History says that Puritans killed off Witchcraft in America. It has happened again but unexpectedly from the puritans in Witchcraft's own ranks. As this photomontage affirms, forty to fifty years ago, nudity and sexual interaction was commonplace. Practitioners might have offered torturous explanations and justifications for having such fun, but it happened. The images here are of Alex Sanders and his coven performing an initiation ritual. Alex after whom the Alexandrian line of British Traditionalist Wicca is names is shown in the apartment of Paul King, a coven member, in 1966. The High Priestess is Maxine Morris who later became Maxine Sanders. Sanders passed on Beltane 1988.
In becoming more mainstream, Witches wanted to appease their neighbors and began doing so with ever alarming frequency by cutting away (and distancing themselves from) the more "embarrassing" elements, i.e., nudity, sexuality, and especially the celebration of the actual Great Rite (ritualized sexual intercourse).
As a student of Divination since 1965, Magic since 1969, and self-dedicated Witch in the Seax-Wica tradition first and then various eclectic varieties since 1987, Senor Lopilopo assures the reader that these charming elements aren't dead but rather continue to be practiced by real Witches.
You have some prudes who respond that if you follow such practices you're just looking to satisfy your prurient interests. That's true. We are, because celebrating all Divine gifts including sexuality is expressive of our most deeply held spiritual beliefs and also sacramental. The ancients viewed the hieros gamos or "sacred marriage rite" to be among the highest and most significant of the year, but modern prigs fearing sex cast is as something tawdry. I maintain that such people aren't Pagan or Wiccan at all. I also maintain that those who always substitute the symbolic Great Rite fall in the same category, pseudo-Wiccans.
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