Witches, War and the Spiritual Battle of Britain

By Richard Clements

In the summer of 1940, as a Nazi invasion loomed, an extraordinary story was quietly brewing in the Hampshire countryside. Local legend has it that on Lammas Eve in 1940, a coven of witches met beneath the ancient oaks of the New Forest, resolved to do their bit for Britain’s defence, not with rifles or Spitfires, but with ritual magic. The story goes that these occult practitioners formed a circle on the forest floor and chanted incantations into the night, building a mystical “Cone of Power” directed straight at Adolf Hitler’s mind. Their message, delivered in fervent whispers: “You cannot cross the sea … You cannot come!” – trying to persuade the Führer to call off his invasion plans. This secretive rite, a kind of “Spiritual Battle of Britain”, has since evolved into one of World War II’s most peculiar legends, blending elements of folklore, patriotism, and the supernatural.

Origins of a Wartime Legend

Gerald Gardner by his well — Gerald Gardner

The New Forest witches may have remained an esoteric secret had it not been for one man: Gerald Gardner. A retired civil servant and amateur folklorist, Gardner would go on to be known as the “Father of Wicca” for his work in resuscitating modern witchcraft. In 1939, with Europe on the brink of war, Gardner claimed to have discovered a secret coven in the New Forest after being invited to the home of a wealthy local woman, Dorothy Clutterbuck. There, he experienced an initiation, blindfolded, ordered to disrobe, and welcomed to the old witchcraft ways. A respectable churchgoer in public, Mrs. Clutterbuck was reportedly a leading member of this hidden pagan circle, although her private diaries intriguingly revealed no signs of unorthodoxy. What Gardner’s account implies is that behind the facade of an English country gentlewoman was a practising witch, keeping ancient rites secret and alive.

The New Forest coven, Gardner said, was comprised largely of senior citizens, “of pensionable age,” as he affectionately described them. Many had backgrounds in esoteric societies and occultism. Indeed, the witches had initially encountered Gardner through a local Rosicrucian theatre club, the Crotona Fellowship in Christchurch, which served as a cover for occult enthusiasts. They included the Mason brothers of Southampton and a schoolmistress named Edith Woodford-Grimes, who took the craft name “Dafo” and became Gardner’s close collaborator. This small group of mystics felt they were still guardians of ancient witchcraft. When Britain’s hour of need arrived in 1940, they reportedly agreed to use their occult skills to battle Hitler with spells.

Operation Cone of Power

The key ritual is alleged to have occurred on the night of July 31, 1940, Lammas Eve, a date traditionally observed as a harvest festival in pagan calendars. Britain had just withstood the fall of France and the evacuation of Dunkirk; invasion was imminent. In the dark, in a wartime blackout, the New Forest coven met in a secret glade deep among the trees. They selected the site with care: some say it was close to the old Rufus Stone, an ancient marker in the woods, while others highlight a great oak known as the “Naked Man,” where highwaymen once swung from gibbets. Either way, it was remote and full of mystical symbolism.

A harvest-time scene in the English countryside, golden fields under a twilight sky. In the distance, faint shadows of warplanes streak overhead, while in the foreground, an old coven gathers near a gnarled oak tre

If there had been witnesses, they would have seen a peculiar sight. The witches, middle-aged men and women, danced naked, or “skyclad,” in witchcraft parlance, in a circle beneath the tall trees. They forwent a bonfire (fearing Luftwaffe patrols or Air Raid Wardens) and instead set a single shuttered lantern atop the circle’s easternmost edge, facing toward Germany. As they leapt and twirled faster and faster, spiralling around, they chanted in unison a magical formula, an incantation, handed down through their craft: “You cannot cross the sea, you cannot come”, over and over again. Gardner later wrote that this was the same charm their “great-grandfathers” had employed against Napoleon, called “Boney”, and their very distant forebears had used against the Spanish Armada. Essentially, the coven believed they were reviving an ancient occult fight to protect the island nation, just as witches before them had allegedly conjured storms and fog to bedevil past invaders.

The climax of the ritual was the raising of the so-called “Cone of Power.” The coven danced in rapture, picturing a cone of psychic energy gathering above their circle. At its zenith, they aimed this cone toward Hitler’s mind in distant Berlin, a mental attack designed to drain his will to invade. “They united, raised the great cone of power, and aimed the thought at Hitler’s mind: ‘You can’t cross the sea. Gardner did not go so far as to claim outright that this magic did stop the invasion, but he noted pointedly that “though all the invasion barges were ready … Hitler never even tried to come.” As he tells it, he had seen a “very interesting ceremony” designed for the sole purpose of inserting that notion into Hitler’s mind. History has it that this was the point at which Hitler called off Operation Sealion – the proposed invasion of Britain – a decision cited as being influenced by many factors; yet, the witches were happy to think that their incantation had helped tip the scales.

Gardner said, however, that the victory was not free. In particular, the physical toll of this ritual was severe. Most of the participants were old and frail, and several fell ill and died “from exhaustion” in the days after that night. In one account provided to Gardner’s colleague Doreen Valiente, several of the coven members died directly from raising the Cone of Power; they sacrificed themselves in the process. One of Gardner’s friends, the writer Louis Wilkinson, later said that the ancient witches must have danced naked too, without protection from warm goose grease on their bodies, and thus were open to exposure and pneumonia. Indeed, the researcher Philip Heselton found that two local people in the New Forest – a reporter and a blacksmith – died in late 1940 under circumstances that fit within the chronology of the story, and he theorises that these men may have taken part in the rite. If so, it turns the coven’s Lammas Eve working into something like an occult Dunkirk, where a handful gave their last full measure of devotion to save the many.

Beliefs and Believers: The Occult in Wartime Britain

Witchcraft warfare may seem fantastical, but it isn’t a concept that originated in a vacuum. Britain enjoys a rich vein of folklore about magical realm defence. An old Devon legend holds that in 1588, Sir Francis Drake and a coven of “sea witches” assembled at Devil’s Point near Plymouth, in an attempt to halt the oncoming Spanish Armada with a conjured storm. On misty days, locals still say that you can hear ghostly chants on the headland, reminding one of how Drake’s witches allegedly bewitched the weather to disperse the Spanish fleet. Likewise, in 1805, English folk tradition claims that witches cast a ring of magic against Napoleon, chanting “you cannot come” until the French emperor reconsidered his plans for invasion. Such stories, though unprovable, were in the cultural imagination, and Gardner explicitly drew on them, arguing the New Forest rite was the latest chapter in this magical battle of Britain.

There were also contemporary currents that made the story of witchcraft resonate beyond its folklore. Thanks to the occult revival of the early 20th century, Britain was possessed by practitioners in the 1940s, including occultists, spiritualists and esoteric groups (often clandestine). One was the esoteric author Dion Fortune, who believed spiritual energies could help the war effort. From 1939 onwards, Fortune organised what she called the “Magical Battle of Britain” – a series of weekly meditations and visualisations by her Society of the Inner Light designed to protect Britain on the astral plane. During the Blitz, she sent letters to her devotees, distributed throughout the country, telling them to simultaneously imagine pillars of light and Arthurian heroes protecting the British Isles. In their mind’s eye, they constructed “a wall of light” around Britain’s shores.

Strangely enough, the British intelligence services themselves were not completely dismissive of occult concerns. The Nazi leadership was fascinated by astrology, mysticism and arcane lore, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was engrossed in astrological predictions, and SS chief Heinrich Himmler had a well-documented fixation on occult and pagan mythology. In response, British Intelligence conducted what one journalist described as “Wicca warfare,” at least at the level of psychological operations. MI6 set up a secret “Witchcraft Research Centre” during the war, run by an eccentric occult expert called Cecil Williamson (who was a friend of Gardner’s, by the way). Yes, much of this is murky, but it is said that MI6 devised “Operation Mistletoe,” an attempt to use propaganda and stage-managed occult ritual to unnerve the superstitious Nazi high command.

The infamous occultist Aleister Crowley was peripherally linked to these wartime intrigues. He volunteered his expertise to the government and even offered to help interrogate Hess through shared occult interests, although the depth of his involvement remains speculative. A later and broadly discredited claim made by a man calling himself Amado Crowley asserted that it was Aleister, not Gardner, who performed the pivotal rite. This narrative claims that “Operation Cone of Power” was a fabrication, and that the true ritual, codenamed Operation Mistletoe, was held in early 1941 in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. Amado even credited what he called this ritual as the source of Rudolf Hess’s bizarre solo flight to Scotland. These claims have been thoroughly debunked, but their existence alone illustrates how rich the ground was for myth-making when it came to occult warfare.

The Story’s Journey from Rumour to Reality

The first public clues to the story surfaced soon after the war. In 1952, with the Witchcraft Act finally repealed, witchcraft no longer being illegal, Gerald Gardner and Cecil Williamson started wearing their witch hats and talking openly about wartime witch business. Both men had a gift for self-publicity in aid of Britain’s fledgling pagan revival, and they made tantalising references to a coven’s ritual to block Hitler. Gardner then published a more complete account in 1954, in his book Witchcraft Today, effectively outing the coven and placing the story in the public domain.

In the ensuing decades, the story was embellished and reimagined within the expanding Wiccan and occult community. A biographical memoir by Gardner’s confidant, Jack Bracelin, published in 1960, provided further details about the New Forest coven and its activities. The wartime rites were relayed to High Priestess Doreen Valiente, who had joined Gardner’s coven in the 1950s. She also confirmed important details, including the fatal exhaustion of participants, and other details about the coven’s existence were incorporated into the lore of contemporary Wicca.

Since then, modern historians and researchers have tried to tease truth from illusion. Philip Heselton, a meticulous investigator of Wiccan origins, has compiled a probable roster of members of the New Forest coven and believes that the Lammas 1940 ritual did occur, in some form. But there’s no smoking-gun archival evidence of the ritual, and Heselton sides with those who believe that this wartime coven gathering truly took place behind the veil of secrecy.

Historian Ronald Hutton advises adopting a healthy scepticism. He notes that Gardner’s story has the added benefit of portraying witchcraft in a heroically patriotic light in the 1950s, exactly the time Gardner needed to rehabilitate the public impression of witches. In Hutton’s view, the New Forest ritual might be better understood as an origin myth of modern Wicca. Whether or not it was true, it conveyed a potent message that witches were loyal Britons who had spiritually guarded the nation in its darkest hour.

Legacy and Cultural Impact

Myth or memory, the New Forest coven tale has conjured a long spell over both popular culture and spiritual thought. Among Wicca and neo-pagan circles, it became a widely recounted foundational legend, confirming continuity with ancient practices and a benevolent intent behind witchcraft. It underscores the ideals of patriotism, of bravery, and the conviction in the energies of nature that contemporary witches find inspiring.

The story of the New Forest witches has also been incorporated into literature and media over the years. Arguably the most famous fictional retelling is Lammas Night by Katherine Kurtz, which dramatizes a concerted effort by British witches to stop a Nazi invasion. More recently, the graphic novel The Witches of World War II imagines Gardner working with other occult luminaries on clandestine missions.

Its influence, beyond entertainment, is felt in a subtle yet profound cultural legacy, a curious footnote in World War II history. It helped recast the image of the witch from an outsider whom society feared to a quirky, even endearing patriot. It was part of the recovery of witchcraft in the British mind.

Conclusion: Myth, Magic and Memory

So did a coven of witches in the New Forest aid in saving Britain from Nazi invasion? The honest answer is that we may never find out for sure. Conclusive evidence is lacking, and the participants, if they existed, carried their secrets to the grave. But what we do have are testimony, tantalising clues and a narrative that has changed as it has been told.

Sceptics correctly argue that orthodox factors account for Britain’s survival; no supernatural explanation is needed. But the cultural viability of the story can’t simply be discounted. In a country begging for miracles, maybe it’s not so impossible after all that some patriots will choose to be miracle-makers themselves.

Whether fact or folklore, the tale of Britain’s wartime coven still casts a spell, beckoning each successive generation to enter the New Forest on a moonlit night and picture the chanting ring of witches, dancing for victory as history teetered on the edge.

References:

Gardner, Gerald. Witchcraft Today. Rider & Company, 1954.

Heselton, Philip. Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner – Volume 1 and 2. Thoth Publications, 2012.

Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Valiente, Doreen. The Rebirth of Witchcraft. Phoenix Publishing, 1989.

Bracelin, Jack. Gerald Gardner: Witch. Octagon Press, 1960.

Fortune, Dion. The Magical Battle of Britain. Thoth Publications, 1993 (original letters circulated 1939–1942).

Magliocco, Sabina. Interview commentary in “The Witches Who Fought Hitler,” Mental Floss Magazine, October 2016.

McShee, Stuart. “Wartime Witches and the Cone of Power,” The Wild Hunt, October 2018.

Thorne, Kieran. “Witches vs. Nazis: Britain’s Occult Defence Against Hitler,” ThoughtCo, 2019.

Lockley, Mike. “Did Witches Curse Hitler?” Shropshire Star, October 2023.

Gault, Matthew. “MI6, Crowley and the Nazi Occult Panic,” Reuters Special Report, 2017.