Getting down to the last few days before we celebrate Halloween, here’s a documentary about the modern witch who brought us the most well-known system of modern witchcraft: Gardnerian Wicca, which was founded in the 1950′s by Gerald Gardner. Here’s Garner’s story from the Wiki…

Born into an upper-middle-class family in Blundellsands, Lancashire, Gardner spent much of his childhood abroad in Madeira. In 1900, he moved to colonial Ceylon, and then in 1911 to Malaya, where he worked as a civil servant, independently developing an interest in the native peoples and writing papers and a book about their magical practices. After his retirement in 1936, he travelled to Cyprus, penning the novel A Goddess Arrives before returning to England. Settling down near the New Forest, he joined an occult group, the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, through which he claimed to have encountered the New Forest coven into which he was initiated in 1939. Believing the coven to be a survival of the pre-Christian Witch-Cult discussed in the works of Margaret Murray, he decided to revive the faith, supplementing the coven’s rituals with ideas borrowed from Freemasonry, ceremonial magic and the writings of Aleister Crowley to form the Gardnerian tradition of Wicca.

Moving to London in 1945, following the repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1736 he became intent on propagating this religion, attracting media attention and writing about it in High Magic’s Aid (1949), Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). Founding a Wiccan group known as the Bricket Wood coven, he introduced a string of High Priestesses into the religion, including Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, through which the Gardnerian community spread throughout Britain and subsequently into Australia and the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Involved for a time with Cecil Williamson, Gardner also became director of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, which he ran until his death.

Gardner is internationally recognised as the “Father of Wicca” among the Pagan and occult communities. His claims regarding the New Forest coven have been widely scrutinised, with Gardner being the subject of investigation for historians and biographers such as Aidan Kelly, Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton.

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Chaos magic is the emergent discipline of the occult revival of the 21st century, and chaos magic pioneer Austin Osman Spare is its spotlighted personality. Spare died in mostly-anonymous squalor in 1956, but in this new era his cult of personality is second only to Crowley, and his magical concepts and haunted art continue to inspire long since his death. One of the first signs that Spare and his work had transitioned to legendary status was the release of the song “Austin Osman Spare” by Bulldog Breed in 1969. Here’s the word from Beyond the Calico Wall…

Occult psychedelia. Too bad they misprinted his name Austin Osmanspare on the record. Not to be confused with an Oi!/RAC band who coincidentally have an album called “Made In England” as well.

Here’s the tune…

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.