Jack Bracelin

Jack L. Bracelin
Died	1983 Greece
Nationality	British
Occupation	Nightclub owner, nudist club owner, Wiccan priest

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.

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

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.

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

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". 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.

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Wikipedia