Origins & history

The name “Traditional Craft” came into common use in the second half of the twentieth century, partly through the writings of Robert Cochrane, who in the early 1960s positioned his Clan of Tubal Cain as a distinct British witchcraft tradition predating Gardner. Whether or not the lineage claims of Cochrane and his immediate successors stand up to historical scrutiny, the current he founded gave the term its modern shape.

From the 1990s onward the related current of Sabbatic Witchcraft, articulated principally by Andrew Chumbley and the Cultus Sabbati, drew on European witch-trial materials, the imagery of the witches’ sabbath, and Persian and Arabic esoteric sources. Distinct from both is the cunning-craft revival associated with figures such as Nigel Pennick, which orients toward documented English folk-magical practice rather than initiatory ritual.