Jack L. Bracelin

Jack L. Bracelin was an influential figure in the early history of the neopagan religion of Wicca, being a High Priest of Gardnerian Wicca who had been initiated into the craft by Doreen Valiente in 1956 and had been a member of the Bricket Wood coven.

Jack L. Bracelin
Died1983
Greece
NationalityBritish
OccupationNightclub owner, nudist club owner, Wiccan priest

Early life

Prior to being initiated into the craft, Bracelin had worked for the British police in Palestine and had later worked for a paint company.[1]

Wicca

In 1956, Bracelin was initiated into Wicca through the Bricket Wood coven by the High Priestess Doreen Valiente.

In 1959 Bracelin met the Sufi writer and practitioner Idries Shah at a table in the Cosmo Restaurant in Swiss Cottage, North London. Shah was interested in Wicca, and Bracelin introduced him to Gardner. Shah wrote Gardner's official biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, which was published by his own company, Octagon Press, in 1960. However, he used Bracelin's name as a pseudonym because he did not want to cause confusion amongst his Sufi students and friends as to his interest in a different religion.[2]

Bracelin was one of the beneficiaries of Gardner's estate at his death, along with Monique Wilson and Patricia Crowther.[3] Bracelin inherited enough of the Fiveacres naturist club in Bricket Wood, that he could take it over.

Post-Wicca

Bracelin later resigned from being the Bricket Wood coven's High Priest, and soon left the coven itself, because, according to coven member Frederic Lamond, "he asked himself whether the Book of Shadows' simplified ceremonial magic rituals expressed his own religious feelings, and concluded they did not".[4] In 1966 he married a young woman in a ceremony held in a Roman Catholic church, which many members of the Wica felt showed that he had turned his back on the craft.[4]

However, Bracelin continued to allow the coven to meet at the Witches' cottage, on the condition that they paid rent on the plot of land upon which it was situated. In 1975, Bracelin tried to get them to pay for the nudist club's electricity as well, which the coven members were unwilling to do, and so they sold their plot to another nudist.[5]

Bracelin was a supporter of the hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s, believing that it embodied the "life-affirming Goddess values" in its "true expression". He had taken over Pink Floyd’s light show at the London Free School following Joel and Toni Brown’s return to Millbrook, then ran his own light show called Fiveacre Lights in a corner of UFO Club. Pink Floyd played at Bracelin’s Watford nudist colony on Guy Fawkes Night 1966.[6] He opened his own psychedelic club, called Happening 44 on Gerrard Street[7], the heart of London’s Soho, opposite the photography studio of George Harrison Marks.

In June 1976, Bracelin, by then in financial difficulties, was forced to sell the nudist club, though the new owners agreed to pay him a small pension.

Death

Bracelin retired to live in Greece, and it was here that he died in 1983 of a heart attack.

References
  1. Davies, Hunter (27 October 1963). "Hallowe'en—and the witches gather in force". The Sunday Times.
  2. Lamond 2004, p. 19.
  3. "Gardner, Gerald B. (1884-1964)". Themystica.com. Retrieved 22 December 2008. Other beneficiaries of his estate were Patricia C. Crowther and Jack L. Bracelin, who authored an authoritative biography of Gardner, Gerald Gardner: Witch (1960).
  4. Lamond 2004, p. 37.
  5. Lamond 2004, p. 38.
  6. Nymphs and Naiads. Wolfbait Books. 2020. p. 11. ISBN 9781916215122.
  7. "Hex Appeal – Witches Brew". Pamela Green: Never Knowingly Overdressed.

Bibliography
  • Lamond, Frederic R. (2004). Fifty Years of Wicca. Sutton Mallet, UK: Green Magic. ISBN 978-0-9547230-1-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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