{"id":375,"date":"2005-02-05T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-05T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=375"},"modified":"2005-02-05T16:10:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-05T16:10:00","slug":"helen-duncan-accidental-godmother-of-wicca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=375","title":{"rendered":"Helen Duncan, accidental godmother of Wicca"},"content":{"rendered":"

A movement is underway in Britain to clear the name<\/a> of Helen Duncan, a Scottish Spiritualist medium sent to prison during World War II under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.<\/p>\n

She was convicted of faking mediumistic abilities, but as this reviewer says<\/a>, some people thought she was a true medium at times:<\/p>\n

Her partisans, and conspiracy theorists in general, looked back to 1941, when at an earlier s\u00e9ance in Portsmouth Helen had raised the spirit of a young sailor. In life, he had served in HMS Barham. News of his materialisation soon spread among the families in the port. This was a source of dismay to the Admiralty, who had not yet admitted that the warship had gone down.<\/em><\/p>\n

A film is now being made about her life.<\/p>\n

What is the Wiccan connection? After the war, British Spiritualists lobbied Parliament to repeal the 1735 act. Eventually, it was replaced by a milder law. The repeal occurred in 1951–and suddenly here was Gerald Gardner proclaiming the existence of the hither-to unknown Southern Coven of British witches. <\/p>\n

Cynic that I am, I think that Gardner & Friends only felt safe to create<\/em> the coven then, in part to furnish a “back story” to Cecil Williamson and Gardner’s new witchcraft museum on the Isle of Man, which opened that year.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it may be the museum that makes 1951 significant, and that invoking the repeal of the 1735 anti-witchcraft law was merely another of Gardner’s dramatizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A movement is underway in Britain to clear the name of Helen Duncan, a Scottish Spiritualist medium sent to prison during World War II under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. She was convicted of faking mediumistic abilities, but as this reviewer says, some people thought she was a true medium at times: Her partisans, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,6],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-england","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-63","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":793,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=793","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":0},"title":"Helen Duncan’s Family Tries Again for a Pardon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch.Descendants of Helen Duncan, the \"last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":995,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=995","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":1},"title":"Gallimaufry with Beheaded Statues","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 When monotheists turn violent (which is often): Mormon missionaries vandalize Catholic shrine in southern Colorado. Mormon higher-ups ask forgiveness of Blessed Mother. That was a joke. Actually, they apologized to the San Luis, Colo., town board: one quasi-theocracy to another. They also want to build a huge church in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":150,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=150","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":2},"title":"Gerald Gardner in the 1940s\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Gerald Gardner in the 1940s Capall Bann have published Philip Heselton's second volume exploring the origins of contemporary Wicca, Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration. (Am I the only one who thinks that that title seems awfully Harry Potterish?) Capall Bann's distribution is not great outside the UK, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10197","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":3},"title":"“Solitary Pagans,” a New Academic Study","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the mid-1990s, Nancy Mostad, then the acquisitions editor at Llewellyn, told me that they estimated that 70 percent of purchasers of books on Paganism were solitaries.Hence the immense success -- by their standards -- of Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Meanwhile, sociologist of religion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=867","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":4},"title":"Teen Witches and Sociologists","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for Self, a sociological study of young Pagan Witches, will be shipping in a few days from Rutgers University Press.I have heard co-authors Helen Berger and Doug Ezzy give presentations from their research, which is excellent.From the Rutgers University Press catalog:As Helen A.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":586,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=586","url_meta":{"origin":375,"position":5},"title":"1939 and All ThatJason Pitzl-Waters\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"1939 and All ThatJason Pitzl-Waters draws attention to a 2001 interview with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone recently re-published in the online zine The Wiccan-Pagan Times.Janet Farrar, who came to the Craft in the late 1960s, seems to dancing around a more skeptical position as regarding Gerald Gardner's finding a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}