Modern Wicca

by Michael Howard

  Doreen Valiente claimed that she had discovered that a man who used the pseudonym “Michael Glenister” provided the information for the story to the newspaper. Subsequent enquiries revealed he was a friend of Madeline Montalban (1989: 49). His real name was Paul Le Cornu, and he worked as a clairvoyant in Kensington Market in London. He died in the 1990s in a nursing home in Lampeter, West Wales, and a collection of his magical objets d’art and occult books was sold at a local village hall. I was living nearby and attended the auction, which was packed. In one of his books I noticed a note saying he had done a healing ritual for Doreen Valiente.

  The reference in the Pictorial to a nudist camp could have only been directed to the Five Acres Club. Professor Ronald Hutton has said it was the publication of this story that led Edith Woodford-Grimes to resign as the High Priestess of the New Forest Coven and which, with the death of Mother Sabine in 1948 and Dorothy Clutterbuck three years later, led to the coven’s demise (Hutton 1999: 243). The article was followed by another, a year later, claiming to have exposed modern witches practicing devil worship in London. It said there were covens in the capital engaged in “sex rites in secret temples.” These sensational newspaper exposés followed a stereotyped pattern that was repeated at frequent intervals from the 1950s to the 1970s.

  Usually they began by informing their readers that “the evil cult of witchcraft” was spreading across Britain, bringing moral degradation in its wake and corrupting the nation’s young people. The witches, who were usually described as devil worshippers who practiced naked fertility rites, were supposed to be busy recruiting the younger generation into their cult. There were always references to mysterious dossiers compiled by reporters from their investigation and passed to Scotland Yard for action—although none was ever taken. These dossiers of evidence were supposed to contain details of wealthy people with important positions in society who were involved. Stock photographs from the newspaper’s photo library illustrated these articles and were recycled time after time.

  Some of the articles featured known Satanists or magical practitioners who were described as witches, but most of them in the 1950s and 1960s focused on the (alleged) activities of Gerald Gardner and his coven. In the 1970s, it was Alex and Maxine Sanders who received most of the publicity. It is not a coincidence that these newspaper exposés began when the old Witchcraft Act of 1735 was repealed. Doreen Valiente quoted an article in October 1953, again coinciding with Hallowe’en, about “Black Magic in Britain.” It said clergymen had issued warnings before the Witchcraft Act was repealed that its abolition would unleash an explosion of occult practices that were “undesirable” and “that is exactly what has happened.”

  The most serious of these newspaper stories was published in May 1955 by the Sunday Pictorial. It featured the usual claims that its investigative reporters had uncovered a network of covens across the country, practicing sex orgies and animal sacrifices, whose members included famous people. One of the reporters involved in the investigation went to the Isle of Man and interviewed Gerald Gardner. He asked for his reaction to the allegations, and Gardner told him modern witches did not worship the Devil or perform animal sacrifices. Either the reporter was not listening or had already made up his mind, as he went back to London and wrote an article titled “No Witchcraft is Fun.” In it, he called Gardner “a whitewasher of witchcraft,” and accused him of participating in fertility rites where naked men and women danced together and worshipped a pagan horned god. The reporter also called High Magic’s Aid a “foul bait” to lure young girls into Gardner’s coven. He was particularly interested in a description in the novel of a historical witchcraft ceremony where the altar was the naked body of a priestess. Presumably this was because it sounded like the popular description of a so-called “Black Mass” (Gardner 1959: 225–228 and Valiente 1989: 67).

  The reason why the newspaper had become interested in Gardner was because their informant in the “black magic cult” had mentioned his name. This was a woman of ethnic origin living in Birmingham. She told the paper she had been the High Priestess of a local witches’ coven and attended nocturnal gatherings held in graveyards. She had also been to indoor meetings in a satanic temple where “frenzied dancing” took place, chickens were sacrificed, and the participants drank their blood.

  This woman was, in fact, a well-known police informant known as “Mrs. Jones,” and was regarded by her employers as mentally unstable. She claimed she had been introduced to an “occult society” in the city by her husband, who was an astrologer. He took her to a meeting in the 1940s where she met the head of the group, a former Roman Catholic priest. The priest lent her some books on the occult and began to teach her “strange religious theories.” A relationship of teacher and pupil developed and he telephoned her every day to give her lessons that lasted for about an hour every time. Her occult teacher allegedly told her how to conjure up elemental spirits, use magical power to enslave any man she wanted, “build a temple in her mind,” and pray to the Devil (Ibid., 219 and Newman 2006: 103).

  In the article in the Sunday Pictorial, Mrs. Jones said she was finally initiated into witchcraft in February 1948. However, a different source says she was already attending rituals in 1947 in an apartment at King’s Hall, Birmingham, where there were “witchcraft signs on the floor,” and everyone present wore cloaks. During her initiation in 1948 a cockerel was sacrificed and the new members of the group had to drink its blood from a glass. They were then told they had drunk the blood of the Devil himself. At other rituals she acted as a High Priestess, wearing a veil and a robe while the others present were “cowled and masked.” She also claimed that among those who were present at these rites was a “Dr. Gardner.”

  Nearly a year passed and another newspaper published further allegations made by a “terrified woman, driven grey-haired by some of the most evil men in Britain.” She had contacted the paper to tell them who was responsible for a famous murder in the village of Lower Quinton in Warwickshire on St. Valentine’s Day, 1945. The mutilated body of an elderly farm laborer named Charles Walton had been found in a field where he had been cutting a hedge for a local farmer. His throat was cut, his arms and chest had been slashed with his own billhook, and his body was impaled to the ground with a pitchfork.

  There were rumors that the killing was a ritual murder, and the local police called in detectives from Scotland Yard to investigate the case. Even Dr. Margaret Murray got involved as she anonymously visited the village disguised as a tourist on a painting holiday to try and find what had happened. She concluded that a human sacrifice had taken place to bring fertility to the land, which seems unlikely considering the victim’s advanced age. In fact, Walton was well known as a “cunning man,” and the local theory was that he had either been murdered by someone who feared his powers and believed the old man had cursed them, or in a violent argument over money owed to him by his employer.

  The newspaper’s informant for this new article lived in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, and claimed to belong to a witches’ coven that met in Birmingham and London. The woman said the people who had murdered Charles Walton had been brought to Lower Quinton by car from another part of the country. Either three or thirteen people took part in the ritual—she seemed confused about the exact number. Walton was struck down, his body was mutilated, his robes were soaked in his own blood, and the participants then danced around the body. She claimed one of those present was “the leader of the London branch of the cult,” and the Midlands leader had told her he wanted him out of the way so he could gain control of the cult nationally (Gardner 1959: 237).

  It transpired that the newspaper’s informant was the same Mrs. Jones who had supplied the information for the previous exposé. She had reported the details of the killing to Detective-Superintendent Alec Spooner, the head of Warwickshire’s Criminal Investigation Department, who had originally led the murder investigation before Scotland Yard was called in. Sh
e said a woman called “Mrs. Crowley, the widow of Aleister Crowley,” living in Cornwall, had been responsible for the Walton murder. She added that the ex-Roman Catholic priest who initiated her into the witch cult was the “leader from the Midlands,” and the one in London was “Dr. Gardner.” Allegedly, Gardner had organized the killing and had encouraged “Crowley’s widow” to carry it out (Newman 2006: 103). A few days after she was told the story, a “circle of silence,” made of twigs and graveyard chippings, was placed on her doorstep. This was a warning to keep quiet about what she had been told. When she said she was going to the police, she was attacked with a doctor’s scalpel and some hair and skin was removed from her head (Gardner 1959: 239).

  “Mrs. Crowley” was actually Pat Doherty (aka Deirdre McAlpine), who had had an affair with the Great Beast, encountering him when he was involved in a libel case in 1934. She had accosted Crowley outside the courtroom and asked him if she could be the mother of his child. Subsequently she bore a son. In the late 1930s, Crowley was supposed to have stayed briefly in Cornwall where Pat Doherty was living. There were local rumors that during his visit he attended drug-fueled orgies at country houses and performed magical rituals with fellow occultists at stone circles. It is alleged that some reels of 35mm film taken of these rites may still exist.

  Det. Supt. Spooner was naturally skeptical about the fantastic claims made by Mrs. Jones, but he was also determined to solve the Walton murder that had overshadowed his career. He was therefore willing to follow up any new lead, however unlikely it might seem. He contacted his colleagues in the Cornish police and asked them for any intelligence they had on Pat Doherty and her associates. A report came back saying that, according to their files, in 1932 Doherty had met a man who had moved into a converted barn near where she lived. He knew Alister Crawley [sic] and was acting as his “right-hand man” in Cornwall. His task was to recruit local people who wanted to practice black magic, and Doherty and several others belonging to the “county set” in the area joined his group.

  One of these new members was supposed to have been an outsider described as coming from “a very wealthy family in the Midlands.” Paul Newman has identified this person as Crowley’s friend Gerald Yorke, an old Etonian descended from the Earls of Hardwicke (2006: 108). Presumably he was supposed to be the head of the witch cult in the Midlands mentioned in Mrs. Jones’ fairy tale. According to the Cornish police report, the group that Pat Doherty belonged to held rituals in a local wood at full moon using a pile of stones as an altar on which small birds were sacrificed (Ibid., 104). Spooner does not seem to have followed up the report. In fact the whole business appears to have been a classic example of rumors and gossip combined with the imaginings of a mentally deranged person. The media used this to justify their fantasy stories that well-known occultists engaged in devil worship, blood sacrifices, sexual orgies, and even ritual murder.

  An interesting postscript to the lurid confessions made by Mrs. Jones is a possible connection with Gardner’s friend and magical working partner, Madeline Montalban. She once told me that she knew a defrocked Roman Catholic priest in Birmingham who organized performances of the Black Mass on a commercial basis. Paul Newman has told me privately that Mrs. Jones claimed to have known Madeline by the pseudonym of “Mrs. Montfort.” Professionally, she used many names as an author of romance novels and books on astrology, as a journalist, and in her private life.

  In November 1956, Madeline Montalban wrote an article for the astrological magazine Prediction on the effects of karma. She gave the example of a journalist she knew who had written a series of articles on “black magic” for a newspaper. He had drawn a small amount of his material from factual sources and a great deal from hearsay and his imagination to produce a semi-fictional “smear and scare” story. This sounded like the recent articles about Mrs. Jones and the Birmingham witch coven. Montalban warned the man that by creating an interest that did not previously exist and making a profit from exploiting the weak-minded, he would suffer.

  Shortly afterwards his editor found out the journalist’s stories were not true and lost confidence in him. He also suffered a series of misfortunes from which he never fully recovered. The last time Montalban saw the journalist he was bewailing his fate and protesting at the injustice of his situation. He claimed he only wanted to expose the alleged “black magicians.” In her article Montalban observed that accusing others of practicing black magic always brings the accuser karmic problems.

  After the newspaper stories were published, Doreen Valiente said that Gerald Gardner at first treated the whole affair lightly. He reportedly told her the publicity he had received would have cost thousands of pounds if he had paid for it. Donna Gardner did not agree, and was unhappy about the business. The impression Valiente got was that the couple had lost some non-Craft friends because of the stories. Several people who had recently joined the Brickett Wood Coven were also panicked by the expose and the investigation carried out by the reporters. There were rumors the telephones of coven members had been tapped and their mail was being interfered with, either by private detectives working for the newspapers or by the police. Later, in the 1960s, I was in contact with one of the reporters involved in a News of the World exposé of witchcraft in 1963, and he confirmed private detective agencies were employed during the investigations.

  Valiente advised Gardner to destroy any of his private papers and correspondence that might “fall into unfriendly hands,” and he agreed. He also considered fleeing abroad until the whole thing blew over. It was feared there might be an imminent police investigation, and that made sense considering the seriousness of Mrs. Jones’ allegations. In the end nothing happened, probably because the police informant was unstable and unreliable. Valiente spent a year investigating and debunking the various media stories. The results of this research were eventually published as an appendix to Gardner’s book The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).

  In 1957, the pressures of the negative publicity that Gardner, and Wicca in general, were receiving in the press, and his increasingly autocratic style caused tensions to develop within the Brickett Wood Coven. According to Doreen Valiente’s version of events, two different and differing factions had begun to form in the group. She described these as being pro-publicity, led by Gardner and newer members such as Jack Bracelin and his girl friend Amanda, and anti-publicity, led by herself and several other disgruntled older members (1989: 69). Bracelin (who died in 1981) was an ex-member of the police force in British-occupied Palestine (modern Israel). In the 1950s he worked for a paint wholesaler and as the administrator of the Five Acres Naturist Club. He was initiated into the coven in March 1956. He was tall, of slim build with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a small moustache that gave him a military look (Bourne 1998: 20). Bracelin was a close friend of the Sufi master and Grand Sheik, of the Sufi Order in the United Kingdom, Idries Shah. It was Shah who wrote the biography of Gardner published in 1960. Jack Bracelin put his name to it as the author because the Sufi did not want to be publicly associated with witchcraft.

  Other members of the Brickett Wood Coven when the split happened between the two groups in 1957 included Frederick “Fred” Lamond (born 1931), an Austrian-born graduate of Clare College, Cambridge, working for the Economic Intelligence Unit and now an international computer consultant. Another leading member was Edward “Ned” Grove (died in 1966), a retired colonel in the Indian Army and city banker, who sided with Doreen Valiente. There were also a couple of housewives, a nurse, a sales executive, and a secretary (Hughes and Akhtov 1999).

  Things came to a head in the coven when Doreen Valiente gave Gardner an ultimatum. She told him his “silly publicity seeking” was only adding to the new witch hunt by the press. She demanded that before Gardner gave any more interviews to the newspapers he first checked with the senior members of the coven. Valiente seems to have been independently supported in this position by Edith Woodford-Grimes. After Gardner’s wife,
Donna, died in 1960, he asked Lois Bourne to sort out some of his papers. She came across correspondence from Dafo written in a very stern style and castigating Gardner for his “blatant publicity tendencies” (Bourne 1998: 58).

  The ultimatum, however, was rejected and the pro-publicity faction led by Jack Bracelin encouraged Gardner to ignore any attempts by the opposing group to curb his publicity efforts on behalf of the Craft. In October 1957, Bracelin and Amanda were even persuaded by a reporter from The People Sunday newspaper to put on a ritual at a house in Finchley, Northwest London, for his benefit. A photograph was published to accompany the article, showing four naked witches sitting around an improvised altar on which were laid out an athame, some cords, a pentacle, and two lighted candles in candlesticks. The text described how the reporter witnessed “a nude priestess” perform a “wild ritual dance,” wearing nothing but a lapis lazuli necklace, a silver bracelet, and a garter. Doreen Valiente was horrified to find out that the original plan was to take the reporter to the witch’s cottage at Brickett Wood, but inclement weather had prevented this and an indoor ritual was hastily arranged in London instead.

  Gardner was still busy seeking his own personal publicity. The final straw for the older members of the coven was when he posed for a magazine article on witchcraft, sitting cross-legged in a magical circle in the Isle of Man museum. He was holding a ceremonial sword and pointing at what the magazine described as “the weird image of a bat-winged demon.” When Valiente protested about this fiasco Gardner rather lamely blamed it on his publisher. He said Rider & Company had forced him to do the interview, against his wishes, to publicize his book Witchcraft Today.