Cleveland, the still-beating heart of the Rust Belt, is not a place most people would associate with Witchcraft. The sprawling city, tucked on the cold shores of Lake Erie, is probably more known outside of Ohio for its industrial sector, its somewhat underdelivering football team, and for being the birthplace of Superman.
Still, when I landed there in the closing days of 2021 to visit family, I quickly discovered, hidden away behind the plumes of fire and the busy smokestacks, a town with a vibrant Pagan community. Beside the various groups active in the greater metropolitan area, such as a seemingly quite active Reclaiming group, I was able to visit a number of Witchy stores, all of them teeming with clients.
Yet, if I had to choose the single most remarkable experience I had in Cleveland, it would be, without any hesitation, visiting the Raymond Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick.
Well known in the US as one of the first, if not the first, individuals to bring Wicca to America, Raymond Buckland, who passed away five years ago, was a figure I was only passingly aware of. Until I set foot in Cleveland, he was but one of the many elder figures I had read about in books about Witchcraft and Paganism, so doing a little family excursion to learn about the man, his world, and his collection of occult memorabilia seemed like the right thing to do.
Located on Broadview Road in Cleveland, the Raymond Buckland museum represents a small, but not quite innocuous, presence in the neighborhood. From the get-go, when approaching, one is met with what seems to be a massive Halloween store window display, complete with a grim reaper, pumpkins, bats, skulls, and a gigantic papier-mâché plague doctor. The messaging could hardly be more obvious: whoever crosses this door will be met with all kinds of occult shenanigans.
For the time being, however, and because of a certain virus which shall hereby remain nameless, one cannot just drive to the museum and cross its hallowed threshold. Due to the small size of its locale, the museum is opened by appointment only and tickets must be purchased in advance. Thankfully, our group was able to do just that and we were then able to have the whole museum for ourselves for almost an hour, and what a museum it was! But before I get into details discussing the countless artifacts housed within, I feel like no piece about the museum would be complete without retelling the fascinating story of how it came into being in the first place; while this tale has been touched upon previously on this very website, summarizing it and updating it for the current year won’t harm anyone.
Inside the Raymond Buckland Museum. [Lyonel Perabo]
The story of the museum starts with its founder, Raymond Buckland. Buckland, an Englishman who had emigrated to the United States in the 1960s, became interested in the burgeoning Wiccan movement thanks to Gerald Gardner, with whom he entered into contact with shortly after discovering his writing. Buckland, who was then working for British Airways, was able to take frequent trips over the Atlantic, and thereby started gathering items related to both the historical and contemporary iterations of Witchcraft and the occult.
His findings were first exhibited in his own successive private residences between 1966 and 1979, before being put into storage due to his inability to reconcile a busy professional life with the demands of managing the collection. Besides being publicly displayed for a short time in New Orleans in 1999, the collection remained largely hidden from the world until the middle of the last decade, when it was acquired by Toni Rotonda, a longtime Wiccan who had been initiated by none else than Raymond Buckland many years prior.
Rotonda, who besides her spiritual activities is active in the house restoration business, originally just planned on bringing the collection from Louisiana back to Ohio to reunite it with its erstwhile owner. However, around the time it took place, Buckland, who was turning 80, decided to move with his wife away from cold northern Ohio to California. Rotonda was thus entrusted with the collection instead, which she took care of for a little while with her friend Kat Tigner, who owned a Witchy shop in their hometown of Columbus.
Not much later, Rotonda was contacted by Steven Intermill, a Clevelander and museum professional who expressed his desire to display the collection once more, but this time as a bonafide museum. Together, they managed to get the museum started in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland which opened in early 2017, before, two years later, being moved to its current location.
Despite its rather tumultuous history, the museum I was able to visit made quite an impression on me. As a tourism professional and museum worker with over a decade of experience in the field, I am fairly used to the process of visiting and guiding in museums, galleries, heritage centers, and the like. What makes places like those great, I do believe, is not just the artifacts they house, but the way they are arranged, contextualized, and showcased – the common story they tell in connection with the space they occupy and how the knowledge they generate is communicated. It is very easy to gather a bunch of historically significant items and put them inside display cases, but it is significantly harder to create a historical, intellectual, and aesthetic interplay between them. It is something that takes time, effort, resources, and talent, qualities which were all on display at the Raymond Buckland Museum.
Gerald Gardner’s broom. [Lyonel Perabo]
When entering the premises, visitors enter a large, spacious, and ostentatiously dark room, whose Bordeaux-colored walls are obscured with all manner of artifacts and artworks. Meeting us as we enter is a large white sigil guarding the room, and directly across from it stands a large glass cabinet in which a regal purple cloak is displayed: Raymond Buckland’s very own ritual regalia. In just a few instants, we are taken into a different world, a literal backroom of wonders and mystery, as if we had stumbled into an old dresser to find ourselves in Narnia.
This feeling of discovery is only amped up when our guide, a cheerful and dynamic speaker called Cara, starts introducing us to the collection. Right off the bat, I can tell that she is a real pro. Cara, who also manages an active Youtube channel on the side, manages to cram a whole lot of information into short, easily digestible sentences, something that showcase a skill honed by years of practice.
In a few minutes, our small group is introduced to historical witchcraft, Wicca, and how Raymond Buckland help spread the faith to the new world before being told of the history of his collection and museum. The various sections of the museum, such as the tarot cabinet, the herbalism corner, or the two temporary art exhibitions, are all succinctly yet aptly presented before we get time to wander around on our own.
The Tarot display at the Raymond Buckland Museum. [Lyonel Perabo]
As previously stated, the artifacts, already imposing on their own, are all smartly assembled, creating small chronological and thematic displays that manage to make good use of the relatively small space of the premises. One of the first displays I noticed upon entering the room was, tucked in a corner, a collection of items that once belonged to none other than Gerald Gardner himself. You can see the very pipe he smoked from, his attaché-case, and even, hanging from the ceiling, his broom!
Despite the miscellany of artifacts scattered within the four walls of the museum, almost everything is displayed in an accessible and appreciative way, as if the exhibit had been set up by some sort of interior designer or architect. Almost all of the items are also carefully and clearly labelled, which is something that, unfortunately, is not always the case with all museums.
I also enjoyed the way in which the dynamic between the ritualistic artifacts and the more germane items of pop culture presented in the museum helps create a space where intellectual curiosity and inquisitiveness is rewarded. On one side of the wall, you will see an ancient representation of the Horned God, and on the other side, posters for 1960s low budget occult-themed movies. In between lay a horned helmet used by Raymond Buckland in his ceremonies, just a foot away from headgear that once belonged to Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. There is also a good balance between objects from the heydays of contemporary Paganism, pre-Christian artifacts, and more recent additions to the collection gifted by living practitioners of the Craft. Making connections between artifacts representing various lineages, practices, esthetics and individuals definitely enhances an already grand museum experience.
After beholding artifact after artifact, really sipping in the atmosphere of the place, and assailing Cara with countless, obtuse questions (like why there was a tuft of hair from famous internet cat Li’l Bub exhibited, a fun story I won’t spoil here), we had to leave. Still, on our way out, we took a quick look at the museum gift-shop.
Far from being a simple store counter where one may buy a postcard or two, museum gift-shops serve a crucial task: making sure that a happy visitor may, literally, take something from the museum back home, may it be a brochure, a toy, or some kind of symbolic token. As someone whose principal task back home is to sell souvenirs, I can safely say that the gift-shop of the Raymond Buckland Museum is top notch. There is a good balance between fancy coffee table books, crystals, other ritual paraphernalia, inexpensive booklets and more, making a stop at the museum not just a matter of culture, history, or faith, but also a good spending pit stop for any self-respecting Witch.
Inscription found in the museum’s gift shop. [Lyonel Perabo]
After spending my last American dollars on some neat-looking crystal, it was, alas, time to go. We may only have stayed about an hour in the small, not-unassuming museum, but the experience remains to this day our best memory of our trip to Cleveland. If I were to give up on my tourism career and become a travel writer instead (something I’d do in a heartbeat if I could, not gonna lie), I absolutely would give the Raymond Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick six stars out of five, and recommend it to both experienced Pagans, closeted Witches, and anyone with even a modicum of open-mindedness. This is an experience you really won’t get anywhere else and one that is likely to leave you either intrigued, exhilarated, or both. Don’t miss the chance to visit if you are in the greater Cleveland/ Pittsburgh area; believe me, you won’t regret it.
The Author would also suggest to anyone visiting Cleveland to consider making a visit to the following locales as well: The Greater Cleveland Aquarium, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the West Side Market, Oktober metaphysical shop, Bear Soul Studio Rock Shop, Cloak and Dagger Bar, and the Cilantro Taqueria restaurant.
Correction: This story previously described the Buckland Museum as being located in Broadview Heights, when it is actually located on Broadview Road in Cleveland proper.
THE WILD HUNT ALWAYS WELCOMES GUEST SUBMISSIONS. PLEASE SEND PITCHES TO ERIC@WILDHUNT.ORG.
THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY OUR DIVERSE PANEL OF COLUMNISTS AND GUEST WRITERS REPRESENT THE MANY DIVERGING PERSPECTIVES HELD WITHIN THE GLOBAL PAGAN, HEATHEN AND POLYTHEIST COMMUNITIES, BUT DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE WILD HUNT INC. OR ITS MANAGEMENT.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.