This book explores the currents of thought that ran counter to the main thrust of the revival of witchcraft in the 1960s, counter-currents that are growing in importance and influence some sixty years later.

During the chaotic but colorful 1960s, witchcraft was reborn as a modern mystical practice. Many are familiar with Wicca, founded by Gerald Gardner, but there was a counter-current, now known as Traditional Witchcraft, which saw the art from a very different angle. Its chief thinker was Robert Cochrane, who envisioned witchcraft as a gnostic quest for ultimate knowledge and union with the divine. This volume explores his most important ideas, especially the way in which he re-envisioned ancient mythology, putting a new spin on old deities as well as on folkloric figures like Robin Hood and King Arthur and naming Tubal Cain, whom the Bible calls the first blacksmith, as his avatar of knowledge both sacred and profane. Though he wrote very little and died young, Cochrane left enough material behind for us to reconstruct the steps by which he urged each aspiring witch to take a crooked path to complete gnosis.