This torrent represents a w o rk of LOVE All texts so far gathered, as 'well as all future gatherings aim at e xposing interested students to occ u lt infonnation. Future re leases w ill include submissions fro m users like YOU. For some of us, the time has come to mobilize. If yo u h ave an interest in assisting in this process - w e all h ave strengths to b rin g to the tab le - please email occult.digital.mobilizationiGgmail.com Complacency serves the old gods, By the same author .itcbt~ The Grasshopper Boy i{iug of tbt : Zoo Without Bars The World of Alex Sanders JUNE JOHNS With photographs by JACK SMITH PETER DAVIES LONDON © 1969 byJuneJohns <toutents First published .1969 page Glossary viii Introduction I Chapters I. The Young Initiate 10 2. A Magic Childhood IS 3. The Haunted Hill 23 4. Call Down the Spirits 3° 5. Bewitched 36 6. The Devil to Pay 45 illustrations © 1969 byJack Smith 7. Time ofAtonement 53 8. In. Search ofAngels 64 9. The Unwelcome Apprentice 72 10. Relic of the Past 80 II. Witch Wedding 88 12. King ofthe Witches 96 13. Toil and Trouble l°S 14. Betrayal in the Coven II4 An Interview withAlex Sanders 120 Appendices A. The Book of Shadows 13° B. The Witches' Calendar 142 C. Initiation Ceremonies 145 D. The Magic ofMatter 152 Made and printed in Great Britain by Morrison and Gibb Limited; London and Edinburgh 3JIlustrations The illustrations appear between pages 56-57 and 72-73. Alex Sanders with his crystal Maxine blesses her athame Tarot cards The witches' circle . Maxine beside the altar Alex honours the goddess Maxine inside the circle Breathing life into the fith-fath The witches' dance Walking to covenstead Calling down the power The symbolic sex act The witches' altar Passing the pentacle around the circle The witches fall to the ground Fertility rites The black mass 3lntrobuction ATHAMll The witch's black-hilted knife. BOOK OF SHADOWS With book of rules, written in witch's own hand­ writing and copied by successive generations, COVEN Group ofwitches. Since the dawn of history man has believed in miracles. The COVENS'rEAD Meeting place ofa coven first tribesmen to discover the healing power of herbs, or to ESBAT Small meeting, not necessarily ofa full coven. recognize clouds as the forerunners ofrain, were elected magi, ESP Extra-sensory perception or wise men. From this it was but a short step to divining the FAMILIAR A massofenergy or power raisedby the witches and future and to the formulation of spells to increase fertility or sent to work their will. destroy enemies. FITH-FATH Small image made ofclay or plasticine to represent a person on whom a restraint is to be worked. As long ago as the Stone Age the wise man ofthe tribe was THE KEy OF Ancient Hebrew book ofmagic. dressed in an animal skin; he was called 'devil', which meant SOLOMON 'little god', and was worshipped by his followers as the chief MEASURE Length of cord measuring a witch's height at the god's representative. The earliest record of this custom is a time of his initiation. Sometimes held as a 'hostage' palaeolithic painting found in a cave in the Ariege district of by the coven leader. PENTACLE Originally a five-sided figure but now any circular southern France. It depicts a man clad in a stag's skin, with piece of metal inscribed with witch symbols. antlers on his head-the Horned God, a symbol ofbenevolent SABBAT Major meeting of whole coven or several covens. power in primitive times. Another, a man disguised as a TAROT CARD Cards used in predicting the future. jackal, carved on slate, dates back to archaic Egypt. VOODOO Primitive form. of religion practised by negroes of In about 1100 B.C. women and officers of the harem of Haiti and elsewherein the West Indies and America. Rameses III were brought to trial for making wax images of WARLOCK Originally the witch who bound the initiate, but used only by non-witches to describe a male-witch. the Pharaoh to the accompaniment of magic incantations. WICCA Ancient word for witchcraft. These images were fith-faths, still used by witches today WITCH Initi~t:d male or female member ofwitchcraft group. against their enemies. WIZARD Magician, not necessarily a witch. History shows that, as a new religion succeeds the old, the I gods of the latter are invariably condemned as the devils of to distinguish between beneficial and harmful magic, it had the former, and it was thus that the pagan god became the little effect on the treatment of the witches themselves. From Christian devil. ill spite of this, Christianity and witchcraft being a joyous religion, witchcraft was changed overnight co-existed peaceably for centuries. In Britain, for instance, when, in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII put his seal on ~e Bull.t~at London was still heathen six hundred years after the birth of condemned witches as heretics for interfering WIth fertility. Christ, and although Augustine managed to convert the King From now on terror would invade the life ofanyone suspected of Kent to Christianity, the rest of the country preferred ofworking miracles. pagan rites ofwitchcraft. In 1486, two members of the Inquisition, with the full But as the 'establishment' became Christian, the old religion approval of the Pope, wrote an~ ha~ publis~ed the boo~ det~11 fellinto disrepute,and in A.D. 668 the ArchbishopofCanterbury Malleus Male.ficarum, which described in considerable ruled that people who ate and drank in heathen temples, or methods of discovering and punishing witches and ways m wore the heads ofbeasts, should do three years' penance. The which magic could be harmful. The book, which by. 1520 witches continued to use the stag's horns, however. Their had run to fourteen editions, confirmed popular miscon­ only concession was to meet secretly, on moors or in lonely ceptions and hostility towards witchcraft and was to influe~ce forests. These meetings were known as 'sabbats'.* After public opinion in Europe until after the Reformation homage had been paid to the devil, usually present in the guise (Protestants were even greater witch-haters than their of a black goat, or his deputy, the witches held a banquet. predecessors). This was followed by the main feature of the sabbat, the One of the first countries to declare war on Witches had dance, the tempo of which was often raised to a frenzy in been France, where they .were burnt at the stake several preparation for the final climax of sexual orgy. decades before the Papal Bull. At that time whole villages still It is important to note at this point that although we have followed the old religion and even the priests, who were few historical records of 'white' witches at this time and must mostly drawn from the peasant class, were only outwardly include them under the general term 'witches', modem white Christian. Having tried to stamp out witchcraft by persuasion, witches, who are the subject ofthis book, believe that they are the clergy, backed by civil law, overcame it by force-the descended from, and adhere to, a separate tradition embracing same fate as had befallen the ancient religions ofEgypt and of the worship not of Satan, but of the Homed God and the the Aztecs. Earth Mother-symbol of fertility, the oldest goddess known ill England tolerance had prevailed until the arrival of the to man. Certain aspects of white-witch dogma can be traced inquisitors. At first the law forbade them to use torture, but in ancient religions all over the world, in Druidical beliefs, for nevertheless rumour and terror were rife in every village. The instance, and the incantations in Runic have been passed from clergy claimed that all witches had made a pact with the Devil generation to generation. White witchcraft is invariably con­ who, in return, gave them a 'familiar', usually in the form ofa fmed to doing good, restraining evil and promoting fertility. domestic animal, to run errands for them and bewitch their But although some attempt was made in the Middle Ages enemies. At a time when most people believed that the earth was flat, it was not difficult to imagine such evil properties * Often confused, erroneously, with the term 'coven'. The latter is much in any obedient animal, especially ifits owner were unsociable; more recent and refers to the basic organizational grouping of thirteen and lived alone. (Spiteful women are not confmed to the witches-six couples and a leader, or eleven priests, a high priest and high priestess. twentieth century; they abounded in medieval Europe!) 2 3 As 0e activi~ies of the witch-hunters increased, Henry the threat of death from haemorrhage or blood-poisoning to VIII himself decId~d to ~rofit by it. In 1542 a law was passed that ofexecution. not only condemning witches to death but confiscating their Another certain proof was the finding of a spot that was lands and money. All over the country men and women were insensible to pain and that did not bleed when stabbed with a dragged from their homes on the flimsiest evidence. In Kent pin. The Scots developed this method to such a fine art that a mother an? daughter were condemned to death for 'feeding some citiesin England hired experts from across the border to and employmg an evil spirit in the likeness of a black dog'. conduct their witch-hunts for them. Alt~ough, torture wa~ ostensibly still forbidden, witches could In 1649 the town bell-ringer of Newcastle-on-Tyne was be tested.