The Enquiring Eye of the Witchcraft Research Centre – call for articles

The Enquiring Eye of the Witchcraft Research Centre – call for articles

About a month ago, we stumbled upon a letter from Cecil Williamson, the founder of the Museum to Mike Howard.  It was written in 1997 and included the following statement…

“…the Witchcraft Research Centre.  To me that has been, and is still my life’s work.  Without it there would not have been any Museums.  Maybe I keep too low a profile on that score.”

This got the Museum team thinking: what could we do to revive the Witchcraft Research Centre so beloved of the Museum’s founder and without which there would have been no Museum?  Clearly the Museum itself is a centre for research but we want to do something more clearly research based (maybe we too have been keeping too low a profile on that score?).  

So we came up with the idea of starting a publishing arm of the Museum called “The Witchcraft Research Centre” or WRC for short.  Our first publication will be a book of essays on Halloween which is a follow up from our Halloween Conference held on October 15th 2016.  This should be published some time in 2017.

But we also want to do something that is more broad, not on one topic and more regular than book publications.  A journal seemed the perfect solution (which could emulate (but never match!) the much missed Cauldron edited for decades by Mike Howard).  So the Museum is going to start publishing its own journal called “The Enquiring Eye”.  Why this name?  Because Cecil used it as a metaphor for his approach at the WRC as evidenced by the logos and booklets pictured below from the Museum’s archive.  

west-country-witches-printed-version-1

enquiring-eye

We think we might publish twice a year (or even quarterly) but we have no idea at the moment as we don’t know how many articles we will receive, how much interest their will be in the publication and also how long it will take to edit!  We aim to start and see what happens.  

So that is our rationale and now we are looking for articles.   Here is the key information:

  • Articles can be on any topic to do with witchcraft, paganism, folklore and magic
  • Articles can be any length from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages (maximum 2000 words)
  • We welcome submissions from anyone, no prior knowledge or association with the Museum is required, we aren’t interested in your qualifications, just the quality of your article
  • No fiction or poetry please: this will be a research based publication
  • Pictures can be included but only if the writer owns the copyright and only if the image is relevant to the article (i.e. we don’t want it to be a picture based journal)
  • In order to stimulate discussion and further reading some references and citations would be appreciated but are not essential
  • There won’t be any financial remuneration for articles submitted or published
  • If your article is published, you will be asked to sign a Journal Publishing Agreement which will cover issues of copyright and will be similar in terms to those cited here (for subscription articles)  https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-information/policies/copyright  Essentially, we will own the copyright to the article submitted but you will be able to re-use it in other formats/minor additions.  More details to follow on this.
  • If you submit an article, there is no guarantee that it will be published.  It may be kept for future use in another edition of the journal or we may not publish it at all.
  • Please email articles to museumwitchcraft@aol.com
  • Deadline for submissions: March 1st 2017

 

9 responses to “The Enquiring Eye of the Witchcraft Research Centre – call for articles”

  1. Strongly encourage you all to proceed with the WRC. This is a living lineage and tribute to Cecil Williamson and I am all for anything that honors him. Could be a great format for sharing knowledge.

  2. I cannot thank you enough for bringing about change in the views of enquiring minds on witchcraft. I would love to see a quarterly publication and if you are lacking in material do a round robin of covens willing to donate articles for the better understanding and tolerance of witches both domestic and abroad. Thank You!

  3. I love the idea of this! I wonder if a personal story of childhood intuition, family secrets, and discovering a possible witchcraft family ties to Essex, England tragic persecutions of 1600’s. All by a chance research on Ancestor.com and family rumors of Quakers turn Spiritualists.

  4. I love this idea – a great rememberance of cecil and his untiring work. I mest Cecil some years ago, long before he sold the museum on. Such a charming man. He partly inspired me to publish Greenmantle, and we owe him a great debt of gratutude.
    I’ll be happy to write something about him.

  5. So excited to see how this comes together! I really miss receiving issues of The Cauldron and I’m really hoping that this will go some way to filling the gap left in its absence. If I can think of something non-Snowshill related to write for it I’ll send it over!

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