The Witchcraft Research Association was a British organisation formed in 1964 in an attempt to unite and study the various claims that had emerged of surviving remnants of the so-called Witch-Cult, such as those of Gerald Gardner, Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek, Charles Cardell, and Raymond Howard.
Presidency was first held by Sybil Leek, but after she was forced to emigrate to the United States after suffering persecution and being evicted from her home, it was taken over by Doreen Valiente, who had herself already been involved in several strands of neopagan witchcraft, including Gardnerian Wicca, Cochrane's Craft and the Coven of Atho.
[1] Leek's reputation was however damaged by press hostility and a strained relationship with other Wiccans, resulting in her resignation as President of the WRA in July and her emigration to the United States.
"[5] In the next issue of Pentagram, an article was contributed by Cochrane, in which he echoed Valiente's call for a full study of the differing forms of the witch-cult, which in his view would reveal an ancient mystery religion which lay behind them.
[5] In one of these articles he criticised Valiente's speech at the WRA dinner as exemplifying "the Gardnerian atmosphere of sweetness and light coupled with good clean fun under the auspices of a Universal Auntie".
[6] She had little respect for "Taliesin"; conducting research into him, she found that he had no apparent connection to a West Country tradition, that he instead lived near to Cochrane in the Thames Valley, and that he had for a time been a member of Gardner's Bricket Wood coven.
[6] Following the culmination of Pentagram, a group of British Gardnerians under the editorship of Dorset-based John Score replaced it with a newsletter titled The Wiccan, first issued in July 1968.