Witchcraft Research Association

The Witchcraft Research Association was a British organisation formed in 1964 in an attempt to unite and study the various claims that had emerged of surviving remnants of the so-called Witch-Cult, such as those of Gerald Gardner, Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek, Charles Cardell and Raymond Howard.

It had been set up by Gerard Noel, with the help of several other interested witches. Presidency was first held by Sybil Leek, but after she was forced to emigrate to the United States after suffering persecution and being evicted from her home, it was taken over by Doreen Valiente, who had herself already been involved in several strands of neopagan witchcraft, including Gardnerian Wicca, Cochrane's Craft and the Coven of Atho.

The WRA began publishing a magazine entitled Pentagram, the first issue of which came out in August 1964.

In February 1964 Sybil Leek announced the formation of the Witchcraft Research Association, with herself as its first president. The historian Ronald Hutton suggested that its creation had been influenced by two recent events: the death of prominent Wiccan Gerald Gardner and a lecture tour by the historian Russell Hope Robbins in which Robbins had publicly criticised the Witch-cult hypothesis promoted by Margaret Murray. Leek's reputation was however damaged by press hostility and a strained relationship with other Wiccans, resulting in her resignation as President of the WRA in July and her emigration to the United States. The Presidency was taken up by Doreen Valiente.

On 3 October 1964, the WRA held a dinner in which fifty Witches were present. At the dinner, Valiente gave an address in which she called for the reunification of what she believed where the many scattered remains of the Murrayite witch-cult across Britain. According to Hutton, "it was probably the first and last gathering in modern Pagan history where most of the men wore black ties and dinner jackets". Cochrane attended the event, as did the sympathetic journalist Justine Glass, who went on to write Witchcraft, the Sixth Sense – and Us, published by Spearman in 1965.

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