Mastering Witchcraft Bandwagon

I just can't resist chiming in on the ongoing discussion, begun at The Used Key Is Always Bright on the classic manual of practical Pagan magic, Mastering Witchcraft.
 

MW became available in my hometown in 1971, in its hardback original release. I was sixteen years old, and the discussion with my parents about my growing interest in occultism occasionally reached high volumes. I used birthday money, bought the book, and quickly scrawled my name across the front leaf so that it couldn't be returned. Despite more loud discussion, I retained the book, and from it I began to learn ritual magic.

Huson claimed to reveal the true names of the witches' Goddess and God, a tidbit that seems hackneyed now, but was rather monumental in those days. Gardner, Valiente and all the first-wave public witches made rather a show of concealing what are now openly worshipped names. He taught a simple, elemental ritual system using the tools based on the grimoiric tool-set, plus other minor tools. All this was presented in classical magical style, everything properly consecrated and devoted to the art. No Kitchen-witchy, using your turnip-knife for spells for our Paul. I had already found "The Black Arts", and was pleased to find ritual witchcraft that conformed to the description of magic in the souces I was reading.

MW doesn't exactly teach 'worship' of the gods, but it does teach effective techniques for invocation. While Huson pays a little lip-service to duotheism his actual system is based on the aid of a specific group of deities, arranged in roughly elemental style. Thus Habondia for Water, the chalice and love-spells; Hermes-Mercury for Air, the wand and divination; Cernunnos for Fire, the dagger (he says athame) and cursing; And Nocticula-Saturnus for Earth and bindings. Protective magic is given to the Elemental Spirits, arranged in the usual way in the four-quartered circle. A thread that runs throughout his witchcraft mythology is that of the "Watchers" - the Nephelim, ancient spiritual beaings that are said to have taught mortals sorcery. It's far from clear whether the gods that are actually invoked are to be thought of as Watchers, or what. The fact is, folk myth doesn't care, and neither does Huson.
 

One of Huson's great skills is the ability to take snippets of medieval lore and reframe them in working rituals. Every so-often I run across another piece of stuff quoted as a fragment or remnant that i recognize from Huson's work. His approach to crafting spells is still a major guide for me. He's also had a huge influence on the Pagan and quasi-Pagan magical scene. I doubt there are many performances of the Dumb Supper that don't rely on MW for their basic form, and the conjuration of Vassago is one of the earliest modern rethinkings of grimoiric ritual. The set of magical goals is thoroughly urban and personal. There are no 'fertility' spells, nor workings to recognize or support seasonal changes.
 

The chapter on 'The Coven and How to Form One' has been one of the most influential pieces in Neopagan history. Huson skips theology, for the most part, to give solid advice on how to organize a small magical group. He does recommend keeping the eight 'Sabbats', but gives no seasonal scripts. The little checklist of organization items (coven name, symbols, etc) have remained a basic guide, and were vital to the way new covens formed in the 70s and 80s. Rather than outline a hierarchy huson provides a pile of lore and ideas, encouraging readers to make of them what they will. By the time that the festival movement brought together the North American covens and working groups of the 70s it was very difficult to find a bootstrap coven or tradition that had not either been organized directly from that chapter or been directly influenced by MW. Sometimes I refer to MW as the "'Spiral Dance' of the seventies" because it both synthesized the magical feel of the moment, and provided practical support that allowed new groups to grow.
 

There's some dispute as to whether Huson had a connection with non-Gardnerian 'Traditional Craft' in Britain. Huson claims that his occult training came from post Golden Dawn sources, along with a personal curiosity about folklore and historic witchcraft. I did ask him a specific question in a personal correspondence, and he again said that he had no connection with craft lineage. At this moment I'm inclined to believe him.

That makes him rather a genius. He created a synthesis of traditional medieval magic with practical energy-work and visualization, reinvented the material tools and taught a generation how to cast spells and summon the Old Gods. Oh, also, he can draw rather nicely. The book is illustrated by the author, and his images of Cernunnos and Aradia have remained in circulation in the Pagan community ever since.

If there are ten books on magic that should be remembered from the 20th century, this should be one of them.