According to his written works, primarily Witchcraft from the Inside, published in 1971, he was the first person in the United States to openly admit to being a practitioner of Wicca, and he introduced the lineage of Gardnerian Wicca to the United States in 1964, after having been initiated by Gerald Gardner's then-high priestess Monique Wilson in Britain the previous year.
From 1957 to 1959, he served in the Royal Air Force, and then went on to work in a London publishing company for four years, before he and his wife emigrated to the United States in 1962, where they lived on Long Island, New York.
Buckland soon read the books The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray and Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner, which gave him an insight into Wicca as it is now commonly known.
[6] Both Buckland and his wife Rosemary travelled to Scotland, where, in Perth, they were initiated into the craft by the High Priestess Monique Wilson (known as the Lady Olwen).
The Bucklands returned home to the United States following their meeting with Gardner, bringing the Gardnerian Book of Shadows with them.
Many fully initiated Gardnerians in the US can trace their origins back to this coven, which was a centre for Neopaganism in America for twenty years.
In 2008, the artifacts of the Museum were housed and entrusted to the care of The Covenant of the Pentacle Wiccan Church (CPWC), based in New Orleans, Louisiana, and led by Arch Priestess Rev.
In 2015, the artifacts were turned over to the Temple of Sacrifice, a coven based in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Raymond Buckland and Kat Tigner.
[3] In 1992 Buckland and his third wife, Tara, moved to a farm in North Central Ohio, where he continued to write, and work as a solitary Wiccan.
He followed this in 1970 with Witchcraft Ancient and Modern and Practical Candleburning Rituals, as well as a novel called Mu Revealed, a spoof on the works of James Churchward, which was written using the pseudonym "Tony Earll" (an anagram for 'not really').