Tag: witchcraft

“Heretics” is now “Alchemists of Time”

Throughout its development my latest novel has been called Heretics. I had the title before I started writing because one of the central ideas was that the Victorian characters were all heretics in one way or another, non-believers in a Christian God in a supposedly pious time. Equally the characters in 1959 were all unconventional, thinking and acting differently to the rest of their contemporaries. In my own mind the book is still called Heretics but when it came to publishing I had to ask if it was a meaningful title. It sounded too much like a historical non-fiction and gave no flavour of genre or content.

After much discussion with my wife we eventually settled on Alchemists of Time, a title which had the virtue of including two major themes of the book – alchemy and time travel. It was my idea to have a strapline “A novel of the occult.” This strapline together with the title covered a lot of the bases and I think will appeal to the audience I am trying to attract. After all it’s difficult when your novel is a historical time-travel fantasy occult social history novel spanning a hundred years. It’s hard to classify and to market with all these aspects but Alchemists of Time and A novel of the Occult are the nearest I can get.

It’s worth saying something about the cover design for which I am also responsible. I wanted it to be eye-catching and give a flavour of the story. The final design is made up of three images licensed from Getty Images and one image from my personal collection of old photographs. I blended the woman’s face on the front of the book with a backdrop of clouds. In the original photo the woman has blue eyes but I changed them to black using Photoshop. On the back cover I blended more clouds with  a drawing of esoteric circles and overlaid a photograph of four Victorian people who bear a similarity to some of the characters in the book. In fact their clothing isn’t quite right for the time period but it does the job.

So, Heretics is now Alchemists of Time, a novel of the occult which should not be read late at night or when you are alone!

Witchcraft in Britain Part 2

MandA

I admit it. I’m getting distracted. Eventually I will get around to writing about Gardnerian witchcraft and the history of witchcraft but I also have these rather wonderful books on Alex and Maxine Sanders which deserve some comment. Between them they founded a school of Wicca known as Alexandrian Wicca. Alex died in 1988. As far as I know Maxine is still alive though her website doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2004.

You can read about Alex and Maxine via their wikipedia entries.

The reason I mention them here is because there was a definite tendency to link witchcraft with satanism in the 1960s. Indeed Alex Sanders said that he followed the “left-hand path” for some time early in his career. The press also liked to sensationalise stories about witchcraft and satanists and were happiest when they could find salacious photographs to illustrate their exposes. Even these biographies feature several photographs of naked participants in various ceremonies and, as you can see, “Maxine, The Witch Queen” quotes the News of the World on its cover.

Just like “Devil Worship in Britain” these books also feature noteworthy blurbs. For “Maxine”, part of the blurb reads “Maxine Sanders….. has been threatened with death for daring to tell her story. But she will not be silenced!” For “King of the Witches” the blurb tells us “A master of the occult reveals the forbidden secrets of sorcery, witchcraft and black magic.”

It’s only fair to warn you that if you continue to read these posts your own life may be in danger from occult forces beyond your comprehension.

Witchcraft in Britain Part 1

As I began to think about this blog post I realised that I could not do it justice in a single post and it will need to be split up over several posts. I will begin then by talking briefly about the motivations and relevance of the subject to my writing.

Much of my writing contains references to occult lore and practices and Heretics is no different. My approach has always been to be as accurate as possible in portraying these beliefs and practices. That’s not to say that plot and story become subservient or that I do not invent some details where the story demands them. I do however want to distance myself from the Disneyfication of much modern writing, both fiction and alleged non-fiction. A witch is a witch whether male or female. I’ve had people argue with me that there is no such thing as a male witch and that I should use wizard for the male equivalent. Yes, but only if you watch Disney films and read Harry Potter books. I actually like the Harry Potter books but I deplore the fact that magic in them is reduced to waving a wand and speaking cod-Latin.

In Heretics I have endeavoured to present witchcraft as it was practiced in the 1960s and to represent the way it was reported in the popular press at the time. Broadly speaking we can trace the origins of this type of witchcraft to a single person – Gerald Gardner. Indeed it is often referred to as Gardnerian witchcraft. More of this in a later post.

In the meantime I can strongly recommend The Triumph of the Moon, sub-title “A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft,” by Ronald Hutton as the best analysis of witchcraft in Britain currently available.