In Search of the Uncanny: Inspirited Landscapes and Modern Witchcraft

Abstract

The uncanny is commonly identified as an emotional encounter, where the known somehow slips out of place; it is embodied and sensory, but understood primarily as feelings. Home is safe and familiar, history is considered rational and chronological, and the supernatural is both untrue and to be feared. Yet all these are challenged by modern witches with their view of an inspirited world. Practitioner-visitors to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall report a wealth of eerie experiences. Situated at the foot of Boscastle harbor, nestled down a steep and winding route, its place in the landscape encourages ready connections to esoteric experiences. This sense is reinforced by a network of sacred sites weaving outwards from the museum, and the well-used occult and folk magic items held in the displays: tangible and material sites of the uncanny. For these visitors, such encounters in the museum hold particular significance. Here, a dynamic landscape, inhabited by genius loci (spirit of place) combines with an inspirited material culture contained inside the museum. In an animated cosmology, the uncanny is encountered through emotional, sensory, and embodied materialities.

Keywords: :

• uncanny
• inspirited landscape
• modern witchcraft and Wicca
• Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
• Cornwall

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dr. Karis Petty and Professor Jon Mitchell for organizing the Uncanny Landscapes workshop in Helsinki, 2016 and for the thoughtful conversations it generated. I thank them for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1 The museum had been known as the Museum of Witchcraft since established in Boscastle in 1960. The name was changed in 2015 to better reflect the collection.

2 These sites are scattered with offerings, and “ritual litter” generates environmental problems alongside demonstrating spiritual significance. See for example, Blain and Wallis (2004); Houlbrook (2016); Rountree (2006b). At high summer the density of these offerings increases with greater visitor numbers.

3 The terms witch and Wicca are complex and unstable. In Britain witches who follow initiatory forms that recall lineages with Gardner or other twentieth century leader are usually considered Wiccans. Others who reject formal religious structures and see their practice as a craft often describe themselves as traditional witches or just witch. In this article I use “witch and Wicca” as loose categories to describe contemporary practitioners who self-identify as witches and claim resonance with nature in some form.

4 Realist histories of modern witchcraft remain contentious, although the publication of Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon (1999) marked a turning point in the uptake of strategic positions that aimed to separate the history of the movement from more experiential claims about the past.

5 There are vital concerns about the extent to which claims of indigeneity are entangled with explicit or tacit extensions of right wing political positions and subcultures. See for example Hale (2011).

6 The emergence of Spiritualist movements in the nineteenth century provides alternate accounts of the presence of spirits based on rational, scientific claims. See Lamont (2004).

7 More detailed histories of the museum can be found in Patterson (2014); Godwin (2011); Hannant and Costin (2016).

8 Accounts of the glen as an ancient sacred site dating back to the fifth century when it is claimed that Nectan, a Celtic Saint built a hermitage here are not reflected in the documentary record, but are traced to the romantic claims of nineteenth century folklorists such as Robert Steve Hawker (Houlbrook 2016). Nevertheless it is perceived as a multifaith pilgrimage site by Pagans, Christians, and New Age followers. The site is privately owned, charges an entry fee and offers a small café, and shrine where offerings can be left and candles lit. Labyrinths have a well established reputation as ancient mystical tropes (Pennick 1990; Matthews 1970), and the carved labyrinths at Rocky Valley seem unarguably archaic, legitimated by an English Heritage sign that suggests they are “Probably of the early Bronze age (1800–1400 BC).” However, some Earth Mysteries writers dispute their antiquity, and suggest they were carved by a seventeenth century north Cornish coast occult group, the Serpent Cult (Ellis 1999). The monument gained public attention in the 1950s in the London Illustrated News (Gibson 1954) shortly before Williamson moved the museum to nearby Boscastle.

9 The memorial to Joan Wytte, was created by Graham King in 1999 after he buried the skeleton that had been exhibited in the museum. Despite the popular belief that these were the remains of a woman, the “fighting fairy woman of Bodmin” believed to be a witch, imprisoned after a violent outburst, there is no record of her life, arrest, or death. It is likely that the account of her life and death was conjured by Williamson to situate evocative accusations of witchcraft in a local, albeit anomalous historical context (Semmens 2010; Cornish 2013). The account of her life has been embellished by folk writers (Jones 1999; Wallis 2003) after her death to become more akin to those of modern witches and Wiccans.

10 Between 1996 and 2015 this experiential shift was marked by an installation of a stone circle, replaced by a gallery for temporary exhibitions in 2016.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen Cornish

Helen Cornish is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests in historicity and an anthropology of history have been explored through a long term study of how British witches approach histories of modern witchcraft. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall has been a key research site. [email protected]