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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Contemporary artists are caught between two cruel poles that simultaneously demand startling originality while declaring “It’s all been done before.” The study of art history is rather like playing with a Russian doll: separating artists and movements contained within the influences of other artists and influences ad nauseam. Most artists and creative schools necessarily build on the masters that came before them, but, occasionally, an artist like the Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch will seem to materialize out of nowhere.

This 1980 documentary attempts to unravel the origins of the mysterious artist and his paintings…

Interpretations of Bosch’s paintings have been varied and extreme: heresy, alchemy, drugs, witchcraft and, the most popular, that he was a member of a secret sect which practised orgies.
Nicholas Baum , who has been fascinated by these haunting paintings for many years, began his investigation in the belief that we would never know their full meaning. After a journey which took him to Holland, Spain. and Portugal, he is convinced that he has found the key…

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Nowadays, when we think of witches we imagine Halloween cartoons with warts on the ends of their big noses or maybe we even have a friend who celebrates the Spring equinox instead of attending Easter mass. 400 years ago the country of Norway killed 91 people found guilty of witchcraft during a century-long purge. The victims were all burned or tortured to death. This week, Norway unveiled a new sculpture to mark the tragedy and to apologize to those who lost their lives. Here’s the word from The Daily Beast…

Right off the crashing waves of the Barents Sea is the remote town of Vardø, known as the “witch capital of Norway.”

Four hundred years ago, Vardø embarked on a crusade to rid itself of witchcraft. For more than a century—between 1593 and 1692—there were more than 140 witch trials in the small village.

At least 91 people, both men and women, were found guilty of sorcery and burned at the stake or tortured to death.

The number may not be as large as elsewhere in Europe, but in northern Norway’s sparsely populated landscape it touched a disproportionately large chunk of the population.

About a third of these trials were specifically targeting Norway’s indigenous Sami population who arose suspicion by practicing traditional healing rituals.

The killings came in spates—one in the 1620s and another in the early 1660s, when 20 of the 30 people were put on trial were killed.

The proceedings were meticulously recorded, giving modern historians insight into the accusations and reasonings that fueled the witch hunt.

“There was an idea in Europe that in the north people might be more inclined to witchcraft and evilness than other places.”
Testimony from the time revealed that witchcraft was believed to be something one consumed—it came in the form of magically tainted milk, bread, or beer.

According to an article by historian Rune Blix Hagen at the Arctic University of Norway, the sudden spate of sorcery accusations came after a particularly brutal Christmas storm that killed 40 fishermen in the early 1600s.

It took three years for legislation that allowed mass prosecution on suspicion of witchcraft, but with that go-ahead, Vardø prosecuted with fervor.

When a woman arrived in the court and described how witches had tied knots and cast spells that caused the wrecks she was swiftly tossed to sea. When she floated, she was dubbed a witch and killed.

That year, in 1621, many more women followed in her ghostly wake after being accused and found guilty of sorcery. Many were burned at the stake, others were tortured to death.

The geographical remoteness may have had been related to the vengeance with which witches were persecuted in northern Norway.

Of course, we no longer fear witchcraft because we all know there’s no such thing as magic, right? But, if these rites and rituals are strictly for show, why have they endured for centuries and continued to be handed down through the ages even at penalty of death?

Here’s a creepy, cool BBC documentary from 1979, looking into the “Power of the Witch…”

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