Thomas Waters - Cursed Britain

CURSED BRITAIN

Copyright 2019 Thomas Waters

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Printed in Great Britain by Gomer Press Ltd, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939094

ISBN 978-0-300-22140-4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

ONE

BLACK MAGIC IN MODERN TIMES

Imagine: troubles mounting swiftly, quietly. Just bad luck you said, at the start. Jobs lost, businesses bankrupt, investments collapsing. Insomnia and, if sleep comes, nightmares. Sick children, enduring illnesses the doctors dont understand. Pets dead, work animals dying. And stranger happenings, at home. Thuds at night, scratches on the roof, doors banging inexplicably. Accidents, oversights, mishaps, missteps. Fraying family ties. Finally, a lover gone, perhaps somewhere else, maybe to someone else.

Individually, these misfortunes would be bad. But imagine theyve occurred simultaneously, relentlessly, in a cluster. You could lose your mind, watching your disasters swell. Emotionally, its overwhelming.

Except, as the crisis peaks, a friend makes a strange comment. Perhaps someone has a grudge against you. Maybe youre cursed.

Cursed, hexed, bewitched, jinxed, ill-wished, overlooked. Utter nonsense, you once thought. Idiocy epitomised. Now though, you begin to wonder. Could apparently unrelated misfortunes share a common origin, a single mysterious cause? Is someone close to you not just enjoying your problems, but also conjuring them? Are they, out of envy and spite, destroying you with black magic? And if they are, what should you do about it?

* * *

This book is about witchcraft. Not witchcraft as in Wicca, the peaceful nature religion also known as Modern Pagan Witchcraft, though it features in later chapters. Not witchcraft in the sense of childish tales about the Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter, either. Instead, this book is concerned with black witchcraft, curses, hexes, jinxes, damaging esoteric influences and harmful spells. The sort of evil mysticism that takes hold when terrible things happen, disasters mount, and families face desperate stresses and strains. The sort of magic that really matters.

Its a violent, disturbing, yet strangely empowering way of thinking. Witchcraft in the sense of mystic interpersonal harm is a deeply ingrained idea, found to a greater or lesser extent in most cultures and during every era of recorded history. From ancient Egypt in the twelfth century BC to Britain in the 2010s, people have thought its possible to hurt enemies with black magic, whether by mumbling maledictions, jabbing pins into dolls, casting elaborate spells, commanding spirit familiars, or even just an evil stare. The basic notion of witchcraft is so widespread that its tempting to wonder whether our brains evolved to recognise it, perhaps because thinking in this way conferred some sort of competitive advantage in the prehistoric environment.

Everyone knows that, in Europe and North America, witchcraft was a powerful concept between roughly the 1400s and 1700s, in the era of the witch craze. Many people also know that, today, witchcraft is a dangerous idea across much of the world, particularly in Africa, Melanesia and rural South Asia. Few of us, however, are aware of the fact that black magic haunts the modern West too, albeit more secretively and subtly. Long after witchcraft was decriminalised and declared impossible by courts and parliaments, black magic continued to trouble vast numbers of Europeans and North Americans. Witchcraft still exists, or is thought to by sophisticated folks with university degrees and access to scientific medicine, state welfare and advanced technology. If anything, in recent decades evil magic has become more common across much of the West.

This sinister topic is the focus of a growing body of academic research. But theres so much left to say. What exactly is black magic and how has it changed over time? What role did witchcraft play in our ancestors lives and what is its status today? What are the harms and are there any benefits? Above all, what should we do about the recent resurgence in dark mysticism?

This book is designed to help answer those questions. Ive dedicated well over a decade to researching the modern history of black magic. I expect to the bafflement of my family and friends, Ive spent the best part of my adult life rummaging through musty manuscripts, trawling bleary-eyed through historical newspapers, scouring old barns for ritual markings, interviewing exorcists and magicians, as well experiencing modern magic for myself. The result, I hope, is both intriguing and important. There is an unknown story of black magic in modern Britain, stretching from the rural world of Thomas Hardy to the multicultural present day. Here, the strange tale is told in full for the first time.

* * *

The history of black magic in modern times is a cosmopolitan drama. Human movement rapidly accelerated from the nineteenth century. People, goods, technologies and ideas began crossing the earth at a dizzying rate. Travellers took their magical beliefs abroad and encountered new mysticisms when they got there. Empires regulated their colonial subjects in all sorts of ways, including how they dealt with witches. Witchcraft became more international, though at the same time it remained fundamentally rooted in local circumstances. This means that, to understand modern witchcraft, we need to combine a global orientation with a local focus. An excellent place for that local focus is a large island, lying on the eastern edge of the North Atlantic Ocean: Britain.

Britain is an ideal place to study the dark arts. Partly because it has many sources for this secretive subject, including personal papers, social investigations, folklore reports, legal and government records, archaeology and above all a vast newspaper archive. Britain is also a dynamic, diverse, globally connected place. As a result, it exhibits many different styles and types of modern witchcraft.

Britain changed profoundly during the era covered by this book. In 1800 it was home to 10 million mostly churchgoing country dwellers. A century later, in the early 1900s, approaching 40 million mostly urbanites lived on the mainland, while abroad the British Empire had become the largest in history, ruling around a quarter of the globe. The empire was long gone by the early 2000s, by which time over 60 million people representing many creeds and backgrounds lived in Britain, largely in towns, cities and suburbs. Throughout this period, Britain was a land of great variety, between its multicultural cities and its regions, like the folklore-rich West Country, the isolated mountains of North Wales, the Highlands of Scotland, the lonely Shropshire hills, the fenlands of East Anglia and the almost 200 inhabited islands surrounding the mainland. It was known both for its traditions and for its modernity, with a long-established welfare state, a highly financialised economy and, as of the late 2010s, among the highest smartphone ownership and internet access in the world. British culture mingled new and old, archaic and advanced, homespun and exotic. This mix made witchcraft in Britain eclectic, shifting and adaptable.