NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/magick/6929

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 3.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Berkeley OTO and Wicca
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 09:12:10 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (ashton)
said:

>Whelp, since I live here in Berzerkely under Thelema Lodge I asked some
>'old timers' (and did they take offence!). So - without naming names
>(and you know who you are) there was nothing going on until 1967-68 ev.
>Sure, Hippies, Wackos, Leary, and Wilson - but no focused group ritual
>work (and I'd rather hear differently). One person said - you can read
>about it all in _Drawing Down the Moon_ (really!). They knew of nothing
>in the area, started their own from books, and no one came out of the
>woodwork to play. So - NROOGD is about the same time as the other
>Wiccan groups.

The origins of NROOGD are pretty well known.  The group that ran a
school ca. 1960 is too early for the NROOGD, or for LaVey's
organizations either.  At the time Berkeley was still a *very*
conservative burgh -- this was several years before the Free Speech
Movement came into existence.  We -- that is, all the boys in the public
elementary schools -- had close-order military drill in school once a
week as part of our education in the 5th and 6th grades!  (Can you
imagine!)  In those days even Playboy was still very much an underground
magazine, and drugs had hardly been heard of at all, except in *very*
strange circles.  So the school of witchcraft that was functioning ca.
1960 kept a very low profile, and probably offered something rather
different from what a witchcraft training course would have offered ca.
1975.  Berkeley didn't even *begin* to become what it is today until about
1963-4.  It's a long sea mile from 1960 to 1964!


>As to the OTO, Most of the the 'old timers' (LOP Slop) came in around 1977
>ev. Sure Grady and ? were living in the hills here (Dublin ?), but the
>current crop (gee, is that like a me-on?) didn't take initiation until
>then. (And grow into the wonderful political organization that we so
>enjoy today :-> ).

Then, I guess, the question is, was McMurtry involved in anything to do
with a school of witchcraft *before* the current crop of old-timers
showed up ...?

Do his papers survive in any quantity, and could someone check?  Please?


>A really nice piece of work on the origins of Witchcraft is
>_Crafting the Art of Magic: A History of Modern Witchcraft 1939-1964_
>Aidan Kelly, Llewellyn, 1991.

Kelly's work in finding the oldest layer of documents for Gardner's
witchcraft is invaluable, and we've discussed these questions together
several times.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have any information on
witchcraft in Berkeley ca. 1960 either.  Whatever it was, it didn't
establish any connections with the stuff that began in 1967, and none of
the people who were working from Gardner's materials and other sources
in 1967 seem even to have linked up with the people who were active ca.
1960.  The older group, if it really existed, must have been very small.
I do think it was really there, though.  -- Robert

Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM

PS  And there's still the question of Margaret St Clair's access to a
rather full Book of Shadows in Berkeley ca. 1962.