the invisible player

Francis Cameron writes :: this is the text of a talk I have recently given to the Ravens Nest Moot in Chingford and to The Secret Chiefs in London.

Spiritualism : the invisible player in the story of the revival of the pagan witchcraft religion.

‘The invisible player’. It’s a wonderful expression. I wish I’d invented it. But I didn’t. My good friend Ronald Hutton did. It’s there in the preface to his Triumph of the Moon [1999] where he explains how he had set about writing his history of ‘the only religion which England has ever given to the world’. He submits it is very possible he has not covered everything which might have been included and his own suspicion is ‘that the greatest invisible player in the story is spiritualism’.

I offer this essay as an act of homage to Professor Hutton.

So let us take a look at Spiritualism as it is today, where it began, what it was like in Gerald Gardner’s lifetime, and how ‘the invisible player’ unwittingly unlocked the door for the pagan witchcraft religion.

It is very easy to gain at least a nodding acquaintance with Spiritualism. There are Spiritualist churches all over the country. In the City of Oxford, where I live, there are two of them. Their services remind me so much of those I used to frequent while I was still a boy at the Mercers’ School in London. Back in those fading years of the 1930s, I played the harmonium for Sunday services at The Temple of Truth in the front room of a first floor flat on the Harrow Road. We began with a hymn from the Spiritualist hymnbook. The words and the music so often reminiscent of Sankey & Moody’s 19th‑century revivalist meetings. One hymn, which I particularly remember, held out the certain promise of ‘a land which is fairer than day’, a land we would reach ‘in the sweet by and by’. After the hymn there was a prayer and a reading; a second hymn followed by an address; a third hymn; a demonstration of clairvoyance; a final hymn; and a blessing. It’s a pattern which shows its origins in the standard practice of 19th-century Nonconformist chapels – with one very significant exception : the demonstration of clairvoyance

Demonstrations of clairvoyance are probably the most significant part of the public face of Spiritualism. They are the means by which ‘life after death’ is illustrated.
Mediums make contact with ‘the other side’ by a combination of clairvoyance (seeing with the inner eye) and clairaudience (listening with the inner ear to voices from the world of spirit). These are not special gifts. We are all born with them (just think of all those little children with their invisible playmates) but these innate abilities are all too often suppressed by parents and by teachers.
Some Spiritualist churches hold special developing circles where those who are more advanced help and guide the less advanced to rejuvenate these natural facilities.

There may be other events during the week. A visiting medium is sometimes engaged for an evening or an afternoon of psychometry. Each of the sitters brings with them a small object, such as a piece of jewellery they normally wear or an article they frequently use or carry about with them. As they arrive, each sitter places their object on a tray which is later set out in front of the medium who takes up the articles one by one, ‘gives off’ the impressions which result, and makes contact with the relevant sitters. The messages which follow do not necessarily involve the spirits of the departed. They are often more of a personal nature.

I teach psychometry as a first stage in the art of divination. I find nearly everyone is sensitive to its possibilities even at their first attempt. It works like this. Objects we wear or use frequently act as recording devices. When I take a small article into my hand and contact it with the tips of my fingers, it is rather like fine tuning a television. I see one or more images, like a succession of stills from a film. I describe these images. They are a trigger to connection with the owner of the article. More images may follow. Sometimes I receive verbal messages as well. There often are questions and answers. Perplexing situations sorted out. I sometimes speak of possibilities but I do not foretell the future.
The advantage of psychometry for my students is that as soon as they feel the vibrations contained within each object and put into spoken words the impressions that make themselves known, more follow. And there are no books of ready-made interpretations to distract them.

At home my parents held a regular weekly healing circle.

Spiritual healers work in different ways. My own practice involves the use of psychic energy. When I hold out my hands a little way in front of me, with the palms facing each other, I feel an interplay, a connection between them which gradually pushes my hands a little further apart as the energy grows in strength. I place one or both hands on or near the patient, close my eyes and tune in. I focus the psychic energy. During this process I experience an interaction between my own consciousness and support and direction from the other side of life.

During the school holidays I was often at home when a Spiritualist friend of my mother’s came to visit. The two of us would sit for ‘the table’. We set up a card table (one of those lightweight folding contraptions with a green baize top). We sat facing each other across the table with our fingertips lightly in contact with its surface. We relaxed. Mentally prepared ourselves. The table began to rock from side to side. We greeted the spirit friends who had come to visit. We reminded them of the usual code. If we asked a question and the answer was ‘Yes’, the table was to rock once. If the answer was ‘No’, the table was to rock twice. In addition to that, the table should be rocked while we recited the alphabet and the rocking was to stop when we reached the intended letter. This is a rather slow and necessarily rudimentary means of communication but it was possible for spirits to identify themselves and to spell out simple abbreviated messages.

All this is reminiscent of the episodes which first brought Spiritualism to the attention of the outside world.

Let me take you across the Atlantic, back to the last days of March in the year 1848. While their own future home was being built, the Fox family – John and his wife Margaret, their eleven-year-old daughter Kate, and her fourteen-year-old sister Maggie – had taken up a temporary residence among the farming community of Hydesville, in the west of New York State. They shared the one large bedroom in the house. The parents in one bed. The two girls in the other. Then the knockings began. There were rappings on the walls and ceiling, bangings on the floor strong enough for the percussion to be felt as well as heard. They searched the house. There was no obvious physical explanation for the sounds. Back in the bedroom, sleep was impossible. On March 31st the women went to bed early to try to get some rest but the rappings were even more insistent. Young Kate snapped her fingers. The rappings replied. She snapped her fingers again and again. The rappings came back with the same number of sounds. When Kate stopped, the knocking stopped. Then her sister Maggie joined in. She called out ‘Do the same as me,’ and she began to clap her hands, counting as she did ‘One, two three, four.’ With each clap came an immediate response. Maggie was too scared to go on. Her mother, Margaret, chimed in. ‘Count up to ten!’ and immediately there were ten taps. Margaret began to ask questions. If there was a positive answer, there were to be two sounds. If not, there was to be silence. In this way Margaret teased out the information that the sounds were being made by the spirit of a man who had been murdered in that house. His body was buried in the cellar. Now John was sent off to fetch a neighbour. When the two of them came back, the knockings continued. More neighbours were brought in. The phenomena went on. In the days following, an alphabetical communication was established and the ghost identified. As the days went by, more and more people came to the house to witness the ghostly hauntings.
Late in April, the eldest Fox daughter, the thirty-five year old Leah, came from Rochester to see for herself what was going on. She found her parents looking old haggard and drawn from the strain of the past weeks. In a mutually agreed effort to put a stop to the disturbances, they decided to separate the two girls. Leah took young Kate back to Rochester. The first night passed peacefully enough, but the nights after that were dominated by poltergeist activity. Ghostly hands made their presence felt. Chairs and tables were moved about. Doors opened and were slammed shut. Leah moved to a different house. Margaret and Maggie arrived from Hydesville. Now the manifestations continued noisier than ever. Round about midnight there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They came into the room. There was shuffling of feet, whispering and giggling. Then the bed, with Leah in it, was shaken about and lifted up, almost to the ceiling, and let down with a great bang. Invisible hands stroked and patted the women. It was a terrifying ordeal. The disturbances resumed on the following night. Brass candlesticks were thrown about. Ghostly hands slapped the women. Kate fell into a trance and experienced a full replay of the Hydesville murder.
These were the first few weeks of the physical phenomena which came to be called Spiritualism. By the following year, the manifestations had been demonstrated in front of substantial public audiences. Not long after that, other men and women realised their inherent capacity for mediumship. Spiritualism began to acquire its widespread international reputation.

But there was already a rather different mode of communication which involved spirit beings from the Halls of Learning.

A little more than a century before the noisy hauntings at Hydesville, the Stockholm-born scientist Emanuel Swedenborg [1688 to 1772] had been through a series of profoundly moving mystical experiences. In 1747, he resigned from his official scientific position and devoted the rest of his life to writing - in Latin - a substantial number of volumes describing the celestial realms and detailing his conversations with angels and other spirit beings.
In North America, Andrew Jackson Davis [1826 to 1910] freely entered into trance states where he collaborated with the spirit of Emanuel Swedenborg who shared his experiences of those who existed on the various planes of thought beyond the physical. Andrew Jackson Davis was convinced that the time was at hand when men and women in this world would communicate freely with spirits from beyond the grave and it is in this sense that he has been called the forerunner of the Spiritualist movement.

At home in London, I often joined the regular evening séances when my mother sat in circle with a small group of friends. She cleared her mind and moved into deep trance, willingly allowing her physical faculties to be controlled by a spirit guide from one of the higher realms, a guide who spoke of mysteries metaphysics and the wisdom of the ages. Only years later did I realise how closely akin some of these talks were to the mystical Neoplatonism associated with Plotinus in 3rd‑century Alexandria and Rome, teachings that were certainly not part of my mother’s everyday physical awareness. The guide also encouraged us in the practice of soul consciousness; and bade us tread the pathway towards perfection in this life in preparation for our lives to come.
And so, as I sat in the circle, I gradually came to appreciate the delicate balancings of Karma and how I might best prepare myself in this life to be ready for the transition leading to my next sojourn on the earth plane (and I grew to have a some intimation of what that may involve). Now and then, a cross‑reference in this life sparks off distant memories. From time to time I re‑encounter those with whom I have enjoyed intimate relationships when we were both living together in very different times and places. And I recognise that, as I neared the inevitability of this return, I chose to be born to parents who were Christian Spiritualists. They were both psychic. Clairvoyants and healers. My father was an outstanding public speaker and my mother’s work, especially her séances in deep trance, delighted and enlightened those with whom she came into contact.


Now let us turn the page and consider just how it was that Spiritualism became involved with the revival of our pagan witchcraft religion.

We tell of Gerald Brosseau Gardner, the man who presented this religion to the world. He was in all respects the most visible player in our story. His part began in the last decade of the nineteenth century while he was still a young boy who had only just learned to read. He was wintering in Madeira. The nearest books were those left behind in the hotel by other English visitors. Young Gerald became completely absorbed in Florence Marryat’s There Is No Death, which had been published in 1891 when he was some six or seven years old. The book is a compendious, sometimes rather chatty, account of the author’s experiences with a great many Spiritualist mediums both in England and in the USA. She describes a form of mediumship very different from that usually found today in Spiritualist circles. In the late nineteenth century, a veritable heyday of Spiritualism, mediums sat in a state of deep trance while the spirits used ectoplasm, exuded from the medium’s body, to build up a materialised form which walked about, talked to the sitters, even sometimes sat on their laps. The materialised forms could be touched. Kisses were given and received. On occasion two or even three spirit forms were visible at the same time. And all this while, in the dim lighting of the séance room, the medium remained immobile at a perceptible distance from the materialisations.

In the year 1900, when he was sixteen, Gerald Gardner was sent to learn how to manage a tea plantation on the island now called Sri Lanka. After a couple of years he moved on and stayed a total of thirty-six years in the lands of that distant part of the British Empire.
Gardner was rather different from the general run of Englishmen out there in the colonies. Unlike them he made friends with the natives. He observed their customs, became familiar with their myths and legends, and noted how closely their daily lives were interwoven with spirit presences.
He spent some time among the head-hunting Dyaks in Borneo. These people had a very simple view of magic. It was real and it worked! Gardner often assisted with their shamanic ceremonies. The medium was a young girl. Gardner had come to know her family. They went to the shaman’s house where everyone gossiped for a while until the shaman began his chant, a chant which might last for an hour or more. When he judged everything to be ready, the shaman made the girl to lie down on a special mat provided with a special pillow. He went on with his chanting and continually moved his hands in the air above her body from her head right down to her feet. The girl medium went into trance. The pitch of her voice changed dramatically. She was controlled by one or other of the various spirits ‘owned’ by her shaman. These were ancestors of the families present. The spirits answered questions and gave advice. It was all perfectly matter-of-fact. When humans died, their spirits remained part of the community. These shamanic rituals were one of their normal ways of keeping in touch.

1927 saw Gerald Gardner back home in Blundellsands on compassionate leave. His mother had died in 1920. Two of his closest friends had also passed on. His father was seriously ill and not expected to live. When someone mentioned a Spiritualist church not far from Liverpool, Gardner remembered the books of Florence Marryat from his boyhood days and the shamanic séances he had been party to in Borneo. Now would be a good time to find out for himself the truth about Spiritualism, survival after death and reincarnation.
I suspect the meeting he attended was like those I went to in the late 1930s, all very reminiscent of nonconformist worship. Gardner recalls there being about fifty in the congregation and a service with a man who stood up and preached the equivalent of a sermon. The medium was a woman who came forward, sat down facing the audience, and went into trance. She was quite unconvincing. She called out a variety of common Christian names which might have belonged to anyone. When one was acknowledged, the message that followed was banal in the extreme.
Gardner was bitterly disappointed but his interest had been pricked. He decided to investigate further. He heard that the best mediums were to be found in London. Before he set off he took every possible precaution to disguise his true identity and destination. When he reached the Cromwell Road, he chose a hotel at random.
The next morning, as he was walking towards South Kensington, he spotted a nameplate outside one of the houses. He had arrived at The London Spiritualist Alliance. He had never heard of it before. No one could have known he was going there. This would be the place for the test. He went in and paid in advance for three sessions.
The first medium was a straightforward clairvoyant who saw his sitter ‘out East’ then went on to say Uncle John was present. Gardner refuted the existence of an Uncle John. The medium repeated that Uncle John was present. Gardner repeated his denial.
(Pause)
- Now there’s a fair, blue-eyed lady. She says she’s your cousin Anne.
- I never had a cousin Anne.
- She says she wants to speak to you.
- There’s no point. I never had a cousin Anne.
(Another pause)
- Now there’s another lady here. She says she’s your mother.
- What’s her name?
- She can’t give her name.
- Why not? The others could.
- I don’t know. She just can’t.
- All right. What does she want?
- It’s about your father. She’s afraid he might die. They’re all very worried about him.
- I’m worried too. Can she say any more?
- Only that she’s very fond you.
- Then she can tell me her name.
- No, she can’t. She’s not able to do that.
(Silence)
- Is there anything else?
- No, ‘fraid not. The power’s gone.
And Gardner walked out feeling it had all been an irritating waste of time. He certainly would not have returned had he not already booked and paid for two more sessions.
The medium that afternoon was a tall thin lady who demonstrated automatic writing. She sat quietly for a moment. Moved smoothly into a light trance and allowed each spirit in turn to control the actions of her arm and fingers. The first to sign in was the Uncle John who had been dismissed that morning and was equally quickly dismissed in the afternoon. Cousin Anne followed him. Once again she was disowned. She wrote that she had died of cancer four years before but this meant nothing to Gardner who once more sent her on her way. Now the style of the writing changed. His mother came through. She still was not able to give her name but she identified herself by describing the house they had lived in. She named each of Gerald’s brothers, their wives and their children. Cautiously he began to accept that this might, after all, be a genuine communication. His mother went on writing. She was very anxious about his father, as were all those who had known him on earth. And that was that. The medium came out of trance.
Gardner began to look forward to his final session. Back in his hotel, he made careful notes of the day’s proceedings and was inclined on balance to think that perhaps after all he had been gulled by some rather convincing thought‑reading.
The medium the next morning was a rather gaunt women with a sort of occult feeling about her. She sat down, went into trance, and her control came through. The sequence of the previous day reasserted itself. Uncle John did his best to speak and was brusquely sent packing. Cousin Anne followed. She told Gardner she had died of cancer four years previously and that they had known each other very well. When, for the third time, he objected that he never had a Cousin Anne, the medium interrupted. Cousin Anne had been known as ‘G’. At first he was inclined to continue his scepticism but when he asked if it really was ‘G’, she replied with great animation. The words came pouring out. She had been trying so hard for so long to get hold of him. He was to get in touch with a relative of hers, deliver a stern message and get the girl to change her ways before it was too late. His compassionate leave might be pretty dull at the moment but something very nice would happen soon and he wouldn’t get back to work until Christmas. Gardner thought this quite unlikely. His leave was up in two weeks and his tickets were already booked for the return journey. G chided him. “You’ll jolly well see.” She went on to speak of his father and the legal papers he had recently been signing. His mother was very fond of him but names were difficult on the other side. “Then why do you call yourself Anne?” But there was no answer. The medium returned from her trance. The séance was ended.
As Gardner left the building he was convinced he really had been contacted by the spirit of his dear friend G.
That evening a train of events was set in motion which put thoughts of G and the spirit world completely out of his mind. He took his brother’s sister-in-law to a theatre. A stepdaughter came too. As soon as they shook hands, Gardner knew this was the woman he was going to marry. The next day he took the two of them to afternoon tea at Kew. And the day after that he went to the hospital where Donna was a Sister and told her she would be going back to Malaya with him, as his wife. There was no argument, but she did want a church wedding. That presented a problem. Gardner’s leave was nearly over. There was no time for the banns to be called. They needed a special licence. By persistence and great good fortune, Gardner obtained one from the Bishop of London’s office. There was still the Matron at the hospital and she was not in the least inclined to release Donna. Gardner must have switched on the charm. Matron relented. The wedding took place. Matron was there in the church to give her blessing. Gerald received two months’ additional leave. The couple went off to honeymoon on the Isle of Wight and then he took Donna to Blundellsands where they stayed with his brother Bob.
On their second evening there, the conversation turned to The London Spiritualist Alliance. The business about the insistent Uncle John was quickly settled. Bob knew him. Their Uncle John had died when Gerald was much too young to remember him. They looked at the pages of automatic writing. Their mother’s handwriting was clear as day. It was identical to samples Bob took out of his desk. And, yes, even though his father was very ill, he had signed legal documents for their lawyer brother Harold.
Gerald went to Liverpool to deliver G’s message. When he mentioned Anne, the girl broke down and cried. She knew the message must be authentic. G had been christened Anne Gertrude but only with her mother had she called herself Anne.
Final proof of the spirit messages came to Donna and Gerald as their ship steamed into Singapore harbour. It was Christmas Eve, just as his cousin G had predicted.

Gardner retired from the colonial service in 1936 and the couple returned to England where they rented a flat in London. Gerald joined a nudist club, met new and interesting people, and fell in love with one of them. She was a nudist. She was also a practising witch. Gerald Gardner wrote about the two of them in his first novel A Goddess Arrives [1939] which describes a substantial part of a previous life they had long ago shared on the island of Cyprus. In our story of the pagan witchcraft religion, this woman is known as Dafo. At home near the south coast she was Mrs Edith Woodford-Grimes, in private practice as a teacher of music and elocution. In the month that war began, Gerald Gardner was initiated into the coven she belonged to. They were both part of the 1940 anti-invasion workings in the New Forest and when the war was over they set up their own covenstead at Bricket Wood near St Albans.

In the meantime there had been a very significant event which is not usually chronicled in the witchcraft story.

I remember it well. It made national headline news at the time.

In March of 1944 there was a spectacular trial at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court. In the dock was Helen Duncan, a Spiritualist medium, accused of ‘pretending to exercise or use a kind of conjuration that ... spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present ... communicating with living persons ... contrary to Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act 1735’. She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in Holloway prison.
Helen Duncan was a much loved, much respected materialisation medium. She had already attracted official attention when a sailor killed by enemy action had built up and been recognised in one of her séances, much to the distress of the sitter who believed the man was still alive. (The news of the sinking of his ship had been kept secret to avoid giving valuable information to the enemy.) Now, in the last crucial months of preparation for the allied invasion of northern Europe, Helen Duncan was a potential security risk who had to be prevented from making further damaging disclosures. The all-but-obsolete Witchcraft Act of 1735 was brought into action to ensure a custodial sentence, but the real reason for its use was concealed.
Spiritualists were dismayed and angry at this prosecution which seemed to them to be an undeserved attack on their religion. Many in the legal profession had their own misgivings at the use of this antiquated piece of legislation. Objections were raised on both sides but were overtaken by the priorities of war.
It was some years before the matter was raised again. One of the last actions of Clement Attlee’s Labour government was The Fraudulent Mediums Act, 1951, whose first provision repealed the Witchcraft Act 1735. Spiritualists saw this as a long-overdue vindication of their cause.

I doubt if much attention was focussed anywhere else, save for one prominent exception.

Gerald Gardner interpreted the repeal of the 1735 Act as a signal for him to go public, to tell the world about the pagan witchcraft religion. He was already involved with Cecil Williamson’s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castleton on the Isle of Man. Two years earlier he had written a fantasy novel High Magic’s Aid [1949] which combined the ceremonial magic of The Key of Solomon with the witchcraft religion practised by his coven. The rest, as they say, is history. The revival of pagan witchcraft was well under way by the time Gerald Gardner died in 1964 and the centre stage was beginning to be occupied by Alex Sanders (who had once been known for his Spiritualist activities) and his attractive young wife Maxine.

More than thirty years ago, I was introduced to the Craft by an Australian witch whose tradition stretched back for a full two hundred years. His philosophy had been modified by the writings of Margaret Murray and some of his practices are to be found mirrored in Stewart Farrar’s What Witches Do [1971]. Right from the start I noticed the distinctions between Spiritualism and Pagan Witchcraft. I also noticed where they overlapped.
I continue to work in the Craft with that same kind of psychic energy I first experienced as a London schoolboy in a Spiritualist circle. Moving into a trance state is of primary importance, especially when the Goddess and the God are to be manifested in the ritual of the Chalice and the Blade. Pathworkings and constructive visualisations, including spellcraft, are extensions of techniques I absorbed as a young man. I heal and practise divination as I have always done : when called for. Soul consciousness is at the heart of my Pagan interaction with local landscapes and the procession of the seasons. My perception of the Mystical Cabalah is enhanced by the teachings received through my mother’s mediumship. I am aware of some of my past lives and that, as is common to all of us, I am perpetually creating my own future.

The world between the worlds is my beginning and mine end.


© copyright 2007
francis cameron, oxford


Details of Gardner’s life are taken from Gerald Gardner: Witch (J L Bracelin). This and his two novels are published in modern editions by I-H-O Books, Thame, England.
Talking to the Dead (Barbara Weisberg, 2004) has a good account of the early days of Spiritualism.
Malcolm Gaskill writes of Helen Duncan and her trial in Hellish Nell, last of Britain’s witches [2001].
There Is No Death and much information about Florence Marryat are online.