Crafting The Art Of Magic:

A Critical Review

By D. Hudson Frew (Morgann)

Revised Version

Copyright 1991 by D. Hudson Frew.

Used by permission of the author.

Due to the extreme length of this document, I have broken it into several pages, based on the subsections of

the original document.

— The Webmistress

1. Introduction

2. Gardner's "dyslexia", his "conspirators", & the reliability of Kelly's texts

3. Independent evidence of an earlier group

4. Pre-1939 Witch groups & Kelly's research

The antiquity of other, non-Gardnerian Craft traditions

Mysterious & unsupported statements of "fact"

5. Kelly's apparent ignorance of folk magic

Ye Bok of ye Art Magical

6. West Country Wicca

Kelly's not-so-puzzling ignorance of Book of Shadows construction

7. Gardner's texts & "sources"

8. Folk tradition in the Gardnerian circle

9. The Eightfold Path

10. Charles Cardell & the Weschcke documents: reliable sources?

11. The Craft Laws

Misdirection

12. Kelly's hidden agendas

13. Conclusions

14. Post scriptum & acknowledgements

15. Bibliography of referenced works

16. Updates:

a. Richard Smoley of Gnosis Magazine said that he assumed that the "English educational

system" mentioned by Kelly on page 47 above encompassed the full range of educational

opportunities in England at the time, including private tutors...

b. Gus di Zerega and Anna Korn pointed out that it was incredibly facile, not to mention

insulting, for Kelly to assert, on page 27, that Gardner's supposed sexual addiction to

flagellation...

c. On page 81, Kelly presents the well-known "Amalthean horn" prayer.

d. Paul Suliin asked me if it was true that all of the Gardnerian material was in published

sources....

e. Leah Samul takes exception to Kelly's statement on page x where he says: "I call all

Neopagan Witches Gardnerian Witches..."

f. Carl Weschcke, owner of Llewellyn Publications, responded to my review...

g. Chas Clifton, a contributor to Gnosis Magazine, responded by asking: "... as long as we're

dealing with hidden agendas, shouldn't you simply say up front that while Kelly has

abandoned the idea of a pre-1939 coven, you have not?"

h. I sent a copy of my review to Aidan Kelly himself, who called me and left the following

message...

i. Victor Anderson says that virtually everything reported by Kelly about the Faery

Tradition is inaccurate...

j. "Robert", a British Witch who was initiated in Gardner's presence and worked in his

coven, and who is often quoted in Kelly's book...

k. Allyn Wolfe of the New Wiccan Church points out that on page 53, Kelly reproduces

what he says is the earliest version of The Charge...

l. Kelly recently sent an "open group letter" (dated 2/1/92) to several Elders of the

Gardnerian community...

m. Kathy Fleck of the OTO recently reviewed Kelly's book in January 1992 issue of the

Thelema Lodge OTO Newsletter.

Part 1: Introduction

Aidan Kelly's new book, Crafting the Art of Magic (Llewellyn, 1991) is the self-proclaimed first volume of

A History of Modern Witchcraft. Book I deals with the period from 1939 to 1964 and examines Gerald B.

Gardner's contribution to modern Craft. Kelly attempts to answer the perennial question "Did Gardner

make it all up?" At this task he fails miserably.

This is not to say that there aren't some good points to the book that might make it worth buying. First and

foremost, the book contains an amazing collection of texts that no Gardnerian Witch will want to be

without (although there are some serious problems with the texts that I will address later). Also, the first

chapter is an eloquent defense of the Craft in the face of the attacks to come:

In emphasizing that the Craft is a new religion, and not the survival of an

old religion, I am not "debunking" it. Rather I am insisting on its

ontological equality with every other religion... people start new religions

all the time, all over the world, whenever they are not forcibly prevented

from doing so by an established state church... in a free society, people

vote with their feet: if their religious needs are not being met by the

established churches, then they will set out to create their own religion.

(pages 2-3)

Kelly goes on to elucidate six unmet needs to which the Craft is a "creative response": a sacramental

experiencing of sex, practical paths for spiritual development accessible to the laity, organizational

flexibility, reduced or absent dogmatism, a future-oriented focus, and creativity. This is a very interesting

and valuable section, but I am a little surprised that Kelly did not include a need for ecological awareness

and empowerment of women in this list.

In Chapter One, Kelly opens with the statement that it really doesn't matter whether or not Gardner made it

all up because the Craft is a viable religion in its own right. Kelly returns to this argument in the last

chapter (Chapter Eight), saying that "The fact that the Craft movement has grown so rapidly in a few

decades is proof enough, indeed, the only relevant proof, that Gardner was doing something right." Kelly

even goes so far as to proselytize in his last sentence:

Let me merely extend an invitation: if you, dear reader, can no longer

stomach being in communion with Cardinal Ratzinger -- or whoever the

Chief Son-of-a-Bitch of your particular persuasion may be -- then come

circle with the Witches. We offer you liberty, fraternity, and equality.

(page 184)

Anti-Roman Catholic sentiments aside, I would enthusiastically endorse almost all of the first half of the

first chapter and the last half of the last chapter of this book. Everything in between, except for Gardner's

own texts, is virtually worthless. Kelly's thesis is that Gardner was a member of a circle of friends who, in

1939, decided to invent modern Witchcraft. He further argues that, after leaving this group to work on his

own, Gardner rewrote the earlier group's material specifically for the purpose of maximizing the amount of

ritual scourging, a scourging to which Gardner was sexually addicted. However, Kelly's arguments are so

riddled with contradictions, errors of logic, and speculative leaps that they cannot be seen as anything

approaching scholarly investigation.

Part 2: Gardner's "dyslexia", his "conspirators" & the reliability of Kelly's texts

Kelly refers to several persons, all of whom claimed to have personal knowledge of Craft groups similar to,

but pre-dating Gardner. These persons include Gardner himself, Dafo, and Louis Wilkinson. Kelly

dismisses this corroborative testimony by arguing that all of these persons were members of a conspiracy,

all engaged in a pattern of deceit to protect the fictitious origins of the Craft. Kelly first introduces this

concept on page xv, where, after examining papers alleged to be Gardner's (the Weschcke documents, more

on these later), he concludes:

... Gardner was marginally dyslexic. That is, despite his intelligence... he

could not spell or punctuate well enough to meet even minimal standards

for being published, and his grasp of grammar was shaky at best. In other

words, Gardner could not by himself have produced the books published

under his name... (emphasis Kelly's)

By claiming that Gardner could neither spell nor write with any competence, Kelly prepares the reader to

accept that other persons secretly assisted Gardner in his fabrication. The problem is that Kelly's own book

provides ample evidence that Gardner was not dyslexic. On page 77, for example, Kelly quotes Gardner's

private magical journal, "Ye Bok of ye Art Magical":

Ever remember the promise of the goddess, "For ecstasy is mine and joy

on earth" so let there ever be joy in your heart. Greet people with joy, be

glad to see them. If times be hard, think, "It might have been worse. I at

least have known the joys of the Sabbath, and I will know them again."

Think of the grandeur, beauty, and Poetry of the rites, of the loved ones

you meet through them. If you dwell on this inner joy, your health will be

better. You must try to banish all fear, for it will really touch you. It may

hurt your body, but your soul is beyond it all.

(On page 100, Kelly says that the author of the above passage "could not write even a line of verse".) I have

quoted this passage at some length to make a point. True, the text has been archaized a bit, but either

Gardner was not dyslexic or Kelly has "cleaned up" the text before publication! If the former, the

conspiracy theory starts to unravel. If the latter, then no text in Kelly's book can be trusted. Why doesn't

Kelly reproduce some of this "dyslexic" text so that readers of his book can make their own judgement?

Unfortunately, this spectre of unreliable and doctored texts raises its head in other places. On page 67,

Kelly presents what he says are Gardner's Sabbat scripts with the following introduction, reproduced in its

entirety:

On pp. 271-288 of "Ye Bok of ye Art Magical" are outlines of rituals for

the four cross-quarter days. The outlines are terse and cryptic, but they do

not differ in any essential way from the later texts of the Sabbat rituals.

They can be fleshed out as follows. (emphasis mine)

"Fleshed out" by whom? By what criteria? Which parts have been "fleshed out"? Kelly doesn't tell us. He

has only told us that we are not dealing with the original texts; in which case, how can we trust either his

reconstruction or his analysis?

On page 54, Kelly presents the earliest versions of the 1st and 2nd degree initiations. He prefaces the texts

with:

I have augmented the text for the first two degrees from the full script in

High Magic's Aid, pp. 290-303.

Exactly how has he "augmented" them? Which parts are "augmented"? We aren't told. We only know for

sure that the text presented to us is not the original text.

Why does Kelly assume that the texts of initiation rituals intended for mass publication, i.e. in High

Magic's Aid, are interchangeable or identical with whatever Gardner did in his private workings? Rather, I

would assume that there would be at least a few differences. In fact Kelly seems to support this latter view

on page 62:

On the other hand, some changes in "Ye Bok of ye Art Magical" -- for

example, those about taking the measure -- were not made in High

Magic's Aid at all, and yet they appear in later versions of the ritual; so

they must have been entered in "Ye Bok of ye Art Magical" after High

Magic's Aid had gone to the printer in about 1948.

In other words, Kelly is arguing that, since all of the details of the initiations were not in the published

book, they must have been written later. It is much easier to assume that Gardner just held these details

back from publication intentionally, not wanting to reveal all of the mysteries to the general public.

It is ironic that Kelly appears to have altered the texts with which he was working, as he takes Gardner to

task for this very thing on page 45:

... Gardner never bothered to word things the same way twice; whenever

he copied something, he simultaneously rewrote it. But this, of course, is

the way that an author treats his own original material; it is not how

anyone treats authoritative texts preserved from an earlier generation.

On page 4, Kelly praised the Craft for its flexibility, and on page 5 for its lack of dogma, so where does he

get the idea that any text in the Craft is "authoritative"? Just because some later Witches have taken

Gardner's words as revealed Gospel doesn't prove that he or his contemporaries thought of traditional

material that way. Gardner's actions are completely consistent with a living folk tradition, changing and

evolving with each person through which it passes. Kelly even quotes Gardner on page 102 as saying to

Doreen Valiente (his initiate and later High Priestess) about the Sabbat scripts, "Well, if you think you can

do any better, go ahead", but on page 150 again complains that rewriting "is obviously not how someone

treats genuinely old material." This would seem to be a case of Kelly projecting his own experience as a

student of Biblical texts, as he tells us on page xiii, onto Gardnerian material.

Returning to the claim of a conspiracy, on page 30 Kelly says:

In September 1939, probably on the 28th, the evening of the full moon,

Gerald Gardner, Dorothy Clutterbuck Fordham, Dafo, and others of their

occult circle of friends were, I believe, sitting in Dorothy's living room,

discussing England's perilous state, now at war with Germany....

Encouraged by the tension of that moment, they decided to try to recreate

the "witch cult of Western Europe" described by Margaret Murray.

(emphasis mine)

Kelly does not offer a single shred of evidence to support his "belief" that this event occurred, yet this does

not stop him from speculating as to the identities of others who joined this alleged group: Dolores North,

Louis Wilkinson, George Watson McGregor Reid, J.S.M. Ward, Charles Richard Foster Seymour,

Christine Hartley, Mrs. Mabel Besant-Scott, and G.A. Sullivan (Pages 31-33). In the same paragraphs,

Kelly calls in Doreen Valiente to support him on this, but the strongest statement she can make is that some

of these persons "could" have been members. There is no documentary evidence presented that any of these

individuals were, in fact, members of Gerald's coven beyond the fact that it is convenient for Kelly's

conspiracy theory for them to be so. Any statements by a "member" that contradict Kelly's views can be

discounted as lies to protect the myth, as Kelly argues regarding Wilkinson and Clutterbuck on page 106.

The speculations continue unhindered by a lack of supportive evidence. Only one page later Kelly says:

If we are assuming that the New Forest group was basing itself on

Murray's concepts...

Note that the "assumption" that Kelly is acknowledging for the reader's benefit is only in regards to what

"the New Forest group" practiced. That such a group existed has advanced from speculation on page 30 to

an assumed fact, a "given", on page 34. This easy sliding from speculation into "fact" is present throughout

the book. On page 41, Kelly notes that Rhiannon Ryall's coven "must represent a hiving-off from the New

Forest coven sometime before the end of World War II". Once again, Kelly has not yet proved that his

hypothetical coven of conspirators ever existed, but that does not prevent him from referring to them as

established fact.

It is interesting to note, as Kelly does not, that Margaret Murray was aware of Gardner's claims and

endorsed them in her preface to Gardner's Witchcraft Today (Gardner, 1954, p.15). Of course, Kelly might

point out that Murray could very well have been lying since Gardner's claims supported her theory, but just

how far are we expected to stretch the conspiracy?

Hartley's and Seymour's membership in the group is seemingly contradicted by Kelly's observations on

page 36:

If the pagan section of the Fraternity of the Inner Light had evolved a

pagan system of magic by 1939, Gardner apparently did not know about it.

Well, the pagan section of the Fraternity, led by Hartley and Seymour, had at least started to evolve a pagan

system of magic by 1939, as detailed in 20th Century Magic and the Old Religion by Alan Richardson.

Richardson reproduces extracts from their magical working journals between July 1937 and February 1939,

during which time they shifted their ritual focus from Egyptian to Celtic deities. How can Kelly assert that

Seymour and Hartley were dedicated members of Gardner's alleged group and yet Gardner had no inkling

of their work with pagan magical energies? If he really wanted to resolve this question, why didn't Kelly

simply ask Hartley about it? On page xiii, Kelly states that he began his research in 1970. Christine Hartley

did not die until 1985.

British occultist Louis Wilkinson's alleged involvement in the "New Forest group" is addressed on page

38, where Kelly cites Francis King quoting Wilkinson. In response to King's skepticism regarding the

existence of Witches, Wilkinson says that "he had himself become friendly with members of a witch-coven

operating in New Forest" and goes on to describe their practices (King, p. 177). Kelly observes that:

He [i.e. Wilkinson] is... saying that their intellectual (Masonic) occultism

was providing a framework for the spells, charms, and dances of folk

magic, precisely what we have already seen is logically necessary in order

to "reconstruct" the religion that [Margaret] Murray describes.

Rather than take Wilkinson's account as independent testimony of the existence of a pre-Gardner coven,

Kelly argues on page 39 that:

... Wilkinson is almost certainly not an independent witness here. He

describes himself as a member of the occult circle of friends around the

New Forest coven, and so was probably a member of the coven himself

(how else would he know the details of its practices?)

This is nothing but innuendo. I can hear Senator McCarthy saying, "If you associate with Communists you

must be a member of a cell yourself!" Kelly presses this argument when Wilkinson describes to King the

practice of wearing grease to protect naked bodies from cold weather. Kelly notes:

This information about the grease is not in any other published source --

but the only way Wilkinson could have known about it is if he had been

there himself; that is, again, he appears to have been a member of the

coven.

Or one of his Witch friends told him about the grease. Or he was a guest at that particular ritual. Or he

made that part up. It suits Kelly's purposes to say that Wilkinson is telling the truth about the grease and is

lying about membership in the coven, but we are not given any supporting evidence or even criteria to

evaluate his statements.

What is at all suspicious about Wilkinson's statements? Wilkinson has said that, as a noted occultist, his

Witch friends felt that they could talk to him a little about their practice. He does not claim to know secret

passwords or the details of initiation scripts, just a general description of a ritual of national importance: the

protection of Britain against Hitler. Even if Wilkinson was invited to participate as a guest in that

ceremony, that would still not prove that he was a member of the coven.

What is interesting here is the convenient and judicious bit of editing that Kelly does on King's quote. The

last line of Kelly's quote from King on page 38 is as follows:

[He] went on to tell me various interesting details of the practices of these

Hampshire witches...

The complete sentence from King (page 178) is as follows:

Louis Wilkinson went on to tell me various interesting details of the

practices of these Hampshire witches -- details which, I felt sure, made it

certain that the group was not simply derived from the jaded tastes of

middle-class intellectuals who adhered to the theories of Margaret Murray.

In other words, King felt that, in his opinion as a knowledgeable and scholarly occultist, Wilkinson's

account supported the existence of a pre-Gardner coven; an opinion expressed in a statement almost exactly

contradictory to Kelly's conclusion! No wonder Kelly opted not to inform the reader of the complete text of

the sentence.

Unfortunately, this is not the only instance where Kelly omits necessary quotes or parts of quotes in order

to avoid arguing against his own point, as we shall see later. He does so in the case of "Lugh", once again

involving King and Wilkinson.

Independent evidence of an earlier group

On page xix Kelly questions the likelihood of there having been a pre-Gardner coven, saying:

... the very ordinary bits of evidence (addresses, letters, diaries, even

laundry lists) that we would expect to find for the existence of a pre-1939

coven were nowhere to be found.

As if this absence of evidence is evidence of absence. But on page 32, Kelly quotes Doreen Valiente in

support of a different point to the effect that:

... the whole occult scene was so secretive in those times [pre-1939], so

furtive almost (witches were, after all, still doing something actually

illegal, for which they could actually have been prosecuted), tracks were

very well covered, I can assure you!

It doesn't seem likely that Witches operating under such conditions would leave such clues as addresses and

letters lying about. It is unreasonable to assume that a thoroughly closeted coven would leave the same kind

of paper trail behind as those functioning in the post-1960's atmosphere of religious tolerance. The pre-

1939 mindset would more likely be akin to that expressed in the Gardnerian text called "The Warning":

Keep this book in your own hand of write... never let this book out of your

hands... never keep the writings of another... Each should guard his own

writings and destroy them whenever danger threatens... if any die, destroy

their book if they have not been able to... (page 85)

It is hardly surprising that evidence incriminating to members of any pre-1939 coven is not forthcoming.

(Laundry lists? You mean like "1 ritual robe w/ hood, black: no starch"?)

Pre-1939 Witch groups & Kelly's research

On page 20, Kelly says that he has "heard indirectly from Gavin Frost" that a group imitating Margaret

Murray's version of Witch practice may have been operating "at Cambridge in the 1930s". I can only

assume that Kelly is mistakenly referring to a group to which Pennethorne Hughes belonged at Oxford in

1928. On page 1 of his book Witchcraft, Hughes describes how he was part of a short-lived group inspired

by Murray's work. It is puzzling that Kelly seems to be unaware of this group, or at least neither mentions it

nor cites Hughes' pro-Murrayite research, as Hughes' book is referenced in the bibliography of Gardner's

The Meaning of Witchcraft (on page 287). Was Kelly so intent on discovering Gardner's "hidden" sources

that he didn't check his published ones?

The antiquity of other, non-Gardnerian Craft traditions

On page 21, Kelly says that he does believe that there were pre-1939 Witch covens whose "existence is

well-documented", just not "proto-Gardnerian" ones. As an example, he gives us the Faery Tradition and its

modern proponent, Victor Anderson:

According to the researches of Valerie Voigt... Victor relates that he was

initiated into the Harpy coven in Ashland, Oregon, in 1932...

I'm not saying that Anderson made the Faery Tradition up, nor do I consider Voigt unreliable, but I do have

to wonder why in Kelly's eyes the uncorroborated word of one man is definitive evidence while the

corroborative testimony of several individuals is a conspiracy of deceit. This evidence is especially weak as

it is a 2nd hand uncorroborated claim. Why didn't Kelly ask Anderson himself about his alleged initiation

and print his response for the readers to evaluate?

The same argument applies to Kelly's use of Rhea W. as an example of a pre-1939 non-Gardnerian Witch

on page 23. It starts to look like Kelly just has it in for Gardner. I shall address this possibility in greater

detail further on in my essay.

Mysterious & unsupported statements of "fact"

On page 35, Kelly quotes Murray regarding the chief festivals of the Witch-cult:

The dates of the two chief festivals, May Eve and November Eve, indicate

the use of a calendar which is... preagricultural and earlier than the

solstitial divisions of the year... The cross-quarter days, February 2 and

August 1... also kept as festivals, were probably of later date.

Kelly's response to this claim of Murray's is:

Murray's speculations here are, in fact, completely wrong, but that merely

proves that the Gardnerian Book of Shadows, which in 1953 had rituals

for only the four Celtic festivals, none for the solstices and equinoxes

[sic], was based on Murray, rather than a more accurate source.

Kelly is arguing that the fact that the Gardnerians originally had only four non-solar Sabbats is "proof" that

they were lifted from Murray rather than deriving independently from a genuine folk tradition. Why? What

is "completely wrong" with Murray's speculation? Kelly neither says nor cites a source. He just expects us

to believe.

When I asked noted folklorist Holly Tannen about this passage, she was unable to see what Kelly was

claiming to be "completely wrong". Indeed, the section on "Festivals and Ritual Gatherings" in Anne Ross'

Everyday Life of the Pagan Celts (pages 197-201) also delineates these same four festivals as basic to the

Celtic ritual calendar. And Caoimhin O Danachair writes in "The Quarter Days in Irish Tradition" that:

...in the Irish folk calendar there occur four festival days which are

separated, each from the next, by regular intervals of three months, and

thus divide the year into four quarters. These festivals are Lá Fheile

Brighde (Saint Brighid's Day, 1st February), Lá Bealtaine (May Day, 1st

May), Lá Lunasa (1st August), and Lá Samhna (All Saints, 1st

November). (O Danachair, 1959)

It would appear that, contrary to Kelly's unsupported assertions, the Gardnerian Sabbats are very much in

keeping with authentic folk traditi

Kelly's apparent ignorance of folk magic

On page 37, Kelly refers to the "New Forest group's" interest in incorporating folk magic in their new

tradition:

...the problem with folk magic is that it is all practice, no theory.... From a

hundred such workings, no one could deduce a hundred-and-first, since no

system lies behind them; they cannot be generalized.

For this reason, Kelly argues, the alleged "New Forest group" of conspirators turned to Masonry,

Rosicrucianism, the Hermetic tradition, etc. to create a structure and an underlying theory for their magic.

That Kelly believes they would have had to do this is strange, since he himself argues on page 134 that the

Gardnerian ritual structure "is a standard sort of magical procedure, quite in keeping with Frazer's laws of

magic." Kelly seems to assert that folk magic does or doesn't have laws and structure according to what

suits his argument at the time.

Additionally, Kelly seems to be unaware of the work of scholars such as Felix Grendon, whose "The

Anglo-Saxon Charms" is a marvelous structural analysis of the formulaic nature of some early English folk

charms. From these hundred charms, one can easily deduce the hundred-and-first.

On page 71, Kelly, speaking of the relative "pagan-ness" of Gardner's Sabbats, asserts:

It will not do to argue that "pagans" would have gone for the "Great Rite"

(by another name), feasting, and dancing, and would not have bothered

with drawing magic circles.... all religious ritual sets apart some sort of

"sacred time" and "sacred space" to distinguish it from ordinary time and

space. Hence a pre-1939 coven would have had some way of doing that.

This is an unfounded assumption. The surviving "pagan" traditions of Britain, in the form of such festivals

as the Padstow 'Obby 'Oss and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, do not demarcate sacred time and space in

any special way. The time and place simply are sacred. (Bord, 1982)

Ye Bok of ye Art Magical

As part of his claim of 1939 as the beginning of Gardner's fabrication of Witchcraft, Kelly states on page

37 that, subsequent to that September meeting, Gardner "began gathering his notes on this topic in a

notebook titled 'Ye Bok of ye Art Magical'". For all that Kelly spends pages and pages supporting his

chronology of Gardnerian texts based on extensive cross-comparison, he never proffers any evidence to

date the beginning of the "Bok". Consequently there is no evidence presented that Gardner did not record

material, possibly oral material, from an earlier coven into the "Bok" before 1939.

On page 45, Kelly says that Doreen Valiente currently owns the copy of the Book of Shadows used by

Gardner and Dafo at her initiation:

...Gardner led her to believe that he had copied it from Dorothy

Clutterbuck's Book of Shadows, but the extant evidence is that Dorothy

never had any such book.

What "evidence"? The "fact" that Dorothy was part of the "conspiracy" that decided to make it all up that

September evening in 1939? That claim of Kelly's is never proven. It is entirely possible that the truth

behind this recollection of Valiente's (almost 40 years after the fact) is that the Book of Shadows was

mostly copied from the "Bok of ye Art Magical", which in turn could well have been a recording of oral

tradition from Dorothy.

West Country Wicca

If Kelly seem unreasonably critical of Gardner, he appears unusually credulous of others, as becomes

obvious with his treatment of Rhiannon Ryall.

On pages 41-42, Kelly uncritically accepts the claims of Ryall regarding her membership in a rural coven,

arguing that the ritual texts in her book are "the New Forest coven's rituals as they were worked before

Gardner rewrote them to better meet his own sexual needs." Most reviewers (including Eran, Wolfe, and

Clifton) have seen the obvious similarities between Ms. Ryall's rituals and Gardnerian ones and have

assumed that Ms. Ryall "borrowed" hers from published Gardnerian sources, but it should also be noted

that there are reasons to question the authenticity of Ryall's work independent of its "Gardnerian" texts.

On page 1 of her book, Ryall states she was taught the Craft in the 1940s in the West Country of Britain.

She cannot produce any verifying documents because there aren't any "because most people in those days

were illiterate". This is not only convenient, it is also untrue. The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of

Great Britain & Ireland states that "by 1901 the vast majority of the United Kingdom was literate,

including 99% of Scotland, 97% of England & Wales, and 88.5% of Ireland."

Ryall also cannot produce any corroborative testimony because "now all [her] teachers are dead and those

who were [her] contemporaries have moved on". Apparently, no one in the West Country perpetuates this

tradition that Ryall tells us thrived there as recently as the 1940s. Once again, as with Victor Anderson,

Kelly accepts the undocumented and uncorroborated testimony of a single person as truth, seemingly for

the sole reason that he can use it to support his argument.

Elsewhere, Kelly is fond of arguing that if Gardnerian material can be found in published texts, that proves

that Gardner "lifted" said material from those texts, rather than obtaining it from the folk tradition first-

hand. If Kelly is going to be consistent in his arguments (which he isn't), then he himself would have to

argue that there is no reason to believe that Ryall's material comes from anywhere other than published

books on Gardnerian Wicca.

Interestingly, on page 42 Kelly states that he believes that some of Ryall's material came from "local folk

witches". So, apparently Kelly is willing to admit that there were folk witches about in England, but that

Gardner alone was not in contact with them.

Kelly's not-so-puzzling ignorance of Book of Shadows construction

On page 45, Kelly notes with some puzzlement that:

...Gardner habitually copied rituals into his book piecemeal, on widely

separated pages, often onto pages containing other material as well. What

his reasons were for doing this one can only guess.