High Priest: Raymond Buckland The Father of American Witchcraft
Since it is October it’s time to look at the things that go bump in the night, making this weeks book High Priest: Raymond Buckland The Father of American Witchcraft by Jason Mankey.
First off, this book is definitely not scary. I get that witches are scary to some people, but Buckland himself was definitely not, as becomes abundantly clear while reading this biography. So who was Raymond Buckland?
Raymond Buckland was born August 31, 1934 in London, England to Stanley Thomas Buckland and Eileen Lizzie (Elizabeth) Buckland, nee Wells. He was the second born child, with an older brother Gerard Stanley Buckland. The Buckland’s, at least on the fathers side, were of Romani descent, which is relevant to the story of Ray, since he would later write several books on Gypsy magic and Gypsy fortunetelling, and what he learned was from his grandmother, not just off the cuff claims of legitimacy, he for real had Romani heritiage. Author Jason Mankey is...lets say squeamish...about using the word Gypsy because today it is seen as a slur and a rude word, and consequently when referring to those works by Buckland, he only uses the word Gypsy when quoting the title of a work by Buckland. And I totally get it...it’s like...if you like rap music, do you say the N--- word just because the artists is rapping it? When you are so white you burst into flames in direct sunlight, the answer is no.
Despite his Romani heritage, Buckland’s real introduction to magic would be as an adult. So he grew up in England, outside of London, largely due to the advent of the WWII air raids. After the war, Buckland would become an...I believe it was apprentice...at an architecture firm, which allowed him to delay his mandatory military service in England for a time. But the delay was not indefinite and he would eventually serve two years in the RAF before being honorably discharged. Just before serving he would marry his first wife, Rosemary Moss in 1955, and they would have two children together.
After his military service, Ray and Rosemary had to figure out what to do and how to support their young family, and ultimately would relocate to the United States where Ray would work for the precursor to British Airways, I think it was called British Overseas Airways. And this is what he was doing, working for the airline, and shortly after the move, in Summer 1962, Ray had stumbled across two books by Gerald Gardner, called Witchcraft Today and The Meaning of Witchcraft. He was intrigued enough by what he read that he reached out to Gardner by mail...1962, intercontinental phone calls were prohibitively expensive, snail mail was not.
Now, Gerald Gardner is easily identified as one of the founders of modern witchcraft, a distinction shared largely with the Alex Sanders, and proponents of each are referred to as either Gardnerian or Alexandrian, and while I’ve never been remotely interested in coven work, even I recognized those two names… and Buckland’s, which is why I bought this book.
Gardner, who’s disciples Monique Wilson and Campbell “Scotty” Wilson, would shortly take over correspondence with Buckland and eventually initiate him into Gardernian Wica….That’s WICA with one C, America would add the second C at some point.
Ray would eventually initiate Rosemary and I think it was around 60 others into the craft...that’s like over his lifetime, not just in the 8 years he ran the New York coven. The amount he DID initiate while in New York was not enough and not fast enough for the Wilson’s, as the Buckland’s and Wilson’s would eventually have a falling out at least partially over Buckland’s vetting process. But what would cause Buckland’s total withdrawal from Gardnerian Wica was his own initiates, Judy and Tom Kneitel.
Buckland had taken kind of a half-step back from leading the coven, partly due to his own divorce from Rosemary, and was happy to act as advisor to the Kneitel’s. But...well as what happens when you just hand over the reins of power, drama happened. There was a falling out. And Buckland walked away from Gardnerian Wica, claiming “more harm has been done to the Gardnerian movement in America by Theos and Phoenix (their craft names) than by anyone else, Wiccan, Pagan, or Christian!” If you want to know the drama, read the book.
Mankey hints that part of the split with Gardnerian Wica is that Buckland was accepting of the LGB community, whereas Gardner himself was openly homophobic. Mankey does not say one way or another if the Knietels were anti-LGB, although given that Gardnerian is still the largest Coven based system to date, I kind of doubt they were. And you are left with the overall sense that the Knietels simply got too big for their britches, in Buckland’s opinion, even trying to invalidate some of Buckland’s own initiates after he’d already initiated them!
Regardless of who said what when, Mankey ensures the reader that all branches of Gardnerian Wica are offshoots of one big happy family tree.
After his divorce from Rosemary, Buckland had a second marriage, that lasted a very scant 8 years, from 1974 to 1982, to Joan Helen Taylor. But it was during his marriage to Taylor that Buckland would write The Tree: Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft, introducing a similar to but distinct offshoot of Gardnerian witchcraft, and one that, importantly, allowed for the solitary practitioner.
His marriage to Taylor was already unraveling when Buckland met his third wife, and love of his life, Tara Buckland. They married shortly after they met and would remain married until Buckland’s death. It was after meeting Tara that Buckland went into a period of extreme productivity and wrote what is arguably his most famous work, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, a book that is still in print and available to purchase in basically any occult shop you walk into. Mankey includes that when he went to Salem, MA in 2021, cases of this book were available to buy in all the witch shops in Witch City.
The Buckland’s would move to California and live there for awhile, with Buckland contributing many more titles to the catalogue of witchcraft literature, before eventually retiring to Ohio, where they would live on a farm until September 27, 2017, when Raymond Buckland would pass away.
Now, this is the bare bones outline obviously, and this overall is an excellent biographical work. I genuinely appreciate how Mankey didn’t belabor any points he was making and kept the story moving forward. There is a detailed C.V. in the back of all of Buckland’s works, most of which you can still buy today at either your local craft store or on like thriftbooks.com or Amazon.
The book was well organized and concise, and several chapters included thoughts from people who had been impacted by contact with Buckland, or rather, how Buckland or his works impacted their own lives, which is a hell of a legacy to leave behind, no question. I very much liked how each chapter closed with a ceremony or magical practice from something Buckland had written himself, which highlights what an engaging author Buckland was.
The only part I found genuinely disingenuous was when Mankey says...and this one I...I rolled my eyes, because Mankey said “Ritual tools were often gendered, with people deciding that, for whatever reason, a pointy knife contains male energy and a cup contains female energy.” I mean, Mankey says somewhere in here he started getting into the craft in the 1990’s, and since basically every craft based book written up until about a decade ago included the same information vis a vis ritual tools, he knows good goddamn well why it is that an Athame...ceremonial knife for the muggles in the room...is described as masculine,...and a chalice….ceremonial cup….is described as feminine. Like...why on earth would the penis shaped object be described as masculine? Why on earth would the vagina shaped cup be described as feminine? So it was very disingenuous when Mankey said “for whatever reason.”
On the other hand….I am well aware that when your income stream is based on appeasing the rabid masses of an unhinged orthodoxy, you damn well better toe the orthodox line and keep your own opinions to yourself. Fortunately for me, this channel is a hobby, not an income stream, so I’m allowed to call bullshit on the “for whatever reason.”
But other than that, this was a good read, explaining how modern day witchcraft jumped the Atlantic ocean and spread west from New York, with the dedication, love, and compassion of the Father of Modern Witchcraft, Raymond Buckland.
