{"id":8830,"date":"2017-10-27T13:47:23","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T19:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8830"},"modified":"2017-10-28T15:38:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T21:38:26","slug":"mystery-deity-in-hitler-hex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8830","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Deity in Hitler Hex"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Chief hexer Ted Caldwell intones an incantation. On the right, in dark shirt and tie, is author William Seabrook. Thomas McAvoy, Time-LIfe.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today the Internet served me “Putting a Hex on Hitler: LIFE Goes to a ‘Black Magic’ Party<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

For background, you have to know that the pictorial weekly news magazine Life<\/em><\/a> had a regular feature called “Life<\/em> Goes to a Party” \u2014 and many of these parties featured big-name musicians \u2014 Time-Life’s music division sold albums of the associated tunes. My parents had a boxed set, divided by decades: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and so on.<\/p>\n

“The occult ceremony climaxes as hexers hammer nails into the heart and throat of the image of Hitler,” LIFE reported.<\/a> “The hexers called on the pagan deity, Istan, to transmit the image’s wounds to the flesh of the living Hitler . . . chanting in unison: ‘We are driving nails and needles into Adolf Hitler’s heart!'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Istan??<\/em><\/p>\n

With reporter and photographer on hand, this ceremony is better attested than the alleged Lammas 1940 ritual by English witches that was supposed to turn back a threatened German invasion.<\/p>\n

The south coast of England was a worried place in the summer of 1940. France had fallen, leading to the Dunkirk evacuation<\/a> (now a major motion picture <\/a>that I have not seen), and also to France and Britain abandoning their assistance to Norway, which Nazi Germany had invaded in April 1940<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even Gerald Gardner had joined the Home Guard, a force of lightly armed volunteers<\/a> prepared to fight and die along the coast when the expected German invasion crossed the Channel.((Conventional military historians suggest that the Germans cancelled their invasion plans because (a) Hitler really wanted to invade the Soviet Union more than the UK and (b) the British Royal Navy was still powerful and capable of disrupting the invasion.))<\/p>\n

Gardner himself is the main source for that story. His museum collaborator, Cecil Williamson, wrote a magazine article on British witchcraft in 1952 that also mentions it, but he had been working with Gardner for a couple of years at that point, and Gardner may have been his principal or only source. Doreen Valiente, who was not there either, said the rite was worked on May Eve 1940, at the two following full Moons, and at Lammas.((My source here is Aidan Kelly’s Crafting the Art of Magic, Book I: A History of Modern Witchcraft, 1939-1964<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.)) Or did the story just grow in the telling?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today the Internet served me “Putting a Hex on Hitler: LIFE Goes to a ‘Black Magic’ Party.” For background, you have to know that the pictorial weekly news magazine Life had a regular feature called “Life Goes to a Party” \u2014 and many of these parties featured big-name musicians \u2014 Time-Life’s music division sold albums […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,95,36,306,29,307],"class_list":["post-8830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-england","tag-journalism","tag-movies","tag-united-states","tag-witchcraft","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2iq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6474,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6474","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":0},"title":"Sampling the Pagan Blogosphere","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Andy Letcher goes to Helston in Cornwall for Flora Day, with flowers, pageantry, and the Furry Dance: Then there is the Furry Dance itself. According to Ronald Hutton, the first mention of any Mayish activities in Helston is in 1600, but the dance is the last surviving Cornish Processional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Cornwall\"","block_context":{"text":"Cornwall","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=cornwall"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6347","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":1},"title":"‘Weird Tales,’ Hex Signs, and Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Joe Laycock examined the mythologies behind True Detective. (I have not seen it, being much the same situation as Jason Pitzl-Waters.) Religion scholar Philip Jenkins has suggested these two sources\u2014contemporary Satanic Panic and the \u201cweird tales\u201d of pulp horror\u2014are connected.\u00a0He suggests that it was the weird tales authors of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10141,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10141","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":2},"title":"A Short Video on Seasonal Guising","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"MARI LWYD from HEX HOUSE on Vimeo. There is a little background info here.","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":430,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=430","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":3},"title":"Vintage clothing patterns and a\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Vintage clothing patterns and a need to be bitchyMy mother at one point in her life was a high-school home-economics teacher. My older sisters, therefore, learned to sew. They had as much choice in the matter as young Joseph Ratzinger had in joining the Hitler Youth. Clothing patterns were part\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9948,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9948","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":4},"title":"The Gods Do Not Vote, So Why Are You Asking Them?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a kid, I read some condensed version of the Iliad for young people. I did not understand the gods. After all, I was raised to be a Christian. In the Bible, YHWH was supposed to take care of his special people, the Jews, although sometimes he expressed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/catland-brett-kavanaugh-witch.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/catland-brett-kavanaugh-witch.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/catland-brett-kavanaugh-witch.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/catland-brett-kavanaugh-witch.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5386,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5386","url_meta":{"origin":8830,"position":5},"title":"When Hitler Spoke Latvian","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A BBC piece examines EVP \u2014\u00a0 Electronic Voice Projection \u2014 or the alleged recording of spirit voices on tape or digital recorders. The simplest explanation is that EVP voices are just stray radio transmissions. Usually they are so faint and masked by static interference that it's hard to make out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ghosts\"","block_context":{"text":"ghosts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ghosts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830","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=8830"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8838,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830\/revisions\/8838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}