Traditional Witchcraft, by Gemma Gary

Traditional Witchcraft A Cornish Book of Ways

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TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT A Cornish Book of Ways by

Gemma Gary with line illustrations by the author and photography

by Jane Cox

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Traditional Witchcraft © 2008 by Gemma Gary. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First North American Edition, 2020 First Printing, 2020 ISBN 978-0-7387-6571-6 Originally published by Troy Books Inc. 2008 Second Edition 2014 Third Edition 2019 ISBN 978-1-909602-36-6 Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Cataloging-in-Publication Programme data is on file with the British National Bibliography.

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Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America

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Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to; Jane Cox, Christine Gary, JackDaw, Jo Maquettes, Graham King, Simon Costin, and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Steve Patterson, Nigel Pearson, Michael Howard, Martin Duffy, Kelvin I. Jones, and the work of Cecil H. Williamson.

With acknowledgement also to those who have walked the Ways with me, but would prefer not to be named.

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Contents

Preface Introduction Cornwall’s Museum of Witchcraft & Magic The Cunning Path The Dead and the Otherworld The Bucca Places of Power The Tools of Cunning The Witches’ Compass The Hearthside Rite The Compass Rite The Troyl Hood A Ritual of Closing

The Trade

The Hand of the Wise Planetary Virtues Magical Substances Charm Bags Workings of Protection Workings of Healing Workings of Love Workings of Good Fortune Workings of Spirit Magic Workings of the Weather Versatile Ways

Rites of the Moon The Furry Nights Candlemas May’s Eve Golowan Guldize Allantide Montol

Initiations on the Cunning Way A Rite of Dedication

Glossary Bibliography Index

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11 33 49 61 69 77 87 99 117

123 124 129 131

135

138 139 142 151 154 162 169 172 173 181 182

189 195

196 199 203 207 210 214

219 222

228 233 236

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List of Line Illustrations and Figures by the Author Tammy Blee 32 Witch Mirror 48 Boskenna Cross 60 Spirit House in the Landscape 68 The Bucca Dark and Fair 76 Where All Conjoin 86 Pellar Tools 98 The Compass Round 116 & 132 Witch Charms 134 The Hand of the Wise 138 Planetary Squares 153-154 Written Protection Charm 154 Written Healing Charm 163 Written Love Charm 170 The Moon and Troy Stone 188 Obsidian Moon stone 193 The Furry Nights 194 The Nine Knots and Thirteen Witch’s Points 218 List of Photographs

By Jane Cox Between Pages 54 and 55: 1 The home of Tammy Blee, 56 Coinagehall St, Helston.

2 Granny Boswell (image courtesy of the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic).

3 Museum of Witchcraft & Magic wisewoman tableau.

4 The Rocky Valley, North Cornwall.

5 The Rocky Valley Labyrinths.

6 Chûn Quoit.

7 The Merry Maidens stone circle.

8 Boscawen Un stone circle.

9 The author’s hearth.

10 Carn Euny Fogou passage.

11 Alsia Holy Well.

12 Madron Holy Well.

13 A West Cornish stone stile.

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Between Pages 114 and 115: 14 Threshing fork and working staves.

15 Spirit whip and hook wand.

16 Skull-staff representing the Bucca.

17 Bucca figure carved by Bel Bucca.

18 Knives in the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic.

19 Wind roarer, sweeping tools and switches.

20 Working stones.

21 Snake vertebrae and garnet witch necklace.

22 An indoor altar and working surface.

23 The author lighting the switch.

24 The author drawing the spirits by use of the switch.

25 The stone, bone, staff and flame.

26 The skull.

Between Pages 168 and 169: 27 The author working at her hearth 28, 29, and 30 The author working in the circle 31 and 32, A collection of household charms 33 The contents of a protective witch-bottle 34 Animal bone and chain charms 35 A charm bag 36 The ‘witch’s lump figure’ in the Museum of Witchcraft 37 Lead body parts for ‘stroking magic’ 38 Snake skin and box for healing 39 House dolls on the hearth 40 Mandrake in coffin-box Between Pages 210 and 211: 41 A spirit house.

42 Antler tine ‘prickers’ for weather magic 43 The author working candle and pin magic 44 A ‘Get-Lost-Box’ in the Museum of Witchcraft 45 A mirror bottomed copper basin - Museum of Witchcraft 46 Padstow ‘Old’ or ‘Red’ ‘Obby ‘Oss 47 A Midsummer fire - Madron 48 The Penzance Guldize Neck 49 Crying the Neck - Madron 50 The nine knotted cord

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The human skull is the symbol of death. For the witch death holds a strange fascination. Each and every one of us is born to die, but is death a final end to life? The witch says no. For she knows that: “there are other places and other things”. Her whole life and being is devoted to the ever present but unseen world of spirit. To the witch the spirit world is a reality, a living thing. To her everything has a spirit, a soul, a personality, be it animal, mineral, vegetable. That is why to us in the south west we know and believe in the little people, oh, you may laugh, my fine up country folk, but beware for indeed you are in the land where ghoulies and ghosties, and long legged beasties still romp, stomp and go bump in the night. Come, let us show you what the witches and their spirits do…’

Cecil H. Williamson 1909-1999

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Preface Immersed in the Land

I

t was already dark, as I made my way along the lonely road that wound its way through the haunted and wooded valley of sea-mists rising from the cove.

Normally, I would have with me a candle-lantern for such journeys, but this night it had been forgotten and I missed the warm company of its soft light, dancing upon the passing leaves, branches and mossy stones.

This for me was part of the delight of journeys to and from witch-meetings, and yet, enveloped in the dark, I felt perhaps more keenly the thrill of the presence of place.

There was, in any case, just enough of a moonlight glow filtering down between the meeting of the trees for me to avoid mishap. Soon though I would have to leave the road and make my way into the denser cover of the wood.

The path alongside the straight whitethorn hedge was easy enough, but ahead things would be very different, and, stepping across the old wooden footbridge into the black of the wood, thrill gave way to mild panic as I went on hands and knees to feel for the narrow track snaking invisibly ahead through the undergrowth, with the danger of deep ditches and a loosely covered well close by. Scrabbling about with growing urgency to find the way, my eyes began to perceive a new and very different 11

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways source of illumination, for the path, no wider than the span of my palm, began to glow with an Otherworldly, almost electric-blue luminescence, as though someone had emptied the content of hundreds of glowsticks and poured it carefully on the path and no other ground.

With the way ahead revealed in so uncanny a way, the numinous thrill of the place returned as I pressed on with grateful ease. Eventually, the friendly oil lamp glow emerging from the windows of the old wood-cutter’s van came into sight through the tangle of branches, and the welcome comfort of a hot drink and the warmth of the stove awaited before the rituals of the night.

Relating my experience, I learned that a ghostly blue light is known in the valley, but it is normally seen sitting high in the branches of certain trees. For it to come to ground to provide so kind and convenient a service seemed to be a new occurrence!

Before long, we left the warmth of the caravan and set about gathering fallen wood to build the fire over which the cauldron would be set to hang at the centre of the old circle of quartz and granite stones, many now barely perceptible beneath the enveloping mosses and lichen. A small altar would be arranged beneath a carved stang, set to the north of the circle’s edge, and at the north-east, we would enter, beneath an ancient holly, to step across the witch’s broom, anointing ourselves as we passed with the dew and rain waters collected in a small moss-covered brass cauldron, kept always atop one of the stones.

Within this ring, exorcisms would be hissed against all ill-influence, beneficent incantations whispered, and mysterious names known to me before only from Cornish folklore, such as ‘Bucca’, were thrice uttered into the rising wood-smoke and cauldron vapours.

Next came the dance, or treading of the ‘round’; the witches’ mill as it is known by some. Round and around 12

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Preface – Immersed in the Land we trod, pacing amid the stones and circling the axial fire to find a stillness that seemed to set the trees of the wood spinning about us, and revealing, here and there, shadow forms, strange sounds and voices. Were they the natural movements of the wood and the coming and going of wildlife, or manifestations of spirit, or both? Pressing on, and on, until we fell, exhausted and dreaming, in a communion with the ‘Other’, affirmed by a draught from the drinking horn and a sup from the seething cauldron of that which had been stirred amid the raising of spirits and the potency of the land.

To work in such a way with others was new to me; I had only before experienced something of its likeness before by working ‘alone’. I had encountered and worked a little within other groups and covens, but here was the most I felt a witch gathering had successfully achieved an immersive and spontaneous conjuration of the old spirit and potency of the land.

The pursuits and endeavours of my own background lay in the rural magic and witchcraft of Cornwall and further afield; the pragmatic and operative ‘cunning’ craft of circle, staff and cross, of bottles, thorns and knotted cords, of written and spoken charms, of talismans, natural amulets, plant substances and of spirits. For me, as was evident in the folklore of witchcraft, magical power and knowledge had as their source a working interaction with the ‘other’; with spirits, both familiar and of place.

Perhaps growing up in Cornwall, a varied landscape rich in mysterious monuments of antiquity, often noted for its numinous and eldritch qualities, it was quite natural that experience of the ‘other’ would be sought out in the wild and liminal places of the land, which had always been, and remains, central to my personal expression of witchcraft.

In addition to solitary explorations of magic among the hills and hedges, sea-cliffs, caves and woods, I would 13

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways also find myself involved at times with magical and ritual gatherings. Some were far-reaching in their scope, and others focussed specifically upon witchcraft; such as Gardnerian and Alexandrian covens. Within the rites of these traditions, there was much that I found valuable and possessed of great beauty, however the individual covens I encountered were not for me; the landscape featured little in their approaches, and one coven worked almost exclusively indoors.

Beyond Cornwall, other traditions and practitioners were encountered, these contacts operating within ways that have come to be called ‘traditional craft’, ‘old craft’ and ‘hereditary craft’. These were of great interest to me, for they not only incorporated elements of the rural ‘cunning craft’, alongside their structured ritual observations, but also a strong emphasis on the magical folklore of their respective landscapes.

Upon being brought into the West Cornish coven, I found much within their outdoor rituals comforting and familiar. There were elements encountered in Cornish folklore and accounts of the activities of Cornwall’s historic and folkloric witches, and traces of those things I had found beautiful in the Crafts of Gardner and Sanders, alongside ritual structures employed by the ‘traditionals’ and ‘Old Crafters’. Indeed, the coven possessed a rich mixture of influences from each of these sources.

In time, I found myself ‘thrown into the deep end’, for it was the habit of the coven’s ‘Devil’ to rotate its leadership every so often. Whilst the coven’s rites had a basic foundational structure, and a pattern of ways to draw upon, each ritual was largely written and planned for the occasion, and even then, only adhered to loosely, for spontaneity and being ‘rolled around by the spirits’ was always the objective.

I rather enjoyed writing the rituals for the coven during 14

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Preface – Immersed in the Land this period, with much already there to inspire me and be developed, and it seems the results were well received, for it was suggested by the Devil that I might write, by hand, a book of these rituals for the coven to refer to and perhaps make use of from time to time. I loved the idea and intended that it should be a thing of beauty (as much as it could be with the state of my hand writing) complete with illustrations. This of course was quite an ambitious undertaking and I regret that I did not complete the book during my time with the coven. However, the rituals I wrote back then survive, for I understand aspects of them are still used today in the coven, just as they continue also in the coven I would later form and continue to serve; Ros an Bucca. Those rituals are also to be found within these pages, for the notes I made for the uncompleted ‘coven book’ were given a new life as the basis for Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways.

As this ‘parent’ coven was a major influence behind this book, and the environment in which it was nurtured and had its earliest formation, I will explore the prominent aspects of the coven’s background and influences, which, in turn, will have each had a hand in shaping the content of these pages.

In 1975, inspired by having read The Living Stones by the writer, occultist, and surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun,1 Jo O’Cleirigh arrived in Lamorna; a luscious wooded valley cut deep into Cornwall’s far West and opening out into a harboured rocky sea-cove. He took up residence in a tent, hidden behind ‘The Wink’, one of Cornwall’s original ‘kiddleywinks’ or beer houses, with a history of smuggling.

In 1976 however, Jo discovered and moved into an old wooden caravan; the gypsy caravan headquarters of the 1. Patterson, Steve. Art, Magic, Ithell Colquhoun & an Alchemical Experiment in a Cornish Valley, p.11.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways ‘woodcutters’ described by Ithell Colquhoun in the very book that had brought Jo to Lamorna.2 Jo, an archaeologist by trade, stems from Irish and Jersey ancestral roots. His Roman Catholic upbringing instilled in him a deep love for the beauty of devotional ritual; the rising incense, the flames of votive candles and sanctuary lights dancing gently in their bloodred glasses, the reverence of sacred imagery and the hypnotic plain chant. He possessed also an innate, natural spirituality, rooted within a deep love for the land and an interest the old faery traditions. Amid the beauty of Catholic ritual though, Jo perceived terribly negative, unhealthy, and ‘anti-incarnational’ teachings of the priests and nuns with their shameful attitudes towards human sexuality. Repelled by these teachings, Jo was drawn back to his spiritual love of the land, and into the worlds of the Fae, witches, and green politics.3 It was during an archaeological dig in 1965 at Tell El Fara’in (Hill of the Pharaohs) in the Nile Delta that Jo was introduced to Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. The themes contained within that book; of dying and resurrecting gods, and a mother goddess, were reminiscent of themes he had discerned within his Roman Catholic upbringing; the divine ‘Star Child’ born from the dark and dead of winter, the female aspect of divinity in Mary Theotokos, ‘The Bearer of God’, and an earlier polytheism preserved within the veneration of Saints.4 Jo encountered the world of modern witchcraft in 1970, first by reading the Samhain issue of The Waxing Moon; a journal edited by Joseph Wilson, an American witch whose correspondence with Robert Cochrane 2. White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p131.

3. The Cauldron, No.143, p.36.

4. Ibid. Also: White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p129 & 131.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land (Roy Bowers) would largely form the inspirational foundations for the 1734 method of witchcraft.

Wilson was stationed at the time with the US Air Force at RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire. Jo travelled to his home in Bicester to attend one of the monthly meetings he held there, and through Wilson entered into a long friendship with the Welsh witch Ruth Wynn-Owen.5 Her own tradition was centred around the god Bran, whose ancient presence was also known in Cornwall.

Jo became involved also with The Regency, a celebratory ritual group founded by Ronald ‘Chalky’ White and George ‘Winter’ Stannard following the untimely death of Robert Cochrane in 1966. Jo was able to take part in the Regency’s rituals whilst travelling through London, on journeys to and from Egypt. These began with discussions in a pub, and then the gathering would make its way to Queen’s Wood where the ceremonies would make careful symbolic use of certain landscape features, such as a river as the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead, and certain trees.

In 1972, Ronald White had written to Jo with the promise of sending him the document known as ‘The Reading of the Festivals of the Year’. This was read to the gathering annually at the ‘dead of the year’ and elucidated the divine nature and inner meanings of each of the festivals. With this, he suggested to Jo that he could begin to build his own rites for the seasonal festivals.6 In Cornwall’s Lamorna Valley, Jo formed his first ritual group named Nemeton. Its rituals were a marriage of influences from both the Regency group and Cornish folklore, incorporating such things as the traditional ‘Snail’s Creep’ dance and Cornish names for the seasonal feasts.7 5. The Cauldron, No.143, p.36.

6. Ibid, p.40.

7. White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p.35.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways Jo was eventually introduced to Ithell Colquhoun by the witch Brownie Pate, who he had met in 1979, which resulted in Colquhoun becoming an occasional member of the Nemeton Group.8 Margaret Ithell Colquhoun, born in Assam, India in 1906, possessed lifelong interests in the occult and surrealism; both offering opportunities for the exploration of inner and other worlds, and to re-examine the nature of reality. For some surrealists however it seems the two did not mix, for it was her refusal to cease her occult activities that led to her exclusion from the London Surrealist Group in 1940.9 Colquhoun appears also to have had mixed fortunes when it came to occult groups; in the 1930s she applied to join the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but for reasons unknown her application was rejected. Despite this, Colquhoun went on to write The Sword of Wisdom, a book presenting a biography of MacGregor Mathers and the history of the Golden Dawn, published in 1975. In 1952 she attempted to join the Society of the Inner Light, undertaking the correspondence course required of all aspirants to the order, but was again rejected.

Colquhoun was however successful in joining a number of other groups, societies and orders including the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis); its dependant cell the New Isis Lodge established by Kenneth Grant; W.B. Crow’s Order of the Keltic Cross; the Ancient Keltic Church druidical order in which she was ordained as a deaconess; Co-Freemasonry in which she was initiated to the third degree as a Master Mason and later to the Holy Royal Arch; the Order of the Pyramid and Sphinx (for 8. White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p.35.

9. Shillitoe, Richard. Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature, p.6.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land which membership of Freemasonry was a prerequisite of application) which operated within the tradition of the Golden Dawn; and the Fellowship of Isis, being ordained as one of its early priestesses.10 Occult exploration pervades the art and writing of Ithell Colquhoun. In both occultism and surrealism, trance states, dreams, visions and the use of automatic techniques are each employed to access the ‘inner world’ and little-visited areas of consciousness. For Colquhoun though, as an occultist, these were means also to explore esoteric mysteries and the spirit world.

Among her artistic magical output, she painted a ‘Taro’ set, with each image abstract and automatic in nature and utilising esoteric colour symbolism in line with Golden Dawn teachings. Visually similar, Colquhoun’s Decad of Intelligence consists of ten vivid, automatic enamel paintings representing each sephira of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, accompanied by poetic lists of the occult correspondences attributed to each of the sephiroth.

Like Colquhoun’s Taro, the images of the Decad were intended to be used by the viewer as meditational devices to access the occult forces and spiritual essences embodied within each painting.

Transformation, the generative force, liminality and the resolving of duality were of immense importance to the magic of Ithell Colquoun, and these themes are encountered throughout her work. Her novel Goose of Hermogenes, published in 1961, but revealed by previously released extracts to have been written as early as the late 1930s, is Alchemical in nature and structure, with each of the twelve chapters being named after an operation in the Alchemical process.11 10. Ibid, p42-44.

11. Shillitoe, Richard. Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature, p.20-21.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways In the chapter Exaltation, there occurs a description of magical ritual, strikingly reminiscent of wiccan ceremony. The heroine of the novel, anointed with an unguent, finds herself naked, except for her jewels, within a clearing of trees and surrounded by a ritual assembly. Before her stands a herm stone, bearing the horned and bearded head of a faun which, after drinking from a cup of intoxicating liquid, she embraces as she is ceremonially whipped by the leader of the assembly. 12 As Richard Shillitoe remarks, Colquhoun’s manuscript containing this evocative ritual depiction predates any publication of Gardnerian ritual by some years. 13 A devout animist; her pursuit of the liminal, the transformative, and therefore the magical, is manifest in a profound relationship with the landscape characteristic of the natural mystic. Colquhoun was drawn to those places ‘betwixt’ and ambiguous in nature, were the numinous and a confluence of the material and the spirit worlds may be more palpably sensed. Caves and sacred wells as entrances to the dark interior of the earth and, symbolically, the inner worlds; the ever shifting, concealing and revealing intertidal shore with rockpools as the mirror between realities; the ancient menhirs conjoining the worlds above with the chthonic depths from where ‘Hecate’s Fountain’ springs forth; and the towering cliffs betwixt sea and sky.

For Colquhoun, any perception of separation between the manifest and the otherworldly, the animate and the inanimate, was a falsehood; the material and the spiritual are intricately interwoven, and all of nature is alive with the generative life force. Creative union is a 12. Colquhoun, Ithell. Goose of Hermogenes, p.99-102 13. Shillitoe, Richard. Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature, p.26.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land preoccupation perfuse throughout much of Colquhoun’s work with human and bestial qualities appearing within trees and landscape features, phallic stones penetrate the feminine earth, and floral studies bloom forth into fleshy, suggestive, sexually ambiguous forms. The recurring theme of union arises from her search as an occultist for the rectification of the fractured and chaotic world of duality, into which Man had fallen from a state of Divine, androgynous union.

Dualistic thinking was, for Colquhoun, ‘the worst, perhaps the only, heresy’,14 and the resolution of all duality was the Great Work and the Goal of the Wise; the reunion of divided principles; female-male, spiritmatter, man-daemon, heaven-earth in a restoration of paradisiacal wholeness and completion in nature. Such a search appears to have been innate to her life-long spirituality, for at the age of ten she imagined Christ as a hermaphrodite, fusing the ‘red-hearted Jesus’ with the ‘blue-cloaked Mary’ to make and worship the image of ‘a god with breasts’.15 Colquhoun’s adopted landscape, in which she sought out and immersed herself in the liminal, the transformative, and the numinous, was the West of Cornwall. She had visited the Lamorna Valley during the war and ‘was overcome by its leafy water-loud charm.’16 Here, she later set up her retreat and studio in a small hut in the valley’s wooded head which she named ‘Vow Cave’, after a rock feature of nearby Castallack Carn.

Her animism is particularly apparent in her 1957 book The Living Stones: Cornwall. Her travels and observations effortlessly interweave matters of every-day life, customs 14. Shillitoe, Richard. Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature, p.110.

15. Ibid, p108.

16. Colquhoun, Ithell. The Living Stones: Cornwall, p.12.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways and festivals, animal and plant wildlife, geology, telluric and chthonic currents, visionary mysticism, sacred springs and ancient megaliths, folklore, witchcraft, magical charms, and spirits; all as component parts of the body, mind and being of the living entity of Cornwall. The spirit of the Lamorna valley she invokes thus: ‘Valley of streams and moon-leaves, wet scents and all that cries with the owl’s voice, all that flies with a bat’s wing, peace!

Influences, essences, presences, whatever is here – in my name of a stream in a valley, I salute you; I share this place with you. Stirrings of life, expanding spores, limbo of germination, for all you give me, I offer thanks. O rooted here without time, I bathe in you; genius of the fern-loved gully, do not molest me; and may you remain for ever unmolested.’ 17 My own copy of The Living Stones lived for many years within the old woodcutter’s van described within its pages; its spine dappled and stained with the eternal damp of the valley. Jo had been kind enough to allow me to keep the book, and it has remained a treasured companion ever since. As a life-long animist whose spiritual path and esoteric endeavours are rooted within the land and its numen, Ithell Colquhoun and her ideas have been profoundly influential, just as they have been to other artists and occultists drawn to the valley, for her influence lingers still amongst the trees…

We could justifiably regard her as a pioneer of that brand of occultism, more familiar to us today, whose practitioners draw upon a working relationship with the land and its secret influences. Of these influences she writes: ‘The life of a region depends ultimately on its geologic substratum, for this sets up a chain-reaction which passes, determining their character, in turn through its streams and wells, its 17. Ibid, p.14.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land vegetation and the animal-life that feeds on this, and finally through the type of human being attracted to live there. In a profound sense also the structure of its rocks gives rise to the psychic life of the land: granite, serpentine, slate, sandstone, limestone, chalk and the rest have each their special personality dependant on the age in which thy were laid down, each being co-existent with a special phase of the earth-spirit’s manifestation.’18 Another influential figure is the author and earth mysteries researcher Cheryl Straffon. Originally from Cornwall, Cheryl was first introduced to ritual by Ken Rees, lecturer on witchcraft and the esoteric, after attending an evening class given by him in London. He contacted Cheryl inviting her to attend a meeting in Highgate Woods, which turned out to be a meeting of a working coven which Cheryl describes as having been a ‘spin-off ’ of the Regency.19 Cheryl became a member and worked with the coven for ‘a year and a day’ before forming her own small group with the participation of Ken Rees. The group met in the South London garden of Cheryl’s then husband Arthur Straffon, in a stone circle arranged from stones they had brought up from Dartmoor and Cornwall.

Eventually, the Straffons relocated to Cheryl’s homeland with a move to Cornwall. Wishing to bring the stone circle with them, Ken Rees put Cheryl in touch with Jo who cleared an area in the beautiful woodland close to the old caravan, to which the stone circle was transported and reconstructed, remaining there to this day.20 Here, Cheryl worked ritually with Jo until continuing this work with the formation of the group ‘Lor hag Mor’ (Cornish, 18. Colquhoun, Ithell. The Living Stones: Cornwall, p46.

19. White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p.153.

20. Ibid, p154.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways ‘Moon and Sea’) whose ceremonies made meaningful use of the West Cornish landscape.

1993 saw the first appearance of Cheryl’s Pagan Cornwall – Land of the Goddess. The book explores such things as Cornwall’s ritual landscape; its natural features, megaliths and holy wells often replete with associated folklore, magic and divinatory traditions. While the holy wells are particularly concentrated with surviving lore, we find also hilltop Midsummer ritual fires, curative magic and divinations at the Men-an-Tol stones, witch-initiation at Zennor’s ‘Giant’s Rock’ and site-specific folklore telling of witches’ sabbats, seasonal sacrifice, faery sightings, apparitions and petrified maidens.

Cornwall’s occultist and Neo-Pagan communities were steeped within a melding pot of ideas, mixing enthusiastically with the burgeoning Earth Mysteries movement, archaeology and folklore; bearing a spirituality intimately concerned with the ancient and living landscape, its features, its stories and its otherworldly inhabitants. This is a spirituality we find reflected in Pagan Cornwall; nestled in a sacred landscape shaped by the activities of giants, where its caves and fogous act as entrances to the Otherworld and wellsprings of telluric, serpentine forces.21 Cornwall’s parish feast days and seasonal customs, often associated with the performance of spells, divinations and rites, are revealed to coincide closely with ancient pagan festivals of the year,22 at which times modern ritual groups in Cornwall celebrate, making use of certain aspects and ancient sites of the ritual landscape.

Cheryl gives a personal account of such celebrations, describing for example May’s Eve and Beltane celebrations on a carn and wooded hill; Midsummer hilltop fire ceremonies; the celebration of Lughnasadh with maze 21. Straffon, Cheryl. Pagan Cornwall – Land of the Goddess, p. 35, 40, 52 & 72.

22. Ibid, p.44 & 82.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land walking and feasting in the moors and fields near Morvah, home of a Lammas feast tradition; a visit to a menhir at the Autumn Equinox where offerings of summer fruits were made to the earth; scrying and the tracing of Troy stones in the fogous at Samhain; a Winter Solstice ritual of rebirth and sacred fires celebrated at a holed stone; and Imbolc marked with a candle-lit procession to a holy well for the invocation of Bride/Bridgit.

The witchcraft and operative magic of Cornwall is also explored, both the accounts brought forth in the works of 19th century folklorists like Robert Hunt and William Bottrell, but also a number of the artefacts in the collection of Cecil Williamson, whose profound influence is a subject covered later within this book.

The influence of Gerald B. Gardner also is, of course, not entirely absent. In 1984 in Lamorna’s Clapper Mill, the workplace of the witch Betty Trenoweth in the local ‘Duffy and the Devil’ tale, Jo O’Cleirigh received initiation from an initiate of Doreen Valiente’ Sussex Coven.23 Valiente herself pursued a personal Craft combining her earlier experiences with Gardner, Cardell and Cochrane, with her own findings on the practices of the traditional Sussex witch. Despite assertions to the contrary, elements of Gardnerian Craft, such as circle, cardinal direction, cord, cup and knife, are recognisable in practically all ‘non Gardnerian’ expressions of contemporary witchcraft. Whether the presence of such familiar elements, however differently interpreted, reveal a Gardnerian source, or rather that Gardnerian Craft itself was developed from common ‘Old Craft’ sources and the ‘cunning-craft’ with its traditional blend of rural magic and more complex talismanic rites of the grimoire tradition, is beyond the scope of this book.

23. White, Rupert. The Reenchanted Landscape, p.137.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways At least one apparent Old Craft lineage appears to have had an active presence in Cornwall, although originating, it is claimed, in a family of Old Craft ‘Guilds’ of the North of England, and to have had links also to the controversial ‘Pickingill covens’. With the arrival of the Order in West Cornwall around the beginning of the 1980s, a number of locals became involved with one or two groups having formed and dissipated again like mists. My own initiation into the lineage occurred outside of any coven involvement, maintaining contact with the Order which departed again from Cornwall some time ago.

Something of their influence remains however, with a central tenet being the adoption of local gods, spirits, lore and places of potency in whatever landscape the Order settled in, and it certainly appears to have done so in Cornwall.

Such immersion in the landscape was evident in the Lamorna coven, as Jo relates: ‘my practice, and that of our coven has dug itself into the Cornish land and is influenced by local traditions and folklore.’ ‘As a traditional coven we are unusual in that we work both robed and sky clad, but still mainly outdoors or in caves.

The god has a dark and light aspect. The principle aspect of the Goddess is the maid/enchantress. The names we use for the Goddess and god are very special to us, and possibly unique, but they are from traditional lore. Titles such as Queen of Elfhame, Old Hornie, Bucca Dhu, and the Devil are used, the latter traditionally a title of the Magister of the coven.’24 Most of the witches I encountered and worked with in West Cornwall revered the mysterious spirit of the Bucca, and incorporated Cornish folklore into their 24. The Cauldron, No.143, p.38

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Preface – Immersed in the Land rites, as well as Cornish charms and magic into the operative side of their craft.

It was perhaps the difficult to define nature of the Bucca that particularly intrigued me, and so this strange figure of elemental forces became a presiding spirit of my personal pursuit of the Craft.

Here he is manifest as the figure at the threshold, between this world and the Cornish Otherworld, keeper of magics and the virtues of land and sea. In his association with storms, he seemed much akin to the folkloric Devil, to Odin and the Wild Huntsman.

In Cornish folklore there is a curious link between the Bucca, the Devil and Odin, centred on a mysterious rocky outcrop above Newlyn called the Tolcarne.

The Essex cunning man Andrew Chumbley held a keen interest in regional manifestations of the Old Craft and cunning tradition, and so naturally he was intrigued

by Cornwall’s pellar current and the Bucca. On one of his visits to Cornwall, where he had received one of his Old Craft inductions, he spoke a charm; ‘Come Bucca Come, noble Captain of our Sabbath, Come forth our god and faithful king. Come dancing over the mound to stand upon the stone of truth, here to plant the tree of Bucca; the goat-horned stang of pellar.’25 Cornwall, with its ancient megaliths, rich mythology and magical history, has always held a strong attraction for the artist, the poet and the mystic, and while gatherings of serious Craft or occult endeavour have been few in number and small in size, a large pagan community has flourished here.

There appears always to have been an emphasis of ritual celebration within the landscape, and I have many very fond memories of open gatherings held 25. Patterson, Steve. Serpent Songs – Bucca & the Cornish Cult of Pellar, p.113.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways at the ancient monuments of stone, on hills, in the woods and fields or on the shore.

In addition to more private workings within covens, my love of ritual had found a shared expression in my late teens when I began attending a ritual group ran by the artist Geraldine McCarthy. She held open and semi-closed meetings on her smallholding and in local woodland with rituals inspired by classical pagan themes and the Goddess movement, which was quite influential among pagans and followers of Earth Mysteries in Cornwall in the 1980s and 90s.

With the total eclipse of the sun in 1999 however, there seemed to come a shift of focus for me; I moved away from attending open rituals, settling instead into a very personal practice of traditional operative magic and otherworldly interaction, nestled in the surrounding landscape of the village; its sea-fog shrouded fields, towering cliffs and footpaths betwixt tall hedges of blackthorn and gorse.

A valuable contact was made during this time via friendship with JackDaw, whose Craft, centred around the Bucca and the witch-traditions of Cornwall and Devonshire, drew also upon a magical inheritance rom his Grandmother. Here, encouragingly, was much that tallied so uncannily with my own Craft, and my findings on local witch-lore.

Although ‘solitary’ working became firmly established as my main approach to witchcraft, which remains the case today, I still had a desire to work on occasion with others, although not on an open ritual basis as I had before, but on a more private and intimate level. And so, my becoming involved with the coven in Lamorna was a welcome, and personally harmonious experience, fully immersed as it was in the West Cornish landscape, its faery faith, and its central theme and gods drawn directly from the lore of the valley.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land Jo relates that his Craft, and that of his coven, is of the ‘left hand path’; a statement that, along with the ritual use of the title ‘Devil’ would see many wiccans running for the hills! The left hand path though he defines as seeking elevation through total acceptance of the world, as opposed to the right hand path’s seeking of liberation through detachment from it.26 It is the people, friendships, group workings, and initiatory experiences above which all coalesced to give rise to the formation of the coven I currently serve, Ros an Bucca, and, later, the ideas presented within this book.

As profound and enduring as these influences are, magical groups tend to evolve, shedding their skins in eternal renewal, to become their own entity. Ros an Bucca, likewise is distinct in many ways, with its own flourishing egregore and current. Distinctiveness can though lead to a sense of isolation; few in the Cornish pagan community would understand our use of Psalms in magic and ritual, and yet they have a long and established place within the witchcraft and folk-magic of Cornwall as elsewhere. Our own use of the Psalms came to us partly from a fragment of Essex Old Craft. Ros an Bucca does though seem to have found a comfortable yet probably uncommon position among magical groups; being not entirely pagan or Christian, but existing somewhere in the strange ‘inbetween’, somewhere ‘other’.

In case any should be misled by certain others to believe otherwise, it is necessary to repeat here my clarification made in previous editions of this book; I make no claims that the content of Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways represents a historical Cornish witch tradition. There never existed an organised tradition or complete system of witchcraft or the pellar 26. The Cauldron, No.143, p.38

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways in Cornwall. Common rites and magical operations exist in each region, yet the traditional magical practice of the country has always been largely unique to the individual practitioner; drawing from and adapting local patterns of operative magic, the grimoire tradition and informed by a personal relationship with the eldritch landscape. It is an organic way, ever evolving and changing, and rebor anew with each practitioner.

Any ‘tradition’ presented within these pages is my own invention, drawing from my own experiences. It is for these very reasons I was careful to give the book the subtitle of ‘A Cornish Book of ways’ rather than ‘The Cornish Book of Ways’.

Traditional witchcraft, a term which gained popularity within the British revival from the 1960s, requires clarification, for it is often applied in different ways by different people. Here though I use it in alignment with the definition of witchcraft that is pre 1939 in origin, or revivalist forms that are inspired by historical witchcraft practices. This is inclusive of both the operative, usually solitary form of witchcraft drawing upon the magic of the ‘white witches’ and ‘cunning folk’ of the 19th and earlier centuries, and the ‘coven’ forms of witchcraft extant in regional witch-lore, and those which emerged into public view from the 1960s onward and draw upon historical witch beliefs, regional mythology, folklore and custom for the basis of their organic rites.

As both kinds of witchcraft form the basis of this book, ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ seemed an apt title.

Being my first book, and now reaching a much larger and widespread audience that the small, local one it was originally written for, naturally I have revisited it over the years. With this edition however I have made (I promise!) my final revisions to the book.

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Preface – Immersed in the Land With the first edition, believing that I might reach people within the local pagan community interested in operative magic and Cornish witchcraft, the book was written as far as possible with a pagan audience in mind. This meant that one or two charms which would originally have included references of a Christian nature were altered in order to make them more palatable to the pagan reader. Modern witchcraft has evolved since then, and there is a far greater awareness and acceptance of the Christo-pagan convergence within traditional operative magic, and so, where necessary, I have restored individual charms to their original. With this evolution in mind, I have included with this edition more of Cornwall’s magic which I felt would have had less appeal to the smaller, pagan audience of 2008.

However, whether the reader be in Cornwall, or elsewhere in the world, seeking perhaps to adapt any of its content they find useful for their own surroundings, this book remains for those witches and magical practitioners given to seeking contact and communion with the spirit presences and virtues of the wild and lonely places. For ‘in the fields, wooded valleys, cottages and craggy cliff-tops of Cornwall, just as they are elsewhere, old charms are re-worked by new hands, guided by the spirit presences and unseen potencies of the Cornish landscape which continues to feed, as but one tributary, the far flowing living streams of magic making.’27 Gemma Gary Cornwall 2018

27. Gary, Gemma. Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways, preface to special edition, p.15.

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Introduction Cornwall’s Witch Heritage

T

he traditional Craft, with its many and various branches, is a Craft born largely from the very landscape in which it is practiced. There exist common threads that run throughout the various recensions of the ‘Elder Faith’, but the precise traditions, ways and practices of the ‘Old Craft’ will always differ and be flavoured by the preserved folk beliefs, traditions, customs, lore, historical magical rites, charms and impedimenta of the region in which its practice is rooted. Traditional witchcraft is in many ways regional witchcraft, it is not and never has been a standardised practice and long may this continue to be the case. The day witchcraft loses regional variation is the day traditional witchcraft ceases to exist.

A traditional witch’s practice is born from their own response to the ways of their particular locality and landscape, and an individual’s instinct, insight, inspiration and creativity come into play. If one were to ask a traditional folk-magic practitioner of Cornwall and of Norfolk, both today and in the 19th century, to speak of the ways of their Craft, one would hear of two practices, distinct in many details, and exactly the same result would occur if the same question were put to two practitioners operating in neighbouring villages in Cornwall.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways Witchcraft has always been practiced in Cornwall, or at least that is how it would seem. In many ways the word ‘witchcraft’ seems to be inextricably linked with Cornwall; a remote horn of land which is home to countless legends of old magic and sorcery, fantastical beings and many haunted, ancient sites which inspire the imagination to ponder the mysterious midnight goings on of witches and joyous gatherings of Piskies.

Within the old folk tales of every land there are contained elements of truth and folk-memories of the ‘Old Ways’ passed down through legend and custom.

Cornwall is certainly no different and behind the legends there is a ‘faery faith’ and a wise-craft that have continued, in some ways, to be observed and practised right up to the present day, where they now exist overshadowed by the modern, and in some respects unrelated, popular practices of Wicca.

Cornwall was indeed home to many folk-magic practitioners; a tradition that reached a climax in the 19th century. Such practitioners offered a range of services mostly involving the work of healing, curse lifting, exorcising of evil spirits, protection, love, and the restoring of lost or stolen property. Their clients were often provided with magical substances in the form of small bags of earth or prepared powders.

Written charms are also a common feature of Cornish magic, intricately folded and sewn shut inside small square bags.

Some Cornish practitioners achieved a certain degree of fame, two of the most notable perhaps being Tamsin Blight and Granny Boswell.

Tamsin Blight, or Tammy Blee as she would have been known, lived from 1798 to 1856 and was perhaps the most famous historical practitioner in Cornwall. Plying her trade 34

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage within the Helston area, she earned a well respected and feared reputation; maintaining the ability to cure and to curse.

Tamsin was known as a ‘pellar’, a word which has aroused much debate as to its meaning. In the 1880 Glossary of Words in Use in Cornwall by M.A. Courtney and Thomas Quiller Couch, pellar is listed as meaning ‘a conjuror; a cunning man, applied to in supposed cases of bewitching.’

Tamsin Blight is said to have claimed to be of the ‘pellar blood’, suggesting it to be a hereditary position, or perhaps even referring to an innate virtue, in the sense that contemporary practitioners speak of ‘witch blood’ without necessarily intending a genetic heredity of familial descent.

Whilst some regarded ‘pellar’ to be a Cornish dialect word as a contraction of ‘expeller’ or ‘repeller’, others believed it to be an original word of the Cornish language and in 1938 Robert Morton Nance listed it as ‘Pellar. A white witch, one who removes spells. Pellar, a remover, from pelly, to remove, to drive out, W. pellau, B. pellaat, the root of which is pell, meaning far.’28 A Cornish speaking friend informs me that in Unified Cornish, ‘pelly’ would be ‘pellhe’, and that the suffix ‘he’ makes an adjective into a verb e.g. ‘glan’ is ‘clean’ so ‘glanhe’ is to clean; ‘pell’ is ‘far’ and ‘pellhe’ is to send far away, to banish.29 All we can be certain of however is that the word ‘pellar’ will continue to be debated.

Clients were known to have travelled great distances for a consultation with Tamsin Blight, and at certain times people would queue outside her small house in considerable numbers to purchase new charms, or to have old ones re28. W =Welsh. B = Breton.

29. Elaine Gill, pers. comm.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways empowered, particularly in the springtime when, according to Cornish tradition, a witch’s powers are renewed.

We know that she would provide the traditional written and sealed charm bags, as well as small bags of grave earth, bones and teeth, and magical powders; most notably ‘Witch Powder’. She also had a strong reputation for removing curses and for healing; working with not only people but with cattle and horses too.

Her powers of sight were also held in high repute for she would be consulted on the whereabouts of lost or stolen money, and the identity of malevolent witches and would work with spirits; making use of hallucinogenic substances to aid her visions and communications.

She had a husband, Jemmy Thomas, who also claimed the powers of a white witch, but for the most part enjoyed a fluctuating reputation for magic, although his obituary celebrated his abilities in providing cures for people and animals, and taming the unruly behaviour of cattle and of horses; a skill traditional among Cunning men across Britain.

The following account, by the 19th century folklorist William Bottrell (1816 – 1881) whose work recorded a vast body of traditional Cornish witch-lore, gives a fascinating insight into Tammy and Jemmy’s pellar’s practice which they operated from their household.

From ‘Annual Visit of the West-Country Folks to the Pellar of Helston, to have their Protection Renewed’: “…According to ancient usage, the folks from many parts of the west country make their annual pilgrimage to some white witch of repute, for the sake of having what they call “their protection renewed.” The spring is always chosen for this object, because it is believed that when the sun is returning the Pellar has more power to protect them from bad luck than at any other season.

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage …There used to be rare fun among the folks in going to the conjuror in the spring, when they were sure to meet, at the wise man’s abode, persons of all ages and conditions, many from a great distance. Then the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles came over in crowds for the purpose of consulting the white witches of Cornwall, and that they might obtain their protection, charms, spells, and counter-spells. Many of the captains of vessels, belonging to Hayle, St. Ives, and Swansea, often visited the Pellar before they undertook a voyage, so that, with seaman and tinners, there was sure to be great variety in the company. …Though they arrived at the Pellar’s by the middle of the forenoon, such a crowd was already assembled that they waited long before their turn came to be admitted to the presence of the wise man. The conjuror received the people and their offerings, singly, in the room by courtesy styled the hale (hall). Few remained closeted with him more than half-an-hour, during which time some were provided with little bags of earth, teeth, or bones taken from a grave. These precious relics were to be worn, suspended from the neck, for the cure of prevention of fits, and other mysterious complaints supposed to be brought on by witchcraft. Others were furnished with a scrap of parchment, on which was written the ABRACADABRA or the following charm: S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

These charms were enclosed in a paper, curiously folded like a valentine, sealed and suspended from the neck of the ill-wished, spellbound, or otherwise ailing person. The last charm is regarded as an instrument of great power, because 37

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways the magical words read the same backwards as forwards. A gritty substance called witch-powders, that looked very much like pounded brick, was also given to those who required it.

An aged crone of the pellar blood, mother or sister of the white witch in chief, received some of the women upstairs to cure such of the least difficult cases, as simple charming would effect; but the greatest part of them preferred the man, as his charms only were powerful enough to unbewitch them.

Instead of the earthy powder, some are furnished with a written charm, which varies according to the feelings of the recipients. Most of the very religious folks have a verse of scripture, concluded with the comfortable assurance that, by the help of the Lord, the White Witch hopes to do them good.

But those who have no particular religious sentiments he furnishes with a charm, of which the following is a literal copy: On one side of a bit of paper, about an inch and a half by one inch; NALGAH. Here follows a picture of what must have been the conjuror’s own creation, as such an object was never seen by mortal eyes in the heavens above, the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. The only object we can compare it to is a something which is a cross between a headless cherub and a spread-eagle. Underneath what might have been intended for angel or bird, there is an egg, on which the creature appears to be brooding. There is another egg at the extremity of one of the outstretched legs of the creature. This picture, which is the most singular part of the charm, can only be represented by the aid of the pencil. The word “TETRAGRAMMATON” is under it. On the reverse: 38

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage JEHOVAH. JAH. ELOHIM. SHADDAY. ADONAY. HAVE MERCY ON A POOR WOMAN. From the worn condition of the charm (which had been in use many years before it came into our hands) it is difficult to make out the writing.

Another amulet, which is commonly given by the Pellar to his patients, to be worn suspended from the neck, is a small bag of earth taken from a man’s grave.

Besides the above-mentioned precious charms, the Pellar gives his neophytes powders, to throw over their children, or cattle, to preserve them against witchcraft, ample directions as to the lucky and unlucky times, and a green salve, which is said to be an excellent healing ointment. I have talked with many who have visited the Pellar every spring, for years running, that they might get their protection renewed. Yet there is no finding out all that takes place at the time of this important pilgrimage, as the directions are given to each individual separately, and all are bound to preserve the greatest secrecy about some portion of the charm, or it will do no good.

Others were supplied with blood stones, milpreves, or snake-stones, and other trumpery, manufactured by the pellar family, to be worn as amulets. The blue-stone rings, in which some fancied they saw the figure of an adder, or when marked with yellow veins the pattern of a snake, were particularly prized, because it was believed that those who wore them were by that means safe from being harmed by any reptile of the serpent tribe, and that man or beast, bit and envenomed, being given some water to drink, wherein this stone had been infused, would perfectly recover of the poison.

The amulets, reliques, and charms supplied by the white witch 39

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways served to tranquillize the diseased fancy as well as the bread pills, coloured waters, and other innocent compounds of more fashionable practitioners, or the holy medals and scapulars of other professors. There are no new notions under the sun; the only difference is the fashion in which they are disguised. …After dinner, the afternoon was spent in telling witch stories. Everyone present had many cases, each within his own experience, to vouch for. They compared the merits of the different conjurors of repute, and all agreed that none could surpass the Pellar of Helston. Not even the “cunning man” of Bodmin nor the “white witch of Exeter” could possess more power to lift a spell or to punish a witch, or to find out who had stolen whatever was missed, and to put out the thief ’s eye.

Another renowned Helston Wise-woman was Granny (Anne) Boswell, 1813 – 1906. A practitioner known to be of Romany blood, she was widely consulted for her skills in magic and foresight.

She entered into the large Boswell Romany family via her marriage to her second husband Ephraim Boswell; son of a Gipsy King. She endured hard, little paid and long working days on Helston area farms alongside other women of her class and community, and was later burdened with the raising of six children; giving birth to them in her late forties.

The magical knowledge gained by her Romany upbringing served her in her later years as she was able to provide a number of charms, traditional to both the Cunning and Romany folk, to those who consulted her for assistance. Notably these included a small curative bag of black spiders to be hung in the bedchamber of the ailing client. She was consulted by girls and young women on matters of love, the lifting of curses, and was skilled in the curing of ringworm in cattle.

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage An amusing incident involving Granny Boswell, often recounted, illustrates perfectly the Cornish tradition of wise-folk having the ability not only to provide cures, but to curse, or ‘blast’ as well. During the 1906 elections, Granny Boswell was drinking herself into great intoxication in a Helston inn, as was her custom, when she walked out into the street to observe what may well have been the very first motor car she had ever laid eyes on; brought into Helston to ferry voters to the poll.

She stood there in the middle of the street fascinated by the polished, throbbing and ribbon-bow bedecked machine. The driver, frustrated by this obstacle, told Granny Boswell to move out of his way in a very harsh manner, blasting at her with the vehicle’s horn. This made Granny Boswell furious, and she began shrieking in the foulest of language at the motorist and informed him that the machine would not even get as far as the other end of the street. She stormed off in a fury, probably for another drink, as the vehicle attempted to continue upon its journey. The thing only managed to get half way down the street before one of the thick steel tension rods broke clean in two leaving it stranded and requiring a horse to tow it away.

Moving west from Helston, deep into the Penwith region, we come to an area with a long and deeply ingrained association with witchcraft. Cornish witch-lore is rich in stories, collected by folklorists such as William Bottrell, about one of West Cornwall’s witches; Betty Trenoweth. It is highly likely that these stories tell of a real figure, as with much of folklore there is no smoke without fire, and as Kelvin Jones explains in his book An Joan the Crone – The History and Craft of the Cornish Witch, ‘nearly all of Bottrell’s characters can be traced to real families in the west of Cornwall just prior to the time he was collecting his tales’.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways It is thought Betty worked at Trove Mill (now Clapper Mill) near Lamorna, grinding corn brought in from surrounding areas. Trove Mill and Betty are associated with the Cornish play ‘Duffy and the Devil’, a ‘Rumplestiltskin’ type story in which Betty features as the leader of a coven of local witches. Featured also is Boleigh Fogou (a mysterious ancient underground chamber of which there are a number of examples in West Cornwall), the ‘Buccaboo’ (Bucca Dhu), synonymous in Cornish lore with the Devil, and an evocative description of a witches’ meeting: “…tearing through brakes of brambles and thorns, we found ourselves in the Grambler Grove. And now,” continued he, after a pull from the flagon, “I know for certain that what old folks say is true how witches meet the Devil there of summer’s nights. In winter they assemble in the Fuggo Hole, we all know; because one may then often hear the devil piping for their dance under our parlour floor that’s right over the inner end of the Fuggo. And now I believe what we took for a hare was a witch that we chased into this haunted wood. Looking through the thickets I spied, on a bare spot, surrounded by old withered oaks, a glimmering flame rising through clouds of smoke. The dogs skulked back and stood around me like things scared. Getting nearer, and looking through an opening, I saw scores of women some old and ugly, others young and passable enow as far as looks go. Most of them were busy gathering withered ferns or dry sticks, to the fire. I noted, too, that other witches, if one might judge by their dress, were constantly arriving flying in over the trees, some mounted on ragworts, brooms, ladles, furze-pikes, or anything they could get astride of. Others came on through the smoke as comfortable as you please, sitting on three-legged stools; and alighted by the fire, with their black cats on their laps. Many came in through the thickets like hares, made a spring through 42

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage the flame, and came out of it as decent lasses as one might see in Buryan Church of a holiday. A good large bonfire soon blazed up; then, by its light, I saw, a little way back sitting under a tree, who should ‘e think? Why no less than old witch Bet, of the Mill. And by her side a strapping dark-faced fellow, that wasn’t bad looking and that one wouldn’t take to be a devil at all but for the company he was with, and the sight of his forked tail that just peeped out from under his coatskirts. Every now and then Old Bet held to his mouth a black leather jack, much like ours, and the Devil seemed to like the liquor by the way he smacked his lips…” “…The witches, locked hand-in-hand, danced madder and faster, pulled each other right through the fire, and they wern’t so much as singed, the bitches. They spun round and round so fast that at last, especially when the Devil joined in, my head got light. I wanted to dance with them and called out as I advanced, ‘Hurra! my merry Devil, and witches all!’ In an instant, quick as lightning, the music stopped, out went the fire, a blast of wind swept away umers (embers) and ashes, a cloud of dust and fire came in my eyes and nearly blinded me.

When I again looked up they had all vanished.”

There are many stories of Betty Trenoweth’s witchcraft and wise-woman ways, one tells of how her powers were gained, and maintained, by her frequent conferences with the Devil. He would meet her, we are told, in the form of a great black bull on the northern side of St Buryan churchyard; an eerie place that, like other West Cornish churchyards, is even today no stranger to the activities of witchcraft.

Whilst undoubtedly there will have been much lost of the wisdom and practices of Cornwall’s past cunning folk, charmers, ‘white witches’ and ‘pellars’, there is also undoubtedly much that has survived and has been preserved.

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways Alongside the likes of William Bottrell and Robert Hunt, whose collected tales and conversations with the ordinary folk of Cornwall in the 19th Century preserved a great body of lore and folk-belief relating to Cornish witchcraft, we are greatly indebted to the work of the witchcraft practitioner, collector and researcher Cecil H. Williamson (1909 – 1999). The founder of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, first on the Isle of Man in the ‘Witches’ Mill’ in 1951, relocating several times before settling in the North Cornish harbour village of Boscastle, in 1960, where the museum remains today. Cecil claimed to have first encountered the world of traditional West Country witch beliefs as a child in the Devon village of North Bovey.

Here he fought to protect an elderly woman, under attack on the village green, from thugs who suspected her of bewitching cattle. This incident sparked a life long interest in the ways of country witches and folk-magicians, not as a thing extinct but as a rare yet living practice.

Cecil’s craft interests were very much in the areas of traditional rural folk-magic, and what he termed the Craft of ‘the wayside witch’. He was not at all fond or approving of Wicca, however he inadvertently played a major role in its development when he introduced Doreen Valiente to Gerald Gardner.

Throughout his collectorship and research of witchcraft, Cecil remained particularly interested in the craft ways of his native West Country. He believed the best way to research was to actively practice his area of study. In addition to encountering witch beliefs through his own clients, it is believed he encountered and learned from some eighty two practicing wise-women. Evidence of his practice being maintained right up to his death exists in the ‘active’ magical and ritual items discovered in his rooms after his passing, and it is clear from these that he pursued the traditional ‘double-ways’ craft of cursing 44

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage and curing. Through his work, Cecil bequeathed a rich corpus of West Country witch ways including tools and working impedimenta of divinatory practice and magical rites of healing, curse lifting, exorcism and blasting.

Cornwall’s rich and extensive array of preserved and surviving fragments of lore and practice relating to the rituals of healing, wort-cunning, procuring of love, luck and wealth, and the lifting and casting of curses, provides a rich and fertile foundation from which the ever living practice of traditional witchcraft and the ‘pellar current’ may flourish and continue as a contemporary observance; for it is a way of life that can never die out entirely. The ingredients necessary for such a continuation remain now as they did in 19th century Cornwall; now, as then, there are those called by virtue of their blood to the pellar way.

Now, as then, there are those living in this mysterious and relatively unchanged rural landscape who fear supernatural harm, or who seek to improve their situation via supernatural means and are thus willing to seek out and consult a practitioner. Now, as then, there is a rich corpus of established Cornish magical lore and practices to inspire and inform the work of the student pellar.

It cannot be claimed that the ways of the contemporary practitioner remain unchanged from those of 19th century and earlier practitioners, for such would be absurd, and to attempt it via unchanging adherence to antiquity does not gain the ‘badge of authenticity’ but results only in empty ‘historical re-enactment’.

Authenticity rests in living practice, which must by its very nature change and evolve with the passage of time.

Honesty and discernment in one’s study and practice, and the procuring of results, are the only requirements for magical authenticity there is.

The claims of some historians that traditional witch beliefs and magical practice in Cornwall had died out 45

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Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways entirely by the 1940s and ’50s are unsurprisingly often contradicted by evidence thrown up by their own research; for the age old beliefs in the power of the curse and of ill-wishing are still very much alive in this remote landscape. There have continued to be folkmagic practitioners tucked away quietly all over Cornwall, not only removing warts but providing charms and preparations for all manner of needs and reversing the power of the ill-wish. It is probably because Cornwall was rapidly becoming more influenced by modern ideas by the 1940s and 50s, causing people to no longer admit openly to such beliefs, for fear of ridicule, that these activities ceased to be recorded in local newspapers.

Farming families in Cornwall today still pay local practitioners to protect their land and livestock from supernatural and mundane harm, and ordinary folk do still consult wise folk to have curses removed. I have even known a Penzance estate agency call in the services of a local ‘wise-woman’ when selling a certain property had become troublesome, whilst in other areas I believe they call in what is known as a ‘house dresser’ or ‘house doctor’. Here, a house not selling might just as well be put down to negative energies, troublesome spirits, or even the ill-wish of a begrudged witch, as it would poor taste in décor or excess clutter. I myself receive, on a regular basis, requests for curse-lifting. This, alongside magic for matters of love, is the most requested magic. What may be said to have changed is the request to divine and uncover the identity of the ill-wisher, a request often put to historical Cornish practitioners. People today, for whatever reason, seem content to just have the curse they are convinced they are suffering from removed and to receive protection from future ill-wishing. This is not always the case though, for such requests do arise on occasion but it must be said they are a rarity. Despite this slight change and the relative 46

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Introduction – Cornwall’s Witch Heritage decrease in clientele, the wise folk of Cornwall have gone nowhere. Slight change and decrease are not by any stretch of the imagination the same thing as extinction.

Neither can they be used to argue any un-authenticity of contemporary practice. This last matter is also true of the presence of ‘off the shelf ’ magical and occult texts available to contemporary practitioners, when one considers that much of the working knowledge of historical Cornish Cunning folk, regarding the details of ritual practice, written charms, planetary virtues and the like, is known to have been learned from the well-known grimoires that were readily available in the 19th century from book dealers by mail order. Being inspired by published material is thus no deviation from tradition, it is simply the case that modern practitioners need to exercise greater discernment given the extraordinarily vast and diverse texts available today. Traditionally inclined practitioners tend anyway to draw from material complimentary to the preserved and established lore of their local craft.

Some have also attempted to organise and ‘pigeonhole’ Cornish magical practitioners into distinct categories, each having their own distinct skills; cunning folk, charmers, white witches, conjurers and pellars – the most powerful of all. In reality however these lines were often blurred and the terms interchangeable; Tamsin Blight, one of Cornwall’s most famous practitioners, was recorded under most of these labels at one time or another. The skills that were offered did differ, sometimes only slightly, from practitioner to practitioner, but it appears not with any real, discernable or strictly adhered to hierarchical structure. It was, and is, a craft of service; employing whatever abilities were possessed by the individual practitioner to provide for need, be it through divination, spirit conjuration, the making of charms and substances, the laying on of hands or the sending forth of the spirit.

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Body, Mind & Spirit / Witchcraft

With November 2018 came ten years since the first publication of Gemma Gary’s first book Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways. This tenth anniversary revised edition begins with a new preface, giving an insight into the backstory of events which informed and inspired this popular title.

Although nestled in the Cornish landscape and its lore, the beliefs and practices described within this book are rooted also in the traditional witchcraft current and an ‘Old Craft’ of multiple British streams. Its magic and charms are comparable also to those found elsewhere in the British Isles and beyond, making this a book adaptable for practitioners in any land.

‘Traditional Witchcraft – A Cornish Book of Ways is a 21st century version of traditional Cornish witchcraft, of the kind recorded by Hunt, Bottrell and others. This is no neo-pagan or modern wiccan manual, but rather a deep drawing up into modern times of some of the ancient practices of lore and magic practiced by the white witches, charmers, conjurers and pellars of the Cornish villages. Their presence was still current when the 18th and 19th century antiquarians and collectors recorded them, and, although the 20th century largely put paid to their activities, nevertheless their lore never completely disappeared, and it continues to provide inspiration for practitioners today. Gemma draws on this knowledge, not only from published material, but also from the experiences and workings of ‘wise women’ and country witches living today.

Topics include the Cunning Path, the Dead and the Underworld (Fairy Faith), the Bucca, Places of Power in the villages and landscape, the Tools used by Cunning Folk (working versions of what can be seen, for example, in the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic), Village Cunning, substances and charms, and Rites of the Year’s Round. This book gathers much material together, some of which has not been seen in print before, and thus provides a sourcebook of magical workings in Cornwall today, which will be an invaluable reference.’

Cheryl Straffon – Meyn Mamvro

$17.99 US ISBN 978-0-7387-6571-6 51799

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