Modern Wicca

by Michael Howard

  In her letter to Gardner, Bone said that while she knew witches were persecuted in the past, she did not expect to be persecuted today by fellow members of the Craft. In another letter dated July 28, 1962, to another of Gardner’s new initiates, Monique Wilson, who became his premier High Priestess, Bone said she intended to form her own coven in Streatham. However she was not happy, as she was getting resistance from the members of the Brickett Wood Coven to the idea. Evidently she must have ignored this and received authority to go ahead from either Monique Wilson or Gardner.

  Ray Bone had mentioned Patricia Crowther in her letter. In 1955, Patricia Dawson, who worked in the theatrical profession as a dancer and a principle boy in pantomime, met Arnold Crowther, who had introduced Gerald Gardner to Aleister Crowley in 1947. Patricia Dawson also claimed her grandmother had been a Breton wise-woman, and because of this alleged Craft heritage eventually Crowther decided to take her to see his old friend Gardner on the Isle of Man. As a result ,she was initiated into Wicca in June 1960. Gardner presented her with a silver bracelet engraved with magical symbols, and a silver crown surmounted by a crescent moon that he had made himself. He also bestowed upon her the archaic title “Queen of the Sabbat” once used in medieval French witchcraft.

  Gardner gave Patricia Crowther the second degree in October 1961 and a few days later took her through the third-degree initiation with its symbolic Great Rite. She then brought her husband into the Craft and in December 1961, as a High Priestess and High Priest, they founded the Sheffield Coven (Crowther 1998). Before they got married in a registry office in November 1960, with the bride wearing black and carrying a handbag decorated with a pentagram, Gardner performed a Wiccan handfasting for the couple with the press in attendance. A photograph appeared in the Daily Mirror newspaper showing Gardner dressed in a duffle coat and waving a phallic-tipped wand over the happy couple in a “witches’ blessing.”

  The Crowthers shared Gardner’s love of publicity and became well known in the 1960s as media witches, giving radio, television, newspaper and magazine interviews and talks to groups like the Women’s Institute. Unfortunately, this led Patricia Crowther to make an astonishing claim (in her first autobiography Witch Blood, and in an article in Prediction magazine in the 1970s) that her husband had introduced her to Aleister Crowley. She also wrote to John Score, founder of the Pagan Front (now the Pagan Federation), claiming: “My husband and I took Gardner to meet Crowley in Hastings the year before he died [1946] …” (letter dated October 6, 1970, in the MOW archive). As she did not meet Arnold Crowther, by her own admission, until 1955, many people wondered how he had introduced her to Crowley, since the Great Beast had died eight years earlier.

  In an interview with Professor Ronald Hutton in 2002, Patricia Crowther finally admitted the story was not true. She told him Witch Blood had been ghost-written by Arnold, and he wanted to include in it an account of how he introduced Gardner to Crowley. Apparently he thought that if he included his wife in the scene it would be good for her image, and thus provide her with some credibility. In fact, it was so blatantly untrue that it had the opposite effect. Crowther told Professor Hutton she was not happy about this, but was overruled by her husband and her US agent, the Italian-American strega (male witch), Dr. Louis Leo Martello, whom she had initiated into Gardnerian Wicca (Hutton Samhain 2002).

  Patricia Crowther has also claimed that she was contacted in the early 1960s by a Scottish witch named Jean McDonald, who coincidentally was also known to Charles Clark. McDonald had seen the Crowthers on a local Tyne Tees television program while staying in County Durham, and had been interested in the type of witchcraft she practiced. This was because in many ways it resembled the family tradition she had inherited that predated Gardner and allegedly originated in the days of the historical witch-hunts. McDonald sent Patricia Crowther the athame she had been left by her grandmother (1998: 50–56). Doreen Valiente was shown it and she described it as having a black handle in the shape of a phallus. This handle was carved with magical symbols from the Key of Solomon (DV notebooks dated June 5, 1965, in MOW archive).

  Unfortunately, because of her false claim of meeting Crowley, some people did not believe this story, even though Patricia Crowther offered to show anyone who visited her Sheffield home copies of the letters from Jean McDonald and the rituals used by her family. However, she would not allow them to be photocopied or allowed out of her sight. Melissa Seims has told me that she has seen these documents, and the rituals are very similar to those of Gardnerian Wicca (pers.comm.). Professor Ronald Hutton has stated that Patricia Crowther’s retrospective testimony is not sufficient to prove her claim, as there is no documentary evidence to support it from before 1950 (Samhain 2002).

  According to Melissa Seims, one of Charles Clark’s initiates in Scotland was Monique Mauricette Arnoux (1923–1982), better known in Wiccan circles as Monique “Nikki” Wilson. She and her husband, Campbell Crozier “Scotty” Wilson, who had worked for the Inland Revenue Service and the Gas Board, lived in a prefabricated house in Nemo Road, Perth. Monique Wilson’s family came from France originally, and she was born in French Indo-China (modern Vietnam). She claimed to be a hereditary witch and that both her parents “had the power.” Monique met Scotty Wilson in Hong Kong after the war, when he was serving as a bomber pilot with the Royal Air Force. Wilson used to still wear his RAF winged badge on the lapel of his jacket. One journalist, who must have been shortsighted, described it in an article as the magical symbol of a winged phallus.

  When Charles Clark initiated Monique Wilson she took the witch name “Olwen.” Later, when she achieved the rank of High Priestess, she began to call herself “Lady Olwen,” and it is popularly believed this is why American Gardnerians adopted that title. As has been pointed out, unless you are a witch and also belong to the British aristocracy, the only “Lord” and “Lady” in the Craft are the witch god and goddess. Clark quickly elevated Monique Wilson to the third degree rank of High Priestess, and she initiated Scotty, who took the witch name “Loic.” The couple then established a coven together in Perth.

  After Charles Clark withdrew publicly from Wiccan activities, Monique Wilson contacted Gerald Gardner on the Isle of Man and asked if he would be willing to re-initiate her. After this, the Wilsons began to help Gardner at the museum, and Monique took up Clark’s old job of answering correspondence from enquirers (Seims August 2006). She was also soon being referred to as “the Witch Queen of Perth, Glasgow, the Isle of Man and London.” The term “witch queen” was one that was introduced into Wicca to describe a High Priestess who had formed or controlled several covens. When witches “hived off” to form their own covens, they often still regarded their initiators and the High Priestess of their parent or mother coven as having authority over them. However, the term did not mean that the designated person was the actual “Queen of the Witches,” as no such title ever existed.

  Although it was claimed that Monique Wilson was Gardner’s niece, possibly to justify her sudden elevation to a high position of authority in the Wiccan movement, there is no evidence they were related in any way. By 1962, when Ray Bone wrote to her, it seems Gardner’s other initiates accepted Wilson as the chief High Priestess of the whole Wiccan movement, although with some reservations. The letter was addressed “My dear Olwen,” and in it Bone said: “It is neither practical or logical to have a HP [High Priestess] living as far away as you.” Ray Bone went on to say that she thought she should have her own coven in Streatham, as had been suggested by both Gerald Gardner and Jack Bracelin. Monique Wilson had told her that if she initiated anyone, they had to undergo a probationary period of the traditional year and a day. In response, Bone says this was something invented by Gardner in 1958 “to cover a certain tricky situation.” She saw no reason to have to do it when the Wilsons and others had gone through the three degrees of initiation in three months (letter to Monique Wilson dated July 28, 1962, in MOW archives ref. 572). Bone was obv
iously unaware of the historical precedent and significance of the year-and-a-day rule in the Craft.

  In another letter, Ray Bone expressed some concern that the Wilsons had initiated their young daughter into witchcraft and were allowing her to attend rituals. Bone described this as “a danger to the Craft,” especially as one of their older children had already been put into care. Her fears were justified, as a few years later a Sunday newspaper reported that the Social Services were investigating the involvement of the Wilson’s daughter in Wiccan rites. It is not known if Gardner knew about this, but he would certainly not have approved. He had a strict rule that minors were not allowed to be initiated or participate in rituals in the circle.

  In the winter of 1960, Gerald Gardner went to Majorca with the Sufi master Idries Shah, who was visiting the poet Robert Graves, author of The White Goddess. In early March Gardner asked Lois Bourne to fly over and join them. From the Mediterranean island, Gardner, Shah, and Bourne flew to Spain where they met up with Graves. They met the Hollywood movie star Ava Gardner, who was a friend of Graves, and visited Toledo, the city renowned in the Middle Ages as a center for Arabic and Jewish Cabbalists (Bourne 1998: 74–75). Idries Shah had been corresponding with Robert Graves, and had told him he was carrying out experiments with a British coven of witches into the visionary properties of the sacred mushroom. Graves was already interested in the hallucinogenic toadstool fly agaric and its uses, and as a result of this correspondence he had invited Shah and Gardner for a visit (Richard Perceval Graves 1995: 326). It is known from Louis Wilkinson’s account that the old New Forest Coven had used fly agaric in their rituals.

  Gardner’s wife Donna died on July 30, 1960, and was buried in a cemetery on the Isle of Man, with a headstone carved with a pentagram inside a circle. Friends arranged for a housekeeper called Mrs. Jones to be installed at Gardner’s house in Castletown to cook and clean, as by now he was quite frail and in poor health. Olive Green described how his “rheumy grey eyes blinked at me out of a waxy, emaciated face. His hair stood on end in long tufts of grey thistle-down, and above an uncombed goatee beard his lips twitched in a strange nervous smacking sound” (Nemorensis 1964).

  Lois Bourne said that as Gardner got older, he became increasingly frail physically, although he remained mentally alert. However, his judgment of friends and potential initiates was not so good. After Donna died his condition deteriorated, leading Jack Bracelin to describe his behavior as “even more bizarre.” He believed Donna had been a steadying influence on Gardner and without her “he was like a ship drifting helplessly without a rudder” and was “prey to self-seeking people” (Bourne 1998: 91 and 66). This led to further mutterings within the Brickett Wood Coven as to the quality of people that Gardner was willing to accept into Wicca.

  After Donna’s death, Lois Bourne claims that Gardner asked her if she would consider taking over the museum when he was gone. As she did not like the Isle of Man, her husband was not willing to move, and her young son was still at school and his education was at a critical stage, she declined the offer. Jack Bracelin was also approached, but he was in a similar situation as the full-time administrator of the Five Acres Naturist Club. He was also not interested in living on the isolated Isle of Man, so he told Gardner he was not interested either (Ibid., 67–68).

  In November 1961, Doreen Valiente received a mysterious letter from Gardner saying he was involved in a cloak-and-dagger “political affair” for the British government that involved “psychological warfare.” This would mean he had to go to India in the New Year and attend a secret meeting that, if it went well, would be “good for England.” Valiente speculated that this was connected with Gardner’s military ancestor who had married an Indian princess. There was also a suggestion that Idries Shah might be involved. Also in 1961 Gardner was admitted to hospital in Watford during a visit to Brickett Wood. After his release he spent some time recuperating in a nursing home before staying for a few days with Edith Woodford-Grimes in Christchurch (entry in DV notebooks in MOW archive).

  Despite Gardner’s failing health the press wase still taking a keen interest in his activities and those of his followers. When Patricia Crowther attended a ritual at Brickett Wood at Samhain 1962 some members of the coven were forced to stand guard among the trees outside the witch’s cottage as reporters had gathered outside the naturist club. Trip-wires were also concealed in the undergrowth to prevent the journalists from getting close to the cottage and taking photographs (Crowther 1998: 46).

  It was a year earlier, in 1961, that the Wiccan community first became aware of a young man named Alex Sanders (Alexander Orrell Carter 1926–1988). A contemporary description of Sanders said he had “gaunt features … above a tall, narrow forehead, brown hair is brushed forward in a Nero-like fashion … the hands are long-fingered and sensitive … the rather sad brown eyes and finely modeled cheek bones give him a totally fragile, vulnerable appearance, an impression which is underlined when he speaks in a soft Lancashire accent” (Smyth 1970: 116).

  According to his own account, which he was still telling people only a few days before his death, Sanders was initiated into the Craft by his sixty-six-year-old maternal Welsh grandmother Mary Bibby. She had moved from her birthplace in Bethesda, North Wales to live near her daughter in Chorlton near Manchester. One day in 1933, Sanders visited his grandmother and was astonished to find her standing stark naked in her kitchen in the middle of a circle drawn on the floor around which “curious objects had been placed.”

  Mary Bibby allegedly commanded the young boy to take off his clothes and join her inside the circle. As Sanders had stumbled upon her secret, he now had to be initiated so he could tell nobody else. The old lady picked up a sickle-shaped knife and told Sanders that if he ever revealed anything about the Craft she would have to kill him. He was told to bend over and she symbolically nicked him on the scrotum to demonstrate the fate that awaited him if he talked. Bibby told the terrified young man he was now “one of us,” and that “all the power of heaven and earth” would strike him if he broke his promise. After the initiation rite, she showed Sanders her athame and her crystal ball and solemnly told him he belonged to a line of hereditary witches dating back to the fifteenth century (Johns 1969: 20–23).

  During the following few weeks Mary Bibby instructed her grandson in the Welsh language, taught him the meaning of the witch’s tools, regalia, and symbols, how to divine the future in a brass bowl filled with water and darkened with ink, and how to recognize herbs and use them in remedies and potions. She told him that as a young girl she had belonged to a coven in the foothills of Snowdonia in North Wales. Its members were all ardent chapelgoers, as it would have been suspicious not to have attended the Sunday service each week. At night the coven went to a small lake in Snowdonia, passed across some stepping stones and on to an island where they performed rituals by the full moon (Ibid., 26).

  Sanders also claimed that his grandmother once took him to London and introduced him to a famous magician she called Mr. Alexander. This was, in fact, Aleister Crowley, and he initiated the young boy into his magical order using a sex rite (Smyth 1970: 17). In 1940, Mary Bibby, now aged seventy-four, gave Sanders the third degree initiation into the Craft that included the sexual ritual known as the Great Rite. Shortly afterwards she died, and Sanders inherited her ceremonial sword, crystal ball, brass bowl, and censer. However, following her dying instructions, he chopped up her broomstick, which was carved with phallic symbols, and burnt her copy of the “Book of Shadows” (Ibid., 37).

  In the following years Sanders is supposed to have been involved with the Spiritualist movement in Manchester as a medium and to have practiced ceremonial magic. However, in October 1961, he saw a Granada television program featuring witches and one was holding an athame like his grandmother’s. He “realised that far from being the last of a dying breed of solitary wise people,” he might be one of many “hidden children” (Maxine Sanders 2008: 1
02). The witches were Patricia and Arnold Crowther of the Sheffield Coven, whose witch names were “Thelema” and “Alistair.” On November 9, 1961, Alex Sanders wrote to Patricia Crowther from his address at 390 Colyhurst Road, Manchester 9. He said in his letter he had seen her on a television program and stated: “To be a ‘witch’ is something that I have always wanted—and yet I have never been able to contact anybody who could help me.” He went on to say that he had always been interested in the occult and had experienced several instances of the Second Sight. He remembered being told as a child by his grandmother that her great-grandmother had been a well-known wise-woman in Snowdonia (letter in MOW archive doc. 391/ref. 412). He did not mention that Mary Bibby had already initiated him into the Craft.

  Patricia Crowther answered the letter and arranged for Sanders to visit her in Sheffield. He arrived in a car driven by a chauffeur and she disliked him on sight (Crowther 1998: 63–68). In contrast, when Sanders met the Crowthers he “took an immediate liking to them” (Maxine Sanders 2008: 102). For some reason a séance took place and Patricia Crowther came to the conclusion that during it Sanders was “putting on an act.” On a subsequent visit, another séance was held using a planchette, an instrument to facilitate automatic writing. A spirit claiming to be Aleister Crowley communicated with the sitters. Referring to Sanders, it allegedly wrote the message: “Chuck the bugger out!” (Crowther 1998: 63–68).