'This was an assumption very much at
variance with the British historical experience, as represented both
by the first public representatives of Wicca and the magicians from
whom they had drawn their ideas. Mathers had been fascinated by
militarism and aristocracy. Yeat's right-wing tendencies developed
into a flirtation with fascism. Crowley was a lifelong high Tory, and
all Dion Fortune's expressed political and social attitudes point in
the same direction. Gardner, as said, was certainly a conservative,
and while Alex Sanders disclaimed an associations with specific
parties, he consistently expressed admiration for hierarchy and
monarchy. A writer who interviewed several Wiccan groups in the 1960s
noted that most of their members were politically right-wing.'
'There was no paradox in this; for most
of these people their interest in paganism and magic was part of a
wider rejection of modernity, a phenomena in which for many people in
the early and mid-twentieth century, industrialization, urbanization,
and high technology all formed parts of a package with socialism.
Their spiritual aspects matched closely with three different
emotional aspects of right-wing idealogy: nostalgia for a better
past, elitism and suspicion of the masses, and a free market, in
magic and sex as in economics.'
Ronald Huntford, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
