This book explores the currents of thought that ran counter to the main thrust of the revival of witchcraft in the 1960s, counter-currents that are growing in importance and influence some 60 years later. Many are familiar with Wicca, founded by Gerald Gardner, but there was a counter-current, now known as Traditional Witchcraft, which saw the art from a very different angle. Its chief thinker was Robert Cochrane, who envisioned witchcraft as a gnostic quest for ultimate knowledge and union with the divine. This volume explores his most important ideas, especially the way in which he re-envisioned ancient mythology, putting a new spin on old deities as well as on folkloric figures like Robin Hood and King Arthur and naming Tubal Cain, whom the Bible calls the 1st blacksmith, as his avatar of knowledge both sacred and profane. Though he died young, Cochrane left enough material behind to reconstruct the steps by which he urged aspiring witches to take a crooked path to complete gnosis.
 
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