the witch next door

Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked how I first became involved with the Wicca. It’s never happened quite like that before. Perhaps it’s because my pentacle is now all too visible on an area of shirtfront not obscured by the long white beard. (I was called ‘Gandalf’ in the pub last night. It was a friendly greeting. They were a very welcoming little crowd.)

So let’s answer the question. How?

The year was 1974. My professional career had taken me to Australia. On the evening in question I’d gone to visit a friend who lived in one of the older parts of Sydney. Down alongside the working harbour. A terrace of single story houses with rust-coloured corrugated iron roofs. Not uncommon in those pars. We were sitting in the kitchen. The front doorbell rang. It was the man from the house next door. He was expected. He came and joined us. Introduced himself as a witch. And began to talk about the Craft.

Now it happened that, although my headquarters were at the Conservatorium of Music, I’d recently felt the need to study anthropology. I’d been welcomed with open arms by the Faculty at the University. (Anthropologists are like that. Music is part of their remit but they are convinced that special attributes are needed to study music. I’ve never even tried to disturb that illusion.) Studying witchcraft – or, rather, studying books about witchcraft – is an obligatory part of the course in any anthropology department I’ve ever come across.

As I sat listening to our visiting witch, more and more of his words were familiar. They were straight out of Margaret Murray. I’d read all three of her witchcraft books only a few weeks before. But then he went on to other things which were not from Margaret Murray. Some of them I could compare with my experience of Spiritualist séances in my parents’ home. Other parts were quite new to me. Importantly, they all made sense, including his explanation that when the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay on 22 January 1787, there were witches among the convicts on board. The Craft had been handed down from them through the generations and was now flourishing quietly and discretely even as we spoke.

That was not the only time he came to visit. I was hooked right from the start. At this very crucial time of my own life, the teacher had made himself known. We began the practical work.

Looking back at it from what I’ve learned since, I guess there was a good deal of the hereditary still present, plus knowledge and practices with a Gardnerian flavour brought in from contacts with witches from England.

Eventually the witch from the house next door moved away with his Priestess partner. We continued working. Always skyclad. Always standing skyclad out at the back on the nights of the Full Moon. At certain times it seemed very near. Large and softly glowing. Low on the skyline.

We found ourselves alone. Just the two of us. We needed to consolidate and to move on. I found the Craftsman Bookshop in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The book I bought was ‘What Witches Do’ by Stewart Farrar, which had been published in 1971, only a few years before. It’s a book I still use from time to time. Its two hundred or so pages contain so much of the essence of the old witchcraft religion. It was a splendid foundation.

I may have moved on quite a long way since then, but every step along the path has been worth it.

francis cameron

oxford, 30 june 2009