You might find this of interest, it is a newspaper article written in the early 1970's about Norman Gills (he was one of the people that Robert Cochrane was in contact with), it's title was "That old White Magic".
The other day I called on a witch who lives in a tumbledown cottage in the middle of a busy shopping centres.
Unless you knew it was there you'd probably walk straight past the tiny stone cottage, mellowed with age, for it's the last thing you expect to find in this bustling thoroughfare of shops and modern buildings.
It stands behind a tidy, evergreen hedge and rickety wooden gate. Bright red flowers in the downstairs window immediately catch the
eye. You wonder what it looks like inside, but it's impossible to see
in. The plants, reaching for the sunlight, have completely covered the glass.
A notice on the door says, "Knock loudly". You step inside and at once get the feeling that you have walked into another world. The traffic pounding by outside is forgotten, the noise fades, a strange quiet descends. The rooms are small and dim. The furniture is dark and old. And at the end of the low narrow corridor, hung with pictures, you catch a glimpse of a garden beyond. It looks wild and
overgrown.
The casual passer-by may not notice the cottage, but there are many
people who do know it's there, for Norman gets letters from all over
the world. They stand in piles on a table in his 'workroom' at the top of the stairs.
Norman is a witch- though he prefers to be called a member of the Old Religion. He doesn't like the word witch. He thinks it 'has been
misused. The popular belief that witches are worshippers of the devil, lovers of orgies and casters of bad spells have given the craft a bad name he feels.
"It was a word created in the Middle Ages when the two sides - Christendom and witchcraft - were at each other's throats." And in
any case he belongs to the old tradition of witchcraft when all the members were true craftsmen.
He doesn't have a lot of time for "these modern witches," many of whom he feels enter the craft for the wrong reasons. "They are gimmicky people," he says. "They become witches because it's fashionable at the moment or because they think they'll get some kick out it. They have their own methods - dancing in the nude and then seeking publicity to shock as much as they can. And they don't
get the rigid training we had. So how much power have they? A witch has to substantiate his powers with proof."
Norman has been a member of the old religion since he was very young. "Everyone tried to make me a Christian," he says. "But I was always very nervous and scared of it. And there was all that hellfire teaching when I was a child. So when I was about eight years old I got hold of everything I could on the occult and studied by myself."
He began to meet members of the craft - old shepherds and gypsies around the Cotswold's. "I listened, picked up a lot and realised that I had been born with a great number of the gifts."
His ancestors, although none were actually members of the craft, were all crafty people - artists, engravers, woodcarvers. And Norman has always painted - the cottage is full of his canvasses.
In his twenties he joined one or two underground covens but not all the activities "suited" him. Essentially he is a loner, preferring to work on his own. Today he teaches witchcraft. His `workroom,' a back bedroom which overlooks the garden, has a slightly eerie atmosphere. The bookcase is packed tight with literature on myths and magic.
The tables are stacked high with strange looking objects - a witch doctor's staff, a pile of swords, a hazel twig water-diviner, Tarot cards, a real crystal ball, a golden fair- ground ball, a cauldron- "Not much used nowadays because people don't like working outside," – painted candles, faded feathers, pestle and mortars for grinding herbs, stones and fossils used in psychometric and a bed for teaching self hypnosis.
They seem a bizarre contrast to the television set painted landscapes and brightly coloured gnomes that he makes for people's gardens.
He showed me photographs he had taken of fairies "using olden day methods of summoning and photography." Goblin-tike faces peered out of tall grass, but I could only make them out after I had been give a helpful drawing to show me what they should look like.
It`s rather a strange experience talking to a witch about witchcraft. As a total outsider there is so much one doesn't understand and it would take hours of patient teaching and listening to grasp even the
fundamental details. And yet one has so many pre- conceived ideas.
"There's much more to it than dancing, round in a circle and practicing magic" he laughs. We have a completely different set of moral values for a start Women are equal in the craft, if not more than equal. The high priestess always comes first. I suppose you could call it a matriarchal society. Women can make advances and take the lead. If women's lib was to advance 50 years they would be about where we are now!"
Because their beliefs have always caused controversy the crafts that
are so much a part of' their original way of life are usually forgotten. But there is one craft that Norman is an acknowledged authority on – herbs. He's been growing them since he was five years old. His garden which I first thought looked wild and overgrown is in fact a mini-jungle of herbs and flowers of count- less varieties. With great pride he takes you round crushing the leaf or flower to bring out the sweet scents. Soon my hands were full and the smell lingered for hours afterwards.
Some of the herbs were familiar in name though I'd never seen them growing, others I'd never heard of - Virginian Poke Vervain Mullin (witch's candlewick), belladonna, old woman, old man, cotton lavender angelica, hawthorn, mare's tail balm of Gilead, valerian lovage - all growing on top of one another in big bushes or tiny clusters. There are so many that even Norman is sometimes surprised when he stumbles across one he had momentarily forgotten was there.
He can talk for hours about his herbs and their medicinal purposes`"I grow those that are difficult to find wild nowadays," he says, "Most of them I've collected from the countryside. At one time when I was young there were herb farms, but they don't exist now."
He thinks there are still branches of folk medicine that are applicable today."Members of the old religion used herbs because they had no other remedies. Many have been lost, but we still have a lot. I've cured myself of a bad touch of gastroenteritis with cotton lavender And I still like to use iodine - from seaweed - for cuts and bruises: And there's nothing like rose hips from the wild dog rose for indigestion and stomach troubles. I know they give it to children, but it's very good for adults too."
Growing things comes so naturally to Norman that he's never really thought about it. "I think it s more than just green fingers though," he says. "You must have a natural love of growing things."
He's even had a go at evolving new plants. One is a flat-topped delphinium. The other a new kind of apple. Sadly, the latter wasn't accepted. "One board said they didn't consider it superseded existing varieties and another said they didn't t want a dual purpose apple. It was a cooker and an eater you see."
I had to ask the obvious questions. Can he magic warts away? He laughed. "There are lots of methods. At this time of the year you'll find some people rubbing them with the inside of a broad bean and then throwing it up the chimney. But the one I've used quite successfully is to rub the wart with a snail and them impale the snail on a hawthorn. When it rots so does the wart."
And where was his steeple hat. "Oh we don't wear those nowadays,
they're far too much trouble."
Suddenly I was back in the roaring, traffic again.
Originally from 'The Oxford Times'
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