THE SHREVEPORT TIMES

Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.

12 October 1958

(page 64)

October’s Witches and the Tale

Of the Most Successful Vampire.

This is October, the month of Halloween, when witches fly and our thoughts turn toward the ghostly and the macabre. It is an appropriate time to speak of the literature of lycanthropy, vampirism, demonology, and the subterranean world of the occult generally.

Let no one suppose that such matters are of only historical concern: The witch and the sorcerer are very much with us today; the publication of occult literature is flourishing: the grimoeris are being reissued: and who knows what strange rites his neighbor practices when the moon is full, or when the stars are in the appropriate relation?

Spiritualism, about which so much was written a few years ago, has largely fallen into disrepute. Most of its practitioners and prophets have been exposed as frauds and charlatans, and the séance has lost both its terror and its glamour. Preoccupation with telepathy is also at a lower ebb than formerly, and even clairvoyance is less often laid claim to now that Dr. Rhine and his conferees have established scientific methods for testing such claims. On the other hand, there is a genuine renaissance of black magic in its myriad forms, and of interest in the more diabolic aspects of the occult.

Covens of witches currently exist, if we may believe the considerable literature, in almost all of the civilized nations of the world. So do societies of Satanists, and mystical orders of adepts of the left hand path (black magicians). It is true that there are no great sorcerers today—or, if there are, they are not so well known—at least, none to compare with the late Aleister Crowley, or with MacGregor Mathers; and no leaders or founders of occult movements to compare with Gurdjieff [George Gurdjieff], Ouspensky and Arage [Alfred Orage], or Madame Blavatsky [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] and Annie Besant. On the other hand, there are more practitioners, and from their ranks will be recruited the writers and leaders of tomorrow.

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