Buckland’s Museum

Estelle Daniels

Looking for things to do in Ohio, I found a list of 149 interesting things, and #7 was Raymond Buckland’s Museum of Witchcraft and Magick. Well, we had to go, so on a Sunny Tuesday we set out to Cleveland, to see the Cuyahoga National Park and the Witchcraft Museum.

The National Park was founded in 1974, at the same time as the Clean Water act, along the very river that spawned the clean water act, when it caught fire. It was a nice park, but mainly geared to hiking and biking along the old Ohio and Erie Canal. We stopped at a few places, and read plaques etc. The train was not running, which was a disappointment.

Then we made our way to the Witchcraft Museum.

It occupies a storefront along a business type street. At the front is a gift shop, with crystals, books etc. and in the back is the museum, which requires a fee.

The museum is eclectic in what it has on display, and is not all Gardnerian or even Raymond Buckland, though a lot of the stuff is geared to him. Steven the owner and guide has a nice patter about Buckland, Gardner, Crowley and the other notables and items in the museum. He is cheerful and enthusiastic about his subject and the stuff he has collected there. He is honoring of the craft and what it means. But his patter is somewhat selective and sanitized for the public, especially about Crowley. Still, he didn’t say anything wrong, and there is a nice collection of witchy stuff: Raymond’s ceremonial robes, various athames, cups, wands etc, a demon in a box caught by Buckland himself, a Crowleyana corner, various tarot cards, divination devices, and other witchy stuff. He has stories about most everything there. We chatted and he was interested in Minneapolis and Paganistan. I turned him on to Murphy’s book on the subject. And told him about my books. I was invited back to do a presentation in September, and I’ll plan on that for sure.

While we were there various people also came, and it was curious cowans. They seemed interested, but not weirded out or frightened. The Museum is a continuation of Buckland’s Long Island Museum, transplanted to Cleveland in 2016 (though how it ended up there was not mentioned). Buckland himself visited in 2017 and I was told pronounced the place good. He has an athame from Sybil Leek’s grandmother—craft grandmother—and a crystal ball that was Sybil Leek’s. There is a picture of Janet Ferrar, and she donated a funerary chalice of Yew.

It is not a big museum, the room is about 20 X 20, but what they have is interesting, broadly representative and well displayed. We stayed over an hour and it was well worth the trip to Cleveland.

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