Sybil Leek - The Burley Witch Part Two.....

Sybil's family was relatively well to do and she grew up as a young lady of privileged societal standing, her mother was related to the Masters family, well known in high society. In their New Forest home her mother and a group of friends regularly met for tea, they called their group the Pentagram Club. When she was fifteen years old and during one of the family's regular trips to the south of France, Sybil was initiated into a french coven based at George du Loup in the hills above Nice. According to Sybil, she was initiated to replace an elderly Russian aunt who had been High Priestess of the coven, and it was from this coven that the New Forest covens in England were descended.

Returning home Sybil met a well-known pianist-conductor who was 24 years her senior. Despite the age difference they fell in love and were married shortly after her 16th birthday. During the relative quiet of the pre-war years they toured and traveled about England and Europe. He died two years later and she returned home to Hampshire. During World War II, Sybil joined the Red Cross and worked as a nurse in a military hospital near Southampton. Later she was sent to help nurse the wounded at Anzio Beach, before returning to England and being stationed at a military barracks in the isolated Scottish Hebrides Islands. She ended the war with a handful of medals, but the prosperity of her family had been lost to the austerity of the War.

After the war and into her twenties, Sybil returned to Hampshire and lived in a small village called Burley situated in the heart of the New Forest. There she mixed with and lived among the Gypsies. She also joined their 'Horsa' coven, a coven they claimed had existed for 700 years. The Gypsy knowing she was a witch born, accepted Sybil as one of their own. From them she learned a great deal about herbal potions and elixirs. When the time came for her to move on, they honoured her in the traditional Gypsy way reserved only for the most respected of outsiders. They made her a 'blood-sister'. This was done by cutting her wrist and mixing her blood with the blood of the Gypsy leaders.

While living in Burley, Sybil started up and ran a successful antique shop. Then at some point she met and married a man called Brian. Together they had two sons Stephen and Julian who are reported to have inherited the family's psychic gifts. While walking in the woods one day, Sybil had a vision, it brought to her the realization that her purpose in life was to promote the craft and the Old Religion. She began to do just that and into the 1950's her reputation as a Psychic, Astrologer and Witch, began to attract attention. Media publicity brought tourists to her village but in the wake of autograph seekers her antique business began to suffer. Witchcraft was still viewed with suspicion in those times and her landlord refused to renew her lease unless she publicly denounced it. Sybil declined and was forced to close up shop and leave.

More to come..........

Sybil Leek - The Burley Witch

Sybil Leek was one of the first witches to become public back in the 1960's. She was often accused of becoming a sell-out, because of her media attention and the odd ways. With the publishing of her autobiography, Diary of a Witch Sybil announced that her style of witchcraft was not dead and never had been.....She attracted public attention for almost everything that she did.

In the beginning of Sybil's public life as a witch, her adherence to the craft cost her dearly, as landlords cut off leases on her secular antique stores, and others made her targets of general prejudice against witches. Her family was acquainted with Alesister Crowley, and he felt that she would be the one to take over where he left off.

Sybil was one of the first popular witches to take to environmental causes... She was a master astrologer, and a gifted psychic. Sybil passed on in 1982, at an unknown age....and she lived to see the establishment of Wicca as a recognized religion.

Sybil was born on the 22nd February 1923 in Staffordshire, England. From an early age she lived and grew up in the New Forest area of Hampshire and demonstrated an early gift for writing. The New Forest is one of the oldest forests in England and is steeped in folklore and witchcraft associations. The same area is where Gerald B. Gardner first joined Old Dorothy Clutterbucks coven in 1939. That coven was reportedly descended from one of Old George Pickingill's famous nine covens. Sybil claims that during her time in the area, there were still four old covens that had survived from the days of King William Rufus.

In 1932 when she was only nine years old, Aleister Crowley became a frequent visitor to her home. She claims to have spent time with him climbing the mountainsides and wondering through forests near to her home. In her autobiography Diary of a Witch (New York: Signet 1969.). Sybil wrote that he talked to her about witchcraft and recited his poetry while encouraging her to write her own. He also instructed her on the use of certain magickal words used for their vibratory qualities when used in magick.

I will tell you more about Sybil in another post.......

I have been trying to collect her books for a few years now. These are all I have at the moment, including two of "have mania will collect". I would dearly love to get my hands on "Diary of a Witch" but they are hard to come by. All her books are out of print, and when at boot sales or charity shops I do trawl through all the books. I have read "Diary of a Witch" from the library and its a brilliant book, Your taken right back to Sybil's childhood in the New Forest and the time she spent with the Gypsies.