Quick Note: Life Magazine article on Witches from 1964
A kind soul has brought to my attention a download of a 1964 Life Magazine article about modern Witches and Pagans. Providing most of the text for the piece is Eleanor Ray Bone, “Matriarch of British Witchcraft”, and one of Gerald Gardner’s High Priestesses. This being Life Magazine, it also has several nice pictures (though sadly they aren’t in the newly digitized collection).
Besides being a nice snapshot of Wicca in England circa the early 1960s, it also shows how little journalism conerning modern Witchcraft has changed in the course of over 40 years. We’re still debunking myths and talking about how normal and nice we are, while the press continues to look somewhat askance at the “witch-cult”.
We 20th Century witches are happy in our knowledge; we are simple people with simple beliefs. We know that come what may, “another sun will rise tomorrow.” – Ray Bone, Life Magazine, 1964
While Witches and Pagans certainly get a lot of press today, I can’t imagine a major mainstream magazine allowing one of us to write our own profile. I suppose we aren’t “exotic” enough at this point to allow such luxuries.
4 responses so far
I do hope they hadn't dug a pit in the middle of a stone circle for that fire, and were in fact using a portable fire dish.
I don't think they had portable fire dishes in 1964
Are these Bone's related to Gavin Bone by chance?
What a wonderful picture!