18 Facts About Cecil Williamson

Cecil Williamson was a British screenwriter, editor and film director and influential English Neopagan Warlock.

Cecil Williamson was the founder of both the Witchcraft Research Center which was a part of MI6's war against Nazi Germany, and the Museum of Witchcraft.

Cecil Williamson was a friend of both Gerald Gardner, who was the founder of Wicca, and of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley.

Cecil Williamson's father was a senior officer in the Royal Navy and was posted abroad.

Cecil Williamson first encountered witchcraft in 1916, when, on a visit to North Bovey, in Devon, to visit his uncle, a local vicar, he saw a woman being publicly beaten and accused of being a witch.

In 1921, whilst at the boarding school Malvern College, Cecil Williamson was bullied, but got help from a woman who lived on the school grounds, who was a witch.

Cecil Williamson showed him how to cast a spell on the bully, who soon after broke his leg in a skiing accident and stopped bullying Cecil.

In 1930, Cecil Williamson returned to Britain and moved to London, where he began working as a production assistant at several film studios.

In 1938, MI6 hired Cecil Williamson to investigate the Nazis' occult interests, and in doing so he formed the Witchcraft Research Center.

An April 1944 news report, while not mentioning the Witchcraft Research Center nor Cecil Williamson, reflects their area of expertise in claiming Goebbels was going to 'harness fortune telling, astrology, and necromancy to his propaganda machine'.

In 1946, Cecil Williamson met Gerald Gardner in the Atlantis Bookshop in London at a talk which Gardner was giving.

In 1947, Cecil Williamson tried to open a museum about witchcraft in Stratford-on-Avon, but was forced to change his plans after local opposition.

In 1948, Cecil Williamson bought a dilapidated windmill at Castletown on the Isle of Man.

Cecil Williamson turned it into the Folklore Center of Superstition and Witchcraft, and opened it in 1949, along with an adjacent restaurant, the Witches' Kitchen.

Cecil Williamson employed Gardner to be the 'resident witch' at the museum, which had been renamed the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act 1735 in 1951.

At Windsor, Cecil Williamson's museum remained open for a year, and was quite successful, but was again forced out due to local opposition.

At midnight on 31 October 1996, Cecil Williamson sold the museum to Graham King.

Cecil Williamson retained some of his artefacts at his home in [Witheridge], a small village near to Tiverton in Devon.