Warlocks – the term originates from the Old Northumbrian for ‘our hair’ as early warlocks were famed for their outrageously large beehive hairdos. In a footnote to his ‘Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum’, the Venerable Bede wrote ‘There are locals who forsake the Lord and instead besmear their loins in goose grease and applieth the same unction unto their manes so that it riseth up like the fires of Hell or the domed abode of the humble bee. Fittingly, they are known by the inhabitants of God’s own Northumbria as ‘Greased Goosemen’, ‘Goat-Worriers’, or ‘Warlocked Folk’.”
There was a schism in the early druidic faith when the warlocks of the Western tradition declared that the goat’s blood was merely metaphorical whilst the warlocks of the Eastern tradition stated categorically that the goat’s blood was literal. This led to a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Particularly by the goats.
The term Wærloga or wicca means ‘witch’ or ‘travel show presenter’, and a such became the name of the ‘faith’ or practice associated with warlocks.
Records of early warlocks are somewhat scratchy. There is a passing reference in Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ when he writes: “When saugh ye ever, in any maner age, that hye God defended warlockerie by expres word? I pray you telleth me; or wher commanded he not to spilleth the blode of goats to Wotan?”
There is a court record of King Richard II having used three warlocks to clear the guttering at Windsor Castle as all the peasants were busy revolting. Warlocks at the time hadn’t unionised – this would not happen until centuries later under the reign of William and Mary.
The English Renaissance playwright and poet, Ben Jonson, of course wrote ‘The Warlock’ in 1610 which tells of a gentleman, Halfwit, who flees the country because of whooping cough, leaving his servant, Jim, in charge of his house. Jim it transpires is a warlock and renames himself ‘Lieutenant Murdock’, before enlisting two friends, Blatant the Magician and Debbie Rare a Magician’s assistant and purveyor of gratification to the discerning letch, to help him to con wealth and suchlike from gullible buffoons. The play had a distinctly anti-warlock leaning due to the monarch of the time being match-happy when it came to igniting members of the occult. Take the following extract as an example:
Halfwit: But Jim, tis true thou art a warlock?
Jim: Marry nay my Lord. Forsooth my flesh be not as dry as kindling and warrant, it’d take more than the King’s brassier to ignite my spongy corporeal form or Winston be a Flemish man.
Halfwit: Then I shall have Blatant fetch me a flaméd torch for Winston is of Low birth, methinks!
John Napier was labelled by his fellow 17th century academics as a ‘warlock’. A profoundly gifted mathematician, Napier had invented the tapir as a student in Europe though it wouldn’t catch on commercially until several decades after his death. Nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston or Merchiston the Magnificent, he would entertain children in the streets of Stirling by pulling pennies out of their ears and making pigeons appear out of his ruff. He became fluent in Greek when he was concussed by a low-flying dolmades.
Napier’s bones, the calculating device created by the supposed warlock, was of such cunning ingenuity that many of his peers so its creation as proof of Napier’s links to the Underworld. Napier insisted that the odds against such a link were 10,000 to 1 and proved it on his calculating device. Though once again, such a stupendous calculation being done on a machine was for his peers proof that Napier had sold his soul to the Hornéd One. Napier then used his device to show that . . . etc. until they all got tired and went to bed.
Napier studied the Book of Revelations using his calculations to predict the end of the world. He came up with a date in 1688 or 1700. He wasn’t entirely sure, so made dinner reservations for both just in case in the name of ‘the Whore of Babylon’.
Napier spent his adult-life travelling with a spider in a box – he was constantly worried about getting flies in his soup. In fact, this was the root of the original ‘fly-in-the-soup’ joke written, once again, by Ben Jonson in his 1616 play ‘The Devil is an Ass’ when the character of the devil Pug takes Fitzdottrel for tea at a hostelry:
Pug: Waiter, waiter, there is a fly in my soup!
Waiter: Don’t shout Sir, or everyone will want one.
Pug: But I am none other than the famous Scottish Mathematician, John Napier, and consequently am most distressed by its presence as I have left my spider in Merchiston with my butler, Wendells.
With the rise of the Puritans, warlocks went a bit quiet and kept themselves to themselves, keeping incantations to a bare minimum and only sacrificing animals the size of voles or smaller.
There is a prophecy in the Outer Hebrides that states that the arrival of a flame-haired warlock in Lewis on a Tuesday will echo in an age of unprecedented suffering in the carpeting industry.
One of the most prominent figures in modern occultism, beside Russell Grant, was self-professed prophet and founder of Thelema, Aleister Crowley. Crowley was born into a wealthy family, so rich that they could get away with spelling ‘Alistair’ incorrectly without incurring public scandal and social ostracism. In 1898, Crowly became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn that were dedicated to keeping dust off shellfish.
Crowley, according to some, named his new religion after the actress Thelma Barlow, though chronology would make this unlikely, and most modern experts on the occult insist he would have been more of an Emmerdale man.
Whilst on his honeymoon, he wrote a book, something that his wife took as a personal insult. The book was supposedly dictated to him by a being called Aiwass, the Minister of Harpocrates, older brother of Tizwas, the Minister of Chris Tarrant.
Crowley developed a penchant for being a cult leader and so set up his own. He enjoyed wearing the robes and drawing pentagrams on the floor – much to his landlady’s irritation. He spent forty years developing his stare. He felt a really good, intense stare was at the very heart of being a cult leader – that and insisting on matching smocks for everybody. At the height of his powers he could use his stare to open a tin of mackerel and beside maître-des to seat him and the guest away from the band.
At the height of Crowley’s influence, another significant name in the world of warlockery emerged, that of Mandrake the Magician. Starting his life in turn of the century Brooklyn, Leon Mandrake née Giglio, discovered early on in life that having a pencil thin moustache made him somewhat of a social pariah in the playground. His insistence on wearing a black top hat even at the height of the summer just exacerbated the issue. Finding himself mocked and shunned, Mandrake turned to the occult to seek revenge. He had himself transferred to a different school – the College of Magic (or Collegium Magikos in pretend Latin) which shared the premises with a fish market in the Bronx. There the headteacher, a Mr Albert Theron, taught him close up magic and the art of illusions. Mandrake quickly became a master of magic, spells and illusions, and his former bullies found themselves crumbling in fear and confusion.
As a young man, Mandrake spent a year travelling Europe where he worked in chalets in Cockaigne and befriended the Emperor of the Galaxy, Magnon – or Clive to his friends. Clive and Mandrake went into the cocktail bar industry, setting up a chain of establishments called ManClives where Mandrake invited warlocks to perform magic and sacrificial ceremonies to the music of light swing bands.
During this time he met Gerald Brosseau Gardner who was busy setting up a neo-pagan movement tentatively called ‘World of Wicca’ at the time before becoming ‘Gardner’s World’ and eventually ‘Ground Force’ where it was vitally important you wore counter-revolutionary trousers, and no supportive undergarments. Gardner renamed himself ‘Scire’ and tried to persuade Mandrake to abandon his cocktail empire and join him in the New Forest. Mandrake politely declined having made friends with a man from Africa called Lothar who could lift an elephant. Mandrake did however side with Scire when the man fell out with another Wiccan, Charles Cardell. Cardell claimed that Wiccans should worship the horned god, Atho, having fallen asleep whilst reading ‘The Three Musketeers’ and eating strong cheese.
In the post-Crowley age of modern warlocks, the movement has shunned the intensity of Crowley and his ilk and instead have developed a more domestic and sedate approach. Modern warlocks, such as former ‘Funhouse’ presenter, Pat Sharp, and celebrity chef, James Martin, are less overt about their practices. In Martin’s case, just occasionally using goat’s blood in a few recipes and dedicating his ‘The Saturday Kitchen Cookbook’ to Wotan. Pat Sharp, on the other hand, holds a village fair in his home of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire every year to raise money for the warlock movement, running the tombola himself and setting alight to the first virgin.
The modern rise in Paganism meant that on the most recent census it came 17th in religions that people identified themselves as just behind Beliebers and ahead of campanologists.
Despite rumours, the ‘Macarena’ is not a Wiccan spell for curing premature balding. However, 70% of Marty Pellow’s creative output can be found in the ‘Necronomicon’.
Treatises of Gloria 