| Robert Cochrane | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 January 1931 London, England |
| Died | 3 July 1966 (aged 35) |
| Occupation | Cunning man |
Robert Cochrane (26 January 1931 - 3 July 1966), who was born as Roy Bowers, was an English Neopagan witch who founded the tradition known as Cochrane's Craft, which is seen by some to be a form of Wicca but is sometimes considered distinct from it due to Cochrane's opposition to both Gerald Gardner and Gardnerian Wicca.
Born into a poor family in London, he claimed to have had family members with various connections to different forms of the occult, and to have been a member of a hereditary witch family, a claim that has been criticised by historians such as Ronald Hutton. Being initiated into the Gardnerian tradition, he subsequently went on to found a coven known as the Clan of Tubal Cain, through which he propagated his Craft. In 1966, he committed ritual suicide. Ever since his death, a number of Neopagan and magical groups have continued to adhere to his teachings, including the Regency, the 1734 Tradition and the revived forms of the Clan of Tubal Cain.
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As noted by Mike Howard in 2001, "factual details about Cochrane's early life are scant".[1] He was born into a Methodist family in London in 1931, in what he would later describe as "a slum".[1]
He claimed that members of his family had been practitioners of an ancient pagan Witch-cult since at least the 17th century, and that two of them had been executed for it.[2] He would also claim that his great-grandfather had been "the last Grand Master of the Staffordshire witches".[2] He said that his grandparents had abandoned the craft and converted to Methodism, for which his great-grandfather had cursed them. He said that his father had practiced witchcraft, but that he kept it a secret, and made his wife promise to not tell his son, Robert. Despite her oath, according to Cochrane, after his father's death, her mother did in fact tell him, at which he embraced his heritage.[2] He asserted that his Aunt Lucy actually taught him all about the faith,[2] but several other accounts of who initiated him have since emerged, causing some confusion on the issue. He would later say of this family tradition that:
| “ | I come from the country of the oak, ash and thorn... I describe myself as a 'pellar'. The People are formed in clans or families and describe themselves by the local name of the Deity. I am a member of the People of Goda - the Clan of Tubal Cain. We were known locally as 'witches', 'the Good People', Green gowns (females only), 'Horsemen' and finally Wizards.[3] | ” |
He admitted that whilst growing up, he had a very violent temper, and was "a walking threat to anything or anybody", because of which he got a broken nose and several scars upon his face.[1]
He worked as a blacksmith at a foundry, and later as a bargee transporting coal along Britain's network of canals. He would later remark that he saw traces of paganism in the folklore and folk art of both of these professions.[4]
In the early 1960s, Cochrane and his wife Jane began living on a modern housing estate in Slough in Berkshire. At this time he worked as a typeface designer in an office.[4]
Around the time that the British 1735 Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951, and it became legal to practice witchcraft in the United Kingdom, Cochrane, who was in his early twenties, founded a coven, and named it the "Clan of Tubal Cain" after the Biblical figure Tubal Cain (the first blacksmith), as a reference to his work in that profession.
Cochrane initiated his wife Jane and several others into the craft, and they then joined the coven. Among these was Evan John Jones, who would later become an author upon the subject of pagan witchcraft. Jones had met Cochrane through his wife Jane, as they both worked at the same company.[5]
The group performed their rituals either at Cochrane's house, or, more often, at Burnham Beeches, though they also performed rituals at the South Downs, after which they would stay the night at Doreen Valiente's flat in Brighton.[5]
Describing his creation of his Witchcraft tradition, one of its later adherents, Shani Oates, remarked that "Like any true craftsman, he was able to mold raw material into a magical synthesis, creating a marvelous working system, at once instinctively true and intrinsically beautiful."[6]
The Clan of Tubal Cain worshiped a Horned God and a Triple Goddess, much akin to the Bricket Wood coven that Gerald Gardner had recently founded. The Goddess was viewed as "the White Goddess", a term taken from Robert Graves' book of the same name. The God was associated with fire, the underworld and time, and was described as "the goat-god of fire, craft, lower magics, fertility and death". The God was known by several names, most notable Tubal Cain, Bran, Wayland and Herne. Cochrane's tradition held that these two deities had a son, the Horn Child, who was a young sun god.[5]
However, differences between the two also existed, for instance Gardnerians always worked skyclad, or naked, whereas Cochrane's followers wore black hooded robes. Similarly, Cochrane's coven did not practice scourging, as Gardner's did. Cochrane himself disliked Gardner and the Gardnerians and often ridiculed them, even coining the term "Gardnerian" himself.[7]
Whilst they used ritual tools, they differed somewhat from those used by Gardner's coven. The main five tools in Cochrane's Craft were a ritual knife (known as an athame), a staff known as a stang (according to Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon, Bowers is responsible for the introduction of this into Wicca), a cup, a stone (used as a whetstone to sharpen the knife), and a ritual cord worn by the coven members.[8] Cochrane never made use of a Book of Shadows or similar such books, but worked from a "traditional way of doing things", which was both "spontaneous and shamanistic".[9]
Cochrane's craft tried to blend both traditional witchcraft practices that he claimed were followed by the traditional Witch-cult, but also Celtic mysticism, that he believed the ancient Druids had practiced.
In 1963, Cochrane anonymously published an article in the Spiritualist newspaper Psychic News (9 November issue) entitled "Genuine Witchcraft is Defended". In it, he stated that:
| “ | I am a witch descended from a family of witches. Genuine witchcraft is not paganism, though it retains the memory of ancient faiths... [Witchcraft is] the last real mystery cult to survive, with a very complex and evolved philosophy that has strong affinities with many Christian beliefs. The concept of a sacrificial god was not new to the ancient world; it is not new to a witch... I come from an old witch family. My mother told me of things that had been told to her grandmother by her grandmother. I have two ancestors who died by hanging for the practice of witchcraft.[10] | ” |
In 1964 Cochrane met Doreen Valiente, who had formerly been a High Priestess of the Gardnerian Bricket Wood coven, through mutual friends which he had met at a gathering at Glastonbury Tor held by the Brotherhood of the Essenes.[11] The two became friends, and Valiente joined the Clan of Tubal Cain. She later remarked that there were certain things in this coven that were better than those in Gardner's, for instance she thought that "[Cochrane] believed in getting close to nature as few Gardnerian witches at that time seemed to do".[12] She also commented on how Cochrane did not seem to want lots of publicity, as Gardner had done, something which she admired. She began to become dissatisfied with Cochrane however, over some of his practices.
Cochrane often insulted and mocked Gardnerian witches, which annoyed Valiente. This reached such an extreme that at one point in 1966 he called for "a Night of the Long Knives of the Gardnerians", at which point Doreen, in her own words, "rose up and challenged him in the presence of the rest of the coven. I told him that I was fed up with listening to all this senseless malice, and that, if a 'Night of the Long Knives' was what his sick little soul craved, he could get on with it, but he could get on with it alone, because I had better things to do".[13] She left the coven, and never came back.
Valiente had also been unnerved by Cochrane's taking of hallucinogenic drugs, which he called "witches' potions".
After Doreen's departure, Cochrane began to commit adultery with a new woman who had joined the coven, and, according to other coven members, did not care that his wife Jane knew.[14]
Shortly after Valiente's departure, Jane also left, and the coven soon ceased to function.
In December 1965 to April 1966,[15] Cochrane corresponded with an American witch named Joe Wilson.[16] Mr. Wilson formed a new tradition, known as the 1734 tradition[17] based upon teachings of Ruth Wynn Owen, a tradition taught by a man he refers to as Sean, and Robert Cochrane's teaching.[18]
The numerological number '1724' (a possible misprint in the book), was explained by Doreen Valiente in her 1989 book The Rebirth of Witchcraft. Valiente claimed that Cochrane had given the American witch Justine Glass a photograph of a copper platter with '1724' printed on it for her 1965 book Witchcraft, the Sixth Sense - and Us. He had told Glass that it depicted a witch's ritual bowl that had been in his family for many centuries. Valiente revealed that this was a lie by Cochrane - she had herself, in fact, bought that very item for him only the year before in a Brighton antiques shop to be used in a ritual.[17][19]
Cochrane ingested belladonna and Librium on Midsummer eve 1966, and died nine days later in hospital without recovering consciousness. He left a suicide note expressing his intent to kill himself "while of sound mind".
A group called The Regency was formed by Ronald "Chalky" White and his friend, George Winter, to preserve and continue Cochrane's tradition; it eventually disbanded in 1978 but recently a website has been set up to preserve The Regency memory.[20]
A similarly Cochrane-inspired tradition was the Roebuck,[21] whose lore is also used by the "Ancient Keltic Church".[22]
There are currently three groups operating under the title of “Clan of Tubal Cain”; each of them has their own interpretation and expression of the legacy of Robert Cochrane, although they may not necessarily completely agree with each other.[23]
All three Clans are led by a Maid and Magister, currently these are:
Following correspondence with Cochrane in the mid 1960s, an American named Joseph Bearwalker Wilson founded a group called the 1734 Tradition,[18] based on his teachings, the teachings of the actress Ruth Wynn Owen[32] and another colleague named Sean and ideas in Robert Graves' The White Goddess, The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain by Lewis Spence, and The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer.
Another of Cochrane's initiates, Evan John Jones wrote a book, Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (a collaboration with Doreen Valiente)[33] outlining his version of the Cochrane tradition. Whilst there was no objective way to validate Cochrane's claim to be a hereditary witch, the experience of being in his coven was that of being one of "Diana's darling crew" (Jones, cited in Clifton, 2006).
Cochrane did not write any books in his lifetime,[1] though some of his collected writings and letters have been assembled since his death:
Other works have been published about Cochrane based upon his teachings, and on his Craft, or based upon his ideas
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