New Forest coven

According to his own claims, in September 1939, a British occultist named Gerald Gardner was initiated into the coven and subsequently used its beliefs and practices as a basis from which he formed the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.

As Wicca developed in the latter decades of the twentieth century, some of the figures who were researching its origins, such as Aidan Kelly[2] and later Leo Ruickbie,[3] came to the conclusion that the New Forest coven was simply a fictional invention of Gardner's to provide a historical basis for his faith.

The idea of the pagan Witch-Cult has been disproved and dismissed by historians specialising in the Early Modern witch trials since Murray's death in 1963,[7] with works by academics like Elliot Rose, Norman Cohn, Carlo Ginzburg and Keith Thomas instead showing the real nature of the witch trials as a combination of social, economic and religious factors.

[11] A different origin theory was put forward by Steve Wilson (1996), who speculated that the coven might have been founded by members of a scouting organisation, the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry.

Meanwhile, he met a group of people within the Fellowship who claimed to have been involved in a form of Freemasonry known as Co-Masonry, who informed him that they had moved to the area where they had joined the Rosicrucian Order when their friend and fellow Co-Mason, Mabel Besant-Scott, had done so.

[14] The researcher Philip Heselton identified two of these individuals as Ernest and Susie Mason, a brother and sister couple who had in prior decades been involved in a variety of occult groups, including Co-Masonry and Theosophy, and who had recently moved to the area from Southampton.

[17] Gardner would reveal little about the coven and its members, although claimed that in August 1940, during the midst of the Second World War, they performed a ritual known as Operation Cone of Power which they hoped would influence the High Command of Nazi Germany and prevent them from invading Britain.

[18] This magical ritual, Gardner claimed, took place inside the Forest, and involved the Witches raising a Cone of Power which they directed toward Germany and focused on sending the message into the minds of the German leaders that they would not be able to cross the English Channel.

Investigating these claims, Heselton found two locals who died soon after the ritual: a reporter, Walter Forder (1881–1940), and a blacksmith, Charles Loader (1864–1940), whom he speculated were involved in the rite.

[5] Rosetta was a keen follower of Anthroposophy; Susie was a Co-Freemason and Theosophist, and Ernie, who claimed to have been fully aware from the moment of his birth, was an enthusiastic esotericist and taught mental exercises in the Crotona Fellowship.