The Rebirth of Witchcraft by Doreen Valiente

Author:Doreen Valiente
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719826931
Publisher: Crowood

8Robert Cochrane, Magister

It was in 1964, not long after Gerald Gardner had died, that I first met the man who used the name of Robert Cochrane and claimed to be an hereditary witch. To tell his story here is personally painful to me, because I regard it as one of the most tragic in the annals of present-day witchcraft. Nevertheless, it has to be told as I knew it, in the interests of truth and because the story of the revival of witchcraft would not be complete without it.

I had been told about this man by some mutual acquaintances in the world of the occult who had already met him at a gathering on Glastonbury Tor held by the Brotherhood of the Essenes. Many people who were not members of that Brotherhood attended this gathering, as it was open to the public. Among them were my friends and Robert Cochrane. They were impressed by his personality and told me that I ought to meet him, knowing of my interest in witchcraft. I agreed and we all foregathered later in London.

Robert Cochrane proved to be a strikingly handsome young man, tall and dark and obviously highly intelligent. He was accompanied by his very attractive wife, and we all got on well together at that happy first meeting.

He told me that his coven practised a kind of witchcraft very different from that of Gerald Gardner and that it had been handed down to him by a member of his family now deceased. He had initiated his wife and a number of other people who now formed his coven. They worked, he said, sometimes in the countryside and sometimes at his home. They observed the Sabbats and the Esbats on the same dates as what he called somewhat contemptuously the ‘Gardnerian’ witches; but they did not follow their practices of ritual nudity and flagellation. Instead, they wore hooded black robes and were consequently known as a ‘robed’ coven. Most of their raising of power was done by dancing in a circle and chanting. If the ritual took place outdoors, the centre of the circle would be occupied by a small bonfire. Indoors, they worked by candlelight. They worshipped the Goddess and the God as the ancient powers of primordial nature, going back into unknown depths of time.

Cochrane impressed me as he had impressed my friends and most of the people who met him. He had that intangible quality which nowadays is known as ‘charisma’. He believed in getting close to nature as few ‘Gardnerian’ witches at that time seemed to do. I entirely agreed with his preference for working outdoors – an idea which Gerald Gardner had never seemed really interested in, probably because of his insistence on ritual nudity, which is seldom a practical proposition in the sort of weather we get in the British Isles. Cochrane told me that they had their own places in the countryside near his home, which they knew of but which they kept strictly quiet about.

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