Cardell's tradition of Wicca venerated a form of the Horned God known as Atho and worked with a coven that met on the grounds of his estate in Surrey.
[2] In 1958 he published an article entitled "The Craft of the Wiccens" in Light magazine, in which he advertised for all genuine practitioners of the religion to get in touch.
Valiente believed that the bracelet was similar to those used in Gardnerian Wicca, and she informed Dafo that "they are not the same as ours, but bear sufficient resemblance to be worthy of our attention".
Valiente later met them in his London consulting rooms, and she said that: They were quite splendidly appointed as a sort of private temple; but when Cardell showed me a bronze tripod which was obviously 19th century and tried to tell me that it had been dug up from the ruins of Pompeii, I became rather unhappy.
In it, Hall claimed to have witnessed a ritual by twelve witches in the woods, involving Mary Cardell, playing the part of a Witch Maiden and dressed in a red cloak, sitting in a five-pronged tree with Charles Cardell, dressed in a black cloak adorned with a pentagram, casting a circle with a sword, blowing a horn and shooting a longbow.
In 1968, Cardell was found guilty of spreading defamatory remarks about the solicitor's company which had supported the London Evening News.
The court proceedings had left the Cardells bankrupt, and they were forced to sell some of their land and live in caravans in one of their fields, though this was also something they chose to do before their loss.