A beginner’s guide to witchcraft

Next year, Exeter University will offer an MA in Magic and Occult Science: the first of its kind in a British university. The new course has led to newspaper headlines about a ‘real-life Hogwarts’ and questions as to whether magic is as worth studying as say, economics. The course director, Professor Emily Selove, refused my request for an interview – with polite apologies, although one could hardly expect the convenor of Exeter’s Centre for Magic and Esotericism to be anything but esoteric.

A similar tension, it turns out, is at the heart of the debate about the degree. For all the media snideness, the most serious objections come from Britain’s growing magical community. In the 2021 census, 95,000 people said they believed in Paganism, Wicca or Shamanism, up from 70,000 in 2011.

Bob Osborne has devoted years to studying the paranormal, particularly around his Cornish village of Zennor, publishing his book Zennor: Spirit of Place earlier this year. He confirms that many magical practitioners are deeply opposed to the course: ‘It’s the popularisation of ancient doctrines that have been hidden for centuries, passed down through a succession of secret societies and bloodlines who have been “initiated”. Adepts have this information, but if the public experiment with rituals it could go very wrong.’

Since Professor Selove won’t speak to me, I decide to explore the south-west’s magical community myself. I meet Bob in the Tinners’ Arms in Zennor. The pub is purportedly haunted by a tin-miner, and there are reports of glasses being raised by poltergeists, even when everyone present is sober. The barman has a pentagram around his neck.

Bob’s main complaint about the university course is the phrase ‘occult science’. He is very much of the opinion that it is an art, not a science.