As we commemorate #VEDay, an often overlooked aspect of World War Two is the role played by magic in the conflict. Yet as always in the history of magic, all is not necessarily quite what it seems… (a thread) 
Occult practitioners, like many other people, were keen to claim that they had contributed to victory in 1945. But a lot of the claims they made were retrospective and can’t be verified. They are nevertheless an interesting insight into 20th-century magic
As well as occult practitioners, stage magicians got involved too; Jasper Maskelyne famously claimed to have used his knowledge of illusion to make British tanks ‘disappear’ at the Battle of El Alamein
Leading Nazis were intensely interested in occultism (a subject examined in authoritative works by the late Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke), but it remains unclear to what extent the Allies were genuinely concerned by this
British and American occultists claimed, however, that their expertise was called upon by their governments to combat Nazi magic. MI6 officer Colonel Charles Seymour claimed he used magic to create a ‘psychic shield’ around Britain
Likewise, Dion Fortune attempted to use magic to construct an ‘astral cave’ beneath Glastonbury Tor from which she sent out an occult ‘beam of light’ to protect France in 1940 – unsuccessfully, as it turned out
Perhaps the most notorious claim of all was that made by Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, who claimed covens of witches gathered in New Forest in 1940 to send up a ‘cone of power’ to protect Britain and defeat Hitler
Aleister Crowley likewise claimed that he had been called upon by the War Office to perform a ritual in Ashdown Forest in which an effigy of Hitler was burnt in an elaborate ritual (this alleged event has sometimes been confused with Gardner’s claims)
One ritual of this kind that certainly did happen occurred not in the UK but in the US, where William Seabrook led a ritual in which a dummy representing Hitler was ritually destroyed; the event was photographed by Life Magazine
Perhaps an even wilder claim by Crowley was that the occultist was responsible for inventing Churchill’s ‘V for Victory’ sign, which Crowley believed was a magical sigil with power against the Nazi swastika
Crowley wanted to become Churchill’s magical adviser – a sort of latter-day Dr Dee – but it never happened. Yet the War Office does seem to have employed an astrologer to draw up Hitler’s horoscope
Most of the claims of occultists after the War were exaggerated; many may have been completely fictitious. But there is evidence that, in the extremity of war, the British government entertained the possibility that there were ‘more things in heaven and earth…’
Notoriously, there is some evidence that MI6 engineered the prosecution of the Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan under the 1735 Witchcraft Act in 1944; faith in Spiritualism was widespread, and Duncan seemed to be able to know things she shouldn’t
In time of war, normal judgements about rationality can often be suspended, and governments tend to act with excessive caution. Were magicians involved in World War Two? Given the notorious unreliability of magicians, we may never know the full truth…
