CHAPTER 1

The Witch Cult in Britain

My Directorship of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft at Castletown, Isle ofMan, brings me a great deal of correspondence from all parts of the world; someinteresting, some abusive (a very little, just enough to enliven matters), somefantastic, and some funny in all senses of the word.

However, my more serious correspondents want to know the origin of witch-craft.Where, they ask, did it come from? What is behind this thing that obsessed theminds of men for centuries? Is it an underground cult of devil-worship? A darkthread running through history? An irruption of the supernatural into normallife? Or is it an enormous delusion? What is the meaning of it all?

This is a matter which of late years has exercised the ingenuity of a number ofwriters. These may be roughly divided into three schools. Firstly, those whotake the severely rationalist view that witchcraft was a kind of mass hysteria,arising from psychological causes. Secondly, those who maintain that witchcraftis real, and that it is the worship and service of Satan, in whom its devoteesappear to be great believers. This is the attitude taken by that very prolificwriter, the late Montague Summers, and his many imitators. Thirdly, that school,headed by anthropologists like Dr. Margaret Murray, which has tried to look atthe subject without either superstitious terrors and theological argument on theone hand, or materialistic incredulity on the other. This school of thoughtmaintains that witchcraft is simply the remains of the old pagan religion ofWestern Europe, dating back to the Stone Age, and that the reason for theChurch's persecution of it was that it was a dangerous rival. I personallybelong to this third school, because its findings accord with my own experience,and because it is the only theory which seems to me to make sense when viewed inthe light of the facts of history.

Perhaps I had better state briefly what that experience is. I am at present theDirector of the only museum in the world, so far as I know, which is exclusivelyconcerned with magic and witchcraft. I was a Civil Servant in the Far East(Malaya) until my retirement, and I made a large collection of magicalinstruments, charms, etc., which formed the nucleus of the present collectionhere. I am also an archaeologist and an anthropologist, and through thesestudies I became interested in the part played in the life of mankind by magicalbeliefs, and by what people did as a result of these beliefs.

When I was out East, before I had any contact with witchcraft in Britain, Iinvestigated much native magic without finding anything which could not beexplained by telepathy, hypnotism, suggestion or coincidence, and frankly Iconsidered magic as an instance of the curious things that people will believe.In those days I was very much interested in Dr. Margaret Murray's theory thatwitchcraft was the remains of an ancient religion; but as all authorities seemedagreed that while there was evidence that some people may have been witches,there was not the slightest evidence that witches had ever been organised intocovens; and as Charles Godfrey Leland, who had known many witches in Italy andelsewhere, and wrote a lot about them, never mentioned any coven or anyorganisation, I dismissed witchcraft as something which had possibly happenedonce, but even if it had existed it had been "burnt out" three hundred yearsago.

The earlier books I read on the subject all seemed to agree to a certain extent.They said that witches existed everywhere, and were both male and female. Theywere intensely wicked people. They worshipped the Devil, often in the form of aheathen god (but then, all heathen gods were the Devil). They had a bigorganisation, regular religious ceremonies on fixed dates, a priesthood withpriests, priestesses and officers, and an organised form of religion; thoughtheir deity might be called "a god" and "the Devil" almost in the same sentence.This was explained by saying that all non-Christian gods were really the Devilin disguise.

However, in the late 17th and the 18th centuries public opinion seemed tochange. In spite of the strong views of John Wesley and other clergymen, peopledid not believe in witches any more, to the extent that when two clergymeninduced a jury to convict Jane Wenham of talking to the Devil in the form of acat, and she was sentenced to death for this in 1712, the judges protested andshe was released. In 1736 the penal laws against witchcraft were repealed; and Idid not think that anyone, with the exception of the Rev. Montague Summers,dared hint that there might be anything in witchcraft today without beinglaughed at. Charles Godfrey Leland had been regarded as a romancer who hadwritten up a few Italian fortune-tellers, and while Dr. Margaret Murray wasknown as a good anthropologist, it was thought that she was writing about thingsthat happened three or four hundred years ago, when people were superstitious,and believed silly things.

However, after Dr. Murray's books appeared, some other people were bold enoughto admit that there were some witches left, but said that they were only villagefortune-tellers, impostors who knew nothing about the subject, and there neverhad been any organisation, and anyone who thought otherwise was just beingimaginative. I was of these opinions in 1939, when, here in Britain, I met somepeople who compelled me to alter them. They were interested in curious things,reincarnation for one, and they were also interested in the fact that anancestress of mine, Grizel Gairdner, had been burned as a witch. They keptsaying that they had met me before. We went through everywhere we had been, andI could not ever have met them before in this life; but they claimed to haveknown me in previous lives. Although I believe in reincarnation, as many peopledo who have lived in the East, I do not remember my past lives clearly; I onlywish I did. However, these people told me enough to make me think. Then some ofthese new (or old) friends said, "You belonged to us in the past. You are of theblood. Come...