There’s a big revival in witchcraft underway with the growth of social media communities like Witchtok and WitchesofInstagram, as well as festivals, markets, and specialist sections in bookstores. Surges of interest in witchcraft have happened over the last hundred years with the 1920s and 1970s being of particular interest. Let’s investigate why witches are back in vogue and what previous revivals looked like.
I’ve just authored a book linking the Knights Templar to witchcraft – arguing that the prosecution of these brave knights by the inquisition back in 1307 was basically the first of the medieval witch trials. Accusations of spitting on crucifixes, worshipped the head of the demon Baphomet, and conducting pornographic initiation rituals all smacks of the witch trials that followed for three hundred years. And the leading Templars were, like so many witches, burned at the stake. The book is titled Downfall of the Templars: Guilty of Diabolic Magic?
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The 1920s witchcraft revival in England
At the end of the First World War, as millions of people in Europe and the United States remained traumatised by four years of bloody conflict, there was a surge of interest in witchcraft. So many families had lost loved ones and felt powerless as armies devastated their homelands. They turned to the supernatural to make sense of their predicament.
One controversial book pushed a theory about witches that divided opinion – with opponents condemning it vociferously. The archaeologist and folklorist Margaret Murray burst on to the scene with her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, arguing that the witch trials from the 15th to the 18th centuries were designed to stamp out a pre-Christian religion that had endured despite the best efforts of the church and the inquisition. Critics, especially in the church, accused Murray of either forcing conclusions from weak evidence or simply making stuff up.
However, her argument – if you take the trouble to read the book – is certainly compelling. England, according to Murray, had lapsed over and over again into “heathenism”. In 1282, a priest had been dragged before his bishop for leading local villagers at Easter in a fertility dance around the phallic figure of a God. In 1579, a man referred to as Father Rosimond was accused of being “Chief of the Windsor witches”. She gives numerous such instances of lingering pagan beliefs.
Murray distinguished between “operative” and “ritual” witchcraft. The former could even be Christian witches casting spells for good. But the latter worshipped Gods banned by Christianity and persisted in England for centuries.
This secret cult of witches worshipped a horned god. Now it’s at this point that Murray goes off the deep end. She claimed that every so often, either the King of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury had to be sacrificed as human representations to this God. Think of it as a kind of occult version of the Christian crucifixion where god must die to be reborn.
This explains, Murray wrote, why the king and archbishop were so often at loggerheads, arguing over who should be ritually killed. In the 11th century the king, William II nicknamed “Rufus” (c.1057-1100), was shot dead with an arrow. Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury was therefore not sacrificed. The tables were turned in the 12th century when it was Archbishop Thomas Becket slain inside his own cathedral and not King Henry II. It’s easy to see how Murray was taken to task over this theory.
1920s revival in the United States
Nevertheless, Murray’s book stoked renewed interest in witchcraft, which jumped the Atlantic. In north America, the witchcraft revival combined the historic fear of witches experienced by Puritans, who had settled in Britain’s American’s colonies during the 17th century, fleeing oppression in England, with native American and immigrant folklore. Then Irish and Italian communities, established in the 19th century, brought their own witch tales from the old world. And to that we must add the beliefs of African slaves shipped to American plantations. Quite a heady occult mix!
In 1921, two women in the United States were being accused of witchcraft by their local communities. In Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, 75-year-old Augustine Tartarcio was accused by Antonio Caprano of being a witch and having cast a spell over him. Caprano was basically a small businessman who was going through a rough commercial patch, which he blamed on the old lady.
This might have been ignored had a neighbour not chimed in with a disturbing claim that her baby had died hours after Tartarcio had paid a visit. Shunned by the entire community, the accused went to the local city alderman for help. He ruled that she was no witch. But the social isolation continued.
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Meanwhile in New York, a 17-year-old – Florence Dazzo – was committed to a ‘reformatory’ after a magistrate ruled that she was “possessed of the peculiar powers of witchery”. A newspaper report from the time stated that a female probation officer had told the court that Dazzo “exercised an evil influence over another young woman” and that she was able to control her victim.
In 1920, a widely syndicated article that appeared in several American newspapers reported that in Bordeaux, France, a physician – Dr Sapounghi – had brought charges against four men who had assaulted him. They admitted in court to giving Sapounghi a “good beating” as he had been practising sorcery. A woman, Marie Mesmin, said:
“When he was in my house, he practised black magic. He mixed the blood of toads and other foul beasts in a cup and forced me to drink it.”
The four men who had attacked the doctor, on the grounds of being a male witch, were a police inspector, an orchestra conductor, a broker, and a bank cashier. Their lawyer told the court that the beating had been “efficacious” and in line with the treatment of witches in Puritan-ruled New England.
Before moving on to the 1970s, I must give an honourable mention to several high profile figures associated with the 1920s revival of witchcraft. Step forward Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), the author who created the detective Sherlock Holmes. His interest in the occult is often attributed to the loss of his brother, son, two nephews, and two brothers-in-law during the First World War. But in fact, he’d been giving speeches on witchcraft back in the 1890s.
Alongside Doyle, we should name check the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), author of The Golden Bough, which was published at the turn of the century but informed witches-related discourse for decades. These figures fuelled the 1920s passion for witchcraft.
The 1970s revival of witchcraft
The 20th century was hugely important for the re-emergence of witchcraft thanks to certain developments. In 1951, The Witchcraft Act – passed in 1735 – was repealed enabling witches to come out into the open. In 1954, Gerald Gardner published a seminal article in Witchcraft Today that defined what we now refer to as “wicca”. In 1962, Raymond Buckland (1934-2017) and Rosemary Buckland established the first modern wiccan coven in the United States. But it’s the 1970s that saw witchcraft bubble to the surface.
Several factors boosted interest in witchcraft: the counter-cultural movement of the late 1960s; the growth of militant feminism; and the decade’s obsession with horror and the occult. It was a craze observed by bemused journalists across the United States, England, France, and Germany. All generations from teenagers to octogenarians could be seen thumbing through magazine racks full of publications about the “dark arts”.
Buckland ran the Museum of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Bay Shore, Long Island. He was interviewed about the movement’s hierarchy and practices. There were three degrees and once the third and highest degree was achieved, a male or female witch could become a priest. They worshipped a male and female deity and in the rituals, everybody was equal by virtue of being naked. Unlike Christian churches, he sneered, where parishioners so often dressed to impress on a Sunday.
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At Halloween, the Bucklands – both British born – would celebrate the transition to the “dark half” of the year. A 1971 article in The New York Times described how there were no silly costumes or apple ducking as the witchy duo preferred no clothes at all: “Mrs. Rosemary Buckland, or Rowen, as she is known in the coven, places a horned crown atop the head of her husband, or Robat, the high priest, allowing him to conjure up the spirits and lead the rituals.”
The museum touched on all those areas beloved of the 1970s alternative scene: astrology, palmistry, graphology, Tarot cards, I Ching sticks, crystal balls, pendulums, ouija boards and dowsing rods. Buckland wasn’t a fan of satanism, which he dubbed a “perverted religion”. He was asked why there was this revival in witchcraft: “There’s a lot of interest but a lot of misconceptions. Everybody seems to be searching. Many people are dissatisfied with organised religion and are looking for an answer in the occult field.”
So, what happened at the Halloween ritual hosted by the Bucklands? The New York Times explained:
“Assuming their witchy sounding names (“Nothing too outlandish, like Beezlebub,” Dr. Buckland says), Skylled, Maverick, Flan, Deirdre and the others disrobe, take a ritual bath and take their places around a specially laid‐out circle decorated with pumpkins, fir cones, clumps of leaves and other autumnal decorations.
By candlelight, and to the strains of Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” the witches ride their broomsticks around the circle in a sort of skipping step, moving clockwise around the circle and picking up the tempo as the music’s pace quickens.”
And where did they get their instructions for this ritual?:
“Rowen takes her instructions from the Book of Shadows, a secret, hand‐written description of the ritual that only a high priestess is allowed to transcribe. Her copy is kept under lock and key in a fireproof box at home. The Book of Shadows in the museum is blank.”
Gundella the Detroit witch
By 1973, covens were forming all over the United States. One of the most high profile voices in this movement – and arguably the loudest – was Detroit-based Gundella the Witch (pictured below). Her real name was Marion Kuclo (1930-1993) and she claimed to come from a family of witches descended from the “Green Witches of Scotland”. Her physical presence defied the usual stereotypes of witches – a point made by one newspaper in terms that were very typical of the 1970s (trigger warning!):
“If you think a witch is a bony old hag with warts and stringy hair who cackles fiendishly and glares at you through piercing eyes, you’re going to be awfully disappointed with Gundella.”
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Some colleges introduced academic courses on witchcraft and below is a group of Delta College, Michigan students staging a mock coven in 1973. That was the year the cult movie The Wicker Man was released, which ends with a gruesome pagan sacrifice of a devout Christian police officer. Other 1970s movies about witchcraft include The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Mark of the Witch (1970), Season of the Witch (1972), and Suspiria (1977). Regarding Suspiria, please skip the 2018 remake and stick with the original. The 1970s knew how to do witchcraft so much better!
