Buckland Museum of Witchcraft & Magick

Buckland Museum of Witchcraft & Magick is a museum in Cleveland devoted to witchcraft, Wicca, ceremonial magic, paganism, divination and related occult traditions. Its collection was established in 1966 by British-born author and Wiccan practitioner Raymond Buckland, an important figure in the introduction and development of Gardnerian Wicca in the United States. Buckland and his wife Rosemary had been initiated into Gardnerian Wicca in Britain in 1963 and subsequently established an early Gardnerian coven on Long Island.

Buckland began collecting after visiting Gerald Gardner’s Museum of Witchcraft and Magic on the Isle of Man. While working for an airline, he acquired ritual objects, folk-magic material and occult artefacts during his travels and through contacts with practitioners. The first version of his museum consisted of several shelves in the basement of his Long Island home. The collection eventually grew to more than 500 objects and developed into a museum intended to approach witchcraft, folklore and supernatural belief from an anthropological and historical perspective.

The museum moved repeatedly with Buckland. It operated in New York from 1966 to 1973, in New Hampshire from 1973 to 1976 and in Virginia from 1977 to 1979. Buckland eventually placed the collection in storage because of his writing and lecture commitments. It briefly reappeared in New Orleans in 1999, but subsequently passed through several custodians and suffered losses and deterioration. In 2015, the surviving collection was transferred to the Temple of Sacrifice, an Ohio coven founded by Buckland, and came under the ownership of Toni Rotonda.

The collection returned to public display in Cleveland on 29 April 2017 as the Buckland Gallery of Witchcraft & Magick, initially occupying a room adjoining A Separate Reality Records in the Tremont neighbourhood. Growing visitor numbers resulted in a move to the present museum at 2155 Broadview Road in 2019. The museum is directed by Steven Intermill and today displays more than 200 objects at any one time, with additional material rotated through temporary exhibitions.

Much of the collection consists of objects with direct connections to influential figures in modern witchcraft and occultism. Items associated with Gerald Gardner, one of the principal founders of modern Wicca, include his horned smoking pipe, briefcase and ritual objects. The museum also holds Sybil Leek’s crystal ball, ritual material associated with Stewart and Janet Farrar, objects connected with Israel Regardie and Austin Osman Spare, and material belonging to numerous later pagan and occult practitioners.

Aleister Crowley is represented by several personal and ceremonial objects, including his Trident Wand and ceremonial bowls decorated with scorpions. Crowley was not a Wiccan, but his writings on ceremonial magic and ritual influenced later occult movements and individuals involved in the development of modern witchcraft. The museum places his objects within this broader history rather than presenting Wicca and Crowley’s Thelema as the same tradition.

Raymond Buckland’s own ritual equipment forms another important part of the collection. Exhibits include his ceremonial robe, ritual wand, besom, so-called Cards of Alchemy and a horned ceremonial helmet. The museum also contains tarot cards, athames, chalices, jewellery, divination devices, Egyptian funerary figures and ritual objects collected from different magical and pagan traditions. You know; the usually stuff every witchcraft museum needs.

One of the museum’s most unusual exhibits is the Demon in a Box. According to the story recorded by Buckland, a ceremonial magician accidentally released a hostile entity during a ritual in New York in the 1970s. Buckland and the magician reportedly spent several days attempting to contain it before trapping the supposed entity inside a small metal box. The box subsequently became part of Buckland’s museum collection. There is naturally no verifiable evidence that it contains anything supernatural, and the object is preserved as part of Buckland’s own account and the folklore surrounding his magical practice.

Another curiosity is a Jenny Haniver, a dried ray that has been cut and manipulated to resemble a small humanoid or demonic creature. Such specimens have been produced for centuries and were historically sold to travellers as dragons, demons or other unknown animals. Unlike the Demon in a Box, its unusual appearance has a straightforward physical explanation and provides an example of the way manufactured curiosities became incorporated into supernatural folklore.

The collection continues to expand beyond Buckland’s original material and includes objects from contemporary pagan, magical and occult practitioners. Rotating exhibitions have covered subjects including spirit photography, radionics, magical dolls and modern occult art. The museum also operates a specialist shop selling occult books, ritual supplies and related material, but the historical collection remains its central feature.