THE COURIER MAIL

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

31 October 1952

(page 2)

HALLOWE’EN TO-NIGHT . . .

Black Magic is Still Practised.

From a Special London Correspondent.

As eleven o’clock strikes to-night, a group of ‘witches’ from all over Britain will celebrate Hallowe’en in an old windmill high on a lonely hillside above Castletown, Isle of Man.

Presiding at the ceremony will be Mr. Cecil H. Williamson, 46-year-old ex-film director who studies witchcraft as a science.

Hallowe’en is the night when witches and warlocks [their male counterparts) are said to wander abroad. But Mr. Williamson’s followers are not the old-fashioned type who use brooms for transport most of them will have travelled to the Isle of Man by ship and aircraft.

They will chant incantations in the temple built by Williamson, and dedicate it to the ‘Cosmic Power’; and they will experiment with thought transference by methods supposed to have been used by witches of old.

Nobody begrudges these modern witches their harmless bit of fun. Their magic is nice and White

But there is a more sinister side to the rapidly growing witchcraft cult—black magic. Hallowe’en, the traditional date of the Grand Sabbat, will witness scenes of unbridled debauchery with burlesques of Christian church services by sworn satanists in many parts of the world.

The frenzied rituals attending the celebration of the Black Mass, with sacrificing of black cockerels, feasting, dancing, and much obscenity will take place In lonely country places, as well as in the heart of London.

Ex-Detective Superintendent Fabian, of Scotland Yard, spent much time during his career investigating reports of black magic meetings. Not only is he convinced that it exists, but he is also convinced that the cult is on the increase.

In June this year a 39-year-old woman who had been reported missing was found four days later dressed only in a coat, with her face and body daubed with paint and her hair partly shorn. Glamogan police were shown anonymous letters she had been receiving, together with black magic symbols.

Warwickshire detectives are still investigating the murder in 1945 of 74-year-old Charles Walton, who lived at Lower Quinton, eight miles from Stratford-on-Avon. He was found with a billhook driven through his body which was staked to the ground with a pitchfork. It is thought the murder may have been a ‘witch killing.’ for there is a record of a similar killing in neighbouring Long Compton in 1875.

Depraved thrills

Throughout the United Kingdom are black magic temples and lodges where neurotics seek new and depraved thrills. Initiates are encouraged to indulge in various forms of abnormal behaviour which are alleged to enable them to develop magical powers.

Many people who are drawn into the web of black magic are well-to-do. They lavish money on the practice of their impieties, and their apparent respectability forms a facade behind which they and other members of the cult shelter from publicity.

The consequences of black magic can be real and dangerous. Black magicians, many of them deliberate crooks, ensnare hundreds of young people, rob them of money, and undermine their moral and religious beliefs.

‘Beast 666’

‘The late Aleister Crowley, the ‘wickedest man in the world’ and self-styled Beast 666, had temples in Italy and France (from where he was expelled), and in Chancery Lane, London. When a famous woman novelist unmasked his activities. Crowley sued her for libel, but the trial was stopped by the judge, the late Mr. Justice Swift, who commented: ‘Never have I heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous, abominable stuff as that produced by this man who describes himself as the greatest living poet.’

Crowley died in 1947, and his cremation was attended by pagan ceremonies. But Crowley’s followers live on.