Abstract
Over the last 20 years British witches have reconsidered historical orthodoxies handed down from earlier generations. Over this time most practitioners have followed the lead of contemporary historians who offer revised empirical accounts that suggest received claims about continuity have no basis in the historical record. In doing so, they contributed to strategic perspectives on the history of a modern movement. Simultaneously, revisionist histories have provided new spaces to trace alternative connections to the past through less rational and more analogic ways. This chapter explores how the “traditional wise-woman”—made tangible through the tale of the "Wayside Witch” at Cornwall’s Museum of Witchcraft—provides a sensory and emotional means to consider the past in the present. It traces how empirical sources are one thread in a complex and dynamic sense of historicity where official histories are continually combined with multiple sources and polyvocal accounts towards creative ways of making meaningful histories.
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Notes
- 1.
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). See also Hutton, “The Status of Witchcraft in the Modern World,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 9, no. 2 (2007): 121–131; Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman, eds., Paganism Today: Wiccans, Druids, the Goddess and Ancient Earth Traditions for the Twenty-First Century (London: Thorsons, 1996); Susan Greenwood, Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Joanne Pearson, ed. Belief Beyond Boundaries: Wicca, Celtic Spirituality and the New Age (Milton Keynes: Ashgate in association with the Open University, 2002); Sabina Magliocco, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Ethan Doyle White, Wicca: History, Belief and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2016).
- 2.
Hutton, Triumph of the Moon, vii.
- 3.
Helen Cornish, “Spelling out History: Transforming Witchcraft Past and Present,” The Pomegranate 11, no. 1 (2009): 14–28. See also Joanne Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic (Oxon: Routledge, 2007).
- 4.
Helen Cornish, “Cunning Histories: Privileging Narratives in the Present,” History and Anthropology 16 (2005): 363–376; Ethan Doyle White, “The Creation of Traditional Witchcraft: Pagans, Luciferians, and the Quest for Esoteric Legitimacy,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 18, no. 2 (2018): 188–216.
- 5.
Jo Pearson, “Demarcating the Field: Paganism, Wicca and Witchcraft,” DISKUS 6 (2000), http://jbasr.com/basr/diskus/diskus1-6/Pearson6.txt; Ethan Doyle White, “The Meaning of ‘Wicca’: A Study in Etymology, History and Pagan Politics,” The Pomegranate 12, no. 2 (2010): 185–207; Ethan Doyle White, “Theoretical, Terminological, and Taxonomic Trouble in the Academic Study of Contemporary Paganism: A Case for Reform,” The Pomegranate 18, no. 1 (2016): 31–59.
- 6.
Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon; Ronald Hutton, “Modern Pagan Witchcraft,” in The History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Volume 6: The Twentieth Century, eds. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (London: The Athlone Press, 1999), 1–79.
- 7.
Doyle White, “Meaning of ‘Wicca’”. In the United States, “British Traditional Witchcraft” (BTW) has often been used to describe those who claim inheritance from British Gardnerian or Alexandrian lineages, although since the 1990s “Traditional Witchcraft” has become increasingly popular there in reference to non-BTW traditions.
- 8.
Helen Cornish, “Recreating Historical Knowledge and Contemporary Witchcraft in Southern England,” PhD Thesis, University of London (2005).
- 9.
Kirsten Hastrup, ed. Other Histories (London: Routledge, 1992); Eric Hirsch and Charles Stewart, “Ethnographies of Historicity: Theme Issue,” History and Anthropology 16, no. 3 (2005): 261–274; Charles Stewart, “Historicity and Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology 45, no. 1 (2016): 79–94.
- 10.
Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, eds., The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990); Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994).
- 11.
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971); Willem de Blécourt, “Witch Doctors, Soothsayers and Priests. On Cunning Folk in European Historiography and Tradition,” Social History 19, no. 3 (1994): 285–303; Hutton, Triumph of the Moon, 84–111; Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History (London: Hambledon, 2003); Jason Semmens, The Witch of the West (Plymouth: Printed for the author, 2004); Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2005). These occult traditions are not static, and shape and reflect historical conditions as domestic and professional habits shifted during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- 12.
Dirk Johannsen, “The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in Nineteenth-Century Norway,” Folklore 129, no. 1 (2018): 39–57.
- 13.
Hutton, Triumph of the Moon, 111; Davies, Cunning-Folk, 193–197. For a specifically Cornish example, see Jason Semmens, “Bucca Redivivus: History, Folklore and the Construction of Ethnic Identity within Modern Pagan Witchcraft in Cornwall,” Cornish Studies 18 (2010): 141–161.
- 14.
For instance, Evan John Jones with Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (Washington: Phoenix, 1990); E. W. Liddell and Michael Howard, The Pickingill Papers (Chieveley, Berkshire: Capall Bann, 1994); Michael Howard, The Witches’ Herbal (Boscastle: Red Thread Books, 2012).
- 15.
An indicative although far from exhaustive list includes: Doreen Valiente, Where Witchcraft Lives (London: Aquarian Press, 1962), Valiente, Natural Magic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975); Marian Green, A Witch Alone: Thirteen Moons to Master Natural Magic (London: Aquarian Press, 1991); Green, Natural Witchcraft: The Timeless Arts and Crafts of the Country Witch (London: Thorsons, 2001); Rae Beth, Hedgewitch: A Guide to Solitary Witchcraft (London: Robert Hale, 1990); Ann Moura, Green Witchcraft: Folk Magic, Fairy Lore and Herb Craft (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1996); Kate West, The Real Witches Handbook: A Complete Introduction to the Craft (London: Thorsons, 2001); Gemma Gary, Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways (Penzance: Troy Books, 2008); Michael Howard, West Country Witches (Hercules, CA: Three Hands Press, 2010).
- 16.
Consider Tylor and Frazer and their evolutionary models of magic, science, and religion: Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom (London: John Murray, 1871); James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1922).
- 17.
Such as: Zsuzsanna Budapest, The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows (Venice, CA: Luna Publications, 1976); Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (New York: Harper Collins, 1979); Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1982). Not all such texts are about religious practice, but identify the witch as a historic mode for the suppression of women. See, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative, 1973); Marianne Hester, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination (London: Routledge, 1992). Social science analyses of these perspectives can be found in Loretta Orion, Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revived (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1995); Kathryn Rountree, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist Ritual-Makers in New Zealand (London: Routledge, 2004). See also one historical analysis: Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (Abingdon: Routledge, 1996).
- 18.
Beth, Hedgewitch, 18.
- 19.
Michael York, “Paganism as Root Religion,” The Pomegranate 6, no. 1 (2004): 11–18.
- 20.
Fiona Candlin, “Keeping Objects Live,” in The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, eds. Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 1–23; Micromuseology: An Analysis of Small Independent Museums (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015). The Museum of Witchcraft is one of the more economically successful of Britain’s small, independent museums.
- 21.
Williamson owned several museums in the West Country, but these have long since been sold and the collections broken up. Williamson tells how his background in MI5 and film provided an ideal set of skills for setting up the museum. For more detailed histories see: Cecil Williamson, “Witchcraft Museums—and What It Means to Own One,” Quest 27 (1976): 4–6; Graham King, “The Museum of Witchcraft,” The Cauldron 101 (2001); Hannah Fox, “Representing the Craft for 50 Years: A Cauldron of Inspiration, Bubbling Away for Half a Century,” Dark Mirror 30 (2002); Ronald Hutton, “Introduction,” in The Museum of Witchcraft: A Magical History, ed. Kerriann Goodwin (Bodmin: The Occult Art Company and The Friends of the Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft, 2011), 9–11; Steve Patterson, Cecil Williamson’s Book of Witchcraft: A Grimoire of the Museum of Witchcraft (Penzance: Troy Books, 2014); Sara Hannant and Simon Costin, Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2016).
- 22.
Under Costin’s directorship the exhibition spaces have been reimagined, although continue to focus on Williamson’s Wayside Witch and relationships between magic and folklore. Currently, the Witch’s Cottage remains at the heart of the museum, but the stone circle built by King has been replaced by a successful temporary exhibition space that runs in conjunction with themed conferences and publications.
- 23.
The term “Wayside Witch” is not used as an analytic taxon by historians, and it does not appear in the documentary record as a vernacular concept. It is likely to have been Cecil Williamson’s personal description for professional occult workers.
- 24.
Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); Sharon Macdonald, “Enchantment and Its Dilemmas: The Museum as a Ritual Site,” in Science, Magic and Religion: The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic, eds. Mary Bouquet and Nuno Porto (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005), 209–227.
- 25.
The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, http://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/ (2015).
- 26.
See, for example, Mieke Bal, “Telling Objects: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting,” in Grasping the World: An Idea of the Museum, eds. Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2004), 123–145.
- 27.
Amy Hale, “Whose Celtic Cornwall? The Ethnic English Meet Celtic Spirituality,” in Celtic Geographies: Old Cultures, New Times, eds. David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones, Neil McInroy, and Christine Milligan (London: Routledge, 2002), 157–170; Amy Hale, “The Land near the Dark Cornish Sea: The Development of Tintagel as a Celtic Pilgrimage Site,” The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic 2 (2004): 206–225; Jesse Harasta, “‘Arise St Piran’: The Cult of the Saints and the Redefining of Cornwall,” Cornish Studies 17, no. 1 (2009): 187–203.
- 28.
Rupert White, The Re-Enchanted Landscape: Earth Mysteries, Paganism and Art in Cornwall 1950–2000 (n.p.: Antenna Publications, 2017); Amy Hale, “The Magic Life of Ithell Colquhoun,” in Pathways in Modern Western Magic, ed. Nevill Drury (Richmond, CA: Concrescent Scholars, 2012), 307–322.
- 29.
These histories of Cornwall are multiple and partial, and sit alongside others that show early conversions to Christianity, enthusiastic Methodist revivals in the nineteenth century, and the keen uptake of industrial mining technologies. See Philip Payton, “Cornwall in Context: The New Cornish Historiography,” Cornish Studies 5 (1997): 180–187. I do not suggest there are easy distinctions between secular and religious history nor between occult versus rationalist worldviews. To the contrary, this demonstrates how various Cornwalls found in the past resonate through meaningful stories identified through multiple sources.
- 30.
Williamson, “Witchcraft Museums—and What It Means to Own One,” Quest 27 (1976): 4–6.
- 31.
Cyrus L. Day, “Knots and Knot Lore,” Western Folklore 9, no. 3 (1950): 229–256. King commissioned a new sign from Cornish artist Vivienne Shanley, who used Boscastle residents as her models, reinforcing local identifications. A few years ago, some sailors who arrived at the museum by boat wanted to buy a knot-spell for their boat, and one was supplied from the museum networks.
- 32.
Cecil Williamson, “Original Text by Cecil Williamson: Museum Explanation of Joan Wytte,” The Museum of Witchcraft (n.d.), http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/displayrecord_mo.
- 33.
Louise Fenton, “A Cabinet of Curses: A Study of People Behind the Poppets Held in the Museum of Witchcraft,” unpublished paper given at ‘Tools of the Trade: A Day of Talks for The Museum of Witchcraft’ (May 2013), held at The Wellington Hotel, Boscastle. Fenton curated a temporary exhibition on curses in the museum during the 2017 season, “Poppets, Pins and Power: The Craft of Cursing”.
- 34.
The Museum of Witchcraft, “Museum Text” (2002).
- 35.
Museum label (2002).
- 36.
Fieldwork, Museum Interview (2002) with a self-identified Traditional Witch of ten years.
- 37.
Steve Patterson, Spells from the Wise Woman’s Cottage (London: Troy Books Publishing, 2016).
- 38.
Helen Cornish, “The Life of the Death of ‘the Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin’: Storytelling around the Museum of Witchcraft,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 22, no. 1 (2013): 79–97. The lack of empirical evidence for the corporeal existence of Joan Wytte is also noted by Semmens, “Bucca Redivivus”.
- 39.
Williamson, “Original Text by Cecil Williamson: Museum Explanation of Joan Wytte”. There is a research folder in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic archive containing Williamson’s notes and some letters from visitors.
- 40.
The sense of dank and musty dungeons invoked by the tale of Joan Wytte is part of the emotional storytelling around her life. However, Bodmin Jail was newly built in 1788 as a light and airy space that exemplified proposals made by prison reformer John Howard. See Bill Johnson, The History of Bodmin Jail (Bodmin: Bodmin Town Museum, 2009).
- 41.
Patterson, Spells from the Wise Woman’s Cottage, 113. Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Archive folder.
- 42.
Cornish, “Life of the Death”.
- 43.
Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “A Live Issue: Ancestors, Pagan Identity and the “Reburial Issue” in Britain,” in Security of Archaeological Heritage, ed. Nick Petrov (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), 1–22; Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “From Respect to Reburial: Negotiating Pagan Interest in Prehistoric Human Remains in Britain, Through the Avebury Consultation,” Public Archaeology 10, no. 1 (2011): 23–45; Gabriel Moshenska, “The Reburial Issue in Britain,” Antiquity 83 (2009): 815–820. See also Emma Restall Orr, “Human Remains: The Acknowledgement of Sanctity,” Respect for Ancient British Human Remains: Philosophy and Practice, Manchester Museum, 17 November 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304043403/http:/www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/documents/respect/human_remains_the_acknowledgement_of_sanctity.pdf.
- 44.
Kelvin I. Jones, Seven Cornish Witches (Penzance: Oakmagic Publications, 1998); Kathy Wallis, Spirit in the Storm: The True Story of Joan Wytte, Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin (Wadebridge, Cornwall: Lyngham House, 2003).
- 45.
Patterson, Spells from the Wise Woman’s Cottage, 114–115.
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Cornish, H. (2019). Other Sides of the Moon: Assembling Histories of Witchcraft. In: Feraro, S., Doyle White, E. (eds) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_4
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