40,000 Page Views Guest Post: Gerald Gardner Talks to Young Witches

As is my wont, as this blog passes a round number of page views I have sought a guest post to celebrate. It feels painfully ordinary to have a post by a real person, when I have previously had guests posts by fictional characters, but not to fear, this one is dead. This is a transcription by Patricia Crowther of Gerald Gardner talking to young witches towards the end of his life. Gardner is of course a somewhat controversial figure in the modern witchcraft movement. Personally I don't have a problem with him, but then I'm speaking as myself a dirty old man who makes it up himself. For me the most important thing about any witch is whether they can come up with the goods, and Gardner definitely passes my test of living purposefully and magically. In fact his whole writings are redolent for me of someone who is definitely the real thing, not a thing one can say about a lot of modern witchcraft authors! 

'Of course it [witchcraft] isn't a thing that belongs to everybody. Some people have a sense of the old things, a desire for peace, a sense of wonder, and a sense of companionship and good fellowship, and that's what witchcraft gives you.'

On being asked how to work magic:

'…You've got to know exactly what you want. You've got to get it into your mind exactly what you want. It's not a vague thing: 'I want John Jones to get well.' You must know what's the matter with him. What particular part of him you want to treat. You've got to fix that very firmly in your mind. And you've got to get the people who are helping to know what you are working at.

'Then, of course, it's a question of raising your nerve power. Well, there are many ways of raising nerve power. Of course the simplest and possibly the oldest one is dancing round – and, actually, yelling and screaming helps. But, of course, it is a thing that is apt to take your mind off things, and I simply… I have not the breath to dance, so I've got to work in other ways. But there are a number of ways you can work magic. I don't want to go into that because you will be taught, and these are secrets.

'Of course, another way – a very old way of working magic – is the Hindu Yoga thing – that is, a method of intense concentration: fixing your mind on the thing; sitting there. You've got to get yourself into one of these Yoga positions – immobilize yourself. Forget your body, only concentrate on the one thought and work on that - work on that; will and will and will and will – and, of course, they say it works. I don't know whether it does. I never tried it; it's too much like hard work to me.

'But, of course, the thing is to try the form of magic that appeals to you, and find out if it works. I think the Yoga system is too apt to lead to illusions. I don't doubt that people get great pleasure out of it, because the concentration produces the effect of an opium dream. They have wonderful illusions, and they enjoy themselves very greatly. If that's all you want from it, it's a cheap way of doing it. Of course, a lot of my countrymen do the same thing with a couple of bottles of whiskey! Of course, sometimes they have a headache the morning after.'

(cited in Patricia Crowther: One Witch's World. Robert Hale, London, 1998, pp. 23-25)

(Image credit: here)