Helen Cornish, ‘In search of the uncanny: inspirited landscapes and modern witchcraft’, Material Religion 16.4 (2020), 410-31
Confronted daily with the ever-mounting absurdities of ‘reality’, seeking the portals to other worlds might seem an attractive option. But how do we access them? In this article Helen Cornish provides a guide to what she calls an ‘inspirited landscape’ in north Cornwall.
The article sets out to search for the uncanny, that moment when the known ‘slips out of place’, when the goosebumps arise, when reality shimmers and threatens to dissolve. The agents for her search are modern witches. These witches come to visit Boscastle’s Museum of Witchcraft and prepare themselves for a journey into its surrounding ‘inspirited landscape’.
In this piece Helen Cornish weaves two strands together. On the one hand there is a fairly traditional realist anthropological account of the origins of the museum and the contemporary history of witchcraft. We are informed that the museum was originally founded by Cecil Williamson on the Isle of Man in 1951. After an obscure intervening period, Williamson relocated his museum to Boscastle in 1960. Surprisingly, this choice owed little to any occult history of the place but was more mundanely a result of the tourist footfall that could guarantee an income for his private museum.
However, once established, the advantages of Boscastle became plain. It was conveniently not far from Nectan’s Glen with its waterfall and the carved labyrinths at Rocky Valley. That’s not to mention the more general romantic ambience provided by proximity to Tintagel and the associated mish-mash of Arthurian expectations. All these made it the perfect setting for the museum.
Yet only a few can access this ‘inspirited landscape’. Modern witches for example have the tools and rituals to communicate with the sacred and animated nature of the district, one teeming with the spirits of ancestors, deities, fairies, dwarves and ghosts (p.416). The practices of modern witchcraft were shaped in the 1940s and relate more to Victorian and early twentieth century interests than they do to traditional witchcraft of the early modern centuries. Moreover, in the 1990s dabbling in the occult was joined by a turn to earth mysteries and a greater engagement with nature.
Any witch happening to visit Boscastle’s museum finds a familiarity there that girds them to an anticipated otherworldly encounter in the ‘manifestly live Cornish landscape’ of Rocky Valley and Nectan’s Glen, potent sites of the uncanny (p.416). The time slippage or fear of unnatural spirits that most people experience in the uncanny are viewed by modern witches with their ‘inspirited worldview’ (p.418) as an opportunity for communication with other worlds and other beings and not a threat. Although we are warned that they need to be approached with caution.
The second theme of the article therefore takes a distinct turn towards the weird, recounting a walk around this landscape in the company of a modern witch. Here, the writing shifts from historical realism to a more allusive and oblique style appropriate to the subject. It’s more about states of consciousness, looking for things that are invisible, hearing sounds that are noiseless, registering tantalising glimpses in the peripheral vision.
Unusual and eerie experiences are apparently reported from the Glen where ‘the veil between worlds is thin and temporality is unstable’ (p.424). Once you’ve paid your entrance fee, places like this can generate a potential uneasiness, perhaps shrugged off by most but embraced by the witch who finds the familiar in the unfamiliar and their portals to other worlds. Unfortunately, no spirits or otherworldly being was encountered in the course of the author’s walk. Meanwhile, she notes in passing the ‘ritual litter’ that is generating environmental problems as modern witches prove to be no different from more run-of-the-mill tourists in wearing out not only the veil between worlds through their repeated visits but eroding and damaging the natural environment.
Apparently even other worlds cannot staunch the onward march of over-tourism.
Cornish studies resources 
