The witches of the New Forest were not the only ones working magic against the Nazi threat. Many occultists in London gathered together during the war on a regular basis to prevent a German victory. They included Dion Fortune and her magical group, the Fraternity of the Inner Light, who performed weekly rituals invoking the angelic guardians of the British Isles for their protection. Phillip Heselton has referred to other anti-Nazi rituals performed by groups in Kent, on the Sussex Downs, and at Alderley Edge in Cheshire (August 2000). Another ritual was allegedly performed in the winter of 1940 by a coven in the Chiltern Hills. Its purpose was to call on Holda, the Germanic goddess of winter, darkness, and death, and petition her to stop the German bombing during the Blitz (letter to Cecil Williamson from Geoffrey Stuart Dearne dated February 15, 1982, in the MOW archive doc. 18/ref 20).
Cecil Williamson, Gardner’s business partner in the 1950s, claimed that he had based his story of the Lammas ritual on a wartime military exercise called “Operation Mistletoe” performed in Ashdown Forest in Sussex by the British Security Service. MI5. A ritual was organized by Williamson on a private estate in the forest between Surrey and Sussex. He did not talk about this in public until 1992, because he had signed the Official Secrets Act during his wartime work with MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), PWE (the Political Warfare Executive), and the SOE (Special Operations Executive). Williamson told me he had been recruited into MI6 in 1938 by a family friend, Major Edward “Ted” Maltby, who belonged to a magical lodge run by Christine Hartley and her magical partner Colonel Charles Seymour, who also worked for MI6 and became head of the Dutch section of SOE.
Major Maltby recruited Williamson because of his occult knowledge to travel to Germany as an undercover agent posing as a folklorist to gather information on the occult interests of Nazi Party members and investigate possible links with British magical groups. When war broke out Williamson was employed by the PWE to run secret radio stations broadcasting black propaganda and disinformation to the German U-boats operating in the Atlantic and the North Sea. Several static and mobile radio transmitters, secretly supplied by the Americans, were established across southern England and were under his command. He also worked as an undercover agent behind the lines in occupied France for the SOE.
Originally Williamson was sent to Ashdown Forest, which was under the control of a Canadian Army unit, to locate a site for a radio transmitter. Shortly after he arrived, a message came from a brigadier in MI5, informing him they were “getting together a whole group of people to have a sort of pantomime set-up whereby the wizards of England [sic] were going to curse Hitler and the Nazi regime” (Williamson, Winter 1992). It had to be near the south coast of England because at the time two high-ranking officials from the Vatican were visiting the Duke of Norfolk at his family home at Arundel Castle in Hampshire. MI5 knew these officials had contacts with the German High Command and they would be leaked details of the ritual. It was believed that those in the Nazi leadership who were interested in the occult would be intimidated by the idea that powerful magicians were working against them.
Williamson persuaded the owner of a private estate in Ashdown Forest to let him use the land for the operation. About forty Canadian soldiers were recruited and were dressed up in robes made from gray army blankets decorated with magical symbols from the Key of Solomon. Occultists and witches from the south coast were also invited to attend and a phony cursing ritual was then performed at a church on the estate. A dummy representing Hitler was raised in a cradle to the top of its tower, set on fire and then lowered to the ground on a rope. Unfortunately when it hit the ground the blazing image set fire to some bushes and the local fire brigade had to be called to extinguish the flames. Williamson said that he told Gerald Gardner about this ritual and he then invented the story of a similar one performed by the New Forest Coven.
Apart from Edith Woodford-Grime’s comments to Eleanor Bone, independent evidence for the Lammas ritual was provided by the novelist Louis Umfraville Wilkinson (aka Louis Marlow). He had been a friend of Aleister Crowley, contributed articles to his magazine The Equinox, was one of his executors, and officiated at his funeral service in December 1947. In 1953, Wilkinson met the occult writer and historian Francis King, and the subject of the survival of witchcraft into modern times was raised. Wilkinson said that in the late 1930s and early 1940s he had become friendly with the members of a witch coven in the New Forest (King 1970: 141–142).
Wilkinson said that the membership of the coven was composed of “a peculiar amalgam of middle-class intellectuals with the local peasantry” (King 1970: 141). From his description it sounds like the same coven that Gardner had encountered in 1939. Although he personally believed that the group’s foundation only dated from the publication of Dr. Margaret Murray’s book The Witch Cult in Western Europe in 1921, Wilkinson was reasonably convinced that it was a genuine fusion of a surviving folk tradition with a more intellectual form of occultism. The proof of this was that the coven used a flying ointment made of bear’s fat, very similar to the type of grease used by cross-Channel swimmers to keep warm. Its purpose was to protect their naked bodies from the cold during outdoor rituals. They also used the hallucinogenic toadstool fly agaric or amanita muscaria in their rituals. This red-capped, white spotted fungi has always had magical significance and is frequently found illustrating books of fairy tales.
Louis Wilkinson added that “on one occasion the Hampshire witches indulged in human sacrifice—but done in such a way there could not possibly be any legal unpleasantness” (Ibid.). He told Francis King that this happened in May 1940, when a German invasion was expected at any time. The witches decided to perform a ritual to deter the Germans and its central point was the voluntary death of a sacrificial victim. According to Wilkinson’s account, the oldest and frailest member of the coven volunteered to take this role. He left off his protective covering of flying ointment so that he would die of hypothermia and exposure. Unfortunately the plan went wrong, as it turned out to be the coldest night in May for many years. As a result, apart from the original volunteer, several other elderly participants involved in the ritual also died within a fortnight of its performance (Ibid., 142).
Chapter Three
The Pickingill Connection
In his discussion of the Lammas ritual in 1940, Philip Heselton suggested that the Mason family, who he believed were hereditary witches and members of the New Forest Coven, had ancestors who performed a similar magical ceremony at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. In his writings about the coven and its practices, Gerald Gardner always emphasized the antiquity of the modern witch cult and made references attempting to link it with older beliefs. For instance, he said that “in the old days sometimes when the High Priest was not present, a skull and crossbones was used to represent the god, death, and resurrection [or reincarnation]” (1954: 28–29). The witches also told Gardner that “in the old days, the ‘prettiest girl’ was selected and given the title of the Maiden.” He says she was made the acting High Priestess and was the hostess when distinguished visitors such as the Devil (Man in Black) turned up. Often the young woman who took this role was the daughter of the High Priestess of the coven and in time would inherit her title (Ibid., 136).
Gardner even suggested that the witch cult dated back to “a Stone Age cult of the matriarchal times” (Ibid., 48). He also devoted a whole chapter of his second book The Meaning of Witchcraft to this theory (1959: 40–50), and it is an idea that is still promoted by some present-day Wiccans. When Eleanor Bone met Dafo, she was told that the New Forest Coven could trace its history back to King William Rufus in the eleventh century. Gardner said that members of the coven had told him “They knew that their fathers and grandfathers belonged [to the Craft] and had spoken to them about meetings about the time of [the Battle of ] Waterloo [1815], when it was then an old cult, thought to exist from all time” (Ibid., 51).
During the 1970s, information surfaced
into public view that appeared to support the claims by Gardner and Dafo that the New Forest Coven had an ancient history, or at least was connected with a Craft tradition that did. In 1971 the late John Score, founder of the Pagan Front and editor of The Wiccan newsletter (now the Pagan Federation and Pagan Dawn magazine) received a letter from correspondent E. W. “Bill” Liddell, living in Auckland, New Zealand. He said he had been born in Essex, England, and had emigrated in 1959 or 1960. Liddell added that as a young man he had been inducted into his family’s traditional form of witchcraft on May Eve, 1950. This Craft tradition had allegedly been founded by “Old George” Pickingill (1816–1909), who lived his last years in the remote Essex village of Canewdon.
From 1974 to 1977, The Wiccan published a series of articles based on the letters Liddell sent to John Score, using at first the by-line “a well-wisher,” and then the pen name of “Lugh,” the Irish god of light. These articles were later published in book form in the 1990s. They contained sensational and controversial claims about George Pickingill and his alleged influence on nineteenth-century occultism and the twentieth-century witchcraft revival. It was also claimed that Aleister Crowley, as a young man, had been inducted into a coven in Norfolk founded by Pickingill. The articles also said that the Rosicrucian writer and researcher Hargrave Jennings had compiled ritual material with the witch master that later formed the basis of the teaching papers of the Victorian magical group, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. A link was also established between the New Forest Coven that Gardner had been initiated into in 1939, and the Pickingill Craft (Liddell 1994: 1).
Bill Liddell claimed that his Craft Elders and other interested parties had told him to write the letters and send them to the editor of The Wiccan for publication. They were reacting to the negative publicity generated, first by Gerald Gardner, and then by the self-styled King of the Witches, Alex Sanders, as they believed it had brought the Craft into disrepute. Their primary aim was to disseminate information using a public platform to counter the false claims made by Gardner and Sanders, and show that modern Wicca had nothing to do with the older, more traditional forms of witchcraft. The secondary consideration was to “stress the baleful influence” of both Crowley and George Pickingill on the history of the modern Craft revival (Ibid., 16).
Liddell’s brethren were encouraged to draft articles that could not be traced back to them, and he was used as a suitable middleman to deliver these for publication. Several different Craft traditions contributed information for the articles, putting forward their individual points of view. Liddell’s Elders were alarmed by inner plane or spirit advice they had received telling them that Gardner had been the instrument to restore the Old Religion in modern times. Other hereditary witches from East Anglia wanted to counter the Wiccan heresy, and the Pickingill Crafters wanted to promote their radical concepts of Goddess worship and female leadership. Unlike the others, they were not anti-Wiccan and were convinced by their spirit contacts that Gardner’s version of neopagan witchcraft was the channel for the goddess worship that would be the predominant religion of the Aquarian Age.
Each of the writers who contributed material to the articles therefore had their own individual agendas and this led to some confusion in their content. None of the informants was willing to reveal their identities publicly, so they chose Bill Liddell as the front man. They forwarded the material to him that they wanted published, and he then drafted articles in his own handwriting from this information. Once compiled, the articles were then returned by Liddell to their respective authors in England for checking before being submitted for publication. From 1974 to 1977 these articles were published in The Wiccan (TW) and then from 1977 to 1988 in my own magazine The Cauldron (TC), until Liddell’s brethren apparently decided that the work had been completed. In 1988, Liddell also felt that his obligation to his Elders was over and since then he has continued contributing articles to TC under his own name and authorship.
When Bill Liddell began to write to me in 1977, he said his Elders had instructed him to offer future articles to The Cauldron because, despite the fact I had a Gardnerian initiation, the magazine was considered less pro-Gardnerian then The Wiccan. It was also regarded as more sympathetic to the traditional and hereditary Old Craft. The new articles submitted covered considerably more ground than the ones previously published. They described the differences between the old-style covens and modern Wicca, the supposed connections between Celtic druidism, medieval French witchcraft, and Freemasonry, and the alleged influence on the witch cult of the Cathar heresy, and Saracen beliefs and practices from North Africa and the Middle East.
These new articles offered a radical and alternative view of modern witchcraft that was very different from Wicca. It was therefore predictable that they would cause controversy and skepticism. The previous contributions by Liddell to TW had already been dismissed by critics because of their grandiose claims about George Pickingill’s alleged influence on the Golden Dawn. Unfortunately, at the time, these critics were unaware that Liddell was merely passing on information provided by other sources. He also failed to inform his readers that some of the more controversial elements and claims in the articles were in the nature of Craft legends passed down by his Elders and others. These may or may not have been based on historical facts.
During our lengthy correspondence, which has lasted off and on for over thirty years, Bill Liddell has always claimed that the information in the early articles in TW and TC came directly from his Elders and other Craft brethren, and that he has also had some doubts about its veracity. He has also been very open about his later contacts with and initiations into Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, even though this has also caused further controversy. He has said that his common-law wife, whom he met in New Zealand after she emigrated from England in the 1960s, was present when Alex Sanders received his first-degree intiation into Gardnerian Wicca. As we shall see in a later chapter, this has been confirmed by an independent source who was also present.
The earliest published references to Old George Pickingill or Pickingale (there are several local variations on the surname) that I am aware of are the articles written by the amateur folklorist Eric Maple for the Folklore journal. The first was published in December 1960 and was called “The Witches of Canewdon.” It was followed up in autumn 1962 by “The Witches of Dengle,” in autumn 1965 by “Witchcraft and Magic in the Rochford Hundred,” and a chapter in Maple’s book The Dark World of the Witches, published in 1962. A more sensational account of Pickingill’s life was written by Charles Lefebure in his book Witness to Witchcraft, published in the United States in 1970, but probably written about 1967.
Eric Maple had first visited the Essex witch village of Canewdon in 1959 while staying in the area to recover from an illness. Having an interest in the local folklore he heard tales from the older villagers about the witches who lived there fifty or sixty years before. The earliest historical reference to witchcraft in Canewdon was in 1580 when the Grand Jury from the Lent Assizes in nearby Colchester charged Rose Pye, a spinster from the village who was described in court as “notoriously living as a witch.” She was accused of bewitching to death the twelve-month-old child of Johanne Snowe of Scaldhurst Farm, Canewdon. Pye pleaded not guilty and was formally acquitted of the charge. However, for some unknown reason, she was not released from prison and died there a few months later. In 1585, another Canewdon woman, Cicely Makin, was unable to find the necessary five people to testify on her behalf that she was innocent of a charge of practicing witchcraft. She was found guilty and sentenced to undergo a public penance in church, confess her sins, and promise to live a religious life. Unfortunately she refused to mend her wicked ways and five years later was excommunicated (Webster 2005: 169–170).
When Eric Maple investigated the folk traditions of Canewdon in the winter of 1959–1960 he found stories about the witches living in and around the village in the nineteenth and early twentieth centur
ies had survived among the local farming community. One tradition that had survived into the 1950s was that if ever the tower of the village church, St. Nicholas, fell down, then the last witch would die. As long as the tower stood there would always be at least six witches living in the village. One would be the minister’s wife, another the baker’s wife, and a third would be the butcher’s wife. Every time a stone fell from the church tower, a witch died and another took her place. The village children used to dance around the churchyard as a charm against being bewitched. It was also said that if you walked around the church seven times you would see one of the Canewdon witches. An alternate version said that if you did the same around a large tombstone in the graveyard, the Devil would appear.
Another popular local tradition was that there were “as many witches in silk as in cotton” living in the village. In 1959, a reporter from The Times newspaper interviewed Arthur Dawes, one of the oldest inhabitants of the village, about the witchcraft stories. He said that as a child his parents told him that the most prominent of the witches was the minister’s wife, as in the legend, and an aristocrat named Lady Lodwick. In fact, the two women were sisters whose family name was Kesterman, and one, Mary Ann, had married the local minister, the Reverend Atkinson. A story was told that the famous Essex cunning man or male witch, James Murrell, had asked the minister’s permission to put a spell on the Canewdon witches so they would be forced to go to the churchyard and be exposed in public. The Reverend Atkinson refused the offer because he knew his wife was a member of the local coven (Ibid., 172–173).
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the witches and their powers were regarded as a menace and a threat to the village. It was said there were between six and nine witches, and they had the power to “shimmer,” or shapeshift, into the form of mice and white rabbits. For that reason, many superstitious people avoided these animals. In Canewdon, rabbits were never kept as a food source, and one foolish man who tried to catch one was taken ill afterwards, because it was believed to be a witch in disguise. The witches were also feared because they could inflict plagues of lice on their enemies, bewitch the wheels off farm wagons and pony traps so they could not move, and paralyze people with the malefic glance of the Evil Eye.
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