The Pomegranate on CDROM

of the Witches (1969) and in Stewart Farrar’s Book Review: What Witches Do (1971), Sanders and his wife Maxine were probably the most-photographed A VOICE IN THE FOREST: British witches of the 1960s and 1970s, CONVERSATIONS WITH appearing also in the 1970 Man, Myth and Magic series and elsewhere. He died in 1988 of ALEX SANDERS lung cancer, having mellowed considerably and having taught the Craft to many students who by ‘Jimahl’ regarded him with emotions ranging from Trident Publications, P.O. Box 990591, embarrassment to tolerance to genuine fond- Boston, Mass. 02199. 1999. 200 pages. $15. ness. Stewart and Janet Farrar and others were content to focus on what they believed was his genuine gift for healing. lthough it is written for a narrowly Morwen, who is Jimahl’s high priestess and defined audience, A Voice in the who once edited a Pagan journal called Har- A Forest should interest anyone con- vest, describes Sanders in her introduction to A cerned with issues of mediumship and the Voice in the Forest as the “arrogant showman” of establishment of what are sometimes called the Craft: “His goal was to make [the Craft] magical “contacts” within revived Witchcraft. more accessible, which he certainly did, but Modern practitioners do frequently refer to the detractors were horrified by his pandering to presence of ancestral spirits and deceased the press and his giving away of the Craft Witches who take an interest in their religious secrets.” descendants’ activities: these persons are often As a literary work, A Voice in the Forest is not referred to as The Mighty Dead or as The fully formed. Jimahl’s writing style is some- Hidden Company, for example. Yet, paradoxi- times gushy and overloaded with modifiers: cally, modern Witches seem almost embar- fires are “vigorous,” hands “strong,” and rassed by their traditions’ founders and elders. November landscapes “distinctly” uninviting. Some are too quickly forgotten, such as the sci- Events and persons are only sketchily contex- ence-fiction writer Margaret St. Clair (see The tualized. And like many devotional religious Pomegranate #2). Others find themselves on books, it is written only for insiders—not the trash pile of history because their eccen- merely for Wiccans, but for those who know tricities seem less charming than obsolete: who Alex Sanders was. I suspect that today that Gerald Gardner’s alleged sexual kinks are better would mean fewer than half of North Ameri- remembered than his genuine religious creativ- can practitioners of the Craft. ity. But the book has its strengths as well. The In this case, the embarrassing elder is Alex narrative pace is quick and the description of Sanders, who blazed a streak through the the coven’s necromantic ritual on Hallowe’en British news media in the 1960s. According to 1998—and its unintended consequences for Patricia Crowther, he boasted “that he could one member—is reminiscent of Dion For- make the front page of the Manchester Evening tune’s The Secrets of Dr Taverner, albeit more Chronicle & News any time he liked.” Further- compressed. Most importantly, it raises a ques- more, he attempted briefly to make money by tion that many if not most Wiccan groups performing magical rituals in theatres and on gloss over: the importance of magical “con- nightclub stages. Profiled in June Johns’ King tacts.” CHAS S. CLIFTON 51 As Alan Richardson, author of two books having received “a series of communications on Dion Fortune and her associates in ceremo- from what purported to be the discarnate spirit nial magic, Dancers to the Gods and Priestess, of a traditional [which is to say pre-Gardner- defines them, contacts are “discarnate sources ian] witch, who gave his name as John Brake- of power and intelligence—in short, the so- speare.” What began as a vision on the edge of called Secret Chiefs … entities of high status sleep of a group of dark-clad people grouped who have what is essentially an evolutionary around a stang (staff) stuck in the ground interest in humankind.” The entities favored evolved into a series of impressions, pictures, by ceremonial magicians may be legendary fig- and conversations recorded during meditative ures like Melchizedek, “Lord of the Flame and states, leading to a portrait of a group of also of Mind,” whom Richardson identifies as witches in (possibly) early nineteenth-century one of the guides of what was to become For- Surrey, which Valiente describes in the chapter tune’s Society (later Fraternity) of the Inner “A Voice in the Past?” in her 1989 book The Light, or historical figures, such as John Scott, Rebirth of Witchcraft. Furthermore, she quotes Lord Eldon, chancellor under George III and Brakespeare as saying, “We were used to speak- IV. However, to lose one’s contacts means psy- ing with spirits of the dead, so the Christians chic sterility for the magician: in Richardson’s could not frighten us with tales of hell-fire, phrase, he or she “would be like a light bulb in burning pits, devils with pitchforks, and all the which the electricity has suddenly been shut bugbears they used to terrify poor yokels.” And off,” the filament slowly going to black. she gives two examples of necromantic rituals Alex Sanders, and by extension the “Alexan- performed by his coven. Elsewhere, Valiente drian” tradition of Wicca which sprang from describes contact with the dead as a hallmark him, have often been described as more cere- of “traditional” Craft. monially oriented than the Gardnerian tradi- Similarly, Patricia Crowther, quoted above, tion to which they owed a great deal. (Sanders mentions in her recent autobiography, One hounded Gardnerian leaders for initiation, Witch’s World, that Gerald Gardner “has often despite the story that he fed to June Johns communicated with us from the World of about being initiated by his grandmother as a Spirit.” boy—the eponymous “grandmother story” of At this point, it is tempting to regard com- modern Witchcraft.) By contrast, the late munication with the dead as yet another of the Doreen Valiente, who did a great deal to shape rough edges that has been smoothed off the modern Craft in the 1950s, first working modern Wicca. You will not find it in with Gerald Gardner’s coven and then with Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance, for example, nor Robert Cochrane’s, actively purged much of in the popular introductory works of the late the ceremonial magical tone from the Gard- Scott Cunningham. So it takes an author like nerian rituals as “not really suitable for the Old Jimahl and a tiny publisher like Trident to Craft of the Wise.” Likewise, the Farrars, remind us that communication with discarnate trained by Alex and Maxine Sanders, some- spiritual ancestors remains important to some times used Cabalistic magic but felt that it was modern Witches, even as in Afro-Brazilian reli- “out of context” in many Wiccan rites. gion and many other traditions worldwide. But communicating with dead elders is not Here is an opportunity for further scholarly unknown in modern Witchcraft. Valiente, investigation that has been little taken up. having broken with Gardner and connected with Robert Cochrane’s group, recounted Reviewed by Chas S. Clifton 52 THE POMEGRANATE 11 • WINTER 2000.

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