Modern Wicca

by Michael Howard

  Sorita d’Este and David Rankin have concluded from their extensive research into the origins of the rituals of Wicca that they were based on a medieval tradition of grimoire magic supplemented with material from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the OTO. This supplementation, they believe, was either by persons unknown before Gardner’s initiation in 1939, or later by Gardner and his associates. They claim that when the GD and Crowley material is removed from the BoS what is actually left is “a bedrock of grimoire materials with fragments of folk practices which would fit in with idea of a continuation of a genuine tradition” (2008).

  Chapter Six

  The Museum of Witchcraft

  Cecil Williamson (1909–1999) was a colorful, flamboyant, larger- than-life, and controversial character, and he had an important behind-the-scenes influence on Wicca and the modern witchcraft revival through his relationship with Gerald Gardner. Sadly, it was a relationship that was to end in legal disputes, recriminations, and mutual hatred. This was largely caused by their financial partnership in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic opened by Williamson in Castletown on the Isle of Man in 1951 and later sold to Gardner.

  Williamson was born in Devon of upper middle-class parents and his father was a high-ranking officer in the Royal Navy. During World War I, the young Cecil spent his summer vacations with his uncle, the Reverend Russell Fox, the vicar of the village of North Bovey on the edge of Dartmoor. One day Williamson went into the kitchen garden of the vicarage to pick some gooseberries for tea. His attention was distracted by an uproar going on over the garden wall on the village green. He went to investigate and found a gang of farm workers attacking an elderly woman known locally as “Aunty,” and stripping her naked. Williamson intervened and was only saved from a beating himself by the intervention of his uncle who dispersed the mob. He later found out that the woman’s attackers believed she was a witch and had cursed their cattle. They were removing her clothes to search for evidence of the witch’s teat she used to suckle her familiars. As a result of this incident Williamson got to know Aunty quite well, and she taught him “a little about witches” and what they did, and also how to “tickle” trout.

  In the 1920s, Williamson did voluntary work in the slums of the East End of London among the poor. There he encountered the “wise women” of the docklands area, who offered their clients fortunetelling, herbal cures, and even abortions. When the war ended, Williamson’s father got a position in the Admiralty in London and the family moved to a town house in fashionable Curzon Street in Mayfair. Through the person who introduced him to voluntary work in the East End, Williamson met a society fortuneteller, Madame De Hoye. She took him on as her assistant, called the “boy in white,” and dressed him up in a white suit with white shoes and white gloves. At the appropriate moment in a reading with a client she asked him questions and he gave answers that were supposed to come from the spirit world.

  As a young man, Williamson went to work on a tobacco farm in Rhodesia (now divided into Zambia and Zimbabwe). He became friendly with a local witch-doctor and was taught the secrets of juju. On his return to England he worked for Radio Luxembourg and then became a producer and director in the film industry working for Paramount, Ealing Studios, and British International. In 1933 he met and married Gwen Wilcox, the daughter of the film producer Charles Wilcox, who was working for Max Factor in Hollywood as a make-up artist. During the 1930s he was active in the London occult scene and knew Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, the Egyptologist Dr. Wallis Budge, the psychic researcher and “ghost hunter” Harry Price, and Dr. Margaret Murray. He was also busy investigating rural witchcraft and found many village witches still practicing their art—healing the sick using herbal remedies, and dealing in love potions, spells, charms, and curses.

  After his wartime service for king and country in MI6 and SOE, Williamson decided not to go back to the film industry and instead become self-employed. He had accumulated a large collection of items relating to witchcraft and folk magic and wanted to open up a small museum exhibiting these commercially to the public. In 1947 he went to Stratford-on-Avon because of its association with Shakespeare and his Scottish play with the three witches on the blasted heath. He knew a doctor in the town through his hobby of collecting antique apothecary jars. During the war, the local fire brigade requisitioned the doctor’s large garden and built a garage on it for their engines. He offered this to Williamson to exhibit his collection, but although the tourist board was supportive the locals were not, and Williamson was, quite literally, run out of town.

  Williamson was still determined to set up his museum and in 1948 he decided to go to the Isle of Man and try there. He found a group of derelict buildings with a ruined windmill, two cottages, and an enormous barn with room for both his collection and a restaurant that he called the “Witches’ Kitchen.” Before Williamson had bought the place it was known locally as the “Witches’ Mill,” and got its name because a famous coven of witches lived nearby. When the mill burnt down in 1848, they allegedly used its ruins for their rituals and as a “dancing ground” (Heselton 2001: 41). The mill dated back at least to the seventeenth century, and there is a court record in 1611 when its owner was fined two sheep for not turning out the “watch and ward” (the local defense militia) (Gardner 1964).

  Although Williamson had faced problems in Stratford-on-Avon, the Manx authorities went out of their way to welcome the arrival of a new tourist attraction to the island. Both the board of commissioners and the chief executive officer of the tourist board offered their assistance and the necessary permits were granted. As a result the work of reconstructing the mill began in the spring of 1951. It is presumed this date was chosen as it was the year in which the old Witchcraft Act of 1735 was repealed. Previously the problem was that the Craft was still officially illegal. In 1944, the Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan had actually been prosecuted under the old act.

  The museum was finally opened in July 1951. At first it was called “The Folklore Center of Superstition and Magic,” although by the time Gerald Gardner purchased it some years later, the name had been changed to “The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.” In the brochure he printed to advertise the exhibition, Williamson said it was impossible to cover all aspects of folklore, so he had decided to focus on superstition and witchcraft. This meant the exhibits also included related and kindred subjects such as magic, spells, charms, amulets, faeries, luck, and omens. Williamson actually told Gerald Yorke that he had opened the museum as a “shop window,” to attract contact with other witches, as well as making him a living (letter dated August 7, 1952, in the Gerald Yorke Collection at the Warburg Institute).

  The activities at the museum came under three headings: the exhibition of objects to the public relating to witchcraft and folklore, a visitors’ restaurant, and a membership scheme. Interested visitors were invited to become members of the Folklore Center and in return for their subscriptions they received a journal with views about the museum, articles written by members and non-members, and answers to correspondence queries. In addition the members had access to the museum’s library, were encouraged to collect and donate objects for display, and could join a study group to discuss the practical aspects of magic.

  The Witches’ Kitchen was set up to offer refreshments to museum visitors and was also an additional money-making enterprise. It offered meals that were themed to reflect the seasonal festivals of the folk calendar and emphasis was placed on using locally sourced food. In this respect it was quite innovative and forward looking for the time, which was a post-war period when rationing and food shortages were still a depressing feature of daily life.

  According to the information printed in the brochure, the museum exhibitions consisted of a large and varied range of display cabinets containing objects relating to the history and practice of witchcraft, ancient and modern. They included the set piece reconstruction of a “medieval sorcerer’s temple for th
e working of art magic” based on one that might have been used by the Elizabethan astrologer and magician Dr. John Dee. Other planned reconstructions would feature a witch’s kitchen, an alchemist’s den, and a modern African witch doctor’s hut. There was also a replica of a Golden Dawn temple designed and constructed by Kenneth Grant’s artist wife, Steffi. In a series of letters written in the spring of 1951, she kept Williamson informed of the progress with the making of a GD lotus wand, the candlesticks, and the altar. She offered to visit the Isle of Man and help set the exhibit up (letters dated April and May 1951 ref. 96/111, 97/112 and 100/115 in MOW archive). Williamson also employed students from the Douglas School of Art to make some of the items displayed in the temple (Heselton 2003: 339).

  Shortly after he had opened the museum, Williamson has said that unexpectedly Gerald Gardner turned up on his doorstep. According to this account, a member of the staff told Williamson there was a gentleman to see him. When he went to see who it was, he found the “pathetic sight of Dr. G. Gardner with a music case that had his pyjamas and a toothbrush in it.” Allegedly Gardner was having financial problems with a family trust and had fallen out with his brother over it. There were also apparently problems with the Brickett Wood Coven and because of this and a shortage of money Gardner had decided to come to the Isle of Man for a vacation. In fact he stayed with Williamson and his wife for three months until the lawyers sorted out the outstanding financial matters.

  This account is not strictly true, as Gardner had already been in contact with Williamson before the museum had opened. They had first met at the Atlantis Bookshop in 1947. As early as February 1951 Gardner wrote to him expressing his paranoid concern that the Church of England might stop the museum from opening. He was afraid they could obtain a court injunction and the contents would be confiscated and destroyed (letter dated February 8, 1951). Philip Heselton has suggested that Gardner may even have visited Williamson in March 1951 (2003: 334) and had given Williamson his own private collection of magical objects on loan for display in the museum. An article published in the Isle of Man Examiner newspaper dated July 29, 1951 mentioned Gardner, and says he was to perform the museum’s opening ceremony the next day. He stood in a magical circle drawn on the ground and read part of a ritual from his grimoire [sic] while holding a ceremonial dagger.

  It has been suggested to me that Gardner may have had some contact with the Isle of Man before Williamson decided to base his museum there. There was a long history of witchcraft on the island and in his book The Meaning of Witchcraft, Gardner published a drawing of Margaret Ine Quane and her son being burned to death as witches in Castletown in 1617. They had been accused of riding around the fields astride broomsticks to encourage the crops to grow. In his A Second Manx Scrapbook (1932), the folklorist Walter W. Gill referred to a folk dance performed by Manx women to obtain a husband. He said the real reason for its performance was to become an initiate of the witch cult and the husband was the Devil. Gill mentions a woman on the island known as “Queen of the Witches,” and of witches being initiated into the “high degrees of witchcraft.” Gardner himself talked of hereditary witch traditions on the Isle of Man, and one family known to have been “white witches for five generations” (1964).

  It has been claimed that Gardner visited the Isle of Man several times in the 1940s and made contact with the local robed covens (Asphodel Summer 1993). It was these Old Crafters who encouraged Gardner to go public and write High Magic’s Aid. The purpose was to make contact with other surviving witch covens and traditions. On Midsummer’s Day, June 24, 1951, Cecil Williamson held a Witches’ Convention on the island. He remarked that Gardner had found himself at odds with the other delegates because of differences of opinion about his form of witchcraft. It is possible some of these were locals. Charles Clark also firmly believed that Gardner had received an initiation into witchcraft on the Isle of Man (e-mail to Michael Howard from Melissa Seims dated November 17, 2005).

  If we accept Cecil Williamson’s account, when Gardner arrived at the museum he asked if he could sell copies of High Magic’s Aid. He had paid Michael Juste to print it and the book was not selling well. Juste was storing “so many thousand copies” and wanted them out of the way. Williamson agreed to store this stock and also provided Gardner with a large elm table at the museum he could use to try and sell them. In return he took a commission on each sale (Williamson Winter 1992). Gardner acted as a “resident witch” in these early days at the museum. During the summer season he entertained visitors to the teashop with tales of life in the Far East and provided an extra (living) attraction to the exhibition. He also used his position to recruit new members to the Craft. In 1953, Gardner wrote to Williamson, complaining that he was not passing on enquiries about modern witchcraft to him. He concluded that Williamson was deliberately withholding information about prospective members (letter in MOW archive).

  Gardner’s presence on the Isle of Man and at the museum became more permanent when Williamson found him and Donna an old house to live in at 77 Malew Street, Castletown. It had originally been a smithy with a stables attached. When the Gardners moved in, the study was decorated with spears, Saracen scimitars, daggers, medieval pikes, Toledo rapiers, and Malayan keris. Hundreds of books lined the shelves from floor to ceiling and stood in piles on the carpet. Their subjects covered psychic research, secret societies, archaeology, and weapons (Bourne 1998: 32). A bathroom door connected to a two-story building next door with rough stone walls. The top floor was converted into a temple, complete with incense burners, antique lamps, an old oak table as an altar, and a magical circle on the floor. It was in this converted room that meetings of the Isle of Man Coven were held in the 1950s and initiations took place (Crowther 2002: 142).

  Cecil Williamson claimed that Gardner’s appearance at the witchcraft museum was not as straightforward as it seemed. In fact he “coveted the museum [and] was up to all sorts of tricks to get me out” (Autumn 1992). Because of his lifelong interest in collecting weaponry and in archaeology Gardner was a great supporter of museums. In 1944, he gave a talk in Christchurch in which he strongly argued for the establishment of a local museum. Unfortunately he was before his time as he advocated the use of models and exhibits to educate people as well as static displays in cabinets (Heselton 2001). He had probably got this idea from Father Ward and his Abbey Folk Park museum.

  Gardner introduced Williamson to Edith Woodford-Grimes (Dafo), and described her as the “High Priestess of the Southern Coven.” In fact, Williamson claimed that this was not their first meeting. He had encountered her previously during the war when he was setting up a secret radio station in the New Forest to broadcast propaganda to the German U-boat crews. She was introduced to him as “the leading witch of one of the New Forest covens” (Autumn 1992). Williamson described Woodford-Grimes as a typical English lady wearing “a good tweed skirt and jacket, a string of pearls and sensible shoes” (“Witchcraft in the New Forest” doc.113/ref. 134 in the MOW archives).

  Using Gardner as her middleman, Dafo offered to loan some artifacts belonging to the New Forest Coven for exhibition in the museum. They eventually arrived in several cardboard boxes and Williamson told me they were “the sort of stuff produced by an arty-crafty house potter.” They included pots, bowls, and various bottles made from glazed earthenware of a darkish brown or gray color. Many had runic-type (Theban?) symbols on them. There were also several black- and white-handled knives, a scourge, handmade wands, necklaces made of beads, twigs strung on leather thongs, small boxes carved from tree branches, sheets of old parchment covered in magical sigils, antique wooden spoons, and three-pronged forks. This “junk,” as Williamson called it, was evidently some of the ritual-working equipment that was being used by the New Forest witches.

  These objects were put on show in a special display cabinet for six or seven weeks. Then Gardner told Williamson that Dafo was upset that he “was not into paganism,” and she wanted them returne
d. Gardner showed Williamson a letter that he said was from Woodford-Grimes written in the runic script that was on some of the exhibits and said he had offended her. Williamson removed the collection from display and when Gardner arrived next at the museum he was surprised to find them packed up on the table he used to sell his books (Autumn 1992). Evidently they never found their way back to the New Forest coven, as when I first visited the Boscastle museum in 1967, I remember seeing them on display. What happened to them when Williamson sold the museum in the 1990s is not known.

  Despite Williamson’s suspicions that Gardner was trying to take over the museum, in 1952 the two men became business partners. The business was running into financial difficulties and Williamson borrowed money to pay the rent owed to the landlord of Old Windmill Farm. Gardner also offered to buy the museum buildings and then offered them back to Williamson on a mortgage (Heselton 2003: 350). However, after about two years of this partnership, the two men fell out over the financial arrangements. Williamson accused Gardner of “wicked double-dealing ways,” and from 1952 to 1954 letters were exchanged between their lawyers. One from a legal firm in Douglas, written to Williamson in 1954, informed him that the notice requiring the repayment of Dr. Gardner’s mortgage was due to expire in two days. It asked him to confirm he could repay it by that date. The letter also mentioned that Mrs. Woodford-Grimes had offered to take over the property with vacant possession for a sum equal to the amount owed to Gardner (letter ref. 39/111 in MOW archive).

  Williamson eventually decided to sell the museum buildings to Gardner and return to the mainland. This, however, was also not without its problems, due to the alleged intervention of Mrs. Woodford-Grimes. Gardner told him that before he could make an offer she would have to come to the Isle of Man and inspect the place. When she arrived at the airport Williamson offered to collect her to save Gardner having to pay the costs of a taxi. He was adamant, however, that he would meet her at the plane and bring her back to the museum. Williamson claimed that when Mrs. Woodford-Grimes turned up he immediately recognized her as Mrs. Soames, the owner of a local boarding house (Autumn 1992). Why Gardner should have attempted this subterfuge, if he actually did, is unknown as Dafo had already visited the museum shortly after it had opened (Heselton 2003: 350). Perhaps Williamson was being “economical with the truth” again.