Witches Haven

Part Three - Wicca As An OTO Encampment
Allen Greenfield,

The question of intent looms large in the background of this inquiry. If I had to guess, I would venture that Gerald Gardner did, in fact, invent Wicca more or less whole cloth, to be a popularized version of the OTO. Crowley, or his successor Karl Germer, who also knew Dr. Gardner, likely set "old Gerald" on what they intended to be a Thelemic path, aimed at reestablishing at least a basic OTO encampment in England.

Aidan Kelly's research work on all this is most impressive, but at rock bottom I can't help feeling he still wants to salvage something original in Wicca. In a way, there is some justification for this; the Wicca of Gerald Gardner, OTO initiate and advocate of sexual magick produced a folksy, easier version of the OTO, but by the middle nineteen fifties some of his early "followers" not only created a revisionist Wicca with relatively little of the Thelemic original intact, but convinced Gardner to go along with the changes.

It is also possible, but yet unproved, that, upon expelling Kenneth Grant from the OTO in England, Germer, in the early 1950s, summoned Gardner to America to interview him as a candidate for leading the British OTO. Gardner, it is confirmed, came to America, but by then Wicca, and Dr. Gardner had begun to take their own, watered-down course. Today most Wiccans have no idea of their origins.

Let me close this section by quoting two interesting tidbits for your consideration.

First consider Doreen Valiente's observation to me concerning "the Parsons connection". I quote from her letter above mentioned, one of several she was kind enough to send me in 1986 in connection with my research into this matter.

"...I did know about the existence of the O.T.O. Chapter in California at the time of Crowley's death, because I believe his ashes were sent over to them.

He was cremated here in Brighton, you know, much to the scandal of the local authorities, who objected to the `pagan funeral service.'

If you are referring to the group of which Jack Parsons was a member (along with the egregious Mr. L. Ron Hubbard), then there is another curious little point to which I must draw your attention. I have a remarkable little book by Jack Parsons called MAGICK, GNOSTICISM AND THE WITCHCRAFT.

It is unfortunately undated, but Parsons died in 1952. The section on witchcraft is particularly interesting because it looks forward to a revival of witchcraft as the Old Religion...I find this very thought provoking. Did Parsons write this around the time that Crowley was getting together with Gardner and perhaps communicated with the California group to tell them about it?"

We must remember that Ms. Valiente was a close associate of Gardner and is a dedicated and active Wiccan. She, of course, has her own interpretation of these matters.

The OTO recently reprinted the Parsons "witchcraft" essays in Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, a posthumous collection of his writings. It does indeed seem that Gardner and Parsons were both on the same wavelength at about the same time.

The other matter of note is the question of the length of Gardner's association with the OTO and with Crowley personally. My informant, Col. Lawrence, tells me that he has in his possession a cigarette case which once belonged to Aleister Crowley.

Inside is a note in Crowley's hand that says simply: `gift of GBG, 1936, A. Crowley'." (Personal letter, 6 December, 1986)

The inscription could be a mistake; it could mean 1946, the period of the Charter. But, as Ms. Valiente put it in a letter to me of 8th December, 1986:

"If your friend is right, then it would mean that old Gerald actually went through a charade of pretending to Arnold Crowther that Arnold was introducing him to Crowley for the first time - a charade which Crowley for some reason was willing to go along with. Why? I can't see the point of such a pretense; but then occultists sometimes do devious things... "

Crowley may have played out a similar scene with G. I. Gurdjieff; the other enlightened merry prankster of the first half of the twentieth century.

Gnosticism and Wicca, the subjects of Jack Parsons' essays, republished by the OTO and Falcon Press in 1990, are the two most successful expressions to date of Crowley's dream of a popular solar-phallic religion. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Aleister and Gerald may have cooked Wicca up.

If Wicca is the OTO's prodigal daughter in fact, authorized directly by Crowley, how should Wiccans now relate to this? How should Crowley's successors and heirs in the OTO deal with it?

Then too, what are we to make of and infer about all this business of a popular Thelemic-Gnostic religion?

Were Crowley, Parsons, Gardner and others trying to do something of note with regard to actualizing a New Eon here which bears scrutiny? Or is this mere speculation, and of little significance for the Great Work today?

If the Charter Crowley issued Gardner is, indeed, the authority upon which Wicca has been built for half a century, then it is perhaps no coincidence that I acquired that Charter in the same year I was consecrated a Bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church.

Further, it was literally days after my long search for the original of Gardner's BOOK OF SHADOWS ended in success that the Holy Synod of T Michael Bertiaux's Gnostic Church unanimously elected me a Missionary Bishop, on August 29, 1986.

Sometimes, I muse, the Inner Order revoked Wicca's charter in 1986, placing it in my hands. Since I hold it in trust for the OTO, perhaps Wicca has, in symbolic form, returned home at last. It remains for the Wiccans to, literally (since the charter hangs in my temple space), to read the handwriting on the wall.

"Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes its name."
--Charles Fort