Museums and
contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of
modern pagan witchcraft, first publicised Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson’s
Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum
of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his correspondence
suggests that the first formal Wiccan coven might have been created partially
to provide provenance for the museum’s exhibits. Sold to Gardner in 1954, the
museum housed his collections and was the base from which he promoted modern
witchcraft and published Witchcraft Today.
Inherited by his high priestess Monique Wilson after his death in 1964, the
museum continued for almost a decade before Wilson sold the 10,000-piece
collection to Ripley’s Believe it or Not Ltd in 1973. Tamarra and Richard James
of the Wiccan Church of Canada purchased much of Gardner’s collection from
Ripley’s in 1987. Cecil Williamson, meanwhile, had attempted to establish a
new witchcraft museum on the UK mainland at various locations, eventually
settling at Boscastle in Cornwall in 1960. Williamson’s Museum of Witchcraft
was sold to Graham King in 1996; and has been under the direction of Simon
Costin as The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic since 2013.
A number of small
museums today focus on contemporary and historical witchcraft and magic: The
Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, Ohio was founded by
Raymond Buckland, one of the first Gardnerian Wiccans in America. Others
include the Witch History Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; The Hexenmuseum
Schweiz in Gränichen, Switzerland; Strandagaldur, The Museum of Icelandic
Sorcery and Witchcraft; the Museo de las Brujas in Zugarramurdi, Spain; and
HEX! Museum of Witch Hunt in Ribe, Denmark. Temporary exhibitions of objects
belonging to the “mother of modern witchcraft,” Doreen Valiente, were held in
Brighton, UK, in 2016; the Academy of Arcana in Santa Cruz, California, ran for
two years between 2015–2017; and objects loaned from The Museum of Witchcraft
and Magic to The Last Tuesday Society & The Viktor Wynd Museum of
Curiosities in London were displayed in 2018. There are also museums dedicated
to stage magic such as the American Museum of Magic in Michigan; the
International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas; The Magic
Circle Museum in London; and the Musée de la Magie in Paris.
Exhibitions of
objects pertaining to Paganism, witchcraft and magic also feature in large
“universal” museums, galleries and libraries. Occult walking tours of London
include the British Museum; the “Witches and Wicked Bodies” exhibition was
held by the National Galleries of Scotland in association with the British
Museum between 2013–2015; the British Library presented the exhibition “Harry
Potter: A History of Magic” in 2017; which was followed by “Spellbound: Magic,
Ritual and Witchcraft” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2018. In 2019
“Second Sight: Witchcraft, Ritual, Power” was held at the University of
Queensland Art Museum in Australia; and “Waking the Witch” at the Bonington
Gallery at the University of Nottingham. Most recently (2019–2020), the Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery held “Do You Believe in Magic?”
Beyond Wicca,
museums have played important parts in other magical and Pagan revivals. The
late nineteenth and early twentieth-century members of the Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn sought to commune with the collections of large public museums
such as the British Museum and the Louvre. Today, ancient Pagan objects are
often the focus of quiet reverence by contemporary Pagans in museums, although
in early 2020 the Witches of New York conducted a vocal “pop up” ritual to the
goddess Hekate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. British Druids have been
active participants in the controversy over the storage and repatriation of
human remains held in museums; Pagans hold rituals at prehistoric
archaeological sites which can be considered outdoor museums; and go on Goddess
tours to experience sites and museums in locations such as Ireland, Crete,
Malta and Turkey. “Witch City,” Salem, is a tourist/pilgrimage destination
where public witchiness is encouraged; the Witch House is used as a backdrop
for evocative Instagram photos and offerings are left at the Witch Trials
Memorial. In contrast, Salem’s Essex Peabody Museum is often ignored, although
perhaps not for much longer with an exhibition on the Salem Witch Trials
scheduled for September 26, 2020 to April 4, 2021.
The Pomegranate: The International Journal
of Pagan Studies invites submissions of articles (5000–8000 words) for
a special issue on Pagans and Museums, edited by Caroline Tully (caroline.tully@unimelb.edu.au).
How and why do contemporary Pagans engage with museums today?
Possible topics include:
1. The role of
elite museums in the creation of contemporary Paganisms
2. The role of
small museums: e.g., the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic; the Buckland Museum of
Witchcraft; Salem witch museums
3. Pagan
perceptions regarding the agency and enchantment of museum objects
4. Material and
sensory aspects of Pagan experience within museums
5. Pagan use of
museums and preserved historic or archaeological sites for religious purposes:
e.g., the replica Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee
6. Pagans and
Witch Trials Memorials: e.g., Bålberget Memorial, Sweden; Steilneset Memorial,
Norway; Paisley Witches Memorial, Scotland; the Salem Witch Trials Memorial
7. Pagan attempts
to change the narrative in museums, including efforts at removing ancient human
remains from display, for example, the efforts of the Honouring the Ancient
Dead movement in the UK
8. Memorializing
contemporary Pagan history: e.g., the Doreen
Valiente Foundation
Abstracts by Dec. 31 2020. Finished papers by March 31 2021.
For information on the submission process
see: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/POM/about/submissions
Please note that The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies uses
the University of Chicago Press notes-and-bibliography citation style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
*Image from the exhibition, Préhistoire, une énigme modern, at the
Centre Pompidou, 2019.
2 comments:
I would be very interested in hearing more about this:
"Some of his correspondence suggests that the first formal Wiccan coven might have been created partially to provide provenance for the museum’s exhibits."
Hi Jesse,
According to Chas Clifton, editor of The Pomegranate, it’s based on Philip Heselton’s research. In GERALD GARDNER AND THE CAULDRON OF INSPIRATION (2003), Heselton quotes a letter from Gardner to Cecil Williamson, when they are setting up the museum, in which he says in relation to a ritual sword: “I’ve been to several more Theatrical People, but none of them will make the sword, so Ime [sic] bringing 2 swords for you to see, & I think we can fake them up . . . I have written out a lot of the grimoire . . . I think it will look quite imposing when its [sic] stuck up. Binding it is impossible but will fake up something” (341).
He also writes of knowing a dentist who will cast a silver “ritual bell.”
I think that it is safe to say that many of the items in the “witch’s cottage” at the museum were either purchased and re-purposed or created from scratch for the exhibit.
Gardner also suggests creating an Isle of Man Druid Lodge with himself as Founder so that Druidic rituals can be staged at the museum (358–59).
There is more in Heselton’s two-volume WITCHFATHER (2012), where PH quotes letters that, as I read them, show Gardner’s little working group of three morphing into “the Southern Coven of English Witches.” This is all in Vol. 2, chapter 24, “Making a Museum.”
Gardner runs the museum — seasonally, since winter is dead for tourism — for ten years, 1954–1964. All his writing and organizing takes place with some relationship to the museum. I think it a reasonable assumption that the needs of the museum influenced the shape of Wicca and its formalization, if you will. For instance, Gardner and Cecil Williamson at the beginning are talking about holding a “witches jamboree” and inviting practitioners to the Isle of Man (this never happens, as I read it), but again, to do that, you need people willing to self-identify as witches.
So yeah, I would argue that the museum and Wicca shaped each other to some extent. Gardner was always in a hurry, and if he did not have what he needed, he would “fake something up.”
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