
collaborated with pseudo-Rosicrucians to compile the GD rituals
(16),

My own people aver that there is a simple explanation for the

existence of a BoS written entirely in Crowley’s own longhand.
You will recall that Ray Buckland admitted it was formerly
exhibited (in Gardner’s museum) on the Isle of Man “”. Crowley
eventually compiled a BoS which he assured Gardner was
reasonably accurate facsimile of the rituals used by his parent
coven. Gardner was delighted, for he now had three distinct
‘Books’ which were used by sister covens. He set about devising
his own rituals using the three Craft sources as models. Gardner
and Crowley congratulated each other on the birth of Wicca.
Crowley conferred an honourary membership in the OTO in
Gardner, while Gardner reciprocated by inviting Crowley to accept
an honorary membership of Wicca. Crowley dutifully copied out
the present Gardnerian BoS.

Neither I, nor my people, have sighted the Crowley Ms which was

29
formerly exhibited on the Isle of Man. It is impossible to determine
which of the two Crowley Mss it was. It is possible that Gardner
exhibited the BoS which Crowley claimed was ‘an authentic
portrayal’. However he may have displayed the present Gardnerian
_BoS, which Crowley copied out. Gardner’s detractors have claimed
that Crowley’s handwriting was certain proof that he copied out the
BoS at an advanced age. Various reports have confirmed that the
handwriting in the BoS on the Isle of Man was that of an aged and
sick man. It certainly does not correspond with specimens of
longhand when Crowley was in his prime.

My Brethren cite this as proof of their contentions. However,

Gardner’s detractors adamantly maintain that the existence of this
BoS affirmed that Crowley was the author of the Gardnerian BoS.
They believe this was the original draft copy Crowley presented to
Gardner. I assure you that Gardner used authentic Craft ‘originals’
when devising his rites. It is unfortunate that the East Anglian
Crafters have chosen to deny Gardner his ’Craft authority’ and
background. However, the Hereditary persuasion refuses to
associate either Pickingill or Crowley with the Craft.

My own people are anxious to see that their Gardnerian siblings

prosper, for the Gardnerian persuasion perpetuates many of our
ancient rites. I am delighted to hear that the Gardnerians are going
from strength to strength in the United States. Gardner should be
publically vindicated for writing his own BoS. He was determined
to substitute more wholesome “thought forms’ for those inherent in
the rituals he received.

First published in The Wiccan 40 & 41, November 1974.

30
NOTES & REFERENCES

(1) This view of Crowley is not shared by all modern Wiccans.

Many are openly sympathetic to ‘the Great Beast’ and his ideas.
-The OTO was founded around 1900 by a German occultist and
Freemason called Karl Kellner. Its mythical history claims descent
from the 12th century Order of Knight Templars, the 18th century
Order of the Mluminati and the 19th century Hermetic Brotherhood
of the Light. The OTO claimed to possess ‘the key which opens up
all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, namely the teaching of sexual
magic.’ Kellner is believed to have obtained these ‘secrets’ from
the American occultist and Rosicrucian P.B.Randolph, who was in
turn influenced by the English Rosicrucian occultist Hargrave
Jennings, who he met on a visit to London in 1858. Crowley was
initiated into the OTO in 1912 and became its British leader. In
1922 he became its international head on the death of Kellner’s
successor, Theodor Reuss.

(2) Crowley was initiated into the Isis-Urania lodge of the GD in

1898. In early 1899 he rented a flat in Chancery Lane, London
WC2 and furnished two rooms of it as a magical temple. There he
and Allan Bennett, who was also a member of the GD, evoked
spirits using rituals from medieval grimoires. Doreen Valiente has
claimed these rituals were similar to witchcraft practices (1978).

Kenneth Grant, who became head of the British OTO after

Crowley’s death, has told me that the psychic artist and magician
Austin Osman Spare (1888-1956) had connections with a
traditional witch coven in Essex. Spare, who was a mutual friend
of Crowley and Gardner, was taught by an old witch called Mrs
Paterson. Grant claims she had a ‘witch sister’ who was an old
woman who ran a coven in Essex. ‘It is probable Bennett made
contact with this coven for, from the account Spare gave of Mrs
Paterson, It would seem to have been one of the few manifestations
of the genuine witch cult to survive into the 20th century.’

31
(Personal correspondence December 1975).

(3) The significance of the Second and Third Rites of the

Hereditary Craft will be discussed in Chapter Five.

(4) Critics of the Lugh material point out that the publication of this
historical photograph would provide proof of the connection
between Crowley and Pickingill. When I enquired in 1977 as to its
whereabouts Bill Liddell told me it was ‘not available’. When
Leonara James posed the same question in 1983, he replied: ‘It is
highly unlikely that the photograph...will ever be exhibited for
view. Its custodian was an old lady who died a few years ago.
Several interested parties have purloined this photograph.’

(5) Gardner’s account of the conversation reads: ‘When I met him

(Crowley) he was most interested to hear I was a member (of the
Craft) and said he had been inside when he was very young, but
would not say whether he had rewritten anything.’ (Gardner 1954).
Gardner’s biography, credited to Jack Bracelin but allegedly ghost
written by Idries Shah, states: ‘At Oxford (Cambridge? MH),
Crowley said, he had been on the edge of witchcraft. Why had he
not followed the way of the witches? Because he ”refused to be
bossed around by any damned woman.“ (Bracelin 1960) This is a
direct quote from the conversation on their meeting in 1946.

(6) Amold Crowther, who was the husband of Patricia Crowther,

high Priestess of the Sheffield coven, took Gardner to see Crowley
at the private hotel called Netherwoods outside Hastings in Sussex
where the Great Beast lived for the last years of his life. It has been
suggested that Gardner and Crowley met before 1946, possibly as
early as 1938. King (1971) claims Gardner and Crowley knew each
other in 1943 or 1944.

(7) It has been alleged by some traditionalists that Gardner

introduced ‘skyclad’, or nude, rituals into the Craft because of his

32
interest in naturism.

(8) It is alleged that the Nine Covens were Pickingill’s attempt to

reform the Craft in the 19th century, just as Gardner was allegedly
_at the head of a reform movement in the 20th century.

(9) In De Gestas Herewadi Saxonis (The Life of Hereward the

Saxon) it is said that when the Normans were hunting Hereward the
Wake and his rebels through the East Anglian fens one of the
Norman knights suggested witchcraft could be used. He told
William the Conqueror that he knew a powerful witch who could
be employed to cast spells on the Saxons. William agreed and the
witch, who was lodging in the village of Brandon at the house of a
widow was sent for.

While the woman was lodging at the house a travelling potter

arrived and also asked for lodgings. He was apparently an illiterate
Saxon and the two women of the house, believing he he knew no
other language then his own, conversed freely in French. In fact the
potter was Hereward in disguise and he had heard rumours about
the witch and had decided to spy on her. He overheard them
plotting about the King’s plan and eavesdropped when they went at
midnight to consult the indwelling spirit (geni loci) of a spring in
the garden.

When William was ready to launch his attack he installed the Witch
of Brandon on top of a high wooden tower from which she began to
cast her spells. Hereward however was prepared and ordered his
men to set light to the dry reeds. A strong wind was blowing and
the Normans were engulfed in flames. The witch also died in the
fire for ‘that woman of infamous Art in the great alarm fell down
head first from her exalted position and broke her neck’. (Hole
1977).

The Roman historian Tacitus mentions a famous Germanic seer

33
 called Veleda of the Bructei tribe of the Rhineland who was widely
consulted, even by Roman generals. When her tribe were
negotiating with the Romans Veleda remained in ‘a high tower
while one of her relatives carried questions to her and brought back
_ answers.’ (Davidson 1988). Kightly (1980) quotes a description of
the Witch of Brandon as ‘a pythoness’ and says she was ‘raised on
a high place’, ‘a kind of wooden tower' so she could by protected
by the Norman troops and be better able to practice her magical
arts.

In the version in the Lugh material this witch is Julia Pickingill

who was branded a traitor by the Pickingills because she led the
Normans along the secret paths into the fens only known to
witches. The Normans thought the Saxons fear of witchcraft would
prevent them attacking the tower, however the rebels knew that the
local Brotherhood (of the Craft) had declared Julia an outlaw and
had ‘placed the runes’ to bring her death. Apprised of this
intelligence the rebels became the agents of her end.

Gardner (1959) refers to ‘French speaking witches’ who were used

by the Normans to suppress Saxon uprisings. He adds that
Hereward killed one of these witches who was helping to hunt him
down. Bill Liddell told me that this is a coded reference to the
Pickingills and their French Craft connections.

(10) Writing in the American neo-pagan magazine Green Egg

(Lughnasadh 1990) Fred Lamond, who was initiated into Gardner’s
coven in the late 1950s, refers to a number of unspecified books
recently published in France describing a form of rural witchcraft
involving spellcasting and herbalism. He hints that these French
practices were linked with a similar tradition in England, which
may have been the Nine Covens and/or the New Forest coven.

(11) Again these views on homosexuality are at variance with

widely held views in neo-pagan circles today. It should be noted,

34
even though this is not the place to discuss them, that differences of
Opinion exist between traditional and neo- pagan Crafters on the
role of gays and this is highlighted by these comments.

(12) The existence of this article has been the subject of some
controversy and is further discussed in Chapter Twenty-five.

(13) Gardner (1949) refers to the tradition of a witch priestess

serving as the living altar. It has been claimed that this practice was
borrowed from the Craft by Satanists for the concept of the Black
Mass. Liddell has advised me that Pickingill used the energy of the
Norse god Loki for magical purposes and this is why he was
considered a ‘Satanist’ by more conservative elements in the Craft.

(14) King (1970)

(15) Modern Crowleyians have claimed Wicca is an ‘outer court’ of
the OTO. Crowley was certainly eager to promote paganism as the
religion of the New Age. In 1914 he wrote to one of his American
disciples suggesting the formation of a ‘natural religion’ dedicated
to sun worship and the Great Mother Goddess, with rites at full and
new moon and seasonal festivals. (Symonds 1971).

(16) This claim, predictably, has caused the most controversy and
scepticism about the Lugh material. The foundation of the GD in
1888 is already surrounded by myth and mystery, to which this
claim adds another sensational ingredient. The generally accepted
version is that it originated with a Dr William Westcott, who was a
Rosicrucian and Freemason, and allegedly acquired a manuscript
written in cipher which gave the basic details of several Masonic
type rituals and material relating to the Cabbala and the Tarot.
Among the papers was an address in Germany and when Westcott
wrote to it he was given permission to found an English branch of a
German Masonic-Rosicrucian Order known as the The Golden
Dawn. This he did with the assistance of Dr W.R.Woodman and

35
Samuel (McGregor) Mathers, who were both high ranking Masons.

Howe (1972) regards this story as a fabrication to provide a

spurious authenticity for the new group. Instead he sees the GD as a
product of the Societas Rosicruciana et Anglia (Rosicrucian
Society of England), who are possibly the ‘pseudo-Rosicrucians’
referred to in the Lugh material. The SRA had a membership of
high grade Freemasons who were interested in Cabbalism and
esoteric Masonry.

Westcott wrote an ‘official’ history of the GD that was given to

new members. It claims the GD was descended from a 17th
century German Rosicrucian Order which ceased working during
the middle of the 19th century when several of its adepts died.
Members of the original GD included:the French magician Eliphas
Levi; Kenneth McKenzie, author of Masonic books; Jean Rogan, A
French Masonic writer; and Frederic Hockley, an English
Rosicrucian and pupil of Sir Francis Barratt, who was also
McKenzie’s occult teacher. Th history states that the GD is
descended from the original Rosicrucian Order of the 15th century.

(17) The alleged existence of this BoS has caused much

controversy. I cannot trace the original reference to it by Ray
Buckland, who was initiated by Monique Wilson on the Isle of Man
and imported Gardnerian Wicca into the States in the early 1960s.
This issue is discussed further in Chapter Twenty-five.

36
Chapter Two
Old George Pickingill - the Grandfather
of Gardnerian Wicca

My statement that Pickingill collaborated with pseudo-Rosicrucians

to compile the Golden Dawn rituals requires qualification. It was
never my intention to infer that this Essex ‘farm labourer’
possessed a specialist knowledge of classical languages. I used the
word ‘collaborated’ advisedly. A newspaper obituary claimed that
England had produced only two outstanding magicians - Merlin
and George Pickingill! (I cite the Prediction article referred to
earlier). This was an extravagant obituary for a ‘farm labourer’.

A small coterie of Master Masons established a lengthy and

productive relationship with Pickingill from the 1850s onwards.
These Freemasons entertained “Rosicrucian’ fantasies and sought
personal verification that Masonic Crafters and Rosicrucian
Crafters were siblings of the Old Religion ©). Old George awed
these Masonic ‘Rosicrucians’ with demonstrations of his mastery
over elementals. He was also able to fascinate them by expounding
‘the inner secrets’ of Masonry. None of these learned Masons could
comprehend how this non-Mason had penetrated their Craft
mysteries. It was reluctantly conceded that the witch cult may have
possessed some secret arcane knowledge. Occult-minded
Freemasons were to question Old George very thoroughly over a
period of many years. Indeed, Pickingill was their only informant.

Crafters are enjoined to read between the lines when digesting

stated areas of research undertaken by the Metropolitan College, the
literary forum of the SRA. (I cite page 221 of The Secret Rituals of

37
 ve
So)Ss}9 © AY icking ill
the Golden Dawn by R.G.Torrens): ‘This body was calculated to
meet the requirements of those worthy Masons who wish to study
the science and antiquities of the Craft and trace it through its
successive developments to the present time; also to cull any
information, from all the records extant, of those mysterious
societies which had their existence in the dark ages of the world
when might meant right, when every man’s hand was against his
brother and when such combinations were necessary to protect the
weak against the strong.’ @)

These terms of reference appear innocuous enough. However they

were discreetly extended to enable many leading Masons to
investigate Pickingill. His revelations about ‘the Brotherhood’
interested these Masonic ‘Rosicrucians’. It is no exaggeration to
claim that Pickingill’s machinations materially influenced the
founding of the SRA (in 1865) and the GD (in 1888). Two Master
Masons who were to become members of the SRA had been
accepted by Old George as his pupils. I allude to Hargrave
Jennings @) and W.J. Hughan. Both men believed that the Masonic
Craft could learn much of value from the witch cult. Pickingill
freely exchanged ideas and Craft rituals with these two eminent
pupils.

Jennings collaborated with Pickingill on a very ambitious project -

a Craft ritual which would incorporate the best elements of
traditional witchcraft, accepted Masonic symbolism and
Rosicrucian magic. The ritual jointly compiled by them was to
deceive many eminent ‘Rosicrucian’ experts. Crafters may not be
aware that Jennings was one of England’s foremost experts on the
Rosicrucian rites and mysteries. There was a third collaborator in
what proved to be one of the finest literary hoaxes of the 19th
century - he was the French occultist Jean Ragon. He was deemed
to be an outstanding Rosicrucian scholar and it was widely
rumoured he had been initiated into a genuine ‘Rosicrucian’
fraternity.

39
Fortunately for Rogan’s well merited reputation he was a
posthumous ‘collaborator’. One of Jenning’s many Continental
friends secured a number of ‘authentic Rosicrucian manuscripts’
from the estate of the recently deceased Rogan (circa 1866).
_Jennings purchased these documents and obtained a bill of sale
from his friend which stated that Rogan had formerly owned the
Mss. Jennings was thrilled with the purchase and he and Pickingill
revised their original craft rituals to conform to the degree structure
and archaic terminology of Rogan’s supposedly authentic Mss.
One concedes that Rogan’s source documents may have been
authentic.

Armed with the ‘Rosicrucian manuscript’ and his bill of sale,

Jennings brazenly perpetuated a deliberate fraud. He assured his
startled Masonic colleagues that ‘the Brotherhood’ had accorded
English Crafters a miraculous dispensation to found a Rosicrucian
fraternity. One need hardly add that Jennings omitted to mention
that he had collaborated with England’s most notorious witch to
amend and modify the said authentic rituals.

These Masons, who fondly imagined themselves to be

’Rosicrucians’, hailed the discovery of the authentic rituals as
authority to found an English temple. They concurred with
Jennings’ premise that the MSS constituted a dispensation from
the Brotherhood’. R.W. Little was satisfied that the Mss had been
formerly owned by Rogan. Both Hockley and McKenzie
pronounced the rituals to be genuine 6), The SRA was
subsequently founded on the assumption that heirarchal succession
was conferred by the possession of the Rogan Mss. ©

Crafters may not be aware that the GD was an offshoot of the SRA.
It is now known many of the GD rituals were expressly written by
Mathers, after he had carefully perused the Craft rites compiled by
Jennings and Pickingill. The GD was also founded on a series of
ingenious fabrications. Crafters will be interested to learn that

40
Westcott held a charter from the Palladist Co-Masons to found an
English lodge of this infamous Order. I cite A Manual of Sexual
Magick by Louis T. Culling. A photographic reproduction of this
charter collaborates this statement by Culling. ™

First published in TW 42, January 1975.

Notes & References

(1) It should be noted that the SRA was founded in 1865 by Robert
Wentworth Little and he allegedly founded the Society on the basis
of ancient Mss he found in Freemasons Hall. These rituals
allegedly bore a resemblance to those of an 18th century German
Rosicrucian group called the Fratres of the Golden & Rosy Cross.
Membership of the SRA was restricted to Master Masons. Little
also claimed that he was provided with information by Kenneth
McKenzie, who had contacted some hereditary Rosicrucians while
visiting Germany and been encouraged by them to form a group in
England.

(2) The belief that Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism had originated

in the pagan religions and classical Mysteries was widespread in
the 19th century. C.W.Leadbeater (1847-1934), a high ranking
Freemason, Co-Mason and Theosophist, for instance claimed that
Masonic rites and symbols could be traced back to the mystery
cults of Egypt, Crete, Greece and Rome. (Leadbeater 1926).

(3) According to King (1971), Jennings was inspired by reading

two books on phallic worship to search for the pagan keys to
Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. These were Richard Payne
Knight’s An Essay on the Worship of Priapus, published by the
Dilettanti Society in 1786, and Thomas Wright’s Essay on the
Worship of the Generative Powers, written in 1865. The Dilettanti

41
Society had been founded by Sir Francis Dashwood of the ‘Hellfire
Club’(aka The Order of Monks of St Francis of Wycombe), who
will feature later in The Pickingill Papers. Knight’s interest in
phallicism was inspired by a fellow member of the Society, Sir
William Hamilton,husband of Lord Nelson’s mistress, who had
encountered a surviving cultus of Priapius worship while
ambassador to Naples. Jennings subsequently published the results
of his research in a curious tome called The Rosicrucians; Their
Rites & Mysteries linking Rosicrucianism with druidism, the
Templars, the Fellowship of the Round Table, the Order of the
Garter and sex worship in ancient cultures.

(4) Rogan was a distinguished Masonic scholar born in Belgium in

the 1780s and initiated into Freemasonry in 1803. He
subsequently moved to Paris where he founded a Masonic lodge
and was the author of several important lectures and books on the
origins and history of Masonry. He died in 1866. Rogan was
responsible for the theory that Masonry was first established in the
17th century by English Rosicrucians. (Mackenzie 1877 &
Dunning 1988).

(5) McKenzie apparently regarded the magical arts as a legitimate

study for Masons. In 1861 he visited Eliphas Levi in Paris and was
a member of various Masonic and Rosicrucian Orders including the
Hermetic Order of Egypt and the Order of Ishmael. McKenzie,
whose magical name was Baphometus, was also friendly with the
American Mason John Yarker, who was connected to the early
OTO. (King 1970).

(6) It should be noted that King says the SRA was founded in 1865
and Rogan did not die until 1866.

(7) The Order of Palladium was founded in 1637 and was the first
Masonic Order to admit women. McKenzie says the Paris lodge
was broken up by the police in 1737. Its name later featured in

42
sensational allegations made by a French journalist, who was an
undercover agent for the Vatican, in 1885. He claimed the Order
was a Masonic group which worshipped Baphomet, the deity of the
Templars. These allegations also linked the Order with the SRA
and claimed William Westcott was the leader of the ‘English
Luciferians’. The journalist later claimed he had invented the story
and it has been suggested it was a Popish plot to discredit
Freemasonry and the Rosicrucian movement in France and
England. (Howard 1989).

43
Chapter Three
Ritual Nudity

Many Traditional Crafters disparage ritual observances popularised

by Gerald Gardner; ritual nudity, female leaders, three grades of
initiation and obvious parallels with Freemasonry are contentious
issues. Crafters are invited to read ‘The Bog People’ by Prof. P.V.
Glob “. This archaeological bestseller throws some interesting
light on some of Gardner’s Craft concepts. Professor Glob has
contrived to write a highly entertaining book about corpses
recovered from Danish bogs. Some of these were deposited in the
bogs 2000 years ago. The unique properties of the bog water
preserved the bodies intact.

The comments on the rear jacket of the paperback edition ® will

interest Crafters. ‘In 1952 the body of a 14 year old girl was found
in a shallow grave in a peat bog in Schweslig, Denmark. She had
been led to the spot naked and blindfolded and had been drowned
in about 20 inches of water. The crime was not recent. It occurred
in the Iron Age, during the first century AD. The body, like
hundreds of others, had been perfectly preserved by the strange
chemical properties of the peat. Winderby Girl, like Grauballe Man
(found with his throat cut) and Tollund Man (found with a leather
noose around his neck) were all murdered as sacrifices to the
Mother Goddess, victims of rites of fertility.’

The Old Religionists in Scandinavia and northern Germany wore

neck collars or halters to acknowledge their subservience to the
Goddess. Some male victims were strangled or hanged. A noose or
halter was often placed around the neck of a male victim
irrespective of the manner of death. The leather noose or rope
halter was symbolic of the victim to the Goddess®. I cite page 60

44
of The Bog People: ‘The dead man had been brought to the bog
naked except for the rope around his neck.’

Many women wore neck collars or hide collars when they were
. sacrificed to the Goddess. Page 84 describes how the Windleby
Girl was found ‘naked and hoodwinked’: ‘The girl lay naked in the
hole in the peat, a bandage over her eyes and a collar around her
neck.’ The body lay stretched on its back with both arms crossed
behind the back, as if they had been tied together, although there
was no trace of bindings.

Gardner’s detractors allege that he parodied rites to devise certain

of his rituals. It would be fairer to say that both the Craft and
Freemasonry have been influenced by similar parent sources. The
Pickingill-led covens in East Anglia were separated from the
mainstream of English witchcraft. Many vestiges of the
Scandinavian fertility religion still linger on in the Essex marshes
and rural Essex. Both Pennethorne Hughes and H.T.F. Rhodes state
there was a marked Cathar influence in East Anglia 4. The
weavers from the Low Countries who settled principally in East
Anglia were religious dissidents. Many were informed with
Gnostic concepts and the Gnostic beliefs of the French witch cult
found ready support in East Anglia, but were largely ignored
elsewhere in England.

Crafters may care to examine the 15th century French miniature

which appears opposite page 64 of Hughes’ book. A coloured
reproduction appears on page 95 of Venetia Newell’s The
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Magic ©). The rites of the French
witch cult in the Middle Ages will be quite unfamiliar to most
English crafters. However, one observes that some old style
English covens still retain many similar concepts. Both Gardnerian
and Alexandrian Crafters will note that the female leader is
initiating the male candidate. At least one cord is tied around the
leader’s waist.

45
First published in TW 47, April 1976.

Notes & References

(1) Faber & Faber 1969

(2) Paladin 1971

(3) In the historical period this custom of hanging sacrificial
victims in Northern Europe was transferred to the cult of Odin.

(4) Hughes (1951) and Rhodes (1954).

(5) This illustration is also reproduced in Robbins (1970) and

Valiente (1973).

46
Chapter Four
Medieval French Witchcraft

The 15th century miniature affords pictorial evidence of the

parallels which existed between the medieval witch cult and
Freemasonry. This remarkable miniature also depicts the rites of
that segment of the French Craft which was the historical precursor
of the Gardnerian persuasion. The authentic details of a 15th
century Craft initiation should interest Crafters of all persuasions.

The actual ceremony is depicted as a ‘tableau vivant’, with the

female leader preparing to admit the male candidate. One notes
that three female Crafters have convened at a crossroads on a hill
top to initiate a man. A wood and a church at the foot of the hill
are in the immediate environs. The four cardinal points are
observed. The God stands in the north. The young widow, who
substitutes for the absent male officer, ‘mans’ the east “). The
female leader technically mans the south, because she contrives to
touch the southern station with her feet. The Maiden mans the west.
The three Craft ‘officers; are positioned to form an inverted
triangle. This is an obvious parallel with Freemasonry. The
‘Master’ is situated in the east, the Junior Warden in the south and
the Senior Warden in the west. The north is untenanted when the
basic three degrees are worked.

Gardner’s detractors should note that the sigils common to both

Freemasonry and the Craft can be discerned in this grouping of
15th century Crafters. Specific ‘male’ and ‘female’ sigils are
associated with the grids along which the ‘Power’ flows. Medieval
Crafters were stationed to afford maximum ‘Power’ during an

47
 The 15th century French miniature
allegory depicting a witch’s initiation

48
 initiation. Internal evidence in the miniature suggests that this
ostensibly God-oriented coven honours both the God and Goddess.
The upright triangle and the pentagram dominate the foreground.
The God is the apex of both sigils. This is clearly a ‘right hand’
(male) coven.

The upright triangle links the God with the female leader and the
male candidate. This is the ‘male’ sigil par excellence. Medieval
Crafters associated both the upright triangle and the square with the
Craft. One notes that these French Crafters are protected by the
Saracen Square! 2. The northern boundary of this square is not
delineated because the God cannot be limited or qualified. The
Saracen Square was used by both Crafters and Freemasons to
delineate their “holy ground’. One notes that the stave marks the
eastern boundary, a broom the southern boundary and a winnowing
implement the western boundary. The square is delineated by
wooden implements.)

Modern Freemasons have perpetuated the concept of the Saracen

Square. Many lodges are patterned on an oblong square. The
northern and southern boundaries being twice as long as the eastern
and western boundaries. There is an exact parallel with an ‘oblong
square’ in the French miniature. The position of the broom
emphasises the excessive length of the southern boundary. The
wooden, three sided ‘holy ground’ was commemorated in a
remarkable way by 18th century Freemasons. Brethren manned
only three sides of a wooden dining table when assembled at an inn
to conduct lodge meetings. Nobody was permitted to sit on the
northern side of the table. The three ‘officers’ adopted their
traditional stations - the Master sat in the east, the Junior Warden in
the south and the Senior Warden in the west. (One observes the
Freemasons have four annual festivals. They also have a ‘Loving
Cup’!)

Contemporary Freemasons honour the ‘holy ground’ by using

49
tracing boards to delineate the form of the lodge. Chalk, charcoal
and tape were formerly used to mark out on the floor the detail
from the lodge. Bro. B.E. Jones states on pp 396-397 of the
Freemason’s Guide & Compendium: ‘The floor lines in chalk, tape
etc. delineated ‘the form of the lodge’, which seems to suggest that
to our Brethren the lodge was not so much the room in which they
met, but the space -’the holy ground’ - enclosed within the outlines
drawn on the floor...There is reason to suppose that at one time the
circumbulation of the lodge meant merely walking around the lines
drawn on the floor.’

The miniature reveals the origin of the Masonic phrase ‘to square
the circle’. The Crafters are grouped in a circle within an oblong-
square. Medieval Crafters were taught the most abstruse mysteries
by simple physical analogies. The square represents the Life aspect
and is ascribed to the God. The circle represents the Form aspect
and is ascribed to the Goddess. The initiate ‘squares the circle’ by
reconciling the male and female currents within his own being. He
is then a self-conscious and self-perfected god.

The upright triangle, the inverted triangle, the pentagram, the

lozenge, the circle and the square can all be discerned in the
miniature. This circumstance should silence certain of Gardner’s
detractors who foolishly allege that the sigils of Wicca were
borrowed either from Freemasonry or the Golden Dawn. One
stresses that the inverted triangle, the diamond lozenge and the
circle have been associated with Scandinavian fertility goddesses
for over 2000 years. Iron Age amuletic representations of the
Goddess depict her as a circle, an inverted triangle and a diamond
lozenge. These glyphs are sexual in origin and Crafters may
examine photographs of these in P.V. Glob’s book The Bog People.

The God and the three Crafters form the diamond lozenge by
manning the cardinal points. The lozenge can be divided into two
triangles with the upright triangle linking the God with the Crafters

50
 in the east and west. The inverted triangle links the female leader
with the two Crafters. The sexual polarity which was observed by
the French Crafters is implicit in the miniature. The female leader
in the south adored the God in the north. The male officer in the
-east adored the Maiden in the west. A male always ‘opposed’ a
female in the French Craft. This perpetuated the injunction that the
‘Power’ must pass from a man to a woman and from a woman to a
man @), The initiate was also reminded that ‘the Great Work’
entailed balancing the opposites within himself.

The pentagram links the God with the three Crafters and the male
candidate. The God and Goddess are dual in nature, but always
One in essence. Distinctions between the male and the female
elements are obvious in the details of the individual Crafters. The
three women are depicted as comely wenches. The female leader
wears a long red gown to denote she represents the God. She
sports long green sleeves to indicate that the Goddess is relegated
to a secondary role in this coven. Her rustic head-dress proclaims
that she is a peasant. The leader has a cord tied around her waist.

The Maiden wears a long blue gown. Blue was worn by all female
Crafters, except the leader. Red was reserved for male Crafters, the
God and the ‘wife’ of the God. The Maiden has a cord draped
across her pregnant belly. Her head-dress indicates she belongs to a
different social strata to the leader. The Maiden personifies the
Goddess when stationed in the west. The glimpse of red petticoat
denotes that (in this coven) the Goddess is subservient to the will of
the God.

The young widow in the east has a cord tied around her waist. (The
white barbe on her head indicates she is a widow). Her transvestite
appearance is symbolic. She is a female impersonating a male.
The blue gown which is rolled up to the waist indicates her sex.
The red petticoat is displayed in full because the widow represents
the male element. The hapless widow usurps the station always

51
manned by a male Crafter. One may assume that the male officer
of the coven is dead. Hence the necessity to ‘bend the rules’ to
initiate a successor.

Internal evidence in this miniature suggests that these 15th century

Crafters were familiar with the rudiments of the Masonic initiation
ritual. This appears to be a reasonable supposition ©. Both the
Craft and Freemasonry borrowed certain rites and concepts from
the mystery schools of the Near East. During the Middle Ages male
Crafters and Freemasons were able to exchange rituals and beliefs
(6),

The Masonic candidate enters (the lodge) from the west. He is

divested of all money and metals. The bare-headed candidate
kneels on the left knee and faces east. In many lodges he passes
between the traditional Two Pillars. The candidate is challenged at
the cardinal points during a clockwise circumambulation of the
lodge. The candidate in the miniature has entered from the west.
No doubt he has been divested of all monies and metals. The bare-
headed candidate kneels on the left knee and faces east. He is
flanked by the Craft equivalent of the Antediluvian Pillars - two
human bodies.

The division of the circle into the ‘right hand’ and the ‘left hand’
segments corroborates that the candidate will be challenged at the
cardinal points during a clockwise circumambulation of the *holy
ground’. Both the leader and the substitute male officer occupy
the ‘right hand’ segment of the circle. These representations of the
God and Goddess are physically identified with a clockwise
procession. They both hold a candle in the elevated right hand.
Both the candidate and the Maiden occupy the ‘left hand’ sector.
They both hold a candle in the elevated left hand.

The symmetry is symbolic. The candidate must reverse the anti-

clockwise orientation of human nature to achieve union with the

52
indwelling god. The anti-clockwise (widdershins) orientation is
associated with the ‘left hand’ stream of energy which rotates
around the central sun of our solar system. This anti-clockwise
current affords the impetus for the material expression of the
universe. Birth, death, karma (fate) and rebirth are the natural
providence of the ‘left hand’ activity.

The clockwise orientation is associated with the ‘right hand’ stream

of energy which rotates the impetus for the spiritual regeneration of
the universe, spiritual growth and the Divine Awakening are the
ultimate province of the ‘right hand’ stream of activity. The concept
of the Antediluvian Pillars was derived from the two streams of
cosmic energy. The Pillars were deemed to be the very foundation
of the cosmos. Both Crafters and Freemasons inherited the
symbolism of the Two Pillars from the mystery schools of Egypt,
Mesapotamia and Persia.

The miniature illustrates the line of demarcation which will always

exist between the Craft and Freemasonry. The symbolism of the
Two Pillars is a succinct commentary. The candidate kneels
between the female leader and the Maiden. He beholds the leader
‘face to face’. The man can only glimpse the vision of the Divine
Woman. He cannot attain his spiritual goal. He is in the ‘left hand’
sector and cannot communicate with the Gods. The leader exhorts
the candidate to tread the ‘right hand’ path if he would know the
Gods. She counsels him to achieve a perfect balance between
spiritual idealism and human love.

The Craft has always enjoined harmony with Nature. The leader is
the right pillar and signifies ‘divine love’. The Maiden is the left
pillar and signifies ‘human love’. The symbolism is explicit. The
God is depicted in the goat guise which obtained in medieval
France. His head is inclined towards the left. The God leers at both
the candidate and the Maiden. The act of physical generation is
implied whenever the God form is inclined to the left. The Maiden

53
is pregnant. The candidate is enjoined to seek the Goddess in a
consecrated Crafter.

Freemasons do not associate the Two Pillars with sexual polarity.

The Masonic Craft advocates character development, charitable
works and the sublimation of the sex instinct as the true method of
achieving union with the god within. Freemasonry is undoubtedly
the most circumspect of the right hand mystery schools.
Freemasons and Crafters agree to differ on the means of attaining
their common spiritual goal. However the pivot of their respective
Mysteries was the correct understanding of the Tower of Babel
allegory.

First published in TW 53 January 1977 and 54 March 1977

Notes & References

(1) Gardner (1954) mentions that in ‘the old days’, when there was
nobody of sufficient rank to take the position of the ‘Devil’, or
male leader of the coven, the High Priestess belted on the sword
and ‘acts as a man’. It has been suggested that this procedure was
adopted in the Middle Ages when the rural population was
decimated of males through war and the Black Death.

(2) It is hinted here that the so-called ‘Saracen Square’ was a fairly
‘recent’ innovation in the medieval Craft. The influence of the
Saracens on the medieval witch cult will be discussed later in the
book.

(3) In fact the Lugh material suggests that the use of metal ‘tools’
by the medieval Craft was unknown.

(4) Again, there is a traditional way of working described here

which would seem to prohibit all-male or all-female covens,

54
 although this also suggests the rules could be bent and broken in
emergencies.

(5) & (6) These comments suggest that ‘Masonic initiation rituals’
. existed in the 1400s. Critics have pointed out that the earliest
lodges of Speculative Masonry were not recorded until the late
1500s.

It is presumed that these references are suggesting that medieval

‘operative’ masons, who were organised into lodges and guilds,
practised induction ceremonies that were similar, if not identical, to
their later Speculative versions and the witch rites described here.
In fact, as we shall see, the Lugh material suggests a common
source for Masonic and witchcraft rites and a medieval cross-
fertilisation between the two movements.

(7) Masons trace the Twin Pillars back to the entrance pillars of
King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. In the GD rituals the Pillars
are symbols of the masculine and feminine principles, the pillars of
the Cabbalistic Tree of Life, Adam and Eve, the Kerubim or
archangels who guard the Ark of the Covenant. (Regardie 1989).

55
 Chapter Five
Craft Grades

The English Craft was ostensibly bi-gradal until the end of the 17th
century. Two rites were observed, but only one actual initiation
was recognised. The First Rite entailed ritual copulation with a
representative of the God. The magister ’brought in’ female
recruits, the Lady brought in male recruits. This is the historical
claim that a candidate must be initiated by a person of the opposite
sex. The magister ‘passed the power’ to women and the Lady
passed the power to men. This sexual indiction was mandatory. It
was also remarkably expedient. The newest recruit was often the
sole survivor of a coven which was decimated in the era of the
witch persecutions.

The First Rite conferred no Craft status. The recruit was not
competent to initiate. Entered Brethren were enjoined to pass the
*power’ only once in their lifetimes. This extraordinary anomaly
explains the prevalence of ‘witches alone’. Entered Brethren who
had survived the decimation of their parent coven were permitted to
pass the ‘power’ to only one person of the opposite sex. The
power’ could only be passed during the act of copulation ©.

The so-called Second Rite constituted final admission into the

Brotherhood. This Rite of Admission was the only initiation
recognised by the English craft prior to the end of the 17th century.
Entered Brethren were required to demonstrate specific skills
within a stipulated probationary period before being admitted into
the Craft Brotherhood. @

36
 The magister passed the Craft authority to candidates of both sexes.
The Historical Craft was a citadel of male chauvinism. It was long
believed only a male body could transmit the ’authority’ of the
Brotherhood. This empowered the Crafter to initiate in the name of
. the Brotherhood and to found covens. The Second Rite conferred
the status of full Crafter. This is the historical basis for the claim
that only the magister may induct candidates. It also explains why
so many Hereditary and Traditionalist covens are adamant that the
Historical Craft recognises only one actual initiation.

The confusion which arises in considering the actual number of

Craft grades stems principally from the First Rite. A new breed of
Crafters emerged in the 17th century. Many intellectuals were
attracted to the Craft because they believed it contained elements of
druidism. Rosicrucians, Freemasons and pseudo-occultists were
admitted to the Craft. These worthies naturally viewed sexual
induction as a barbaric anachronism. The First Rite was gradually
abandoned by most English covens. It all but disappeared during
the sweeping Craft reforms of the 18th century.

The majority of English covens observed only one induction

ceremony. The magister finally passed the ‘power’ and the
’authority’ to candidates of both sexes. Some covens remembered
that the historical Craft had observed two Rites. Unfortunately the
traditional Rites were confused with actual initiations. A second
initiation was subsequently conferred on outstanding individuals or
potential coven leaders. Many contemporary covens adhere to the
belief that two initiations can be conferred. However, none of the
established traditions will accept that there were ever three grades
of initiation.

The Revived Craft has derived its tri-gradal structure from the
medieval witch cult. One looks in vain for tri-gradal precedents in
England. However the French Craft has always observed Three
Rites. Gardner, the founder of the revived Craft, was trained in

57
several covens which had been influenced by the French Craft ©. It
is not surprising that Old George Pickingill should introduce the
French tri-gradal structure when attempting to revive the English
Craft. |

The French craft was ostensibly tri-gradal in structure. Three Rites

were observed. The First Rite was common to both England and
France. The notorious entrance rite is far better documented in
French annals. The Second Rite was the first actual initiation. As
in England, the Second Rite conferred the status of a full Crafter.
The Third Rite was only conferred on exceptional Crafters who
were adjudged worthy to found covens. The second initiation has a
decided parallel with the subsequent induction ceremony conferred
by some 18th century covens in England.

There is no exact parallel between the Three Rites of the French

Craft and the three degrees or grades of the Revived Craft.
However Crafters may care to examine certain similarities. The
First Rite was a token induction only. Entered Brethren could not
initiate or found covens. The Second Rite conferred the first Craft
initiation. Admitted Brethren could initiate and found covens.
However, the Third Rite gave the official stamp of approval to
those Crafters who undertook to found covens.

First published in The Cauldron 9, February 1978.

Notes & References

(1) This ‘sexual induction’ has apparently caused some problems to

modem Wiccans. Some have claimed it is a practice which is open
to abuse (Valiente 1989). In the Revivalist Craft it is pointed out
that the Great Rite at third degree can be practised symbolically, as
well as actually. If performed in actuality it is practised, modern

58
Wiccans say, by existing partnered couples.

(2) Traditionally it was ‘a year and a day’ probationary period, but

obviously this will differ between covens and traditions.

(3) The alternative view put forward by critics is that Gardner

inherited this tri-gradal initiation from the Co-Masons in the New
Forest coven or his own Masonic background.

59
Chapter Six
Hereditary Witch Lore

The term ‘Hereditary Crafter’ is something of a misnomer. IIl-

informed opinion suggests that the accident of birth entitles one to
be described as an Hereditary Crafter. this view is incorrect.
Nobody is born into the Craft in the strictest literal sense. A
Crafter has to be inducted into a coven with a recognised authority
of some tradition to qualify for the title of "Hereditary Crafter’.

The Hereditary Craft comprises many disparate factions which

seldom deign to recognise one another. It is extremely difficult to
corroborate the claims advanced by these factions. There are only
several infallible criteria whereby one can recognise an authentic
‘Hereditary’ coven:

i) Sexual induction is a hallmark of the Hereditary Craft. “The

witch alone’ will insist on sexual induction when lawfully passing
the ‘power’ to a chosen person of the opposite sex. The lone
witch’s ‘power’, abilities, psychic gifts, spirit guides and
elementals are actually transferred to his or her spiritual heir during
the sex act. One recalls that this belief was perpetuated by the
English Crafters who settled in America. The modern Ozark
*witches' still insist that children born into a Craft family cannot be
deemed Crafters until they have been sexually inducted.

Hereditary covens insist that the magister inducts female recruits

and the Lady obliges for males. The Hereditary Craft proper places
great reliance on this transfer of power. Many contemporary
covens claim to be of the Hereditary persuasion. However their

60
 claim is belied unless they observe sexual induction as a
prerequisite for entrance into the Brotherhood. The Hereditary
covens insist that only the magister can transfer the ‘authority’ of
the Brotherhood. Recruits of both sexes are formally admitted by
. the magister. This Second Rite confers the status of full Crafter and
is the only ‘initiation’ recognised by the Hereditary Craft proper.
However, a handful of East Anglian and Scottish covens observe
the French concept of Three Rites. One stresses the tri-gradal
structure never obtained throughout England.

ii) The Hereditary Craft proscribes the use of metal at

convocations. Authentic ‘Hereditary’ covens eschew the use of
either metal or weapons. Metal is proscribed at convocations
because Hereditary covens convene at recognised ‘ley’ centres.
Both metal and blood negate ‘ley’ energy and actually pollute the
*ley’ centre. The use of metal in any form impedes the flow of
*power’ which can be generated in a circle. Old Style Hereditary
Crafters have adopted the practices of the French Craft. The circle
is implied, rather then described. The boundaries of the protective
square are marked by wooden agricultural implements.

Hereditary Crafters who deign to ‘describe’ the circle use a wooden

‘rod’ or an implement made of horn or stone. No authentic
Hereditary coven would desecrate the earth by using a metal
weapon. One possible exception may be noted; some so-called
Hereditary covens have adopted the practice of using a knife with a
flint blade. This is not a traditional method. Hereditary covens
have long deemed themselves as custodians of permanent ’ley’
centres. They labour to contact the guardians of these centres and
to preserve the psychic and physical purity of their chosen centre.
One stresses that the ‘power’ utilised in fertility rites flows upward
from below the earth and desecrating Mother Earth with a metal
‘weapon’ can impede the flow of ’power’.

iii) The Hereditary Craft knows nothing of any so-called ‘Book of

61
 Shadows’. One suggests that the Revived Craft is responsible for
foisting this spurious concept on an unsuspecting public. The
quaint notion that historical witches copied a book in their ’own
hand of write’ has no foundation in fact. A coven Rule Book was
_ kept by Hereditary Crafters. Only one copy was extant at any one
time. It was held in custody by either the magister or his male
lieutenant. No woman was ever permitted to read it, let alone hold
it for safe keeping. This was actually a wise precaution for a
woman could well reveal the whereabouts of the Book if her
children were tortured before her very eyes. 2)

Hereditary covens actually enjoin extempore rituals. The magister

is too engrossed in raising the level of the candidate’s
consciousness to insist on any set wording or responses. The
successful transfer of the ‘authority’ vested in the magister is
deemed of paramount importance. All Hereditary rituals follow a
set pattern, but the wording varies considerably. It is deemed
sufficient that the magical intent has been achieved.

First published in TC 10 May 1978

Notes & References

(1) Randolph (1947)

(2) This subject is discussed further in Chapter Twenty-three.

62
Chapter Seven
Druidism, Freemasonry & the French
Craft Connection

The 15th century French miniature referred to earlier suggests the

medieval witch cult was influenced by the tenets of Celtic
druidism. It groups the three Craft ‘officers’ in an inverted triangle.
They man the eastern, southern and western boundaries
respectively. This grouping may derive from druidic precedents.
One instances an obvious parallel with Freemasonry. The three
Masonic ‘officers’ are also grouped in an inverted triangle to man
the eastern, southern and northern stations respectively.

Dudley Wright “ reveals the probable origins of the grouping when

he says: “The presiding officers in all druidic ceremonies and
mysteries are three in number. They were named Cadeiraith; the
principal who was stationed in the east, Gronway; who represented
the moon and occupied a position in the west, and Fleidwr Fram;
the representative of the meridian sun and was stationed in the
south.’ @)

Many Crafters will recognise this basic grouping. The magister

stands in full power in the east to represent the sun. The Lady
stands at full power in the west to represent the moon. The
historical Craft stationed the magister’s male deputy in the south, to
represent the meridian sun. Masonic parallels are equally
interesting; the Master is stationed in the east to represent the
Greater Light, the Senior Warden in the west to represent the Lesser
Light, and the Junior Warden in the south to represent the meridian
sun. One notes with cynical amusement that the duties of the

63
Junior Warden parallel those of the historical Summoner in the
Craft.

English Freemasonry was reconstructed in the 18th century. The

many parallels between the Craft (of the witches) and the Masonic
craft can be largely explained by the influx of ‘cunning men’ into
the Masonic movement 3). The East Anglian lodges of cunning
men were familiar with the practices and tenets of the French Craft.
The miniature affords proof that the rites of the medieval witch cult
were subsequently introduced into English Freemasonry. The two
spherical objects near the heel of the kneeling male candidate in the
illustration are made of quartz. The druids placed quartz spheres on
‘ley’ grids to boost ‘ley’ energy and the miniature corroborates that
the medieval French Craft also followed this practice.

Crafters will note that the quartz spheres are aligned with the
church nestling at the bottom of the hill. The crossroads in the
foreground confirms that this is a ‘ley’ centre. The candidate for
initiation has been positioned so that the church is sited in the
north-east. It is flanked by two ‘pillars’ - the bodies of the female
leader on his right and the Maid on his left. This also appears to
have a druidic origin. Candidates of the dmidic Mysteries were
required to pass between two ‘doors’. The French Craft modified
this to a symbolic passage between two human bodies.

English Freemasons adopted this druidic notion in the early 18th

century. Masonic candidates were required to pass between two
upright pillars attached to the floor of the lodge. It is amusing to
note that French Masons adopted the quartz spheres used by
medieval Crafters, without apparently realising their true
significance. French lodges frequently placed two globes on the
floor between the twin pillars. This was standard practice in 18th
century France. English freemasons have also adopted the two
globes as recognised lodge furniture. However they use ingenious
explanations for the existence of these spheres.

64
 Wright has unwittingly explained the phenomenon of female
leaders in the French Craft. Gerald Gardner’s detractors would do
well to ponder on Wright’s comments about the unique status of the
Gallic druidess. His comments may also explain why some Cathar
sects ordained women as priests. He states: ‘Although there (in
Gaul), as in Britain, they were dependents and subordinates of the
druids they in fact superintended entirely the divine mysteries and
sacrifices, entrance to certain parts of the temple being interdicted
to men’. 6) Wright should have elaborated on this theme. The
southern and western portals of Gallic temples were interdicted to
men. It is surely no coincidence that women manned the south and
west in female-oriented French covens?

The miniature depicts a female leader actually ‘admitting’ a

kneeling male candidate. Her feet touch the southern station. The
Maid mans the western station. The two quartz spheres are
intended to boost the ‘ley’ energy so that the candidate’s level of
consciousness may be altered. One stresses that the rudiments of
the initiation ritual parallel the rites adopted by English Freemasons
in the 18th century. The kneeling male candidate is bareheaded and
looks to the east. He is flanked by two ‘pillars’ - the female leader
and the Maid. One notes that both these officers’ sport at least one
‘cord’ apiece.

Gardner’s version of the Craft may not appear so fanciful once it is

recognised that he popularised the rites of the French Craft, to the
detriment of the historical English Craft. Those detractors who
imagine Gardner borrowed freely from Masonic rituals may be
disconcerted to learn that Masonic historians themselves suggest
that the ‘five points of fellowship’ in Masonry derive from
witchcraft. The ‘five points’ are listed as foot to foot, knee to
knee, heart to heart, hand to hand and ear to ear.” Knoop & Jones
state: ‘We would suggest, though only tentatively, that the five
points of fellowship may have originated in practices connected
with witchcraft or some other superstition of which there was no

65
lack in Scotland.’

One adds that the Scottish archers who served Louis XI brought
many variants of the French Craft back to Scotland.

The original ‘five fold kiss’ was designed to activate certain

*chakras’ (psychic centres) in the candidate’s body and was a
legacy from the Saracen mystery schools. The kiss (or ‘current of
rarefied breath’) was implanted on the feet, knees, phallus/yoni
and anus. The latter was originally included because clairvoyant
faculties can be activated by this ‘chakra’. No doubt adherents to
the Revived Craft prefer the modern counterpart!

First published in TC 11, August 1978.

Notes & References

(1) Wright (1921) p 67

(2) The meridian sun is the noon or midday sun at its highest point
in the sky.

(3) A cunning man, as we have seen earlier, was (historically) a

male witch or wizard who used counter-magic to combat female
witches.

(4) McKenzie (1877) describes these globes as ‘symbols of the

universality of Masonry’ p252. He goes on to say that they were
“emblems of universal power’ and the druids used them for
divination. He goes on to compare them with the shewstone used
by the Elizabethan magician Dr John Dee and says he also has one
he uses for clairvoyance. He concludes by saying that Masonically
the globes represent the chapters of the twin pillars of King

66
Solomon’s temple.

(5) Wright (1921) p99

(6) Knoop & Jones (1949) pp 90-91 and presumably written before
the publication of High Magic’s Aid.

(7) In Gardnerian Wicca the five fold kiss is applied on the feet,
knees, phallus/yoni, breasts/nipples and mouth of the candidate.
Writing in TC 70 (November 1993) Aleister Clay-Egerton,
describing his initiation into a pre-Gardnerian traditional coven in
Cheshire in 1943, says it used a nine fold kiss. In an associated
coven in North Wales he says a seven fold kiss was used.

67
Chapter Eight
Leys, Stone Circles & Serpent Power

The oldest standing stones in Britain were erected by a pre-druidic

people. Many stones in the existing circles were of a high quartz
content “), The quartz was activated at a specific lunar phase. The
pre-druidic adepts used this material phenomenon to boost ‘ley
energy’ and believed that the “serpent’s egg’ naturally conferred the
Supreme initiation on a worthy candidate within the circle. @)

Pliny, in his Natural History, has quite unknowingly revealed the

true secret of the anquinum or ‘druid’s egg’. He states: ‘There is
besides a kind of egg held in great esteem by the inhabitants of
Gaul unnoticed by the Greek writers. It is called the ’serpent’s
egg’...and as the magi are very cunning and artful in concealing
their frauds, they pretend that this egg can only be obtained at a
certain time of the moon’ @).

Pliny appears to have been ignorant of the true application of this

statement. The ‘serpent’s egg’ was a natural phenomenon
coincident with a phase of the moon. It was never an inanimate
object. Much nonsense has been written about the ‘serpent’s egg’
and the British druids are responsible for this confusion. British
druidism was largely solar orientated, whereas their Gallic
counterpart was largely influenced by the moon magic of the pre-
Celtic adepts. The British druids used beads and glass baubles as
badges and passports that the bearer was initiated. Many of these
‘druid’s eggs’ were specially consecrated beads and amulets.

The anguinum was not known in Ireland. The reason given by

68
Llwyd the antiquarian was as follows: ‘The druid doctrine about
the Glain Neidr obtains very much through Scotland, as well as the
Lowlands and Highlands, but there is not a word of it in this
kingdom, where there are no snakes they could not propagate it.
Besides snake stones, the Highlanders have their small snail stones,
paddock stones etc. to which they attribute their special virtues and
wear them as amulets.’ “

The 15th century miniature suggests the medieval French Craft was
influenced by the tenets of druidism. Patrick Kennedy relates how
the Chief Druid of Ireland went to investigate a sacred fire kindled
by the first Christian monks (at Tara by St Patrick MH): ‘ ”What
mean these incantations?“ cried the druid curiously looking at the
books, so unlike their wooden staves and tablets’ ©). Traditional
covens still delineate their boundaries with wooden staves.

The miniature also suggests the French Crafters still knew the
secret of the ‘serpent’s egg’. The quartz spheres near the feet of the
candidate were intended to boost the ‘ley’ energy available. The
French clergy brutally attempted to discourage the peasantry from
convening at the traditional ley centres and many stone circles were
demolished and villages built on the sacred site. The terrain in the
illustration clearly indicates that the Crafters were convening at an
old ley centre. The spheres replace the quartz in the old standing
stones. The admission ceremony is conducted at night and one
suggests the consciousness of the candidate would have been
transfigured by the ‘serpent’s egg’.

Even the eminent Dudley Wright fails to understand the true import
of the ‘serpent’s egg’. He states: ‘the druids themselves were called
Nadredd, or ‘snakes’, by the Welsh bards and the whole of the tale
mentioned by Pliny was a mystical reference to the difficulties of
attaining druidical secrets and the danger of disclosing them. There
is, of course, no doubt that the object of the druidic superstition was
merely artificial.’ ©

69
The druids were rightly termed ‘snakes’, because they were priests
of the solar force. The coiled serpent was the symbol for both the
solar force and what is termed today ‘ley energy’. The ‘serpent’s
egg” was prized as the supreme knowledge of the druidic
Mysteries. The worthiest candidate for the Mysteries became
‘more than human’ when the outpouring coincided with a specific
phase of the moon and imparted the ultimate initiation.

First published in TC 12, October 1978.

Notes & References

(1) The importance of quartz in standing stones has been noted by

modern Earth Mysteries researchers, notably Dr Don Robins, who
has claimed that the solidified energy structure of stone may hold
the key to the psychic phenomena associated with megalithic sites
and ancient buildings (1988). Although today the use of crystals is
a New Age fad there is plentiful evidence that traditional witches in
rural areas used crystals for healing and divination in historical
times. This evidence is to be found in local accounts of folklore.

(2) It should be noted that the use of the term ‘ley energy’ is not so
politically correct nowadays among the EM establishment.
However, this article offers evidence of the use of such energies in
historical times by witches and in ancient times by the druids and
pre-Celtic Old People.

(3) Pliny seems to have thought the ‘serpent’s egg’ was just that
and came from a snake. Interestingly Pliny claimed that any druid
who acquired such an egg at the correct lunar phase had to quickly
flee the scene or be chased by snakes. Significantly he could only
escape these by crossing a stream or running water. Spence (1949)
claims these amulets (sic) were made of glass and could be found

70
in Wales, Comwall and Scotland. He suggests the ’serpent eggs’
might have been echinites, or fossilised sea urchins, or an
ammonite. In the Scottish Highland these were known as ‘adder
stones’ and were used to protect from snake bite.

(4) Cornish witches held the snail in high esteem and Straffon
(1993) suggests this was because their spiral shell was a symbol of
the Goddess.

(5) Kennedy (1866)

(6) Wright (1921) p100

71
Chapter Nine
Masonic Symbolism & the Hereditary
Craft

Several eminent Masonic historians have stressed the many

similarities between the French companonnage and English
Freemasonry. P.F. Gould has listed no less then forty-one parallels
between the two (!). Lionel Vilbert @ tells us that: ’...the
Compagnonnage is the name given to that association of
journeymen, originally restricted to the four building trades of the
stonemasons, carpenters, joiners and locksmiths, but expanded until
it included almost every craft of importance in the country.’ @

Visbert has neglected to explain that these skilled journeymen were

banded into covines. They built the great cathedrals in France and
England and the French ones understood the secrets of the ‘ley
energy’. It is no coincidence that churches and cathedrals were
aligned on ‘leys grids’. The word ‘covine’ suggests that the
English journeymen were influenced by their French counterparts,
many of whom worked alongside them. B.E. Jones cites a 1360
statute of labourers which refers to ’...alliances and covines of
masons and carpenters.’4) The same author assures his readers that
the ‘magister’ was one of the alternative titles for the man who
presided over these covines. We may thus speculate that the
medieval covines of masons were led by magisters. The theory
advanced by many Hereditary Crafters that our word ‘coven’ is
derived from the French ’covine’ becomes attractive and tenable. ©

The comraderies which existed between Freemasons and witches

derived from their common allegiance to Lucifer, the Lightbearer. ©

72
Both the Compagnonnage and Crafters understood the principal
tenets of the Saracen mystery schools. Lucifer was deemed to be
‘the indwelling spirit’ in the human mechanism. The Fall of the
angels was correctly understood to represent the incarnation of
Divinity in carnal flesh. The allegory concerning the Sons of God
and the ‘daughters of men’ (in Genesis MH) is yet another attempt
to explain the mystery whereby Divinity became associated with
flesh. 7

Many English Freemasons have stressed that the Hiramic legend

peculiar to the Compagonnage is different from the legend
obtaining in the British Masonic fraternity. This is hardly
surprising; Hiram Abiff is a euphemism for Lucifer, the solar force
(8). Clerical prejudice ensured that the original Craft (Freemasonry)
legend was modified to extol a human being rather then the much
maligned Lucifer. Indeed the allegory of the Tower of Babel is yet
another corruption of a similar theme from the Saracen Mysteries
and the Compagnonnage, medieval witches and English
Freemasons substituted ‘Nimrod’ for the name of Lucifer.

Nimrod is a generic term for the struggle of the ‘indwelling god’

who would aspire to Heaven. Lucifer as the informing entity in
humankind can be equated with Nimrod - the attempt by the human
personality to return to our original, pristine glory. Most
Freemasons would be startled to learn that Nimrod and the Tower
of Babel were one of the pivots of the (Masonic) Craft legend. Alex
Horne corroborates this and states: ‘...but King Solomon’s
Temple did not always hold the pre-eminent position it enjoys
today as the legendary base of reference to which practically all
institutions - including our very beginnings - are traditionally
assigned. That position was, in fact, once held by the Tower of
Babel... our first most excellent Grand Master is declared to be
King Nimrod himself, the builder of that famous Tower and it was
he, not King Solomon, who it is said to have given the operative
Masons of his day their first “Charge’.’ (®

73
Clerical pressure decreed that King Solomon be substituted for
King Nimrod. Freemasons could not publically attribute their Craft
to the Biblical personage who rebelled against God and tried to
overthrow Heaven. Nimrod was certainly an excellent substitute
for Lucifer. However, one wonders whether our Masonic brethren
appreciate the delicious irony in the choice of Solomon for Nimrod.
He displeased God and was a ‘wise man’ with one thousand wives
and certainly typifies the generative energy of Lucifer, the solar
force. ())

Both Crafters and Freemasons overlook the analogy of the Tower

of Babel and King Solomon’s temple. The Tower represents the
means whereby Nimrod tried to return to Heaven. The temple was
also an occult blind which denotes the means where by the aspirant
may return to Heaven. The Compagnonnage were certainly the
builders of cathedrals. Their Biblical tradition masked the spiritual
aspirations of the medieval adepts. Covine initiates followed in the
footsteps of the great builders. They infiltrated the English
building guilds - and the English (witch) Craft. Historical Crafters
spoke of the Temple of Diana.

It should be obvious that Solomon’s temple is not a physical edifice

if the scriptures are read intuitively. The temple ‘not made with
hands’ is said to have existed before it was made. This reference
clouds the issue. The so-called ‘first temple’ was understood to
represent humankind’s pristine innocence and was destroyed when
humanity fell into sexual degeneration during the Lemurian era. (2)
The ‘second temple’, or Solomon’s temple, has to be erected ‘on
the square’. This second temple is nothing more and nothing less
then the perfected body of a self conscious and self-perfected
human.

Sex was the cause of the destruction of the ‘first temple’. Both
Crafters and Freemasons agree that right control of sexual energy is
the means of building the ‘second temple’. Our Masonic brethren

74
enjoin sublimation of the sex instinct, but Crafters rightly eschew
this method. They seek to use an alternative method which was
also known to Saracen initiates. Gerald Gardner’s detractors
appear to be ignorant of the fact he spent many years studying the
beliefs of the Berbers and Sufis.

Crafters will be -amused to learn that the relationship between

Diana and Lucifer was perpetuated in the Dowland manuscript,
circa 1500. Alex Home expresses his incredulity that Templum
Domini is rendered curiously as the “Temple of Diana’ in at least
four versions and Templum Dianum in one other. (3)

First published in TC May 1979

Notes & References

(1) Gould (1885) pp249-50

(2) Vilbert (1922) p37

(3) MacKenzie (1877) describes the Compagnonage (sic) as

’Companions of the Tower” and they were divided into three
Orders called the Children of Solomon, the Children of Maitre
Jacques (possibly a cryptic reference to the last Grand Master of the
Templars) and the Children of Soubise.

(4) Jones (1950) p37

(5) The Oxford English Dictionary originates ‘coven’ to the Old

French ‘convent’, or ‘religious community,’ and Latin ‘coventus’,
meaning ‘assembly’.

(6) It should be clear that when Lucifer is mentioned here it does

75
not refer to the Christian concept of Satan. To quote the teachings
of a modern esoteric school, Lucifer is ‘charged with the task of re-
directing cosmic evil, and so transmuting it into cosmic good.’ In
this context his ‘fall from Heaven’ was a supreme sacrifice on
-behalf of developing humankind to aid our spiritual evolution.

(7) Some witch traditions believe the mating of the ‘fallen angels’
and the ‘daughters of men' created a race of witches and magicians.
Other versions suggest the ‘fallen angels’ or Watchers taught
humankind the secrets of the magical arts. (see Huson 1970)

(8) Hiram Abiff was the master architect sent by the King of Tyre
with a group of masons to build Solomon’s temple. The ritualistic
murder and rebirth of Hiram forms the symbolic focus of Masonic
initiation. In ancient times Tyre was the centre of Goddess worship
in the Middle East.

(9) McKenzie (1877) states that the Tower of Babel story

represents the loss of the general principles of Masonry when
people abandoned worship of God.

(10) Horne (1972) p43-44

(11) Solomon is said to have abandoned the worship of Jehovah

following his marriages to foreign women, including his
relationship with the Queen of Sheba, and made sacrifices to pagan
deities. It has also been suggested that Solomon’s temple was
originally built for Goddess worship,

(12) Lemuria or My was a pan-Pacific ‘lost continent’ which

theosophical occultists locate thousands of years ago in the Pacific
area as the original motherland of the human race.

(13) Modern Wiccans will not be needed to be reminded of the

legend of Diana and Lucifer recorded by Charles Leland in 19th

76
century Italy (see Leland 1968)

77
Chapter Ten
The Saracen Mystery Schools & the
Medieval Witch Cult

One cannot determine the period when the Saracen Mysteries first
impinged on European witchcraft. Arab invaders who conquered
most of Spain and southern France were probably responsible for
introducing Saracen concepts, beliefs and practices into Europe.)
One realises that the founder of the Knights Templar was born in
that very centre in southern France which boasted the most
illustrious of the Saracen mystery schools.®

Both the Basque and Cathar dissidents were reputedly indebted to

the Berber mystery school which flourished in neighbouring
Aragon @), The Navarre witches imbibed much of the Saracen
culture and Hereditary Crafters often speculate that Navarre
witches introduced Saracen concepts into England. Berengaria of
Navarre, the bride of Richard I (1189-99), is credited with bringing
these witches to England. The theory of an alternative source is
also tenable; Norman, French, English and German knights fought
for the kingdom of Sicily. These foreign knights may have
introduced Saracen rites into their respective homelands. Sons of
several English kings were created kings of Sicily.

The only Craft innovations that can be positively attributed to the

Saracen sources were; the use of cords, the concept of the ’second
temple’, the five fold kiss and specific sexual techniques. The so-
called five fold kiss and the sexual techniques were inter-related.
Many medieval Crafters debased the kiss and divorced it from its
original context. The less said the better about their inability to

78
comprehend the correct relationship between the sexual techniques
and the ‘temple not made with hands’.

There were several variants of the five fold kiss, which was long
termed the ‘Saracen kiss’. The Arab adepts activated various
centres in the initiate’s body by breathing in a peculiar way on
specific regions. Many Crafters misunderstood the ‘magical
breath’ of the Arab masters and instigated the practice of kissing
certain parts of the candidate’s body.

The Saracen adepts breathed on the feet of the initiate to remove

karmic impurities and fears. This practice also parallels the
washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus (the apostles were ritually
cleansed of impurities and fears lodged in their subconscious
mind). The feet represent the lower self, or subconscious mind, in
the Middle Eastern mystery schools.

The Arab masters also breathed on the feet to facilitate the flow of
‘ley’ energy, which passes upward from the earth into the soles of
the feet. The Saracen adepts breathed on the phallus to quicken the
solar force in the male’s body. The correct application of sexual
energy enabled the aspirant to build the ’second temple’. That
region from the groin to the throat was deemed to represent the
middle self, or conscious mind. The inference being that the
reproductive organs of both sexes had to be controlled consciously.
The Arab masters breathed on the mouth to activate the head
centres. The throat, brow and head chakras were allegedly
quickened by a ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ breath technique of the Saracen
adepts.

It is tragic that the magical breath applied to the anal or root chakra
has been so lamentably misinterpreted, for the Arab masters
breathed there to quicken the initiates psychic faculties.“ It is
associated with clairvoyant ability and karmic memories. The
charge that unprincipled Arab adepts used homosexual practices to

79
‘force’ clairvoyance and regress their memories to a pre-human
state of consciousness is not without foundation ©). Herein lies the
true danger for those male homosexuals who have magical
expertise.

First published in TC 14 May 1979

Notes & References

(1) This idea was first introduced into the public arena by Sufi
writer and ‘Master’ Idries Shah. He claimed that the practices of
the medieval witch cult could be traced back to the Aniza cult of
Arabia and the ‘Two Horned’ cultus followed by the Berbers in
North Africa. (see Shah 1962 & 1964). Shah was employed as
Gerald Gardner’s secretary on the Isle of Man in the 1950s and
ghost wrote his biography.

(2) The Knight Templars (Order of Knights of the Temple of

Solomon in Jerusalem) were founded in 1118 by a Frankish knight,
Hugh de Payens, to protect the pilgrim routes from Europe to the
Middle East. The Order became wealthy, acting as international
bankers for the Vatican, but was suppressed by King Philip of
France in 1312 on charges of treason with the Saracens,
homosexuality, heresy and devil worship.

(3) It has been claimed that medieval witches employed a special

language in their rituals based on ancient Basque. (see Harrison
1973)

(4) One of the accusations against the Templars was that initiates
to the Order were kissed on the lips, navel and anus during their
admission. In the later witch trials coven members were said to
give the Devil (the coven leader) the oscalum infame or ‘obscene

80
kiss’ on the buttocks as a sign of allegiance.

(5) Allegations of ‘unnatural vice’ were made against the

Templars, Cathars and medieval witches.

81
Chapter Eleven
Gerald Gardner & the Hereditary Craft

Gardner had a vested interest in pushing his own version of the

Craft. He had published certain beliefs and was obliged to adhere
to them. He was also dependent on ‘the power’ and ’thought
forms’ associated with George Pickingills concept of witchcraft.
His greatest sin was to popularise an obscure segment of East
Anglian Hereditary Craft and pretend it was representative of
English witchcraft per se. A former magister of my parent coven in
Essex was present when Gardner was ’accepted’ into the East
Anglian Hereditary Craft.

Gardner had genuine witch powers. “) He was also astute enough

to tap the energy sources of Pickingill’s Nine Covens, but he was as
much a showman as he was a shaman. Crowley and Gardner liked
and respected each other 2). There was also a ‘witch bond’
between them because both had been connected with at least one of
the infamous Nine.@) There was certainly nothing incongruous in
the collaboration of Crowley and Gardner to produce the so-called
’Book of Shadows’. Both men had dutifully written out the Craft
manual which was peculiar to the Nine. Old George seems to have
been the instigator of the written ‘Book’ as Hereditary witches do
not use a BoS.

The only responsible thing Gardner ever did was to keep his mouth
shut about his genuine Hereditary contacts. This has caused
endless confusion and misunderstandings for Gardner did not
derive his undoubted abilities from any so-called ‘Hereditary’
coven in the New Forest. A story has been put about that Gardner

82
received only one grade in the Hampshire coven. Other,
supposedly authentic sources, offer different interpretations. The
simple truth is that Gardner was a prattling nuisance in some
respects. He did not advance far with the reputed New Forest
coven, but he did contact a genuine Hereditary coven in
Hertfordshire, which was a remnant of one of the Nine.

It should be stressed this is not the Hertfordshire clique to which

Gardner was publically associated “. Robert Graves unwittingly
associated Gardner with a Hertfordshire coven in his essay on
modern witchcraft in The Crane Bag. Gardner was advanced to the
third grade of the Hereditary Craft and ranked as a magister in my
parent persuasion. This advancement was accorded in an East
Anglian coven. Gardner had no excuse for persisting with his
deception. He did know better! Both he and Crowley favoured the
Pickingill version of the Craft to the detriment of the mainstream
traditions.

I welcome any attempt to clarify the meaning of the word ‘witch’.

Graves was no witch, but his article on witchcraft explains the true
derivation of the Saxon word ‘wicca’. He explains it means ’a
male magician who turns back the forces of evil’. I could not better
this description. Wicca is traditionally associated with the
Brotherhood. Both terms are masculine as the Saxons and
Scandinavians were unashamedly male chauvanists. Witch is
correctly derived from the Old German ‘wic’, which originally
meant ‘to bend or turn’. The wicca was the male priest who
manipulated the forces of nature for the good of his community. He
turned or bent the seasons to the advantage of his tribe.

The forerunner of the wicca was the shaman in the oak forests of
Northern Europe, who saw visions, interpreted the wishes of the
Gods and generally ‘turned’ or ‘bent’ forces of Nature for
communal benefit. Wicca was thus an honoured and useful role as
far as the Saxons were concerned. This male priest was invested

83
with awesome powers by the superstitious Teutons, who believed a
wicca could turn back the forces of evil. Gradually the notion
evolved that each wicca was an integral member of a Brotherhood
pledged to fight evil and save the community. The Brotherhood
was simply termed Wicca.

It is essentiall to recognise that we are dealing with male priests

and a male brotherhood. Vestiges of this Saxon chauvinism can be
seen in the cunning men of East Anglia, who were the heirs, and
often the direct lineal heirs, of the Wiccas - pronounced ‘witches’.
The cunning man was an accepted figure in East Anglia until
Tudor times. His knowledge of charms, agriculture and animal
husbandry was utilised by squire and monk alike. The office of
wicca - pronounced “witch-ah’ - was frequently hereditary.

Saxon chauvinism was responsible for the denigration of the wicce

- pronounced ‘witch-er’. This female witch was feared and hated
by the English populace. In contrast the wicca had standing in the
community for he healed, helped crops and animals to prosper and
drove back - i.e. turned or deflected - any evil which threatened his
village. Not so the wicce, for she worked furtively behind the
backs of the wicca; procuring abortions, poisoning unwelcome
husbands and blasting crops and animals. It is hardly surprising
that the wicca was frequently expected to expose any wicce who
was foolhardy enough to work on his patch.

The Norman Conquest eventually produced changes in the Saxon

speech and the final vowel in both wicca and wicce was deleted, so
both words were pronounced as ‘witch’. This circumstance played
into the the hands of the Christian clergy who saw an ideal
Opportunity to undermine the powers and prestige of the village
wiccas i.e. the witches. Our word ‘wicked’ is also derived from the
OG ‘wic’, so the jubilant Christians saw to it that wicca and wicce
were bandied about as interchangeable terms. This general
confusion of these two distinct terms enabled the Christians to

84
convince the faithful that the witches openly proclaimed
themselves as ‘wicked people’. It was unforgivable of Crowley and
Gardner to borrow the term ‘Wicca’, for this has always been the
blanket term for the Brotherhood.

The Gods of the Hereditary Craft have never publically been

named. Indeed the real rites, beliefs and aims of the Old Style Craft
have never been published. There are no ‘magical tools’ in
Hereditary covens. ‘Guardians’ and other ‘contacts’ are never
commanded or threatened with a naked blade. In previous articles I
have explained that some Hereditary covens in East Anglia still use
only wooden implements in their rites; e.g. rods, walking sticks,
staves and brooms. My parent persuasion, and other Old Style
covens, will not permit any metal near what are today termed ‘ley
centres’. Indeed we eschew the use of metal on all ritual occasions.

Recently it has been stated in print that there are Hereditary

families whose bloodline can be traced back thousands of years,
with traditions handed down through generations. It appears that if
this is so my own Craft education has been sadly neglected, for I
must admit that the existence of such doyens of the Craft was
previously unknown to me. I am clearly a deprived Hereditary
wicca, for I can only claim a documented family tree from the 11th
century CE!

I would seriously question any claim that the Craft tradition has
been unmodified by transmission for several millennia. My
maternal forebears modified and adopted rites and beliefs as the
French Craft impinged on Saxon and Danish customs. Romany
customs and rules were subsequently adopted by some of my
forebears who sought refuge in Romany camps.

Quite frankly I see no difference in whether a Craft tradition is

ancient or modern. There has never been uniformity in Craft
expression and there is no reason why there should be. External

85
 rites are only the means of realising that the forces of Nature are
inside us. We ourselves are the God and Goddess. If time
honoured rites cannot enable us to grasp this spiritual insight then
the Hereditary Craft can serve no useful purpose.

First published in TC 20, October 1980

Notes & References

It should be noted at this stage that the material tends to cover a

wide range of subjects in each article and there is some duplication.
This is because by this stage I was asking questions in our
correspondence about previous articles and general matters and
these were being responded to by Bill Liddell and/or his Elders.

(1) Kenneth Grant, head of the British OTO, told me in personal

correspondence that in in his opinion Gardner had ‘the elemental
contacts’.

(2) This view is contradicted by Cecil Williamson, original owner

of the Isle of Man museum, who claims that the two men were not
exactly the best of friends. (see interview with Williamson in
Talking Stick magazine, Summer 1991).

(3) Two possible connections between Pickingill, Crowley and

Gardner have been made by Williamson. He has said that the
cottage used for rites on land adjacent to the Five Acres Naturist
Club in Brickett Wood, Hertfordshire was claimed by Gardner to be
. Pickingill’s! In fact it had come from Worcester and was an exhibit
at the Barnet Folklore Museum before being given to Gardner by
his friend the Rev J.S.M. Ward (Talking Stick, Autumn 1992). In
personal correspondence Williamson has told me that when
Gardner met Crowley (allegedly in 1936 shortly after he retired)

86
the latter sent him down to Canewdon to check out the Pickingill
legends.

(4) Brickett Wood

87
Chapter Twelve
The Pickingill Craft

Old George Pickingill officially disbanded the Seven Witches of

Canewdon several years prior to his death. His correct patronymic
was Pickingale. However this form is a recognised variant of
Pickingill. The Hereditary Craft always speaks of ’Old George’ to
stress he was the most celebrated of the Pickingill magisters. Few
realise why he was feared by the local villagers. He deliberately
inspired fear in the giorgos (non-gypsies). Pickingill had a dual
heritage. The Pickingill magisters invariably eluded the
witchfinders by seeking refuge in Romany camps. They frequently
sired their children on Romany girls. George spent his formative
years in a Romany caravan.

This gypsy farm labourer was reviled and bused by the gorgio
yokels and he reacted in the only way he knew how. Pickingill set
out to terrify the locals. His remarkable powers have not been
satisfactorily explained. Many commentators have pointed out that
Wicca incorporates elements of Romany magic. Gardner’s
detractors erroneously presume that Old Gerald borrowed as freely
from Charles Leland’s book Gypsy Sorcery as he, allegedly, did
from Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches.

Craft historians should examine Pickingill’s background more

thoroughly. The Romany lore in Gardnerian Wicca is directly
attributable to Pickingill’s gypsy upbringing. He was taught from
childhood to revere the statue of the black-faced Mother which his
Romany kin kept in their caravan. He was also encouraged to
remove his clothes to worship the full moon and was trained as a

88
kako before he was admitted to the Craft. He eventually became
the most famous gypsy kako in England and was consulted by the
Romany families of East Anglia.

One stresses that Pickingill was inducted into several covens which
had perpetuated many of the rites which were peculiar to the
medieval French Craft. It was because of his specialised
knowledge of French witchcraft that he was subsequently invited to
lead the Canewdon coven. Tradition avers that this coven was
founded in the middle of the 15th century by a local landowner
who had fought in the Hundred Years War between England and
France. He had allegedly been inducted into the Craft after a long
sojourn in France.)

Seven witches have convened continuously at Canewdon since the

15th century. The composition of all these covens is reminiscent of
the medieval French Craft. Six women adored their male leader as
the ‘Devil’. Pickingill’s reputation as the ‘Devil of Canewdon’
undoubtedly heightened the illusion that he was a Satanist ©).

It was only natural that Pickingill should mingle elements of the

Romany lore with the French Craft when he elected to revive the
English Craft. He also included many elements from the Pickingill
led covens. The rituals of Pickingill’s Nine Covens are still extant.
No impartial observer could fail to see that they formed the nucleus
of the rites of Wicca.

First published in TC 31, August 1983

Notes & References

(1) See the local Canewdon folklore concerning the church

(2) In 1974, when the first Lugh articles appeared in The Wiccan,

89
an American-Sicilian strega called Dr Leo Martello, who claimed
that the articles had been written by Doreen Valiente (!?), said he
was in contact with several Hereditary covens in Herefordshire and
Radnorshire. According to Martello these groups considered
Pickingill to have been ‘an evil old man who was a Satanist.’
Martello’s belief that the Lugh material originated from Valiente,
using a male nom-de-plume, is very strange - especially as
Martello had briefly been in correspondence with Bill Liddell and
also had some contact with John Score, the then editor of The
Wiccan!

90
 Chapter Thirteen
Aleister Crowley & Wicca

One can hardly blame Francis King for insisting that Crowley was
commissioned by Gardner to concoct the so-called Book of
Shadows of modern Wicca. “) King had compiled a formidable
array of circumstantial evidence to collaborate this erroneous
conclusion. Louis Wilkinson was Crowley’s literary executor (with
John Symonds) and his closest friend ®. He confided in King that
- Crowley’s private papers include many draft rituals for witchcraft
rites. Also there was correspondence from Gardner querying how
the Craft rituals were coming along. King naturally placed the
wrong interpretation on these facts.

Among Crowley’s papers were drafts of the Charge to the Goddess

now associated with Gardnerian Wicca. It is not generally known
that Crowley was the author of the very beautiful Charge used by
the Revived Craft ©). He simply amended the visitation of the
goddess Isis written by Lucious Apuleius (in The Golden Ass MH)
and interpolated passages from Leland’s Aradia. King was not
aware Crowley and Gardner had been inducted into sisters covens
(of the Pickingill Craft) or possibly known that Crowley had agreed
to use ‘magical recall’ to remember the wording of the rituals used
by his parent coven. This was Gardner’s allusion to the Craft
rituals.

King correctly understood that Crowley had long been interested in

a natural religion which would exemplify the best features of the
Craft. However, he chose to ignore the fact that many of the draft
rituals compiled by Crowley had been written fifteen to twenty

91
Aleister Crowley
(1875 - 1947)

92
years before his meeting with Gardner. King noted that the so-
called ‘three degrees’ of initiation popularised by Gardnerian
Wicca were contained in all of Crowley’s draft rituals. Indeed the
Great Brotherhood of God, founded by Crowley’s most flourishing
disciple, incorporated these three degrees or grades. Sexual
abstinence was stressed in the first and second degrees, but the
Great Rite was performed in the third.

Naturally, King was suspicious about Gardner’s parent coven when

Wilkinson admitted he had encountered a coven of nude ‘witches’
in the New Forest area. He concluded that Crowley would also
have known of this coven and it was possible he supplied some of
their rituals.

Gardner’s witchcraft museum on the Isle of Man contained a BoS

in Crowley’s handwriting. My former Gardnerian High Priestess
(Sylvia Tatham) has independently confirmed that she saw this
when working with Lady Olwen 4. King appears to believe this is
the original Gardnerian BoS. It seems far more likely that Crowley
copied out the BoS as a reciprocal act. He had made Gardner an
honorary Knight of the OTO and Gerald copied out the secret
volume of that Order when he was accorded the VIIIth grade ©).

It is possible that Gardner made Crowley an honorary Crafter. No

doubt Crowley would have relished this reinstatement and one
suggests he had as much right to be a Revived Crafter as anyone
else. King is far too intelligent not to perceive that the BoS is a
recent fabrication. The direct quotes from Crowley, Leland and
Kipling are undisputed evidence of its vintage. King has also seized
advantage of Gardner’s ‘confession’ on pages 52 and 53 of the
paperback edition of Witchcraft Today.

Gardner attempted to forestall charges of plagiarism by citing many

of the literary sources which eventually influenced the BoS.
However Gardner’s apparent gaffe was deliberately created. He

93
used a Craft ‘code’ to apprise the established witchcraft traditions
of his connection with ‘the true persuasion’. He said that Crowley
was the only man he could think of who could have invented the
rites, and this has been seized on by King. Gardner was actually
citing Crowley because the established Craft world was aware that
the Great Beast was one of Pickingill’s disciples.

First published in TC 32, October 1983.

Notes & References

(1) King (1970)

(2) Wilkinson told King he had contacted a traditional coven of
witches in the New Forest shortly before the war and it seems
probable this was Dorothy Clutterbuck’s group. Its membership
consisted of middle-class theosophical occultists and local country
folk and it followed traditional practices such as the use of a “flying
ointment’ (to keep the cold out at naked gatherings) and the
hallucinogenic “sacred mushroom’ fly agaric.

(3) Subsequently rewritten by Doreen Valiente in the 1950s.

(4) ‘Lady Olwen’ was Monique Wilson, who was left the museum
by Gardner in 1964 and sold it to the Canadian Ripley ‘Believe it or
Not’ Organisation in the 1970s. Wilson is sometimes referred to as
Gardner’s niece, but in fact she was one of his many priestesses.

(5) An American source who has seen this OTO charter claims it
grants him IV Degree status with the authority to found a lodge.
Bracelin’s biography mentions this fact but says that Gardner never
practised the rites of the OTO because he had ‘...neither the money,
time or energy.’ (p171). However, Gardner did visit one of

94
Crowley’s successors in New York after the Great Beast’s death
and they discussed setting up a Crowleyan museum (p174). On the
title page of High Magic’s Aid Gardner describes himself as ‘Scire
OTO 4=7’.

95
Chapter Fourteen
The Cambridge Coven

The Hereditary persuasion has an ambivalent attitude to Gardner.

He is accepted as a lawfully inducted brother, but reviled as a
meddler and Craft innovator. His interpretation of the English
Craft is a travesty of ‘the true persuasion’. Some idea of his
perfidy may be gleaned from the following resume of his Craft
background.

He was inducted into three covens. His parent coven was the New
Forest group and he was subsequently inducted into the
Hertfordshire remnant of one of the infamous Nine. Only two of
the original Nine still convene today. One is in Hertfordshire and
the other is in Norfolk. The Hertfordshire coven must not be
confused with the St Albans (Brickett Wood) with which Gardner
was also associated “). He was vexed to discover that the
Hertfordshire coven repudiated many of the tenets espoused by his
parent coven in the New Forest. He was astute enough to realise
that the Fellowship of Crotona had influenced its structure and
concepts ©.

Gardner received the Second Rite of the Hereditary Craft from the
leader of the Hertfordshire coven. He was thus a full Crafter. It was
this circumstance which led to the erroneous belief that Gardner
was a first grade Crafter. There is much controversy as to
Gardner’s actual standing in his parent coven. To counter any
doubts, Gardner foolishly admitted to several associates that he had
received the first initiation of the Hereditary branch of the Craft.
His detractors have seized on this fact and ignorantly assumed that

96
he was only a first degree Crafter. Gardner was disturbed to learn
that the Third Rite could only be awarded by a magister, however
he submitted to his authority.

Gardner was accepted into another East Anglian coven and

received the Third Rite at the hands of a magister whose name is
known to me. Gardner’s ignominy is almost beyond belief. He
sought the help and assistance of the ‘true persuasion’ and then
abrogated their trust. He discarded the most cherished beliefs of
the Hereditaries and promulgated his own concepts to their
detriment. One is forced to concede that he was only emulating
Pickingill and indeed he faithfully adhered to the format of those
rites devised by the latter.

One looks for any admission by Gardner that he received the

’authority’ of the Brotherhood from a man. His peculiar sexuality
naturally precluded such an admission, as both he and Crowley
enjoyed being dominated and chastised by women 3). His
psychological quirks were his own business and we are all subject
to a variety of sexual fantasies. Unfortunately both Gardner and
Crowley projected their fantasies onto the Revived Craft.

When writing about the Craft Gardner was less than truthful. He
deliberately sought to popularise the tenets which he espoused by
pretending that Gardnerian Wicca was representative of the Craft
per se. He turned his back on the ‘true persuasion’ and it is hardly
surprising that the Hereditaries reciprocated in kind. He attempted
to curry favour with the Brethren by spelling out his Craft
affiliation by means of an ingenuous code. His ‘confession’ in
Witchcraft Today (pp52-53) had a twofold purpose; he was
appraising Crafters of his own background and also attempting to
anticipate charges of plagiarism.

He states that ‘the only man I can think of who could have invented
the rites was the late Aleister Crowley.’ This extraordinary

97
statement alienated established Crafters. The Hereditary Craft
execrates both Pickingill and his most erratic disciple, Crowley. It
was Crowley who misused the sexual and magical techniques of
the Old Style Craft. Gardner was simply warning Crafters that he
espoused the innovations instigated by Pickingill and perfected by
Crowley, and also cloaking his own plagiarism of Crowley’s poetry.

The suggestion that Rudyard Kipling might have written the Craft
rituals is another attempt to explain away direct plagiarism.
Gardner states that there is much evidence that in their present form
the rites were worked long before Kipling and Crowley were born.
Pickingill had evolved the format of the Wicca rites before either
Kipling or Crowley were born “). Indeed the Cambridge
academics, who appear to have initiated the concept of drawing
inspiration from classical literature, had formed a pseudo-coven in
the first decade of the 19th century. It appears that Montague
Summers also received a garbled report of these academics. He
states that the author of The Magus, Francis Barratt, founded a
coven at Cambridge University ©). The publication of The Magus
in 1801 inspired certain Cambridge dons to revive witchcraft and
the Ancient Mysteries.

Gardner’s reference to the Order of the Golden Dawn is another

coded allusion to Pickingill and Hargrave Jennings. Gardner next
mentions Jennings by name and indeed the views espoused by Dr
Margaret Murray (1921) are largely a rehash of his writings. It is
then claimed by Gardner that: ‘Grandfathers and grandmothers
have told folk still living of meetings they attended about a hundred
and forty years ago, when the cult was thought to have existed from
all time’.

The key words are ‘a hundred and forty years ago’. The Cambridge
Coven was operative by 1810 and based their rites largely on the
classical writings of Greece and Rome. They adapted the visitation
of Isis from Apuleius and this was further modified by Pickingill

98
and Crowley, interpolated with direct quotes from Leland’s Aradia
and this created the Charge as used by the Gardnerian Craft. This
coded reference enabled the Hereditaries to see that Gardner could
claim some continuity of tradition.

Pickingill was rightly reviled for adopting the Cambridge classical

rituals. The academics’ premise was brilliant. They decided that
the classical initiates who created the Greek and Roman dramas
were in touch with the ancient Gods. They reasoned it was possible
to contact the old pagan gods and thought forms of the Ancient
Mysteries by creating rituals using the exact wordings of these
classical initiates. Borrowing the visitation of Isis seems to have
been their principal stroke of genius. Pickingill appears to have
thought so for he modelled his version of The Charge on it.

Gardner leaves us in no doubt that he is alluding to the use of

Roman and Greek literature as the basis of magical rites. His
reference to Sir Francis Dashwood and the ‘Hellfire Club’ is
incomprehensible otherwise. Dashwood and his libertine cronies
adored the goddess of love. Hereditaries have long believed that he
eulogised Venus by quoting extracts from classical works.©

The reference to the CABAL is an indirect allusion to the School of

Night. Many Cabalists were associated with that magical group.
So too were many lodges of East Anglian cunning men. This
reference is without doubt another allusion to the Hereditary Craft
in East Anglia. Gardner’s attempt to refer to Italy (hinting that the
witch cult may have been brought here from Italy at the time of the
Renaissance MH) as a source of Craft rites must be seen for what it
is - a naive attempt to anticipate charges of plagiarism. Gardner
knew Crowley had borrowed heavily from Leland’s Aradia.

First published in TC 33 February 1984

99
Notes & References

(1) It is interesting to note that Francis King refers to the existence

of a pre-Gardnerian coven in St Albans, but states that he does not
believe its origins go back before 1900 and speculates that it came
into existence after the publication of Margaret Murray’s The Witch
Cult in Western Europe in 1921. He gives the same period of
origin for the New Forest coven. (King 1971 pp11-12)

(2) The Fellowship of Crotona was the ‘Rosicrucian' order founded

in 1911 by George Sullivan which ran the theatre in Christchurch.
Gardner and his wife Donna (who was never interested in
witchcraft) contacted the theatre in 1938 or 1939 and he met the
members of the New Forest coven who were using it as a recruiting
ground.

(3) Gardner’s preoccupation with bondage and flaggelation is well

known in British Craft circles, but strangely is often denied by
American Wiccans. However, as we shall see later, the Lugh
material denies that Gardner introduced scourging into his version
of the Craft for personal reasons.

(4) Kipling was born in 1865 and Crowley in 1875.

(5) Summers says:’I have been told that Francis Barratt actually
founded a small sodality of students of these dark and deep
mysteries and that under his tuition - for he was profoundly leamed
in these things - some advanced far upon the path of transcendental
wisdom. One at least was a Cambridge man, of what status -
whether an undergraduate or a fellow of the college - I do not
know, but there is every reason to believe that he initiated others,
and until quite recent years - it perhaps persists even today - the
Barratt tradition was maintained at Cambridge, but very privately,
and his teaching has been handed on to promising subjects.’
(Summers 1946)

100
Barratt himself had Rosicrucian pretensions and two of his pupils
were Kenneth McKenzie and Hargrave Jennings. His own teacher
is believed to have been the magician, astrologer and fortune-teller
Ebenezer Sibly. King (1992) tells us that a pupil of both Barratt
and Sibly was the Lincolnshire cunning man John Parkin, who in
1810 was prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. King says that
Parkin was an intellectual magician whose clients were recruited
from the rural poor. He is supposed to have used a geomantic
system identical to one contained in a GD manuscript dated
1890(p43). King says Parkin ‘was already a villager sorcerer
practising the traditional techniques of witchcraft well before he
met Sibly.’ (p48) Barratt also has a following among modern
occultists, including the late Madeline Montalban who will feature
later in the Lugh material and created a magical system largely
inspired by his tome The Magus.

(6) Dashwood may have played at being a ‘Satanist’, but the inner
circle of the Order he founded was concerned with reviving the
pagan Eleusian Mysteries. Dashwood was also a Freemason,
Rosicrucian and neo-druid.

(7) The School of Night was the 16th century occult group centred
around Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spencer, which venerated
Elizabeth I as the personification of the moon goddess Diana.
There is also the suggestion that this group venerated the black-
faced Dark Goddess. (See Yates 1979).

101
Chapter Fifteen
The Gardnerian Charge

In TC 34 (May 1984) Doreen Valiente challenged Lugh’s version

of the writing of the Charge to the Goddess by Crowley and
Pickingill. She pointed out that the modern version had been
rewritten by her after she was initiated by Gardner in 1953. Then
she had been told that the rituals Gardner received from New Forest
were fragmentary and he had chosen quotations from Crowley to
supplement them and make them more workable. Valiente then
rewrote the Charge with his approval to create a new version. She
also queried in her article the existence of the (now infamous)
Gardnerian BoS in Crowley’s handwriting that was supposed to
have been on the Isle of Man as late as the early Sixties. The
following reply from Lugh was published in the same issue:

Doreen Valiente's adaptation of the original Gardnerian Charge

does not discredit the information supplied by my Brethren.
However it does augment our knowledge as to how the rites of the
Revived Craft were evolved. Both Gardner and Crowley were
initiates of sister covens and each subscribed to the radical Craft
concepts of Pickingill. Not enough is known about Old Dorothy
Clutterbuck’s New Forest group to afford a positive identification
with Pickingill’s Hampshire coven. However, Gardner was
inducted into Hertfordshire and Essex remnants of the Nine.
Because of doubts about the provenance of New Forest it is
customary for the East Anglian Hereditary tradition to identify
Gardner with only two of the Nine.

I have never sighted the rituals used by the much publicised New

102
Forest coven. My Brethren know next to nothing about them.
However, I have in my possession the rituals used by both the
Hertfordshire and Essex covens with which Gardner convened as I
too was inducted into the surviving remnant of Pickingill’s Essex
coven. Gardner attained the status of magister in the ‘true
persuasion’ in another Essex coven with which I am also
associated. Thus in a double sense Gardner’s Elders were, and in
some cases still are, my own Brethren. They may be presumed to
know something about Gardner’s status and the rituals he received
from them!

Each of the extant rituals used by the Nine features a Goddess

Charge and a Legend of the Goddess. The Charge was a visitation
of Isis from The Golden Ass and The Legend was a so far
unidentified fragment from the Demeter-Persephone Mysteries.
When Gardner was challenged by his Elders, he explained that
Crowley had rendered valuable assistance in the rewriting and
reconstruction of Pickingill’s rituals. It was claimed that Crowley
was responsible for redrafting both the Charge and the Legend. “

Gardner also added that his friend Crowley had supplied the rituals
of the now defunct Norfolk coven, together with other papers and
rituals for founding a nature cult based on the Greek Mysteries. It
has to be stressed that neither men invented Wicca. Pickingill was
an extraordinary magician, as well as an hereditary magister. He
calculated that the Aquarian Age would not technically commence
until 2424 CE. He understood however that its influence would be
felt in the 20th century. He predicted that the Revived Craft would
be reactivated in 1962. 2

He redesigned the rituals of the established Craft for a specific

purpose. It was necessary to re-introduce Goddess worship and
female dominance to attract those Thracian and Greek priestesses
who would be reincarnated in English bodies from the late 19th
century onwards. Pickingill selected little known, but historically

103
viable, Craft rites which would most appeal to reincarnating
Greeks.

Pickingill adapted the magical rites devised at Cambridge

University circa 1805. These were pseudo-Masonic, cum-
Rosicrucian initiation rites using direct quotes from the classical
poets to attract the original thought forms and guardians of the
classical Mysteries. This excellent occult device commended itself
to Pickingill. The rites he drafted emphasised ritual nudity, nature
worship, the unity of the Goddess, female dominance, the five fold
kiss - without the words Blessed Be’ -, the Drawing Down of the
Moon, the Goddess Charge, the Legend of the Goddess, induction
by the opposite sex, a tri-gradal initiation structure, the use of
magical cords etc. It is difficult not to recognise the basic features
of what is now Gardnerian Wicca.

I can well believe that Gardner was ‘slightly disconcerted’ when

Doreen Valiente recognised the Crowleyan content in a supposedly
traditional passage in a ‘Hereditary’ ritual! He appears to have
benefited from this temporary setback. In Witchcraft Today he
anticipates any subsequent criticism of his rituals by admitting the
literary sources which had influenced his selection of presentation
and wording. He appears to be bemused and innocently
speculating when reciting a list of possible sources for the rites he
was trying to popularise. Each of the allusions covers him against
possible charges of plagiarism.

Valiente is perfectly correct to insist on first-hand evidence for the

cited BoS by Crowley. No one seems to have had enough
commonsense to verify the claim that it was Crowley’s
handwriting! This would have not been difficult as he had a very
distinctive scrawl. Ray Buckland refers to it in one of his books,
but does not actually say if he sighted it. American Crafters
searched for it when Gardner’s collection was sold to Ripleys.
However there is no evidence that the BoS was shipped from the

104
Isle of Man to America. (3)

Quite frankly, I cannot see that it matters who rewrote the Craft
rites or even who introduced foreign elements into the English
‘Craft. It appears to be perfectly valid to update and streamline Craft
rituals in line with changing conditions and altered states of
consciousness. What is of vital importance is that Crafters honour
the Old Ways and tread the path of the Old Gods. Provided those
injunctions are observed, I cannot see that it is necessarily wrong
for modern Crafters to ‘invent’ their own rites - and initiate
themselves.

First published in TC 34 May 1984

Notes & References

(1) In 1993 it was reported that among Crowley’s papers lodged at

the Humanities Library at the University of Texas is a manuscript
that Gardner sent to Crowley for correction. This Ms appears to be
a draft of the legend of the Goddess. The American source who saw
a copy described it as ‘a passion play’ involving Persephone’s
descent into the underworld.

(2) Presumably coinciding with the Great Conjunction of planets in

Aquarius in February 1962 which some modern astrologers believe
heralded the dawning of the Aquarian New Age.

(3) In TC 35 (August 1984) Cecil Williamson responded to the

above article, claiming that when Gardner used to visit the museum
while he still owned it he sighted Gardner’s BoS. He says that
tucked into the Book were ‘two large sheets of carefully folded
airmail type paper covered from top to bottom in closely spaced
handwriting drawn with a pen and fine steel nib. Much of it was
like blank verse and the rest descriptive instruction. One side had

105
Crowley’s personal symbol in the bottom left hand corner.’
Although he does not say so, Williamson suggests these were in
Crowley’s handwriting. According to him, Gardner left the Book
in the cafe one afternoon while conducting a group of French
-women to see the exhibit of ‘tools’ loaned from the New Forest
coven. When he had returned it had gone. Unfortunately this
could not therefore be the famous BoS shown to Sylvia Tatham by
the Wilsons in the Sixties.

106
Chapter Sixteen
The Cambridge Rituals

George Pickingill was shown the ‘Cambridge rituals’ during one of

the lodge meetings of the Ancient Woodman. (In previous articles I
have mentioned that Freemasonry was heavily indebted to the
lodges of cunning men). These lodges were comprised primarily of
witch magisters some of whom were local landowners. They had a
foot in both camps i.e. the social and academic world of the landed
gentry and the rural Craft of the cunning men. These landowners
mixed freely with Rosicrucians and Freemasons in a way in which
their Brethren could not. They not only influenced Freemasonry,
but also kept the cunning lodges in touch with occult developments
in 17th, 18th and 19th century England.

There were two magical fraternities at Cambridge. One composed

rituals for pseudo-Rosicrucian/Masonic rites based on the classical
Mysteries and the other was influenced by sex rites and the mock
‘devil worship’ of the Hellfire Club type. Both groups are still said
to be active today. Crowley learned much of his magical lore at
Cambridge University (from 1895) and was influenced in a
specific direction before Pickingill completed his education “.

The East Anglian landowners who moved freely in Masonic and

-cunning lodges acquired various tracts of the “Cambridge rituals’.
Pickingill reputedly had access to them in the archives of the
cunning lodges. He drafted the rites for his Nine Covens from
these documents. Many years later he had dealings with leading
Masons and Rosicrucians who came to pick his brains. One
stresses that the rites of the Nine were compiled over a period of

107
many years.

My Brethren discount the generally accepted claim that Gardner’s

VIII Degree OTO Charter was only a reciprocal gesture by
Crowley, who had been made an honorary member of Gardnerian
Wicca. They suggest Gardner had been a member of OTO for
some years and was fully sympathetic to Crowley’s beliefs and
ideas. I cannot understand how Gardner could have been an early
member when so much of his life was spent in the Far East ®.
However, Benjamin Walker (1983) claims an early membership of
the OTO by Gardner. The rites of Wicca are permeated with
Tantraism and Walker’s book will help Revived Crafters
understand why my Brethren are so suspicious of a Craft tradition
which is so blatantly Tantric in orientation.

The Tantrics worship in a circle, adore the Goddess and wear

girdles and necklaces to honour her. A nude young woman
represents the Goddess in the circle. Walker says she is
spreadeagled on the floor in a pentacle position, within a circle in
which an inverted triangle is drawn. The Tantrics use a priest and
priestess and the latter is invariably the loveliest woman in the
group. This parallels the practice of the French and Scandinavian
Crafts. The Tantrics observe nudity, honour the Goddess with a
ritual meal and culminate their act of worship with sexual
intercourse.

One of the values of Walker’s book is that an intuitive Crafter may

realise that the so-called ‘witches’ of the Middle Ages were
practising left hand (feminine) Tantra. It was natural for Gardner
to whitewash the Craft. The public had to be conditioned to accept
it as a positive force for good and a legitimate mystery school in its
own right. However, Gardner was very devious when attempting to
authenticate his own preference. He has argued against H.T.F.
Rhodes when discussing the Black Mass (in The Meaning of
Witchcraft), but Rhodes was right to equate the origin of this

108
ceremony with the young priestess who led the rites of the French
Craft (Rhodes 1954).

However Gardner could not let the public associate the worship of
Satan with a beautiful young priestess, representing the Goddess
and personifying the ‘bride of the God’ who celebrated the rites in
toto. He was justified in popularising his version of the Craft
because it did have historical parallels with the French and
Scandinavian witch cults. “

One could argue further that the Gardnerian rites are clearly based
on the format of Pickingill’s Nine Covens. However, we still have
to explain why Gardner turned his back on the Hereditary Craft.
His standing in the ‘true persuasion’ is not in doubt. He attained
the rank of magister in the East Anglian branch and was therefore
authorised to found covens as of right. Anyone or any coven which
can trace legitimate descent from Gardner is a sibling of the ‘true
persuasion’.

First published in TC 35, August 1984

Notes & References

(1) There is an apocryphal story that as a student Crowley made a

wax image of one of his tutors and pricked it in the leg with a pin.
Shortly afterwards the man fell and broke his leg. (Wheatley 1981)

(2) Gardner did return to England several times during his Far East
career as a tea planter, rubber farmer and Customs officer and spent
his time following his interests in the occult and Spiritualism.
However, as Bill Liddell intimates, he would hardly have had time
during these short visits to pursue a serious membership of an
esoteric magical Order.

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(3) The Tantric writer Swami Anandakapila (aka John Mumford)
has linked Tantra with both Wicca and the OTO. He states:
‘Perhaps the most important synthesis of Western tantric concepts
came through the formation of the Oto..’ and goes on to state:™.. I
‘would suggest that modern witchcraft is the Tantra of Western man
emerging in the 20th century.” (Mumford 1975 p129). Other
writers such as Robert Anton Wilson (1977 and 1987) have linked
the Rosicrucians, Dluminati, OTO and medieval witchcraft with a
secret Western Tantric cultus practising sex magic and the use of
natural psychedelic drugs. Tantra is said to have originated in the
ancient Goddess worship of pre-Aryan India and the shamanism of
the prehistoric period. King (1971) says the heterosexual magic
taught in the IX Degree of the OTO is similar to that of the left
handed Tantrics of Bengal.

(4) In her introduction to Lugh (1982), Leonara James states: “ We

do know from a totally independent source that many of the
features attributed in these articles to the medieval Craft in
Scandinavia are true of present-day Norwegian witchcraft’

110
Chapter Seventeen
The Nine Covens

It is unfortunate for Gardnerian Wiccans that the established Craft

cannot accept the rites and tenets espoused by Gardner. The revived
Craft is ostensibly the brainchild of Pickingill who combined the
Cambridge rituals with elements of his family beliefs, together with
obscure rites from the French Craft. The Pickingill family’s covens
were unique in England because all their rites were conducted in
toto by a priestess who was deemed to be the wife of the God. This
concept originated in Scandinavia and was perpetuated in East
Anglia @)

The Pickingills also observed the Scandinavian injunction that a

man must induct a woman and vice versa. The incursion of Cathars
and French Crafters into East Anglia added further dimensions to
the Pickingill Craft. The Pickingills had also perpetuated the rope
or cord necklace worn by both sexes. In Bronze Age Scandinavia
men were sacrificed to the Goddess and women to the God. Each
victim had a rope or leather collar around their neck. The medieval
Craft silenced traitors by strangling them with a cord or noose. A
symbolic cord or ribbon was put around the throat of the strangled
witch. This led subsequently to the mercy killing of witches
awaiting execution.

Cords were worn by both Cathars and French witches @). It is

believed these cords originated with the girdles used by the Magi
and the initiates of the Saracen mystery schools also used girdles or
cords. The contemporary Parsees Zoroastrians have the three cords
around the waist just above the solar plexus (the nabhi chakra).

111
Pickingill appears to have been responsible for associating cords
and the five fold kiss with the Revived Craft. The Saracen
influence lingered on in the English Craft scene for many centuries.
The five fold kiss never found favour with most English covens.
The Saracen Mysteries also failed to take root in the English Craft.

However, much of the debased Magian (Sabean and Mazdean)

occult knowledge was imbibed by medieval Freemasons and those
lodges of cunning men who influenced Rosicrucianism and
Speculative Masonry. The ‘five points of fellowship’ are the
Masonic version of the five fold kiss used by Saracen adepts. The
use of cords and the kiss seem to have been restricted to East
Anglia, but it should be stressed only a minority of covens there
adopted them. There is no record of their use after the 16th century.

Pickingill was interested in many of the Saracen concepts and sex

magic and he attempted to combine this with the magical means of
perfecting the human potential for divine realisation. The Sufis and
the Tantrics believed that man can become divine by the correct
control of sexual nature. The established Craft is quite correct to
repudiate the cord and the kiss as adjuncts of the English Craft
scene. However there were little known precedents.

Scourging is another Gardnerian hallmark which rouses the ire of

both Traditional and Hereditary Crafters. It has to be said that no
historical coven ever scourged candidates for initiation. However,
some of the rituals composed by the Rosicrucian- Freemasons at
Cambridge suggested candidates for the classical Mysteries should
be scourged. This is probably the harbinger of Gardnerian
scourging. (3)

Neither the Hereditaries or Traditionals ever enacted a Legend of

the Goddess or any god. This is another aspect of the classical
Mysteries borrowed from the Cambridge rituals by Pickingill @.
The established Craft also rejects female dominance. The

112
Pickingills always accorded great honour to Nerthus, the mighty
earth mother goddess of the Jutes, Danes and Angles. However, it
was the Horned God who was the principal object of worship in
historical covens. Goddess worship and the priestess syndrome are
concepts alien to the mainstream English Craft. No vestiges of
goddess worship can be recognised since the 17th century.

Pickingill re-introduced Goddess worship into the rites of the Nine

because he had been influenced by the references to Demeter and
Persephone in the Cambridge rituals. They also included hymns to
Venus and Isis. Pickingill was aware that Nerthus was both the
black-faced Earth Mother and the Bright Maiden. Indeed Nerthus
is the Northern European version of Demeter-Persephone.
Pickingill’s preponderance of Romany blood conditioned him to
revere the black-faced Mother of All.

First published in TC 36, October/December 1984

Notes & References

(1) The present revival of Celtic-based pagan spirituality has tended

to obscure the fact that influences dating back to the Northern
European pagan religions and shamanism can be found in historical
witchcraft. This is an area that requires more unbiased research.

(2) The Templars were also accused of wearing girdles or cords for
‘magical purposes’.

(3) Doreen Valiente (1989) links the practice of flaggelation in

Gardnerian Wicca to the classical Mysteries. Less kind critics of
Gardner have pointed to his hidden agenda for the inclusion of so
much scourging in his rites.
(4) Critics have pointed out that the Legend of the Goddess in its

113
modern form is patriarchal, mythologically inaccurate and
confusing. See Robert Hughe’s article ‘Descent into Confusion’ in
Web of Wyrd magazine, issue 10 of February 1994 (P.O. Box
A486, Sydney South,NSW 2000, Australia or BM Box 9290,
London WCIN 3XX)

114
Chapter Eighteen
Witchcraft & the Aquarian Age

In the Pickingill Craft the three ‘officers’ were the Priestess,

Maiden and Priest. This preponderance of female officers is totally
foreign to the English Craft and historically derives from the
female-led covens in France. The druids in both Britain and Gaul
struggled with the rebellious feminist elements in those lands. The
pre-Celtic stock of North African origin resented the male-oriented
druids. In Gaul the combined efforts of the pre- Celtic female
shamans and remnants of the female ‘cave shamans’ perpetuated
the concept of female cult leaders who sacrificed the victims and
conducted the rites all religious rites.

It was quite natural for women to usurp the role of ‘priest’ after the
medieval decimation of the Cathars. Many covens in the French
Craft were led by women and Horned God worship predominated
in these female-led groups. English covens from the early Middle
Ages composed two male leaders and the Lady. The Nine Covens
founded by Pickingill also continued the tri-gradal induction
system of the French Craft. The English Craft knows nothing of
three degrees and eschews nudity, for nearly all ’old’ covens
convene robed. Established Crafters certainly repudiate any notion
that the ‘High Priestess’ can appoint a male leader as a matter of
personal whim or fancy “.

It is apparent that Crowley and Gardner were trying to introduce

atavistic resurgence into the established English Craft. The use of
metals and weapons in the circle was deliberately calculated to
keep the ancient guardians at bay and render them powerless. The

115
established Craft has never used Cabbalistic weapons @. It is true
that Traditional witches carry a sacred knife. However, this is
mostly shielded.

Pickingill launched Wicca on several considerations. He correctly

recognised that the English public had been conditioned to reject
the Horned God and wanted to launch a Craft revival that would be
the principal beneficiary from the collapse of organised religion.
He reckoned that the sixth sub-division of the Piscean Age
commenced in 1808 and would end in 2116. The last cycle of the
Piscean Age, the seventh sub-division, would end in 2424. Only
then would the Aquarian Age truly dawn.

This method of calculating the Zodiac Ages is not generally

accepted by most occultists and Crafters. Pickingill read the
portents correctly and believed the Craft revival would be activated
in 1962, the mid-point between 1808 and 2116. He also interpreted
the portents to indicate the emergence of dominant women. There
is a vacuum as an Age draws to a close and the incoming and
outgoing ray energies are ‘neutralised’. This energy impasse
results in emotional chaos, wars, violence and other upheavals.

Pickingill understood that the prevailing energy patterns presaged

a new advent in spiritual development. During the Piscean Age the
aspirant progressed by individual effort. The coming Aquarian Age
indicates they will progress in group situations. Pickingill believed
that most of the present English race are reincarnated Greeks. That
is why he deliberately devised Craft rites which would attract free
thinking, intelligent and sexually aggressive women of the New
Age.

It is time that Revived Crafters were told that Pickingill

deliberately selected little known historical rites as the basis for his
Craft revival. He used the highly charged energy fields and thought
forms of the French and Scandinavian fertility cults to get his

116
version of the Craft ‘off the ground’ as it were. His conviction that
the tough-minded Thracian and Greek priestesses would incarnate
in English bodies in the 20th century induced him to stress female
leadership and those elements of moon magic and sex magic to
which they were accustomed.

This Greek bias was a major factor in the ritual nudity espoused by
the Nine. Both Crowley and Gardner were interested in ancient
Greece. The dagger of hecate and the dagger and sword of Kali
were Officially incorporated into Craft rituals to stress the worship
of the black-faced Mother of All@) Revived Crafters may now see
why Gardner made such a thorough study of Greek ’witchcraft’.
So-called rites from the Graeco-Roman Mysteries were
incorporated into modern Wicca @).

Pickingill was deemed a ‘Satanist’ because of his ‘left hand’

approach to sex magic. The stressed sexual induction to entrance
into the Nine was regarded by most established Craft groups as an
historical anachronism. Pickingill’s priestesses were trained to be
brides of the Horned God and they practised sex magic to expand
their levels of consciousness. By emulating the so-called "Mary of
Egypt’, the priestess could merge her consciousness with an aspect
of the Divine Mother. Needless to say, the established Craft was not
amused and dubbed Pickingill a ‘Satanist’. It was not difficult to
see why Crowley was attracted to Pickingill. However the “Old
Devil of Canewdon’ refused to use blood in any of his rituals.
Neither would he allow any of his priestesses to contact prater-
human intelligences which might be inimical to human progress
and welfare. Very odd behaviour for a supposed Satanist!

First published in TC 37, Spring 1985

117
Notes & References

(1) In Gardner (1954) it is said that the God is represented by the

High Priest ‘who was called the Devil in the old days’. He says that
he was told as soon as he was initiated that the High Priest was
usually the husband of the High Priestess. He clarifies this by
saying that the Devil was/is ‘whoever the High Priestess appoints
to take this position.’ Other modern Wiccan sources have also
quoted a ‘tradition’ of the High Priestess choosing her High Priest
and taking the dominant role in the coven. More ‘progressive’ - or
should that be ‘traditional’ ? - Wiccans have moved towards a more
equal balance of leadership and the sexes in the running of their
groups in recent years.

(2) It has been suggested swords and daggers had a high profile in
Gardner's version of Wicca because he was fascinated by medieval
and native weaponry. One of his first books was a renowned study
of the Malay dagger called the kris and he believed he had a past
life on Cyprus as an ancient swordmaker.

(3) Gardner’s version of the Goddess was, in his own words, ‘the
sweetest woman’. It is possible his interest in Greek mythology and
his archaeological digs in Cyprus led him to model his version of
the Goddess on the love aspect of Aphrodite. Certainly this legacy
lives on in modern Wicca and neo-paganism, where the Dark
Goddess is neglected and often ignored.

(4) A whole chapter of Witchcraft Today is devoted to the Greek

Mysteries and their alleged influence on witchcraft and on
Gardner’s visit to the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii.

118
Chapter Nineteen
Hereditary Family Traditions

It is probably fair comment to say that the established Craft is less

certain of its authenticity then the Revived Craft! There is a sound
reason for this statement. The Hereditary Craft was primarily
worship orientated. The ‘old’ Hereditary families perpetuated the
Old Religion and any status of kudos they enjoyed rubbed off on
them because they were seen to be the local priests of the Powers.
These local families were only designated ’Hereditary’ because
many generations of their forebears had faithfully served the
Powers and demonstrated an hereditary allegiance to the Old
Religion.

The status of the families was dependent upon the grace and favour
of the Powers. They approved or rejected the choice of their
priests. Sometimes an entire generation of one of these families was
‘passed over’®). In such instances the scion of another Hereditary
family would be chosen to deputise for the displaced local family.
In most cases the original family line would be installed back in
office after just one skipped generation. The family would
continue to serve the community as before, as if nothing had
happened. The odd skipped generation here or there would not
jeopardise the family’s Hereditary status.

The peasants who worshipped at the sacred sites could also

demonstrate generations of hereditary allegiance to the Old
Religion. They too were often designated ‘hereditary witches’, but
the vast majority of these rural witches were never initiated into
any coven. After Christianity had supplanted the Old Ways the bulk

119
of the rural populace continued to convene at the sacred sites at the
seasonal festivals. They also consulted the local representatives of
the Powers. It should not be imagined that the local peasantry still
adhered to the Old Gods. They were practical, if superstitious,
farming folk. They prayed in their local church for abundant crops
and the fertility of their livestock. Then they went to the sacred site
and left offerings for the Powers. It was never forgotten that the
Old Powers had ensured the prosperity of the flocks and the fields
in former times. This half-hearted belief in the Old Gods was a
form of insurance.

However a number of rural families still adored the Divinities, the

lesser gods, the nature spirits, faeries, et al. One still finds country
people who know much more then they will admit about sacred
sites, ‘leys’, the ‘earth force’ and ancient monuments. These old
country families are frequently hereditary witches who have never
known a coven structure. Their knowledge has been passed down
from generation to generation. In their reverence for the Powers
they stand much closer to the Old Religion then do the Hereditary
Crafters who are coven orientated. 2)

These old rural witches do not concern themselves with rites, tools,
knowledge or ‘the power’. They are content to live in harmony
with nature and tread the path of the Old Gods. For my money this
is the true Hereditary tradition. Many Hereditary families secretly
approve of the present trend towards self-initiation and the
compilation of one’s own rites and rituals. The greatest impediment
to the growth of the Craft is the erroneous idea that one has to be
initiated into a coven. We want pagans and Crafters in great
numbers and many dedicated and sincere seekers spend valuable
time and energy looking for an authentic coven, because they have
been told coven membership is essential for Craft membership.
This is perhaps the most unfortunate misunderstanding foisted on
the public by the Revived Craft. ®

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The Hereditary tradition has always existed primarily to honour and
worship the Old Gods. It is a sine qua non of the Hereditary Craft
that the Powers choose us - we do not choose them! We are
*ynitiated’ by the Lord and Lady. This Craft induction will manifest
in an altered state of consciousness and a willingness to open
oneself up to guidance and tutelage by the Bright Powers. Then we
need no human coven contacts.

The coven structure is a great aid to discipline and provides a

necessary protection. It was however a late development in the
Hereditary tradition. Of course, coven-like ‘cells’ have existed in
the British Isles since time immemorial. Nobody would dare
pontificate on this issue. However, it can be said that the
Hereditary tradition discussed here eschews covens, regarding them
as a stop gap measure. Indeed there was no need for the rural
devotees of the Old Gods to form covens until the 17th century. It
was deemed imperative to worship the Powers in secret, until they
could be adored openly.

In many cases there is very little common ground between the

numerous types of Hereditary covens. The old families modified
rites and concepts to enable the Old Religion to meet altered
circumstances and times. This has caused endless confusion
because the label ‘Hereditary’ can be used to denote a coven
practising historical rites. Many Hereditary covens have been
founded by the grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, of hereditary
witches. The line of descent is also confusing with some families
tracing descent through the female line. The daughter, or grand-
daughter, of a female leader could revive a defunct coven or start a
new one. She would have only to claim the right of descent.

The majority of Hereditary families trace descent through the male

line. Succession passed to the eldest son. However the Powers
often intervened to cause the succession to pass to another child
between an entire generation. The daughter of a male-orientated

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family can lead if her brothers are dead or if the Powers choose her.
A common source of confusion is the distinction between covens
founded by an individual claiming the right of descent and those
who owe provenance to ‘the power’ successively handed down
from an historically based group.

It is obvious from all this that nobody can pronounce on the

authenticity, or otherwise, of either type of Hereditary coven. This
is the reason why so many old families deplore the modern
tendency to identify the Old Religion with an organisational
structure which encourages elitism.

First published in TC 38 Summer 1985

Notes & References

(1) In Bracelin (1960), Gardner refers to a hereditary magician he

knows who was the grandson of a man skilled in the magical ways
and steeped in the traditional lore of the occult. However, Gardner
says: ”...aS so often happens among witches as well, the power
seems to have skipped a generation“. (p172)

(2) Here the Lugh material is referring to the solitary practitioners

of the Craft; the village wise women, ‘wizards’ and so-called
‘hedge witches’ who generally worked alone but may have
gathered together with others for special occasions.

(3) This idea that you can only be initiated into a coven to bea
witch and cannot practice self-initiation or be ‘a witch alone’ is
supported by those modern Wiccans who wish to promote and
reinforce heirarchal elitism in the modern Craft and ‘power over’
their devoted followers. The Craft at the end of the 20th century
has no place for these power junkies. Obviously though, if you are

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self-initiated or a witch alone then you should not claim legitimate
descent from a specific established tradition unless you have
received it.

(4) This statement underlines the fact that the Craft has developed
and evolved over the centuries. What was relevant 500, or even 50,
years ago may not be so today. Also the Old Ways were
fragmented by the Persecution and many beliefs only survived in
folklore and seasonal customs. As we shall see later, the Craft was
also influenced by ‘foreign’ concepts that may not be relevant for
modern Crafters. Indeed the history of witchcraft since the 12th
century has to be examined within the context of the wider magical
and occult traditions. Today there is a movement to ‘get back to
basics’ and revive the more traditional aspects that have been
obscured and neglected in recent years, while rejecting the atavistic
hangovers that we have evolved beyond and create new traditions
for the 21st century.

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Chapter Twenty
The Goddess in Ancient Britain

The Old Craft maintains that two goddesses have always ruled over
our Isles. This distinction between our Bright Lady and our Dark
Lady of Unfathomable Mystery is claimed to have been unique to
our islands. A further legend argues that the dark, lunar goddess
existed alone before she created male gods. The Hereditary Craft
suspects that the legends of our two goddesses have an astrological
basis. All ancient myths were astrologically inspired. The One
Life which informs the universe is ‘conditioned’ by the astrological
rulership of each country. The Father-Mother - or is it the Mother-
Father? - indwells whatever divine form is predetermined by the
planetary rulers of a country. The thought forms (archetypal
images? MH) of each god and goddess are simply human responses
to the stimuli provided by the planetary energies.

The Old Craft prefers the dual concepts of Bride or Bridget and
Arianrhod to the imported, composite figure of the Triple Goddess
(1), This insistence on a dual goddess is not simply astrologically
based. It is also founded on a profound understanding of the
energies periodically realised by the luminaries; the planets, the
Earth, Venus and the moon are the major planetary influences on
the British Isles. This naturally betokens a strong feminine
influence. England is not called ‘the mother country’ for no reason.
Both England and Ireland are predominantly Venusian, because
they are traditionally assigned by astrologers to the sign of Taurus.
One stresses that the lunar overtones are reinforced because the
moon is exalted in Taurus. Scotland is ruled by the moon because
it is traditionally assigned to the rulership of Cancer.

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Bride (pronounced ‘Breed’) was reverenced throughout England,
Ireland and Scotland. The popular appeal of this Celtic goddess of
childbirth, livestock, healing, sacred fires, flowers and holy wells is
explained by the Taurus/Cancer axis. Bride is the gentle goddess
who is the protective mother and demonstrative lover. The
ascription of holy wells, springs and the sacred fires to Bride
denotes she personifies the right hand spiral. She is the female
polarity of that creative energy which interpenetrates the Earth
and is focused at specific sites on its surface.

Holy wells and sacred springs were dedicated to Bride once it was
determined that they could not be contaminated by the cyclic evil
which is regularly released from Mother Earth. No representation
of female polarity can ignore the destructive aspect of Mother
nature. Both the Earth and the moon are subject to periodic
configurations which adversely affect ‘leys’ and these were termed
by the ancients ‘the menses of the Goddess.’ Negative energies
emanating from planetary configurations also impinge on ’leys’.
All creatures can be adversely effected by these evil emanations @).

The megalithic monuments were constructed with several purposes

in mind. Not the least of these was to minimise the dark impulses
from ‘leys’. Megalithic remnants which are subject to ’static’ from
‘ley’ sources alternate the polarity of the life energy they emit. The
alternation of the spiral bias of these monuments was attributed to
the Spider Goddess, because all life energies were channelled
through the Earth via the intermediary of spider-like ‘webs’.
Clairvoyant vision depicted the ‘leys’ as silver radial strands which
closely resemble a spider’s web.

The Old People of our Isles understood that the pure and chaste
goddess was the mother of both inspiration and destruction. Love,
poetry, prophecy and inspiration were deliberately fostered and
heightened by ‘tapping’ the ‘leys’ at propitious times. Physical
shock, mental derangement, bodily illness or even death could

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result from approaching megalithic sites when the ‘ley’ sources
were contaminated by the reversed spiral energies.

Our pre-Celtic ancestors also knew that Venus was both the
daughter and alter-ego of the moon. The chaste maid who is
invariably the object of love is ever the daughter of the Earth
Mother. Both aspects of the Lady are identified with the goddess of
love. Our indigenous goddess, whom the Celts named Arianrhod,
is cast more in the mould of Venus then the moon. This anomaly is
explained by the Venusian emphasis evident in our Isles.

Arianrhod was acclaimed the mistress of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales

and the western reaches of England and Scotland. She enjoyed her
own astrological correspondences because these enchanted islands
are assigned jointly to Taurus and Gemini. The planetary rulers of
Arianrhod’s domain are Venus and Mercury. This combination of
love and knowledge prompted the various druidic priesthoods to
represent Arianrhod as Queen of the Supreme Mysteries. She was
the pure one who tempted humankind - to reveal the reality beyond
sentient experience. She was the fair woodland deity who was both
siren and hierophant. It is no wonder that the druidic/Celtic
traditions are largely knowledge orientated.

James Vogh (1977) claims: “We are told that Arianrhod is another
name for the Spider Goddess, whom the Cretans called Ariadne”.
This radical astrologer claims that the ancients formerly used a
Zodiacal division of thirteen signs and he contends the ‘missing
sign’ is Arachne, situated in the constellation of Auriga, between
Taurus and Gemini! This narrow Zodiacal belt has always been
associated with our indigenous goddess, whom the Celtic invaders
chose to identify with Arianrhod, the Lady of the Silver Wheel. It
is interesting that Vogh identifies Arianrhod with both Ariadne and
Arachne. Graves (1948) made this same identification. However,
it is unwise to infer from this that the original Cretan goddess was
the origin of Arianrhod.

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Scholars now discredit the diffusionist theory, which held that the
megalithic culture originated in the Mediterranean area and
gradually spread westward via Spain, Portugal and Brittany to our
Isles. Craft legends maintain that the sacred knowledge existed in
our Isles before the arrival of the megalithic culture and the
subsequent invasion by the Celts. The vast majority of the
aristocrats and priests of the Old Race are claimed to have fled the
homeland (i.e. our Isles) in the 13th century BCE.

These Old People were cursed by a double affliction; the

destruction of vegetation in the North Sea regions and the
consequent invasions of sea marauders from Scandinavia and
northern Germany. The Old People fled to Portugal and the
Mediterranean islands. The dreaded ‘Torriers’ or Sea People were
not far behind them. Both the Old People and the Northern
European sea pirates settled in Mediterranean areas and produced
hybrid races who eventually migrated back to their northern
homelands ©)

The Goddess of the Silver Web was modified by contact with the
Mediterranean cultures and the hybrid races who sprang from her
devotees. The legend of the human Cretan princess called Arachne
being turned into a spider by the vengeful goddess Athene is
another instance of a new religion deprecating and supplanting an
earlier one. The Greek pantheon triumphed over the Cretan and
other cultures (The Old Race from our Isles who had been Goddess
orientated and matriarchal). The concepts of the Fates spinning
human destiny seems to have been Greek and the returning hybrids
imported a number of foreign ideas. The Triple Goddess and the
triads of spinning fates are amplifications of the original Goddess
of the Silver Web from whom all creation stemmed.

The surviving remnants of the Old Race are said to have reached
Anatolia (in modern Turkey MH) and from that region dispersed in
several directions. Some of the ‘Celtic’ races originated in

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 Anatolia and hence had imbibed some of the ancient lore before
they reached our islands. There is considerable evidence that
Northern Europe was devastated in 1220 BCE and research into
this has been pioneered by the climatologist D. Wildvag Spanuth
(1976). He identified this historically attested cataclysm with the
story of Atlantis and was the first to identify the Sea People with
the Atlanteans. © .

Scholars are unanimous that the Sea People who attacked and
destroyed Palestine, the Aegean isles, Crete, Greece. Thessaly and
Macedonia circa 1220 BCE were Northern Europeans, specifically
Scandinavians. A bas relief in the Medinet Habu temple in Egypt
depicts a sea battle in 1190 BCE between the Egyptians and the Sea
People. The ships, weapons and horned helmets of these sea
pirates identifies them as Scandinavians.

The Old Craft legends should not be viewed as corroborative

evidence for certain of the opinions expressed by Robert Scrutton
(1977 & 1978). The Old Craft knows nothing of the so-called
Atland-Frisian culture, nor has it heard of the Oer Linda Book
quoted by Scrutton as the source of his material. The so-called
Haro prophecy was certainly not derived from either a Celtic or
Scandinavian literary source.

_ First published in TC 47 Autumn 1987

Notes & References

(1) It should be noted that Bride was often represented as a triple

goddess form and in Celtic myth she was regarded as a triad of
three sisters. It has been suggested that Robert Graves was
responsible for introducing the concept of a Triple Goddess
associated with the lunar phases, but this divine archetype can be

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widely recognised in Indo-European myth. The Lugh material, as
will be seen later in this article, offers one possible explanation for
its origin.

(2) Bride has been interpreted by some writers as a sun goddess.

She was certainly associated with Brighde, the ‘Great Queen’ and
warrior goddess worshipped by the Celtic tribe of Brigantes in
northern England and North Wales, and with the triple warrior-
death goddess of Irish mythology, the Morrigan. See Howard
(1994)

(3) Earth Mysteries researchers will know of the so-called ’black

leys’, which are supposed to be responsible for psychic pollution,
misfortune and illness among humans and animals.

(4) This is known in modern terms as the “Web of Wyrd“, but is in

fact a very ancient spiritual-magical concept, possibly dating back
to prehistoric shamanism.

(5) & (6)Spanuth (1976)

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Chapter Twenty One
The Saracen Craft

It appears necessary to discuss the influence of the Saracens on

English witchcraft without reference to a systematic historical
framework. No understanding of the coven concept can ignore the
Berber-Saracen organisational structures which appear to have
originated in North Africa. The major problem is trying to
determine where this North African influence begins and ends.

European witchcraft derived from four primary components:

i) Primitive sorcery common to all cultures

ii) Rites and customs of the native religions.

iii) Organisational structures of North African origin.

iv) Tenets of the pre-Christian mystery schools.

There was a North African presence in our Isles before the Berbers
infiltrated Spain and southern France in historical times (circa 9th
century Ce MH). Little can be speculated about the Old Race who
first inhabited our islands and Crafters have conflicting opinions
about the ancient knowledge and the origins of its guardians.

However, Craft legends are adamant that Hamatic tribes from

North Africa had settled here before 35000 CE. These tribes were
matriarchal in social structure and reputedly Goddess- oriented.
They possessed several outstanding characteristics; an unparalleled

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incidence of etheric vision and an unrivaled opinion of the status of
women. Our North African ancestors introduced the circle dance to
our Isles and they danced to heal, love and raise generative power.
Some African tribes still dance for therapeutic purposes and
‘modern Berbers who still incline to the Old Ways dance in a circle
to raise power.

Our African forebears did not form ‘covens’ as such; the men
specialised in hunting magic and the male shaman was usually a
lone expert. Real magical expertise was the exclusive domain of
the womenfolk. Female shamans bandied together in concentrated
unison to achieve a common purpose and this magical division of
labour seems to have been parallelled in European cave culture.

Craft legends claim that climatic catastrophes, attacks by animal

predators such as cave bears and sabre-toothed tigers and
onslaughts by new human races virtually destroyed the old human
species. Homo sapiens survived because of the ‘moon magic’ of
the female shamans, the old women of the tribe who specialised in
recording menstrual cycles and the various phases of pregnancy “).

Captured women of childbearing age were mated with the strongest

and most intelligent males of the conquering race. These sexual
ceremonies’ were conducted at full moon and the round dance was
associated with these mating rituals. The Old Craft argues that folk
memories of these Paleolithic (Old Stone Age MH) rituals were
responsible for many features of the witch cult.

The Old Craft also speaks of a power struggle between the male
and female shamans. The women painted their bodies and donned
animal masks to communicate with the spirits and the entities of the
worlds beyond our own. This primitive sorcery reached Europe
from North Africa and it is said that men only liberated themselves
from female domination at the end of the Ice Age i.e. approx. 8000
to 10,0000 years ago.

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After the floods caused by the melting snow caps, the male
shamans of Northern Europe gained ascendancy over their female
counterparts and hunting magic was once more to the fore. The
ancient god of the mountains, beasts and water was the undisputed
deity of Northern Europe, but the male shamans never forgot the
evil terror imposed on the human race by the cave women. The
irrational and paranoid hatred evinced by the Teutonic shamans of
the oak forest for the ‘cave witch’ undoubtedly explains the dread
of the hexe in Germany and the bias of the cunning men against
female witches.

Things were quite different in central and southern Europe, for the
supremacy of the old moon magic used by the female shamans was
acknowledged and these cave women emerged stronger then before
Their knowledge of the moon’s influence was essential in
agricultural communities and the female shaman assumed
responsibility for overseeing the planting of the crops. The Deity
was envisaged as female, not male, and the concept of the
Mediterranean Great Mother Goddess was distinctly African in
origin.

Isis, Demeter and Cybele were different versions of the black-

faced, snake goddess of Sudan. She was the forerunner of such
later Earth Mother figures as the Black Isis, the Black Demeter and
the Black Madonna of the Christians. Pockets of female shamans
worshipping the Goddess survived in the Alpine vastnesses into
historical times. Legends persist of lost ‘kingdoms’ ruled by
women in the French, Italian and Austrian Alps and there is
archaeological evidence for such claims as recently as 4000 years
ago.

The female shamans reigned supreme in northern Spain and

southern France. They persisted into historical times in those
regions of France which had prehistoric cave complexes. Neither

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the Celts or the Gauls could subjugate these dominant females and
these pre-Celtic women maintained their status even after
intermarriage with successive invading tribes and races.

-The Gallic ’druidesses’, the female Cathar leaders and the witch
priestesses of medieval France testify to the perpetuation of this
racial strain of strong minded, strong willed women.

North Africa was the springboard for the cultural colonisation of

both the Mediterranean and Western Europe and a two-way
communication existed for millennia between the two areas.
Successive waves of North African settlers had reached our
homeland before the Channel was formed. The original
civilisations of Malta, Crete, Sicily, the Greek islands and Italy
were heavily dependent on African cultural patterns. African
sorcery and spiritism had crossed the Sahara and had been carried
not only to Egypt and Carthage, but to unsuspected corners of
Western Europe.

The Berbers were the first carriers of North African magic in

historical times. The followers of the Prophet had conquered North
Africa - after a fashion! Tarik and his Moslem hordes powered into
Spain, but many of the Moors were pagans at heart. They venerated
women, secretly adored the goddess of love, sacrificed goats and
chickens at crossroads, altered states of consciousness by frantic
drumming and combined ecstasy with knowledge to attain spiritual
salvation.

The Moors who paid lip-service to Islam were aware of the dangers
they faced from more pious Moslems. They formed themselves
into bands of comrades with an average size of ten to twelve
members. These pagan Moors in Spain and southern France used
passwords and identifying marks to recognise each other. This
clandestine Moorish brotherhood had the distinction of organising
the first coven structure.

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They had no difficulty finding local girls to be their “love queens’.
Good Christian girls found their Moorish overlords both attractive
and exciting and furious drumming and ecstatic dancing became
the vogue in the occupied areas. Local pagans were familiar with
circle dances to raise power, love making in the woods at full
moon, worship at:the crossroads, communion with the dead, the
control of elemental spirits and the adoration of the Goddess. It was
a simple transition from simple communal paganism to a secret
elite of senior initiates who were impressed with the organisational
structure of the Moorish brotherhood ®.

The ‘captains’ who led the Moorish pagan bands were originally
mercenary soldiers and this title was used for centuries until it was
replaced by rahbin, or Robin i.e. ‘master’ or ‘teacher’. He was the
forerunner of the later magister or witch master and had a deputy
who was an assistant shaman. Both these worthies could raise and
commune with spirits, control elemental servitors, charm animals,
read the future and magically alter events. Each had the power of
life and death over his band and each of the brethren swore to kill
themselves before they would betray the secrets of the
Brotherhood.

These Berber bands used secret names to identify each other and at
initiation each brother had an incision cut with a sacred knife. In
the course of time the Brotherhood was invested with incredible
occult powers and the ‘Robin’ was popularly reputed to be able to
summon spirits who would confer untold wealth or a steady stream
of lovers. Gullible people abandoned the old pagan ways and
embraced the Moorish phenomenon. The Saracen Craft spread
from the Continent into the British Isles. Many of the charges of
witchcraft laid against Lady Alice Kyteler of Kilkenny in Ireland in
1324 were probably well founded. It is highly likely that this
noblewoman had sacrificed fowls and goats to the spirits at the
crossroad and that the mysterious ‘Robin Artisson’ who was her

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teacher was a blackamoor.

Many of these ‘captains’ roamed the countryside peddling love and

wealth in exchange for payment. The more plausible of these
rogues were employed at court or by nobility. Many came to
England with the returning crusaders, while others were brought
back by young aristocrats who had gone to Moorish Spain to study
the magical arts. Many of these Moors travelled throughout Europe
founding groups of initiates to whom they imparted the secrets of
the Arab mystery schools. These Saracen ‘covens’ had very similar
organisational structure to the Berber originals, but their ‘Robins’
were better educated and certainly more audacious and
sophisticated in their claims. They pretended to hold the keys to
salvation and they alone could impart the secret knowledge which
enabled the initiate to enjoy paradise - both on Earth and after
death.

The Saracen masters stressed sex magic in their covens and their
primary purpose was to train the initiate to transcend the normal
boundaries of human consciousness. Then, and only then, could the
candidate prepare to become a Perfected One (or Cathari). It was a
sine qua non of the Saracen Craft that each person was his or her
own god/dess - and devil. Only the knowledge inherent in his or her
own being could transform a creature into the Supreme God of the
universe. The Saracen masters claimed to have the knowledge and
expertise to affect this transformation and for this reason were
designated as ‘the Wise Ones.’

These Saracen covens introduced concepts which were to bring

destruction to the English Craft, for a primary prerequisite was that
the candidate for initiation had to abjure the Christ. This was not
specifically an anti-Christian measure, but no initiate of the Saracen
Craft could revere any god except the godhead within and the only
saviour who could ensure salvation was their own latent divinity.

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 The Saracen masters were exponents of the Arab and Jewish
Cabbala and they introduced Eastern concepts which had no
relevance to English witchcraft @). The Eastern discipline of
absolute obedience to the guru or master’s will has no place in the
Craft, but a certain Saracen ritual found its way into a number of
Hereditary rites. The candidate for divine enlightenment
approaches the magister and implores his aid in the time honoured
words: Master, I come to the altar. Save me Robin from death and
illusion.“ Various parodies of this plea alarmed the Church, for the
‘witches’ had clearly abjured the Christ, received new *baptismal’
names from the ‘Devil’ and surrendered themselves to the powers
of darkness.

All this was a far cry from the native paganism of our forebears.
many of the rural yokels still caroused at the old festivals and
convened at the ancient meeting places. The vast majority of the
surviving pagans saw no need to join a secret cadre to honour the
Powers who ensured the prosperity of the land. Many of the old
families still served as priests and priestesses of the Old Gods. The
defeat of the Moors in Spain and the existence of Moorish secret
societies were equally important factors in the decimation of the
witch cult.

The Moors vowed to destroy Christianity and, while ceasing to

exist as a military factor, a number of Moorish malcontents
travelled through Europe. They received assistance from those
Saracen societies which had flourished on European soil and were
chiefly to be found in Spain, the Basque country, Italy, Sicily and
several regions in Britain and France. These carried their
organisation into parts of Germany and Scandinavia. Tales of a
"black man’ suddenly appearing in isolated rural areas and
initiating local women may not be a figment of the Church’s
imagination.

It is known drugs and love potions were used by the Moorish

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 *covens’ and their leaders co-operated with the heads of the
Saracen secret societies who trained their initiates to steal and kill
at the command of the master. 4) There is no doubt the Church
recognised the danger and regarded those European pagans who
-had succumbed to the Moorish fortune-tellers as a dangerous fifth
column. There were many reasons why the Church moved against
the ‘witches’; however, the peasants who adored the Old Powers
went largely unscathed. Pagans who perpetuated the beliefs of
their Celtic, Saxon and Danish ancestors survived.

First published in TC 64, Spring 1992

Notes & References

(1) This account of prehistory is based on oral tradition and is

therefore almost impossible to substantiate. The existence of
prehistoric ‘ritual batons’ made of reindeer horn and carved with a
lunar calendar was offered by Bill Liddell in our personal
correspondence as proof of the ‘selective breeding’ programme by
the female shamans to create a “master race.’

(2) The occultist Rollo Ahmed has stated: ‘Another effect of the
Crusades was the mingling of Eastern and Western ideas and
beliefs; men who were prisoners of the Saracens in particular
bringing back the theories and practices of Oriental magic, upon
which much of the current witchcraft came to be based.” (Ahmed
1936)

(3) The hereditary witch Robert Cochrane (aka Roy Bowers)

writing in the Sixties mentioned a period when branches of the
English Craft accepted Eastern gods. He stated that he had not
heard of anyone practising the Eastern system, following the
almond and the walnut instead of the rowan, oak and blackthorn,

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getting results.

(4) See alleged links between the Templars and the Assassins
(Burman 1987 and Wilson )

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Chapter Twenty Two
Gerald Gardner & the Malay Witches

Perhaps the earliest influence on Gerald Gardner’s Craft system

were the village wise women he encountered in Malaya and Borneo
during his Far Eastern career. These wise women were the south-
east Asian equivalent of the voodoo priestess of Africa and the
female shamans of Manchuria and Siberia. They were hereditary
witches whose authority and power was handed down through the
female line. They were consulted as healers, mediums and
soothsayers who supervised a primitive cult of the dead.
Contemporary wise women are regularly hounded by the
authorities in Moslem controlled areas, but their sisters still prosper
in the pagan areas of Malaysia and Kalimantah (Bomeo). It must be
emphasised that these Malay wise women received money or
payment in kind for their services to the community.

Gardner recognised that these wise women practised what is

arguably the world’s oldest religion - animism combined with
ancestor worship. These hereditary ‘witches’ recognise no deities
save their ancestral spirits, household gods and the local nature
spirits of trees, vegetation and springs. There is an obvious parallel
with European pagans as late as the Graeco-Roman period. The
Greek and Roman city states adored the Olympian pantheon,
together with their respective geni loci or local deities. The rural
population seldom gave lip-service to the deities of Olympus, but
they did worship the household gods and nature spirits. Gardner
correctly intuited that the North African and Celtic components in
our racial identity observed the identical practices.

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The Hereditary Craft has always subscribed to this view. The
indigenous ‘witchcraft’ in the British Isles was always an act of
propitiating the lesser deities of Nature. Both our ancient African
and Celtic forebears were able to communicate with the Powers
(i.e. the Sidhe) and there was a two-way communication between
them and mortals. This Nature worship was always conducted by
women and it was believed the community would only prosper as
long as the Powers were suitably invoked and honoured.

The Celtic druids took ruthless measures to suppress these female

bands of shamans. In Gaul the druids gave up their unequal
struggle, grudgingly admitting defeat and installing militant
priestesses of the old Nature religion as “druidesses’. The British
druids were made of sterner stuff. The Western Celts held women
in high esteem, but there was a rigid demarcation line between the
worship of the High Gods by male priests and the adoration of the
lesser deities by the tribal wise women and their female cohorts.
This underlying hostility between the official worship of the Celtic
pantheon and the rural invocation of the Powers to ensure fertility
was to be exploited by the druids, Celtic Christianity, the Roman
Church, Saxons, Danes and ultimately the Establishment.

The Celts adapted readily to the new religion. The Western Celts,
who were and are, pagans, at least intuitively, recognised the
essential paganism at the heart of Catholicism. The Celtic mother
goddess was easily identified with the Virgin Mary and the Christ
was none other then the dying redeemer who invariably conquered
death. The Celtic All-Father could be worshipped in the Christian
manner without giving him offence. The other Celtic deities were
remembered by the rural populace (the pagans). Holy wells and
sacred springs were openly decorated with flowers to honour the
Goddess/Virgin Mary.

However, many of the older gods were still furtively invoked in

their original forms. The village wise women stole away to the

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sacred sites and worshipped the old male deities, as well as the
Powers. It is this circumstance in the Celtic countries during the
early days of Christianity which led to the ridiculous charge that the
pagan female bands worshipped the Devil. The Celtic populace
-could worship the Goddess under the guise of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, but the Old Gods - whether of Celtic or African origin -
fulfilled many basic human needs. The Christ was a wonderful, but
austere and celibate, figure. This Christian god could not
understand warmth, laughter, joy and the comfort of another naked
human body.

Predictably enough, these women who persisted in worshipping the

Old Gods in an orgiastic manner were reviled by both Church and
state. They also, less predictably, incurred the wrath of the pagan
elements among the Saxons and Danes. These Northern European
invaders were generally God-oriented and, worse still, believed the
prosperity of the community depended upon the ’cunning’, or
magical skill, of the male shamans. “) The Celtic wise women tried
to compete with the Saxon wiccas, but the enraged Germanic
cunning men knew a hexe when they saw one. They persuaded
both the Church and the state to move against ‘the evil women’.

It is sad commentary on English paganism that the wiccas co-

operated with the Church to unmask female witches. However, the
conversion of the Saxons and Danes was also a real problem for the
Church. Nothing in the person of the Christ commended itself to
these robust Northern warriors. Any real leader would have died
with his battle-axe in hand, taking as many enemy as he could carry
to Hel with him. The concept of a god meekly walking to his death,
and actually carrying the cross, was totally alien to the Northern
mind. The Saxon and Danish pagans clung tenaciously to their
own powerful gods. These brief notes should explain why it was
that the God image was the one that predominated in English
paganism.

141
Returning to Gardner; during his Far Eastern career he had
recognised the similarities between the English rural wise woman
and her counterpart in Malaysia. He took the most logical step and
assumed they both represented a form of ancient Nature worship
predating all theologically centred religions. He had a number of
preconceived ideas about European witchcraft before he met any
English witch. His determination to identify the Malay wise
women with European witches may account for some of the
historical anomalies found in his version of witchcraft.

Gardner correctly argued that female-led groups were the

prototypes of communal witchcraft, and he was right to stress the
similarities between the Eastern ‘witches’ and their European
’sisters’. Unfortunately for Gardner’s general premise, not all
European witches were village wise women who had herbal
expertise, propitiated the Sidhe, communicated with discarnate
spirits and worked for the good of the community. One stressed
that the Malay ‘witches’ utilised their abilities for good or evil,
depending on the whims of their clients. Many specialised in
healing, but others sold love potions, attracted lovers and procured
abortions. Similar practices were common in medieval Europe.

The principal thrust of Gardner’s argument was that witches had an

innate ability which was not dependent on Satan or some other evil
power. He was influenced by the writings of J.W. Brodie-Innes and
interested Crafters should read his “witchcraft papers’ in Gilbert
(1983). These are reprinted from The Occult Review journal of
1917 and this date is important in establishing their author as one of
the pioneers of the Revived Craft @. Brodie- Innes subscribed to
the view that ‘witchcraft’ formulae had their roots in the classical
writings of Greece and Egypt. He further argued that certain
prayers and rituals found in such diverse sources as the Egyptian
Book of the Dead and the works of Hesiod and Virgil exactly
parallel the practices of modern (sic) witchcraft.

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One of his assertions was to link witchcraft with the Celts and with
Celtic religion. Of specific witchcraft incidents for which he
personally vouched, writing in 1917, he claims: ‘...the most
interesting to the student are those which show forms current in the
Middle Ages and in remote classical times. Naturally the great
number of these occur in the west of England and Scotland and
their Celtic population, but witchcraft is rife to this day also in
Brittany and Morocco, where every medieval incident, including
the witches’ sabbat, is familiar ground and universally believed in.’

I am indebted to Brodie-Innes for linking the Drawing Down the

Moon ritual with the Moors of north Africa. When writing his
occult novel The Devil’s Mistress this learned author was anxious
to determine the ingredients of the ‘moon paste’ used by the 17th
century Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie. He writes: ‘Hints in Hesiod,
and other classical authors, showed that the formula was used in
Thessaly (Greece) and medieval witches spoke of “Bringing the
moon down from the sky’. Still it eluded me until at last I ran it to
earth in Morocco, as recorded in the notes of Emile Mauchamp and
others. The key fitted exactly; not only Isobel Gowdie, but the
Thessalian witches were justified by the experiences of a modern
scientific traveller.’

Gardner was correct in his premise, but dishonestly selective,

especially in linking his version of the Craft to Dionysus ). This
cult was of Greek origin and initially the celebration of the rites
was confined to women. The sacred nature of these rites
degenerated when men were admitted to the holy mysteries. The
licentious nature of the Bacchanalian rites led to a senate decree by
which the Dionysian cultus was abolished. However, the orgiastic
rites survived in an underground religion perpetuated by the Italian
peasantry which survived the coming of Christianity “).

It is worth stressing that the Villa of Mysteries at Pompeii was

sacred to both Dionysus and Ariadne ©, The name ‘Aradia’ (the

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name of the goddess worshipped by the Italian witch cult MH) was
a subsequent Italian corruption of the Cretan-Greek Ariadne.

The worship of the Life Force was ever a principal pre-occupation

of ancient pagans. The God was a vegetation deity who was
regularly reborn in the spring. Life and death were united in the
pagan mind. The Lord of Death was likewise both the phallus and
the resurrected saviour and liberator of humanity. It was Gardner’s
inordinate interest in bondage and flaggelation which led him to
connect his own unique version of witchcraft with the Mysteries at
Pompeii. He deceived his readers by implying that certain of the
rites of ‘Wicca’ could be traced back to these pagan Mysteries.

First published in TC 65, Summer 1992, and TC 66, Autumn 1992.

Notes & References

(1) It should be noted that the Roman historian Tacitus remarked on

the high esteem in which women were held among the Germanic
tribes as wise women, seers, soothsayers and oracles for the Gods.

(2) Dr John William Brodie-Innes (1848-1923) was an Edinburgh

lawyer, Theosophist and leading member of the Golden Dawn. He
is probably best remembered in modern occult circles as the teacher
of the Welsh born occultist Dion Fortune (aka Violet Firth).

(3) See Chapter Seven of Witchcraft Today (1954)

(4) The survival of this cult was, as we saw earlier, investigated by

Sir William Hamilton, an associate of Francis Dashwood, in the
late 18th century, Around 1800 it was reported that two ‘English
gentlemen’ discovered the peasants of Eleusis worshipping the
goddess Demeter at an ancient temple site. Accompanied by an

144
armed guard they forcibly removed the statue to add to their private
collection of ancient relics.

(5) Dashwood decorated his ancestral home at West Wycombe in

‘Buckinghamshire with several murals depicting the legend of
Dionysus and Ariadne and, as was noted earlier, was a devotee of
the revived Eleusian Mysteries.

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Chapter Twenty-three
Athames & the Book of Shadows

It is significant that the Malleus Maleficarum (1486) makes no

mention of a Book of Shadows or any Cabbalistic weapons
associated with witchcraft. Woods (1973) has given a superb
summary of the ‘working tools’ of 15th century witches and I
quote: ‘ According to the Malleus, as soon as a subject had been
arrested his house had to be searched and any articles usable for
witchcraft were taken away. A cat, powder box, a pot of salve,
thread, bits of wax, hair collected in a comb, nail parings, these
were evidence of evil intent.’ (pp 177-78) It is nonsensical to think
that men of the calibre of Kramer and Sprenger, who wrote the
Malleus, did not know what they were seeking as evidence of
witchcraft.

Gerald Gardner’s puerile attempt to explain away the lack of

documentation for the ‘athame’ and the sword should deceive
nobody. Cynical Crafters may choose to believe that Gardner and
Crowley were unduly influenced by the Scottish Craft. many
hereditary witches in Scotland used the black-hilted sgian dhu
when casting spells and directing their magical will. This practice
never obtained in England and one recalls that both Gardner and
Crowley sported a sgian dhu when dressed in full Highland
regalia.) Frank Smythe (1970) has pertinently observed that
Gardner was busy collecting swords and knives from early
childhood. Interested readers may care to examine the plates in the
medieval grimoire of The Key of Solomon to verify from whence
Gardner derived the sigils for the athame. An’ ’obscure weapon’
featured in one of the plates has the so-called Gardnerian sigils

146
engraved on its hilt.

I can state categorically that the English Hereditary Craft never

used a so-called ‘Book of Shadows’. It is pertinent that both
Gardner and Crowley had a penchant for all things Scottish and
covens in Scotland kept a Black Book of Rules and Rites. It is also
significant that both Gardner and Crowley had been admitted into
surviving remnants of the Nine Covens. The practice of the Nine
differed somewhat as Pickingill gave more reign to his imagination.
However a uniform list of Rules was appended to the rituals. The
list in the Gardnerian BoS closely adheres to the Pickingill format
(3),

It is certain that the lone rural witches knew nothing of any so-
called BoS or Cabbalistic weapons. My own researches into the
Hereditary Craft extend over four decades. Lone wise women use
certain ‘objects’ to direct their will. Many cunning men in East
Anglia use a piece of rope to work cures and I have seen one old
man use bird feathers as an adjunct to spells. Rope, string, thread,
straw, feathers, wooden objects, any vegetable matter from trees or
crops, stones, staves and walking sticks are but some of the
‘objects’ used.

Sceptical readers may care to examine all the extant illustrations

of historical English witches. These old crones are frequently
depicted with staves and/or walking sticks. Any observant person
should be able to discern a subtle distinction between the two
‘walking sticks’ held by some witches in old woodcuts. The
handle of the blasting rod is fashioned differently from the handle
of the ‘healing wand’.

I also stress that historical witches believed that metal was inimical
to spirit forces. The chapter on Canewdon in the Encyclopedia of
Witchcraft & Demonology suggests the reason why English
witches never used a knife with a metal blade. Canewdon villagers

147
are reputed to have placed a knife with a iron or steel blade under
the front doormat to prevent a witch entering a house. I can testify
that superstitious East Anglian yokels still follow this custom. The
belief that a knife with a metal blade could incapacitate a witch is
one of the oldest and most widespread superstitions in English
folklore.

Old rustics in any English county will recount that witches and
goblins will flee in terror if a knife is pointed at them. The standard
method of curing a bewitched person in rural England was to hurl a
knife over their heads. The metal in the blade was reputed to drive
away the familiar spirit. It is odd, to say the least, that Gardner
would have us believe that English witches favoured the one
safeguard that protected the peasantry from witchcraft.

I suggest our English yokels know more about historical

traditional witchcraft then do our contemporary Revived Crafters,
who are often of middle class origin. It is pertinent that few
Alexandrians and Gardnerians appear to have been recruited from
farm labourers or country folk. “ Simple country people would
ridicule the notion that English witches ever played with knives.

First published in TC 71 Candlemass 1994

Notes & References

(1) Gardner was of Scottish ancestry and in fact left his sgian dhu
and kilt in his will to a relative. Crowley also had pretensions to be
a Scottish laird after purchasing Boleskine House on the shores of
Loch Ness in the early 1900s.

(2) Modern Wiccans claim that the symbols on the magical dagger
in The Key of Solomon are traditional witch sigils borrowed by
medieval Cabbalistic magicians. A chicken and egg situation?

148
(3) It should be noted that Valiente (1989) claims Gardner invented
these Rules, or perhaps added to them, in the late 1950s during the
dispute that split his St Albans coven and led her to go her own
way.

(4) As somebody who comes from a working class background,

attended agricultural college in my teens, worked as a farm
labourer in Gloucestershire and Somerset and now live next to a
farm in rural West Wales I must be one of the few exceptions to this
tule}!

149
Chapter Twenty-four
The New Forest Coven

The existence of a pre-1039 coven in the New Forest is an article of

faith for many Gardnerians. After all Gardner did claim to be
initiated into a coven which maintained continuity with the past.
There is some substance in Gardner’s claim. A defunct New Forest
cover was the forerunner of his own. However he omitted to add
there had been an intermediate link between the two.

The Hampshire coven founded by George Pickingill stopped

convening during the First World War, but a remnant of elderly
members tried to resurrect it in the 1920s. This attempt met with
mixed success. Some Hereditary witches and several solitary
practitioners joined this revamped coven. During the 1930s there
was an influx of middle-class intellectuals “. Problems soon
surfaced concerning concepts and rituals.

The pre-existing New Forest coven had preserved some of

Pickingill's distinctive innovations;

i) Sexual congress was mandatory at the Second Rite in lieu of the

first i.e. an initial induction.

ii) The priestess and her female deputy generally took precedence
over the male leader. This was a travesty of what normally obtained
in the mainstream British Craft.

iti)The Goddess was accorded more reverence then the God. This

150
concept was alien to virtually all the Craft thinking in recent
centuries.

Gardner’s parent coven contrived an ad hoc theology derived from

‘Dr Margaret Murray’s ideas. However, Pickingill’s borrowings
from grimoires were retained, as was his method of describing the
circle. He was not the first magus to incorporate ceremonial magic
into witch rituals and this had been an ongoing process for
centuries. Divers cunning men and fortune-tellers had borrowed
sigils and ‘barbarous words’ from the grimoires to counter
’witchcraft’. Their clients were impressed by this hocus-pocus and
readily believed that this superior ‘magic’ would overcome the
curse of malevolent witches. Of course, the irony is that many of
the cunning folk were themselves witches! The village cunning
man often doubled as the magister of the local coven! @ The Craft
had borrowed sigils, ‘names’ and rituals from the grimoires before
either Pickingill or Gardner were born.

Brodie-Innes argued that modern witch rituals have a continuity

with a pre-Christian past. His essays on witchcraft were published
in 1917 i.e. five years before the publication of Murray’s first book
on witchcraft. He refers to the formulae in the grimoire, in
Trithemius, the pages of Virgil and Hesiod and the Egyptian Book
of the Dead and says: ‘ In the confessions of Isobel Gowdie and the
other witches of her circle appear mutilated and corrupt forms of
the same, still recognisable...and today among the gypsies (sic)
many of the old formulae are still current, if only we are lucky
enough to find them communicative on the subject, which is very
rare. Charles Godfrey Leland got some and preserved them. But
the very corruption of them indicates...that the precise ceremony is
not essential, nor the comprehension of it. There are certain words
that have in many cases become mere gibberish... In many cases
these can be traced back to actual invocations and prayers to gods
believed in when the world was young.’ (Gilbert 1983 pp 156- 57)
It is significant that 'the grimoire’ (i.e. The Key of Solomon) and

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Trithemius are specifically cited as sources for witch rituals. No
doubt Gardner’s detractors will accuse Brodie-Innes of
disinformation! ()

Dorothy Clutterbuck Fordham and her middle class friends from

the Rosicrucian Theatre were undoubtedly familiar with both
Murray and Brodie-Innes. One wonders why these eminently
respectable Freemasons, Theosophists, Co-Masons and
Rosicrucians would worship the Horned God? New Forest was God
-orientated, it had no ’Book of Shadows’ and knew nothing of
‘Craft Laws.’

There was a marked paucity of Craft material because the pre-

existing coven did not observe Sabbats and did not have a full
moon ritual. A number of ‘Hereditary’ companies convene to mark
the phases of the moon. Most rituals are still performed at the new
moon. Fertility rites are intensified at the full moon, because this is
when the ‘leys’ are most vulnerable.

One cannot dismiss the Gardnerian ‘Craft Laws’ as a total

fabrication. The original inspiration for this piece of creative
writing was a Book of Rituals once owned by a deceased Scottish
witch. Thirteen rules to regulate a coven were found in this book.
Without evidence to the contrary, one must assume that Gardner
himself wrote the Craft Laws. Like so much in Gardnerian Wicca,
a kernel of authentic material has been historicized and romaticized
to prove a continuity with the past.

Gardner was astute enough to recognise that the rituals of his parent
coven lacked the magical power to launch his popular Nature
religion. He joined Pickingill’s Hertfordshire coven and his
sponsor was Dolores North (aka Madeline Montalban). Gardner
and Crowley collaborated to devise rituals for a religion to replace
Christianity. Both Francis King and Gerald Suster © argue that
Gardner and Crowley knew each other for several years before the

152
latter’s death in 1947. There is no tangible evidence that they met
prior to 1946, but Dolores North could have been their go-between
7),

‘Gardner was a member of Crowley’s OTO and had full access to

his magical papers. He was undoubtedly ecstatic to find a ritual in
an abandoned ‘Rosicrucian Order’ which involved both nudity and
scourging:

’4. He is stripped of all attributes - banishing all symbols - and

made naked, after which he is 5. scourged’ (King, Modern Ritual
Magic p114).

Crowley’s influence had made Gardner aware of ‘the Gods’, rather

then the Horned God. However Gardner decided that the Pickingill
theology would not serve his long-term aims. He was aware that
there would be resistance to a God-orientated Nature religion and
he deliberately borrowed Crowley’s version of the Golden Dawn
rites, numerous parallels from Freemasonry and Pickingill’s Charge
of the Goddess which had been borrowed from The Golden Ass.
For good measure, Gardner borrowed the concept of Drawing
Down the Moon from a Pickingill model. Of course, there was no
“ God position’ or ‘Goddess position’ in the originals. These are
Crowley additions. ®

Gardner took his Oath of Obligation to the Pickingill Craft very

seriously and he never revealed exact wordings, but copied
concepts and rites. He had, of course, an ulterior motive for
borrowing from so many sources; he needed immense power from
the inner planes to launch his new Nature religion. He linked up
with the GD, Freemasonry, Rosicrucian Orders and countless
ceremonial magicians via the grimoires. The thought forms
associated with these organisations gave a phenomenal boost to
Gardnerian Wicca.

153
 He was able to tap both the psychic and sexual reservoirs of the
Hereditary Craft by incorporating certain facets of the Old Religion
into his rites and rituals. One should also mention his desire to draw
energy from the ancient mystery schools of Greece and Italy, by
embodying certain of their practices into his rites. All in all, Old
Gerald Gardner was quite a magus in his own right.

Notes & References

(1) This is a reference to Dorothy Clutterbuck, ‘Dafo’ and the

other members of the Rosicrucian Theatre in Christchurch.
Clutterbuck and Dafo were High Priestess and Maiden of New
Forest when Gardner joined in 1939. On Dorothy’s death in 1950
Dafo became High Priestess, although by 1953, when Doreen
Valiente was initiated, she seems to have severed her practical links
with the Craft. (see Valiente 1989)

(2) Leather (1912) mentions a Herefordshire cunning man called

Jenkins who was consulted by locals to lift curses and banish the
‘evil eye.” His powers were believed to be due to the fact that he
had the power to call out the witches of the district and ’make them
dance’. He claimed to be a ‘master of witches’, as were Pickingill
and Cunning Murrel in Essex.

(3) An article on witchcraft in the Illustrated magazine on

September 27th, 1952 refers to ‘the Southern Coven of British
Witches’ and the rituals they allegedly performed in the New Forest
in 1940 to stop the German invasion. The article says: “These are,
of course, the ‘pure’ practioners, who base their ritual on
instructions handed down from their elders, eked out with The
Clavicules (Keys) of Solomon...’

(4) This seems to confirm Valiente's claim that Gardner told her the

154
rituals of the New Forest coven were fragmentary - but which
coven was he talking about??

(5) The Craft Laws Valiente claims Gardner invented in 1957 (see
-Valiente 1989)

(6) Suster is a devotee of Crowley, member of the modern OTO

and a writer on Thelemic themes and of horror thrillers.

(7) Madeline Montalban was active in the London occult scene in

the 1930s and 1940s and knew both Gardner and Crowley. In fact
she told me she had typed the manuscript of High Magic’s Aid for
Gardner. Kenneth Grant (1977) gives a garbled account of a ritual
he attended with Gardner and Madeline in 1949. His description of
her does not correspond with the person I knew from 1967 to her
death in 1982. When I met her she was dismissive of Gardner,
describing him as a ‘fraud’ and a ’pervert’.

(8) The 1952 Illustrated article says: ‘A coven is nowadays led by a

woman officer, because of a shift in emphasis towards the life-
goddess - a woman - and away from the Lord of Death.’

155
Chapter Twenty-five
Aidan Kelly & the Lugh ‘Conspiracy’

Craft researchers will welcome Aidan Kelly’s book Crafting the Art
of Magic:Book I - A History of Modern Witchcraft 1939-1964,
published in 1991. It should prove to be the definitive work on
how the Gardnerian BoS was compiled. Unfortunately, several of
the author’s major conclusions must be challenged. To retort his
erroneous allegations and wild speculations I am forced to reveal
information which emanated from ‘covens’ with which Gerald
Gardner was affiliated. The Lugh articles derive from these
sources, as was explained in my Preface to this book “).

It is clear that Kelly has a problem distinguishing between history

and guesswork. He claims: ‘I have been working since 1971 to
ferret out the hard, verifiable facts of Gardnerian history - what I
am writing here is history, not mere guesswork.’ (1991 pX) His
attempts to guess the identities of the members of the New Forest
coven in 1939 do not constitute ‘hard, verifiable facts’ (pp31-32).
Kelly enlists the aid of Doreen Valiente to guess the identity of
Gardner’ colleagues and manages to guess only two; namely
Dorothy Clutterbuck and Dafo. The other prospective candidates
on his list were not coven mambers ©).

Kelly suspects that Louis Wilkinson was a member because of his

"inside knowledge’ (p 38-39). However, Wilkinson was only
invited to attend as an interested observer. He was especially
friendly with Gardner and discussed the coven’s activities with
him. Kelly’s claim that a perceived spiritual threat from Hitler’s
Germany induced Gardner and his associates to initiate themselves

156
is blatant conjecture (p30).

He is clutching at straws because his methodology precludes the

existence of a pre-1939 coven. He has accounted for everything in
the Gardnerian BoS by identifying a common literary source. He
also argues that the obvious borrowing from the Golden Dawn
would not have been handed down from an older Craft tradition.
Nor, for that matter, could the concepts and actual quotations from
contemporaneous literature derive from an authentic Craft source.

The very fluidity of the Gardnerian rituals, which were compiled

over a period of many years, proves that they did not originate with
New Forest. Gardner invented the concept of the BoS, together
with its title (see Valiente 1989 pp 51-52 for a possible origin for
the title MH). He compounded his deceit by compiling the Craft
Laws from a nucleus of Scottish rules. No wonder Kelly believes
he invented his Craft background, along with his rituals.

Gardner was an arch-dissembler, as well as an inveterate liar.

However these failings are not conclusive proof that he lied about
his Craft credentials. The wonder is that he only mentioned the
New Forest coven. He was successfully inducted into New Forest,
a lodge of cunning men, a Hertfordshire ‘coven’, and a ‘companie’
of ‘the true persuasion’ in East Anglia.

His respective Elders found him recalcitrant and he had certain

shortcomings which prejudiced his usefulness to the Craft. The
irony is that Gardner had been selected, on inner plane advice, to be
the harbinger of the reinstatement of the Old Religion. He certainly
proved to be this, but in a spectacular manner which was as
unexpected as it was unappreciated. Gardner insisted on presenting
a Nature religion which owed more to classical religions and his
own proclivities then to the mainstream Craft.

New Forest had an exotic provenance. It supposedly derived from

157
Pickingill’s Hampshire group founded in the 1860s. When it was
revamped in the 1920s members of known ‘Hereditary’ families
and solitary practitioners were successfully approached locally to
augment it. This was a recipe for disaster as the newcomers
derided and challenged the Pickingill concepts and innovations.
Squabbles broke out and the revamped coven formed into cliques.
The original Elders were too old to cope with all this and withdrew
in disgust.

The new Elders had never convened with the pre-existing (pre-
First World War) coven, but claimed its Craft authority. New
beliefs and rites more in common with mainstream British Craft
were adopted. Would-be witches who were devotees of Margaret
Murray’s bizarre theories also joined this unhappy coven.
Emphasis was already on the Horned God and the male leader,
however the Pickingill method of casting and charging the circle
was retained. The New Forest also used The Key of Solomon in its
basic rituals, for Gardner did not introduce ceremonial magic into
the Craft - many mainstream covens were using the English version
of The Key by the early 1900s. Kelly is unaware that the English
Craft had borrowed practices from various sources since at least the
17th century, and probably much earlier.

Gardner was sponsored into a cunning lodge in 1941 by a New

Forest male colleague and was exposed to a quasi-Masonic
organisation which combined ceremonial magic, Freemasonry,
paganism and witchcraft. Exposure to this lodge reinforced his
focus on the God and the magus. He had long evinced a marked
preference for the Horned One and it took him many years to come
to terms with such concepts as an archetypal Goddess and female
leaders 3) Gardner and his sponsor supplied full details of New
Forest to the lodge. I was inducted into the same lodge in the mid-
1950s and I am thus one of Gardner’s brethren. He spent many
years studying grimoires as a result of this affiliation. He enjoyed
the pseudo-Masonic rituals, which were conducted by the Master of

158
the lodge - a veritable ceremonial magician. The lodge circle was
described by a sword and charged with passages from The Key.
The various magical ‘tools’ were consecrated similarly.

Kelly is either very selective, or quite obtuse, when deploring the

paucity of witchcraft material in Gardner’s extant papers: ’Gardner
had saved correspondence from the 1940s or earlier, but it seemed
very odd that there were no mentions of the Craft except in one file
of correspondence dating from 1957 to 1962...’ (Introduction p
XVII) Valiente answers the query why ‘the very ordinary bits of
evidence (addresses, letters, diaries, even laundry lists) that we
would expect to find for the existence of a pre-1939 coven were
nowhere to be found.’ (Introduction pXIX) Valiente explains that a
Sunday newspaper was making trouble in 1955: ‘...I advised
Gerald to destroy everything in the way of letters and papers that he
wouldn’t like to fall into unfriendly hands’ (Valiente 1989)

Gardner had nothing to fear if the police in 1955 (as he believed

they might do) had impounded his working books for inspection.
He had borrowed Dorothy Clutterbuck’s habit of scattering Craft
tit-bits on different pages without thought to sequential or
chronological order. It must be stressed she did not have a BoS,
however, she had a book of rituals. The New Forest rituals were
progressively improved and amended after the Pickingill concepts
(or most of them) had been abrogated.

Gerald fitted in well with New Forest after his initiation and in
Clutterbuck he found a kindred spirit. They collaborated to
improvise more acceptable rituals which would provide a
continuity with the distant past. This practice of seeking better
material to augment his rites was to occupy Gardner for many
years.

Kelly is wrong (yet again) when he suggests that Clutterbuck may

not have allowed Gardner to claim a continuity with the past which

159
 she knew was not true. (p44) She knew only too well that New
Forest had an authentic Craft authority from ‘Hereditary’ sources.
Indeed it was she who encouraged Gardner to popularise the Old
Religion, However she had a sense of caution manifestly absent in
-her initiate.

Dolores North sponsored Gardner into another Co-Masonic lodge,

where he subsequently made contact with a member of Pickingill’s
Hertfordshire coven. The lodge was a fruitful recruiting ground for
occult organisations and it was analogous to the Rosicrucian
Theatre in Christchurch. Gardner was inducted into the
Hertfordshire coven in 1945. He had gleaned a considerable
knowledge about Pickingill from his cunning lodge, but was not
favourably impressed with his theology. Not long after his
Hertfordshire induction he met Crowley.

The Great Beast was intrigued to learn that one of Pickingill’s Nine
Covens was still operative and he went out of his way to help
Gardner launch a Nature religion to replace Christianity. Crowley
obligingly wrote out the rituals of Pickingill’s Norfolk coven as
exactly as he could recall them and also gave Gardner the Black
Book of a deceased Scottish witch which he had supposedly
acquired while living at Boleskine (circa 1902). Gardner had no
qualms about padding his rituals with long extracts from Crowley’s
poetry and Valiente was to perform a valuable service for
Gardnerian Wicca by rewriting much of the BoS in the early 1950s.

Crowley dutifully copied out in his own handwriting the first

initiation into a Black Book. The existence of this has caused
endless controversy. It would be a misnomer to talk about a BoS at
this stage, but the basic format of the first initiation had been
drafted by 1947. As stated in the Preface, several Elders who
supplied material for the ‘Lugh corpus were guilty of sloppy
phraseology and a prime example is the use of the term BoS to
designate those books of rituals to which Gardner had access.

160
Valiente seizes on this loosely-worded claim that Crowley
.. dutifully copied the present Gardnerian Book of Shadows.’ (1989
p203) My Elders were not alluding to the ‘present version’ which
reflects Valiente's creative genius, but were trying to explain that
when Crowley wrote out the first initiation ritual in his own
handwriting it was the first ever ‘Gardnerian’ ritual book. In short,
it was a prototype of the present BoS.

Valiente also queries Lugh’s claim about the BoS allegedly in

Crowley’s handwriting in the Isle of Man museum. Gardner’s own
BoS was formerly displayed there. There seems to be no logical
reason why visitors would falsely claim that this really belonged to
Crowley. However, Sylvia Tatham, my de facto wife, said that
*Scotty’ Wilson showed her a book he claimed was Crowley’s. She
gave only a cursory glance, but she saw some OTO rituals and
recognised Gardnerian rites.

It is not inherently impossible that Wilson showed this elusive book

to other Crafters. However he appears to have been wrong in
ascribing it to Crowley. My own gut feeling is that he found
Gardner’s Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical. There are only two books on
witchcraft that could have been in Crowley’s handwriting - his
reconstruction of the Norfolk rites and the first initiation he copied
out in his own handwriting. Sylvia’s comments appear to rule out
these possibilities and Ye Bok does have a Crowleyan (OTO)
content, which could account for the subsequent confusion of
authorship. Gardner’s secret notebook was kept out of sight
because it could expose his duplicity and it seems to be the most
likely source for the rumours about a mysterious Gardnerian BoS.

The principal premise of Crafting the Art of Magic is that Gardner

created his own rituals by wholesale borrowing from published
sources. It does not suit Kelly’s interests if Crowley had been
connected with the Craft. On page 180 Kelly refers to "Lugh’s
claim that Crowley wrote Gardner’s original BoS..’ I defy Kelly to

161
cite the article which expressly states that. My Elders claimed that
Crowley supplied Gardner with the rituals of the Norfolk coven of
the Nine into which he was inducted.

It is also not true that Gardner introduced scourging as Kelly

suggests. Doreen Valiente mentions that Gardner lent her a copy of
High Magic’s Aid to read and that he later told her he did this to all
initiates to see what effect his description of a witch initiation in it
would have on them. If they were upset by the descriptions of ritual
nudity and flaggelation he would proceed no further. (1989 p 39)
This makes nonsense of Kelly’s claim that scourging was not an
integral feature of New Forest, but was introduced by Gardner to
meet his sexual needs. Clutterbuck was still alive in 1949 when his
novel was published and she did not demur when Gardner specified
scourging to be part of Craft rituals.

Kelly seizes upon ‘Rhiannon Ryall’’s book West Country Wicca to

substantiate his claim, by quoting her comments that there was no
sword, scourge or cords on the altar of her Devon coven (Kelly
1991 p 41-42). Unfortunately for this premise, Ryall’s coven
rituals have been concocted from folklore, Margaret Murray and
High Magic’s Aid. This does not of course mean there was not a
coven of folk witches.

Kelly’s research has been handicapped by a total ignorance of the

Traditional Craft in Britain. There has never been any homogeneity
in British Craft practices. Different localities evince their own
inimitable customs - and prejudices. Scourging has never been
favoured in the West Country, but is not unknown in parts of Wales
and in some of the Welsh Marches counties. A West Country
coven formed among local folk witches would refuse to take on
board such ‘foreign’ concepts as scourges and cords.

Kelly’s denial that Crowley was a witch is backed up by the naive

claim that there is no corroboration of this fact anywhere in

162
Crowley’s writings and that he kept no secrets about anything
(p174) Crowley, the supreme egotist and male chauvinist, could not
bring himself to be bested by a woman, the Pickingill High
Priestess who expelled him from the Norfolk coven. He never
-wrote of this incident, just as he avoided all mention of his
memorable defeat by Guirdjieff (Webb 1980 p 315) I defy Kelly to
find any reference to this in Crowley’s published works.

Kelly dismisses Pickingill as ‘a garden variety folk magic witch’

and a ‘home-grown Satanist’ (p 176) Valiente likewise refuses to
believe this ‘unlettered farm labourer’ attributed to GD rituals (1989
pp 199-203). Both of them rely heavily on Maple, but Pickingill
was not an “‘unlettered farm labourer’. He travelled extensively as a
horse dealer, joined several cunning lodges and had access to the
grimoires and manuscripts in their libraries.

Pickingill was paid by Freemasons and Rosicrucians to exhibit his

magical abilities in country houses and Masonic temples. He could
leave his body at will and glean any desired information and gather
knowledge by amenuensis (i.e. the answering of questions by
automatic writing communicated from a spirit guide or entity to a
medium). However, it was his control of elementals, and his ability
to evoke them to visible appearance, that astonished the middle-
class intelligensia for decades. (My Elders have informed me that
Miona Bergson (Mathers) attended four or five of Pickingill’s
demonstrations at a country house in Hertfordshire). Eventually he
outlived his usefulness as stories of “black magic’ and ‘Satanism’
tarnished his reputation. Pickingill returned to East Anglia to
terrorise the population.

Kelly correctly disputes the claim that Pickingill devised the basic
format of the Gardnerian rituals (1991 p17). My Elders stand
accused, yet again, of sloppy phraseology. They meant “constituent
elements’. Pickingill’s Nine Covens incorporated ritual nudity,
bound scourging, Masonic parallels, ceremonial magic, the five

163
fold kiss, three rites of admission, a Charge, Drawing Down the
Moon, magical weapons, female leaders and a dominant Goddess.

The reasons why Gardner invented his own rituals will be

-discussed in a forthcoming book. It is pertinent to say here that he
only published rites which he had created himself or in partnership
with another. At no time did he renege on his Old Style oaths. The
Pickingill concepts of a dominant High Priestess, an archetypal
Goddess, a Charge and Drawing Down the Moon were anathema to
him. Crowley had told him about them and he had experienced
them first-hand in the Hertfordshire companie. It took Gardner
many years to overcome his bias for the Horned God.

Dorothy Clutterbuck and her former magister wrote down the rites
of the New Forest coven. These incorporated ritual nudity, bound
scourging, excerpts and practices from The Key of Solomon,
worship of a French God, the circle dance and drop technique,
thumb pricking together with the soaking and retention of the
measure, and various shamanistic techniques. Both Clutterbuck and
Gardner agreed the future of the Craft lay with middle class
occultists and would subsequently collaborate to introduce an
intellectual improvement in the rituals. Dafo’s subsequent refusal
to discuss the pre-1939 coven stemmed as much from her disgust of
Gardner’s innovations, as from his unabashed publicity seeking.

The Old Style Craft is the wild card in Kelly’s assessment of the
situation. Gardner never betrayed the real wording of the Craft
rituals he received from that source, his affiliations with a cunning
lodge (1941), the Hertfordshire coven (1945) and an East Anglian
coven (late 1940s) or the true names of the Deities. Gardner was a
liar and a dissembler and Kelly is also correct to say Gardner had
been compiling extracts from books on ceremonial magic for years.
He had been fascinated by the occult all his life and during his stint
as a Spiritualist was told he would be the messiah of a new religion.
) Kelly’s problem has been compounded because Gardner did not

164
write down the rites he received from various Brethren and kept
them in his head as is the inviolate rule. The Old Style people
understood that an Oath of Obligation means exactly that and this is
an inseparable barrier between them and the Revived Craft.

In his book Kelly correctly predicts a rosy future for the Revived
Craft; ‘My intuition tells me that the Gardnerian movement is far
more important perhaps then many of us realise’ (p181). My
intuition tells me Kelly has a hidden agenda. Which Gardnerian
movement does he mean? Gerald Gardner’s brainchild or his own
Gardnerian based witchcraft organisation? Both the New
Reformed Order of the Golden Dawn and the Covenant of the
Goddess were founded by Kelly. By denying Gardner any Craft
authority, he is ironically placing his own siblings on a comparable
footing with the orthodox Gardnerian Craft. ©

Notes & References

(1) Kelly’s book has been described as ‘scholarly’ by some

reviewers. A review in Prediction magazine (February 1994)
described it as ‘a scholarly reconstruction of the Old Religion. It
does not contain wild claims, rumours and hearsay, but instead
relies on solid documentary evidence.’ Many other reviewers,
including myself, beg to differ with this description.

(2) Other alleged members included Dolores North; Gregory

Watson Mcgregor Reid, the Chosen Chief of the Druid Order; Rev
J.Ward, a close friend of Gardner and Masonic writer; Charles
Seymour and Christine Hartley of the Fraternity of the Inner Light;
Mabel Besant-Scott, daughter of Annie Besant of the Theosophical
Society and George Sullivan, co-founder and director of the
Rosicrucian theatre and the Crotona Fellowship.

(3) It should be noted that Gardner wrote a novel called The

165
Goddess Arrives in the 1930s and was involved in archaeological
digs in Palestine and Cyprus that unearthed Goddess figurines.

(4) Gardner became interested in Spiritualism as a child and on a

trip back to England in 1927 he visited seances. He rekindled this
interest on his retirement in 1936. In the 1950s the Sufi ’master’
Idries Shah also predicted that Wicca would become the religion of
the New Age following communications from inner plane sources.

(5) Readers may be interested (or amused) to know that in early

1994 Kelly launched the BoS of the Aradianic Faerie Tradition on
computer disc at $10 a copy. It is described as ‘the first of a series
of Craft books-on-disc drawn from the voluminous private archives
of Dr Aidan Kelly.’ (Songs of the Dayshift Foreman Vol I No 56,
Imbolc 1994)

166
Contacts
For further information on the pagan Old Religion, traditional
witchcraft and Wicca contact the following. Please include a
stamped self-addressed envelope with all enquiries.

THE CAULDRON Pagan journal of the Old Religion, Wicca,

Folklore & Earth Mysteries Single issue £1.50 Annual subscription
£6.00 payable to M.A.Howard, Caemorgan Cottage, Caemorgan
Road, Cardigan, Dyfed, Wales SA 43 1QU.

THE WICCAN Journal of the Pagan Federation. Single issue £2.00

Annual subscription £6.00 from The Wiccan, BM Box 5896,
London WCIN 3XX

167
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Barratt, F The Magus (Lackington, Allen & Co 1801)

Benton, P The History of Rochford Hundred (Rochford Historical Society

1968)

Bracelin, J Gerald Gardner: Witch (Octagon Press 1960 & Pentacle

Enterprises 1994)

Burman, E The Templars: Knights of God (Crucible 1986)

The Assassins (Crucible 1987)

Chumbley, A The Sabazian Torch in The Occult Observer (Vol II No 4 1993)

Colquhoun, I The Sword of Wisdom (Neville Spearman 1973)

Davidson, H.E. Myths & Symbols in Pagan Europe (Manchester University

Press 1988)

Doran, S & Durston, C Princes,Pastors & People (Routledge 1991)

Dunning, E (Ed) A.E. Waite: Selected Masonic Papers (Aquarian Press 1988)

Gardner, G. B. High Magic’s Aid (Michael Houghton 1949)

Witchcraft Today (Rider 1954 & Arrow 1970)

The Meaning of Witchcraft (Aquarian 1959)

Gilbert, R The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Aquarian 1983)

168
Glob,P The Bog People (Faber & Faber 1969)

Gould,P History of Freemasonry 3 vols (Edinburgh 1885)

Grant, K Nightshade of Eden (Muller 1977)

Graves,R The White Goddess (Faber 1948)

The Crane Bag (Cassell 1969)

Haining,P The Witchcraft Papers (Robert Hale 1974)

Harrison, M The Roots of Witchcraft (Muller 1973)

Hole, C Witchcraft in England (batsford 1977)

Howard, M The Occult Conspiracy (Rider 1989)

Angels & Goddesses (Capall Bann 1994)

Horne, A King Solomon’s Temple in the Masonic Tradition (aquarian 1972)

Howe, E The Magicians of the Golden Dawn (Routledge 1972)

Hughes, P Witchcraft (Longmans Green 1951)

Huson, P Mastering Witchcraft (Rupert Hart-Davies 1970)

Jones, B Freemason’s Guide & Compendium (George Harrap 1950)

Jennings, H The Rosicrucians: Their Rites & Mysteries (1870 & Health
Research USA 1966)

Kelly, A Crafting the Art of Magic: Book I (Llewellyn USA 1991)

Kennedy, P Fiction of the Irish Celts (MacMillan 1866)

Kightly, C Folk Heroes of Britain (Thames & Hudson 1982)

King, F Ritual Magic in England (Neville Spearman 1970)

169
 Sexuality, Magic & Perversion (Neville Spearman 1971)

Moder Ritual Magic (Prism Press 1989)

The Flying Sorcerer (Mandrake of Oxford 1992)

Knight, R & Wright, T Sexual Symbolism & The Worship of the Generative
Powers ( 1786 & 1866 & Mantrix House USA 1966)

Knoop & Jones The Genesis of Freemasonry (Hamer 1949)

Kramer & Sprenger Mallues Maleficarum (1486 & The Pushkin Press 1928)

Leadbeater, C Glimpses of Masonic History ( Theosophical Publishing

House 1926)

Leather, E The Folklore of Herefordshire (Sidgwick & Jackson 1912)

Lefebure, C Witness to Witchcraft (Ace Books USA 1970)

L’Estrange, E.C. Witch Trials & Witch Hunting (Regan. Paul, Trench &
Trubner & Co 1929)

Leland, C Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (Buckland Museum USA 1968 &
Pentacle Enterprises 199?)

Lugh Old George Pickingill & the Roots of Modern Witchcraft(Wiccan

Publications 1982)

Medieval Witchcraft & the Freemasons (Wiccan Publications 1982)

Macfarlane, A Witchcraft in Tudor & Stuart England (Routledge 1970)

MacKenzie, K The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia (1877 & Aquarian 1987)

Macoy, R A Dictionary of Freemasonry (Bell & Co USA 1989)

Maple, E The Witches of Canewdon in Folklore (December 1960)

170
 The Dark World of the Witches (Robert Hale 1962)
The Realm of Ghosts (Robert Hale 1964)

The Domain of Devils (Robert Hale 1964)

Curse of the Doll of Death in Weekend 1.11.77

Mumford, J Sexual Occultism (Llewellyn USA 1975)

Murray, M The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford University Press

1921)

The God of the Witches (OUP 1931)

McEwan, G.J. Haunted Churches of England (Robert Hale 1989)

McNulty, W The Way of the Craftsman (Arkana 1988)

Newell, V The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & demonology (Hamlyn 1974)

Randolph, P Sexual Magic (Magickal Childe USA 1988)

Randolph, V Ozark Superstitions (Columbia University Press 1947)

Regardie, I The Golden Dawn (Llewellyn USA 1989)

Rhodes, H The Black Mass (Rider 1954)

Robin, d The Secret Language of Stone (Rider 1988)

Ryall, R West Country Wicca (Phoenix USA 1989 & Capall Bann 1993)

Shah, I The Sufis (Octagon Press 1964)

The Secret Lore of Magic (Muller 1957)

Secret Societies (NEL 1962)

Scrutton, R The Other Atlantis (Neville Spearman 1977)

171
 The Secrets of Lost Atland (Neville Spearman 1978)

Smythe, F Modern Witchcraft (McDonald 1970)

Spanuth, J Atlantis of the North (Sidgwick & Jackson 1976)

Spence, L The History & Origins of Druidism (Rider 1949)

Straffon, C Pagan Cormwall (Meym Mamvro 1993)

Summers. M Witchcraft & Black Magic (Rider 1946)

Symonds, J The Great Beast (McDonald 1971)

Torrens, J The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn (Aquarian 1972)

The Inner Teachings of the Golden Dawn Weiser USA 1962)

Valiente, D Rebirth of Witchcraft ( Robert Hale 1989)

ABC Of Witchcraft (Robert Hale 1973 & 1993)

Witchcraft for Tomorrow (Robert Hale 1978)

Vilbert, G The Transactions of Quator Corati Vol XXXIII (1922)

Vogh, J Arachne Rising (Hart Davies 1977)

Walker, B Tantratism (Aquarian 1983)

Webb, J The Harmonious Circle (Thames & Hudson 1980)

Wheatley, D The Time Has Come (Arrow 1981)

Wilson, R The Cosmic Trigger (And/Or Press USA 1977)

Sex & Drugs (Falcon Press USA 1987)

Wood, W The History of the Devil (Allen 1973)

172
Wright, D The Ancient Faith in Britain (1921)

Yates, F The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge 1979)

THEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT, CA
173
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est Country Wicca - A Journal of the Old Religion By Rhiannon Ryall

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appendices covering the 19th century opera on the legend of Heme, Heme & his status in certain :
esoteric circles & Hemme & Paganism/Wicca. :

Price £9.95 ISBN 1 898307 237

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 FREE DETAILED CATALOGUE
A detailed illustrated catalogue is available on request, SAE or International Postal Coupon
| appreciated. Titles are available direct from Capall Bann, post free in the UK (cheque or PO with
E order) or from good bookshops and specialist outlets. Title currently available include:

§ Animals, Mind Body Spirit & Folklore

: Angels and Goddesses - Celtic Christianity & Paganism by Michael Howard
Arthur - The Legend Unveiled by C Johnson & E Lung
Auguries and Omens - The Magical Lore of Birds by Yvonne Aburrow
Book of the Veil The by Peter Paddon
} Call of the Horned Piper by Nigel Jackson
f Cats’ Company by Ann Walker
Celtic Lore & Druidic Ritual by Rhiannon Ryall
| Compleat Vampyre - The Vampyre Shaman: Werewolves & Witchery by Nigel Jackson
f Crystal Clear - A Guide to Quartz Crystal by Jennifer Dent
f Earth Dance - A Year of Pagan Rituals by Jan Brodie

Earth Magic by Margaret McArthur

Enchanted Forest - The Magical Lore of Trees by Yvonne Aburrow
- Healing Homes by Jennifer Dent
Herbcraft - Shamanic & Ritual Use of Herbs by Susan Lavender & Anna Franklin
- In Search of Herne the Hunter by Eric Fitch
# Inner Space Workbook - Developing Counselling & Magical Skills Through the Tarot
f Kecks, Keddles & Kesh by Michael Bayley
Living Tarot by Ann Walker
f Magical Incenses and Perfumes by Jan Brodie
f Magical Lore of Animals by Yvonne Aburrow
| Magical Lore of Cats by Marion Davies

| Magical Lore of Herbs by Marion Davies

{ Masks of Misrule - The Horned God & His Cult in Europe by Nigel Jackson
| Mysteries of the Runes by Michael Howard
Oracle of Geomancy by Nigel Pennick
} Patchwork of Magic by Julia Day
Pathworking - A Practical Book of Guided Meditations by Pete Jennings
} Pickingill Papers - The Origins of Gardnerian Wicca by Michael Howard
f Psychic Animals by Dennis Bardens
| Psychic Self Defence - Real Solutions by Jan Brodie
F Runic Astrology by Nigel Pennick
f Sacred Animals by Gordon MacLellan
Sacred Grove - The Mysteries of the Forest by Yvonne Aburrow
# Sacred Geometry by Nigel Pennick
f Sacred Lore of Horses The by Marion Davies
| Sacred Ring - Pagan Origins British Folk Festivals & Customs by Michael Howard
F Secret Places of the Goddess by Philip Heselton
— Talking to the Earth by Gordon Maclellan
# Taming the Wolf - Full Moon Meditations by Steve Hounsome
| The Goddess Year by Nigel Pennick & Helen Field
| West Country Wicca by Rhiannon Ryall
| Witches of Oz The by Matthew & Julia Phillips

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 Che Pickingill Papers
The Grigin of the Gardnerian Craft
by W. E. Liddell
Compiled & Edited by Michael Howard

George Pickingill (1816 - 1909) was said to be the leader of the witches
in Canewdon, Essex, as described in “The Dark World of the Witches’
by folklorist Eric Maple in 1962. In detailed correspondence with
‘The Wiccan’ & “The Cauldron’ magazines from 1974 - 1994,
E. W. Liddell, under his pen name Lugh, claimed to be a member
of the ‘true persuasion’, i.e. the Hereditary Craft. He further claimed
that he had relatives in various parts of southern England who were
coven leaders & that his own parent coven (in Essex) had been founded
- George Pickingill’s grandfather in the 18th century. One of the subjects
iscussed by Liddell was the origin of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows.
It was alleged that Aleister Crowley had helped Gardner draft his BoS
& that Crowley had been inducted into the Craft by Pickingill in 1899
or 1900. It was further alleged that Crowley used a technique of
‘magical recall’ to remember the rites of Pickingill’s network of
Nine Covens & helped Gardner formulate rituals based on these.
The correspondence also covered such subjects as the relationship
between the Hereditary Craft, Gardnerian Wicca & Pickingill’s
Nine Covens, the influence of Freemasonry on the medieval witch cult,
sex magic, ley lines & earth energy, prehistoric shamanism, the iE
East Anglian hg of a Haeda the difference between _
Celtic wise women & the Anglo Saxon cunning men & the sources
of the Gardnerian BoS
There is considerable interest in the material in the so-called
‘Pickingill Papers’ & the controversy still rages about their content
& significance with regard to the origins of Gardnerian Wicca.
This book provides, for the first time, a chance for the complete
Pickingill material to be read & examined in toto together with
background references & extensive explanatory notes. It also
includes new material on the Craft Laws, the New Forest coven,
Pickingill’s influence on the Revived Craft & a refutation of the
material on Lugh & his basic thesis in Aidan Kelly's recent book
‘Crafting the Art of Magic’.