In the later years of his life, Gardner settled in Castletown on the Isle of Man, where he founded a witchcraft museum. After his death the museum was taken over by Monique Wilson, a Scottish witch who is known as ‘the Lady Olwen’, and her husband Campbell, a former bomber pilot. Monique Wilson also assumed the title of ‘Queen of the Witches’. In a recent interview with the British journalist Colin Cross she explained: ‘It is a title conferred by three or more witch covens. It is supposed to be an honour but really it means that I carry the can when anything goes wrong. I adjudicate on disputes that arise in covens under my jurisdiction. Of course there are many covens which are entirely independent. I used to be the only Witch Queen but a few years ago we crowned one for America, where witchcraft is growing very rapidly.’
Monique Wilson estimated that there were about 2,500 witches in Britain. Others have put the figure much higher, at between 5000 and 10,000. ‘A coven consists of a minimum of two members and a maximum of 13; when it reaches the limit, it subdivides,’ Mrs. Wilson explained. ‘A female witch is always initiated by a man, and a male one by a woman.’
Witches are usually naked for their rituals, but the Wilsons denied that the witchcraft movement is really a cover for sex. ‘I daresay there are one or two so-called covens which operate for sexual reasons,’ said Campbell Wilson. ‘Anyone can read a book and start his own coven with his own rules. But in real witchcraft sex is only a very small part of the whole.’
The Wilsons went on to say that there are a few black witches—those who use their power to do people harm—but in their view such witches were rare. However, sufficient evidence exists to suggest that these darker powers of witchcraft—the power to cast damaging spells and lay curses—are no mere superstition, and that they are still being practised today.
In the encyclopedia Man, Myth and Magic, the photographer Serge Kordiev described how he and his wife became members of a coven. After he had written an article in a Sunday newspaper describing his interest in the occult, he received a telephone call from a man who asked whether he would be interested in joining a witch cult. He said yes. By appointment the Kordievs were picked up in an expensive car and driven to a large old house. After being given drinks at a bar they were told to strip and put on small black satin aprons. They were then taken into a large room with a black floor and red carpets hanging on the walls. Half a dozen hooded figures stood in front of an altar. A naked man, his body gleaming with oil, appeared before the altar. Two black-robed girls stood on either side of him. The Kordievs were ordered to kneel, to swear perpetual homage to Satan, and to sign their oaths in blood. They were then given magical names, and the naked man placed his hand on their genitals, causing ‘a curious tingling sensation’.
After several more meetings the Kordievs began to have second thoughts about the cult. On one occasion a young girl was accused of betraying the group’s secrets. She was made to serve as a human altar while a Black Mass was said over her, after which she was ravished by the Master. When the Kordievs discovered that they still had to go through a ‘confirmation ceremony’ which involved sexual intercourse with the Master and with a High Priestess, they decided to leave the group. Almost immediately their troubles began. One day they returned home late at night to discover an enormous toad sitting on the front doorstep. On another occasion they heard sounds of maniacal laughter and smashing glass coming from Kordiev’s studio. When they investigated they found that the studio had been wrecked. But the doors were still locked, and the windows had apparently been smashed from inside, with all the glass scattered outside on the lawn. There followed many months of bad luck.
In his book Experiences of a Present Day Exorcist, the Reverend Donald Omand gives his opinion that a great deal of ‘black magic’ is the result of a kind of hostile thought-pressure. He is firmly convinced, for example, that when a worker in a factory is ‘sent to Conventry’ (an English term for ignoring a co-worker as punishment) the hostile thought waves from the others may cause actual physical and psychological damage—quite apart from any effects that could be ascribed to the power of suggestion. Readers of Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby will remember the episode in which a circle of black witches cause someone’s death by ‘ill wishing’. It could well be that ‘ill wishing’ and the Reverend Donald Omand’s ‘hostile thought-pressure’ are one and the same phenomenon.
Witchcraft and black magic have achieved an even greater popularity in the United States today than in Britain. The white witches of the United States closely resemble their British counterparts, however, and their activities are largely based on the rituals revived or devised by Gerald Gardner. The two leading white witches of the United States, Sybil Leek and Raymond Buckland, are both of British origin. Sybil Leek claims to trace her witch ancestry back to the 12th century. After her arrival in the United States in 1964, she rapidly became a popular radio and television personality. She now lives in Houston, Texas, where she organizes classes in the occult, broadcasts a nightly radio show, and runs a restaurant called ‘Sybil Leek’s Cauldron’.
Compared with Sybil Leek, Raymond Buckland has a far more reserved approach to his craft, but he has probably done more than any other American witch to give modern witchcraft a serious image. The High Priest of a New York coven, Buckland edits a monthly magazine on witchcraft called Beyond, and has founded his own witchcraft museum on Bay Shore, Long Island. A one-time disciple of Gerald Gardner, Buckland is scornful of those who claim to be ‘King’ or ‘Queen’ of the witches, declaring that the witchcraft movement is far too scattered for such a title to have any meaning. Nevertheless, there have been many attempts to unite the witches of the United States, including the New York-based Witches International Craft Association. This organization is a kind of ‘Witches’ Liberation Movement’.
American witchcraft also has its darker side with an upsurge of interest in the practice of black magic and Satanism. Most of the black magic groups are located in California, and the rise of such evil cults has been linked with the increased use of hallucinogenic drugs such as mescalin and LSD.
America’s most notorious black witch is an ex-circus ringmaster and police photographer, Anton Szandor La Vey. On April 30, 1966 La Vey initiated the ‘First Church of Satan’ on California Street in San Francisco (April 30 is Walpurgis Night, the great feast of the witches’ year). La Vey and his followers openly practice black magic, putting evil curses on their opponents, performing weddings, funerals, and baptisms in the name of Lord Satan, and preaching ‘indulgence instead of abstinence’. The Church of Satan is dedicated to the worship of the Devil and the glorification of carnal pleasures—a far cry from the assurances of Sybil Leek and the Wilsons.
La Vey, known variously as the ‘High Priest of Hell’ and the ‘Black Pope of America’, goes out of his way to look satanic by wearing a pointed black beard, Fu Manchu moustache, and shaven head. He is the author of a work called The Satanic Bible, which contains invocations to Satan in a language called ‘Enochian’ and La Vey’s own system of ‘satanic morality’. States La Vey, ‘Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the feeble, for they shall be blotted out!’
La Vey’s church is expanding, but there are many students of the occult who claim that no one can handle black magic without risk. An event that took place in 1967 seems to support this view. On the evening of June 29 a middle-aged man suddenly collapsed on the floor of his San Francisco apartment. He and his family were all members of La Vey’s church. As his wife and son knelt beside him, trying to revive him, they heard a woman’s voice coming from his lips, saying, ‘I don’t want to die.’
The mother and son immediately recognized the voice as that of actress Jayne Mansfield, a fellow member of La Vey’s congregation. Later they learned that the actress had died in a road accident earlier that very evening. She had been driving with her attorney on a narrow road near San Francisco when a truck hurtled from under a narrow bridge, and crashed into their car. Jayne Mansfi
eld was decapitated, and her attorney, Sam Brody, was also killed.
Newspaper reporters soon unearthed a story of violent conflict between Brody, who was Jayne Mansfield’s lover as well as her attorney, and La Vey. It arose because Jayne Mansfield’s film studio was grooming her as a successor to Marilyn Monroe, and rumours of her membership of the Church of Satan were bad publicity. Brody threatened to start a newspaper campaign that would drive La Vey out of San Francisco, and La Vey retaliated by pronouncing a solemn ritual curse on Brody. He told Brody that he would see him dead within a year, and shortly before Jayne Mansfield’s death he warned her not to share Brody’s car. ‘She was the victim of her own frivolity,’ said La Vey dispassionately after the crash; but there were members of California’s occult underground who declared openly that La Vey’s curse had got out of hand, killing the disciple as well as the unbeliever.
In Britain, it has also become clear that the modern witchcraft cult has its negative side, as cases involving ‘black magic’ and ritual child abuse have made national headlines. Just before midnight on July 10, 1971, two police officers on the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, set off in pursuit of a car that had shot through a red light at high speed. After a chase they caught up with the driver when he abandoned his car in the middle of a field. More police arrived and helped subdue the furiously struggling man. As they bundled him into a police car, one of them noticed something strange about his clothes. Two rows of sharp nails protruded from the shoulders of his jacket. He had another row of nails on his lapels, and wore bands studded with nails on his wrist. At the police station the man was searched. In his pockets police found a wig, a rubber face mask, and a length of pajama cord. It seemed that they had finally caught the ‘Jersey rapist’—a man who had been terrorising the island for more than a decade.
The attacks had begun in 1957 when three women had been assaulted by a man with a knife. In April 1958, a man threw a rope around the neck of a girl, dragged her into a field, and raped her. In October 1958, a girl was dragged from a cottage and raped. For over a year attacks ceased. Then in January 1960, they took a more alarming turn. A 10-year-old girl woke up to find a man in her bedroom. He warned her that if she cried out he would shoot both her parents. The man was wearing a rubber mask. He sexually assaulted the girl in her own bed and left by the window, driving off in her father’s car. One month later the rapist assaulted a 12-year-old boy. For the next eleven years repeated attacks made Jersey an island of terror. In many cases the masked rapist carried a child out into the garden, committed the assault, and took his victim back to the bedroom.
When the police in 1971 captured the man with a mask and a pajama cord in his pocket, they had little doubt that he was the rapist. His name was Edward John Louis Paisnel, and he was in his early 50s.
Questioned about the peculiar attire he was wearing when he was found, Paisnel told the police that he was on his way to some sort of ‘orgy’. He implied that this gathering was connected with black magic, and explained that all the participants were unknown to one another, because they wore masks.
When the police visited Paisnel’s home, they discovered that he slept apart from his wife in his own room. In this room they found an alcove containing what appeared to be a small altar. On the altar stood a china toad and a small chalice. Suspended above these objects was a dagger on a length of cord.
In the same room the police found a cupboard that swung away from the wall on hinges. Behind it was a small room containing a blue track suit and a fawn raincoat with nail-studded lapels. Earlier descriptions of the Jersey rapist had mentioned a blue track suit and fawn raincoat.
Nevertheless, Paisnel continued to protest his innocence. He insisted that he was a member of a black magic group and had no connection with the rapes. Then came the break. The car Paisnel had been driving before his arrest proved to have been stolen. In the glove compartment the police discovered a crucifix made of palm fronds—apparently the property of the car’s owner, The detective in charge of the case threw it on the table in front of Paisnel and asked: ‘Is this yours?’
Paisnel’s face went red. His eyes bulged. Then he began to laugh. ‘No, it’s not mine.’ Then after a pause: ‘My master would laugh very long and very loud at this.’
The detective had no need to ask him the name of his ‘master’. In Paisnel’s room the police had found various books on witchcraft and black magic. Paisnel was speaking of the Devil.
The police made one more interesting find. Among Paisnel’s books was a biography of the 15th-century child-murderer, Gilles de Rais—the man on whom the story of Bluebeard was based. Gilles de Rais had been one of the richest noblemen in Europe, and had fought bravely at the side of Joan of Arc against the English. His extravagance forced him to mortgage many of his estates, and finally he began to practise black magic, hoping that with the aid of the Devil he could discover the secret of turning lead into gold. Some of these black magic rituals require the ‘blood of innocent virgins’, and this may explain how Gilles came to acquire his taste for killing children. When Gilles was arrested—for assaulting a priest in the course of a quarrel—his mansion was searched, and the dismembered remains of more than fifty children were found in a locked tower. Gilles admitted that he had murdered the children after committing sadistic attacks on them. He was burned at the stake in October 1440.
It gradually became clear to the police that Paisnel was obsessed by Gilles de Rais. It even seems likely that he believed himself to be a reincarnation of Gilles. No other members of the ‘black magic group’ were ever discovered. Presumably they existed only in Paisnel’s imagination. Charged with seven sexual assaults, Paisnel was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment.
It seems certain that Paisnel was no armchair student of the occult. He practised black magic, and he believed that he had sold his soul to the Devil. He worshipped his ‘master’ before an altar, and he probably offered up prayers before he set off in search of victims.
The logical view of all this is that he was simply a ‘sex maniac’ who indulged in devil-worship as a kind of imaginative exercise that enabled him to ignore his conscience. (A ‘devotee’ always has that advantage over an unbeliever.) But this chapter should at least have raised some doubts about the logical view. The truth is that our scientific rationalism has blinded us to the truth behind witchcraft. And in order to grasp that truth, we have to begin by recognising that all primitive people take the reality of the ‘spirit world’ for granted. We also have to recognise that circumstantial reports of ghosts can be counted in their thousands, that they date back as far as recorded history, and that to try to dismiss all this as superstition is mere silliness. We may reject the Christian notion of the Devil as an embodiment of evil (because surely evil is merely another name for stupidity?), just as we reject the Manichaean notion that matter itself is evil, while still recognising that the evidence for the existence of ‘spirits’ is very powerful indeed. And the history of spiritualism, like the history of witchcraft, demonstrates that it is not difficult for human beings to establish contact with ‘spirits’, and that some do so easily and naturally.
So it would probably be a mistake to dismiss Paisnel’s devil-worship as sheer self-delusion. The more likely truth is that he was a man whose fantasies had opened him to certain dark forces, and who had become a willing tool of those forces in exchange for the satisfaction of sexual cravings—in short, that he had done what a mediaeval theologian would call ‘sold his soul to the Devil’.
It is also interesting to note that his charmed life of immunity came to an end when he stole a car containing a Christian crucifix . . .
1. Salmon’s version in the book differs in some particulars from his account on Westward Television; I have preferred the television version, which Salmon claims embodies his considered opinion.
11
Possession: Illusion or Reality?
ACCORDING TO Allan Kardec’s Spirits’ Book, people who die sudde
nly, or are unprepared for death by reason of wasted lives, are often unaware that they are dead, and become homeless wanderers on the earth, attracted by human beings of like mind, and sharing their lives and experiences. They are able, to some extent, to influence these like-minded people and to make them do their will through suggestion. Some ‘low spirits’ are activated by malice; others are merely mischievous, and can use energy drawn from human beings to cause physical disturbances—these are known as poltergeists. When Kardec asked: ‘Do spirits influence our thoughts and actions?’, the answer was: ‘Their influence upon [human beings] is greater than you suppose, for it is very often they who direct both.’ Asked about possession, the ‘spirit’ explained that spirits cannot actually take over another person’s body, since that belongs to its owner; but a spirit can assimilate itself to a person who has the same defects and qualities as himself, and may dominate such a person. In short, such spirits could be described as ‘mind parasites’. (According to Kardec’s view, when people indulge in sexual fantasy, they may be providing a kind of pornographic film-show for some homeless spirit, which will then try to influence them to providing more of the same kind of entertainment by putting sexual thoughts into their heads.)
The classic modern book on the subject—Possession, Demoniacal and Other (1921)—is by a Tübingen professor, T.K. Oesterreich, and it takes, as one might expect of a respectable academic, a totally sceptical view: Oesterreich dismisses the ‘spirit’ explanation, insisting that possession is always a case of hysteria or mental illness. He will not even accept the hypothesis of multiple personality, since he cannot believe that the human personality can ‘split’.