50°41′20″N4°41′31″W / 50.689°N 4.692°W /50.689; -4.692
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| Established | 1951; 74 years ago (1951) |
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| Location | Boscastle,Cornwall |
| Director | Simon Costin |
| Website | http://www.museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/ |
TheMuseum of Witchcraft and Magic, formerly known as theMuseum of Witchcraft, is a museum dedicated to Europeanwitchcraft andmagic located in the village ofBoscastle inCornwall, south-west England. It houses exhibits devoted to folk magic,ceremonial magic,Freemasonry, andWicca, with its collection of such objects having been described as the largest in the world.
The museum was founded by the English folk magicianCecil Williamson in 1951 to display his own personal collection of artefacts. Initially known as the Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft, it was located in the town ofCastletown on theIsle of Man. Williamson was assisted at the museum by the prominent WiccanGerald Gardner, who remained there as "resident witch". After their friendship deteriorated, Gardner purchased it from Williamson in 1954, renaming it the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft. Gardner's Castletown museum remained open until the 1970s, when Gardner's heirMonique Wilson sold its contents to theRipley's company.
In 1954, Williamson opened his own rival back in England, known as the Museum of Witchcraft. Its first location was atWindsor, Berkshire, and the next atBourton-on-the-Water,Gloucestershire; in both cases it faced violent opposition and Williamson felt it necessary to move, establishing the museum in Boscastle in 1960. In 1996 Williamson sold the museum to Graham King, who incorporated the Richel collection of magical regalia from the Netherlands in 2000. The museum was damaged and part of its collection lost during theBoscastle flood of 2004. In 2013 ownership was transferred to Simon Costin and hisMuseum of British Folklore.
The museum is a popular tourist attraction and is held in high esteem by the British occult community. A charity, Friends of the Museum of Witchcraft, has been established to raise funds for the exhibits. The museum also contains a large library on related topics that is accessible to researchers.
After the Second World War, the former film producerCecil Williamson decided to move into the museum business, and—probably influenced by personal interest—decided to open one that would be devoted to the subject ofwitchcraft.[1]Williamson tried to open a museum to hold his collection of witchcraft and occult artifacts inStratford-upon-Avon in 1947, but faced local opposition and had to abandon his plans.[1] He then decided to open it inCastletown on theIsle of Man, an area which had much folklore surroundingfairies and witches, a tourist season, and local laws that were congenial to the establishment of a museum.[1] He had it set up in a dilapidated old mill known locally asthe Witches' Mill which he had purchased in 1948, and, at the advice of his wife, opened an adjacent restaurant, known asthe Witches' Kitchen.[citation needed]
The museum was first named the Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft.[2]The launch of the museum was timed to coincide with the government's repeal of theWitchcraft and Vagrancy Acts in June 1951.[1] In an interview withThe Sunday Pictorial newspaper, Williamson claimed to be friends with at least a dozen witches, and that he had invited a coven from southern England to come and practice their rituals at his museum.[1] The historianRonald Hutton deemed this to "fairly clearly" be a reference to theBricket Wood coven which was based inHertfordshire and run by the WiccanGerald Gardner.[2] In press interviews, Gardner was described as the museum's "resident witch" and performed a magical ritual at the museum's opening ceremony.[2] For Williamson, the press interest served to promote his museum, while for Gardner it gave the opportunity to promote Wicca at a safe distance from his main coven.[2]
Williamson also had a practical interest in magic, and in a 1952 interview with popular magazineIllustrated described himself as a consultant on the subject who could help remove curses from people, akin to an oldcunning man.[2] He acknowledged that he knew many of these spells from reading about them in books.[2] He took an interest in the lateceremonial magicianAleister Crowley and wrote to Crowley's friendGerald Yorke to enquire as to whether he could send him the instructions for any of Crowley's rituals.[2]
However, Gardner fell out with Williamson over what he saw as sensationalist displays. Williamson, in retaliation, removed a photograph of Gardner from the display.[citation needed]Williamson sold the museum to Gardner.[3]
Williamson decided to return to England, and took his collection of witchcraft artefacts with him. In 1954 Gardner bought the Witches' Mill from him, and renamed itThe Museum of Magic and Witchcraft, filling it with his own collection of artefacts. During the 1950s, Gardner discussed moving his museum toLondon with his then friend,Charles Cardell, but decided not to.[4] According to the historianRonald Hutton, this left Gardner with "a secure and congenial base" from which he could promote Wicca by writing such books asWitchcraft Today (1954) andThe Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).[3]Gardner continued to run the museum until his death in 1964, when it was briefly run by his High Priestess Monique Wilson before it was shut down and the collection sold off.Ripley's Entertainment Inc. bought the collection and in 1972 opened the "Museum of Witchcraft and Magic" at Gatlinburg, TN and San Francisco, CA. In 1975, due to pressure from the local church and religious groups, Ripley's changed the name of the museums to the "World of the Unexplained". More attractions and items were added to the present witchcraft collection. In 1985, Ripley's closed both museums due to poor ticket sales. The collection was disbursed to other Ripley's museums. A lot of the witchcraft collection was sent to Ripley's Believe It or Not museum at Blackpool, England.
In his will, Gardner left the museum to his assistant there, with the proviso that if he did not want it then it would go to his initiate Monique Wilson, which is what happened.[5]
On his return to England in 1954, Williamson opened the museum, now known as theMuseum of Witchcraft, inWindsor. Here it stayed open for the tourist season, and was quite successful, but local opinion was still against it, and so Williamson decided to move it again.In 1954 Williamson moved the museum toBourton-on-the-Water inGloucestershire. The museum suffered various persecutions, including signs being painted on walls and dead cats hung from trees, and eventually it was largely damaged in an arson attack.[citation needed]
In 1960 Williamson moved the museum toBoscastle inCornwall.[citation needed] Williamson displayed some artefacts associated with ceremonial magic, but was largely interested in folk magic and the practices of what he called the "wayside witch".[6]
Williamson retired in 1996, selling the museum to Graham King and Liz Crow.[7]A practising Pagan with interests in witchcraft, King owned a business manufacturing specialist cameras inHampshire when he discovered that the museum was for sale in a newspaper article.[7] King and Williamson finalised the purchase at midnight on Halloween 1996.[7] King and Crow reorganised the museum and removed some of the more sensationalist exhibits, such as a partially clothed female mannequin which had been laid on an altar to represent theBlack Mass.[8]King appeared onBBC television series such asA Seaside Parish andAntiques Roadshow.[citation needed] He organised the burial of Joan Wytte, a woman who died inBodmin Jail under accusations of witchcraft in 1813, and whose corpse had been at the museum for many years. She was buried in a local area of woodland in 1998.[9] The museum was damaged duringheavy floods in August 2004,[10] resulting in it being closed for repairs until March 2005.[8]
After King took over, a group known as the Friends of the Museum was established; it holds an annual weekend of lectures.[11] It was subsequently converted into a charity.[11] To commemorate the museum's sixtieth anniversary, in 2011 the Occult Art Company published an anthology entitledThe Museum of Witchcraft: A Magical History. The idea for the work had been provided by the chair of the Friends, Judith Noble, with the volume itself being edited by Kerrian Godwin.[12] It contained contributions from 51 individuals involved in the esoteric and Pagan communities, including prominent figures likeRonald Hutton,Philip Heselton,Patricia Crowther, andMarian Green.[12]Reviewed byPagan studies scholar Ethan Doyle White inThe Pomegranate journal, he welcomed the volume yet described its contents as a "mixed bag, with the articles varying in their quality and relevance to the subject at hand."[12]
On Halloween 2013 King transferred ownership of the museum, its collection and library, to the designer and curatorSimon Costin, who had founded the Museum of British Folklore in 2009.[13] King retained ownership of the museum's building, which was leased to Costin's Museum.[13]Costin informed theCornish Guardian that "The museum will continue to run exactly as it is. It won't change at all."[13]
In keeping with Williamson's original plan, most of the exhibits in the museum feature artefacts related to historical folk magic and thecunning folk.[8] This includes a room which recreates a tradition cunning woman's cottage, termed "Joan's cottage", with a mannequin of a nineteenth century cunning woman, surrounded by various herbs and divination tools.[14] The museum also contains exhibits devoted to thewitch trials in the early modern period, the modern Pagan religion ofWicca, as well as other esoteric practices such asceremonial magic,Freemasonry, andalchemy. There is also a small case on modern religiousSatanism, in which a distinction is drawn between it and modern Pagan witchcraft.[8]
A number of artefacts in the collection were owned by prominent figures in the history of magic and witchcraft; it contains a ritual chalice used by theThelemite magicianAleister Crowley, talismans created by Gerald Gardner, and ritual swords and an altar slab formerly owned by the noted WiccanAlex Sanders.[7] The museum's collection of artefacts continues to grow with new acquisitions.[8] Many contemporary practitioners of witchcraft and magic have bequeathed their working tools to the museum in their wills.[8] According to the anthropologist Helen Cornish, the exhibits in the museum "work to build narratives that illustrate witchcraft over time, and situate it as a significant force in the present".[15]
InThe Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, Rosemary Ellen Guiley described it as the "world's largest collection of paraphernalia and artifacts related to folk magic, witchcraft, Wicca and ritual magic".[16]The museum functions as an information resource centre for media and the public.[8] An independent organisation, the Friends of the Museum of Witchcraft, operates to raise funds through which to purchase further items for the collection.[8] It also acts as a meeting place for Wiccans and other Pagans.[8]
According to Doyle White, the museum has become "something akin to a site of pilgrimage" for British Witches, with a "special and irreplaceable place in the hearts of many in the British occult community."[12]Cornish conducted ethnographic research among the local Witches who had relationships with the museum in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She found that there were mixed views on aspects of the museum. Commenting on the "Joan's cottage" room, she found that some Witches felt that it provided "a marker of historical identification, and illustrates the ways that independent, rural magical workers provide a central focus and source of heritage, while for others it indicates an ongoing problem of romanticized historical invention."[15] Various practitioners interviewed by Cornish were sceptical about the claims that Williamson had made for many of the artefacts which he placed on exhibit, questioning whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant their continued display.[17]
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