Charles Cardell - Biography - Witchcraft - Cardell's Coven

Cardell's Coven

In the early 1960s, the Cardells fell out with a friend of theirs, Raymond Howard, who went on to propagate the Coven of Atho. Howard later took Cardell to court, claiming that he had sent him an effigy, pierced by a needle and a mirror.

In the writings of Charles Cardell and Raymond Howard, the god was referred to as Atho. Howard had a wooden statue of Atho's head which he claimed was 2200 years old, but the statue was stolen in April 1967. Howard's son later admitted that his father had carved the statue himself.

In March 1961, an article entitled "Witchcraft in the Woods" by William Hall was published in the London Evening News. In it, Hall claimed to have witnessed a ritual by twelve witches in the woods, involving Mary Cardell, playing the part of a Witch Maiden and dressed in a red cloak, sitting in a five-pronged tree with Charles Cardell, dressed in a black cloak adorned with a pentagram, casting a circle with a sword, blowing a horn and shooting a longbow. A shrunken head was one of the items on the altar, and acts of levitation were performed.

The Cardells brought about a libel case against the newspaper, but did allow other newspaper journalists to come along and view the scene of the ritual. Only one took up his offer, the County Post reporter W. J. Locke. Locke photographed the scene, which comprised a circle in sand, a stone altar with two fake spiders on either side, a shrunken head along with the name 'Ramoh' (the craft name of Raymond Howard), a bone, a bowl of water and a crystal ball.

In 1967 the libel case against the London Evening News came to a head in court. Doreen Valiente attended the hearing, interested as to what the results would be. The Cardells claimed that their company, Dumblecott Magick Productions, was merely a front to get witches interested in them, so that they could study and expose the witch religion of Gerald Gardner, and that the ritual which they performed and was witnessed by Hall was merely a part of their front. The Cardells' story did not hold up, and they lost the court case.

In 1968, Cardell was found guilty of spreading defamatory remarks about the solicitors company who had supported the London Evening News. Around the same time, William Hall received a package containing a wooden fish with its tail broken off, accompanied by a note that said "to William Hall, almost a reporter". The court proceedings had left the Cardells bankrupt, and they were forced to sell some of their land and live in caravans in one of their fields. Charles Cardell died in 1977, and was survived by Mary.