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John Score

Written and compiled by George Knowles 

The history of contemporary witchcraft is pretty well documented, and most people are familiar with the names of Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders and Robert Cochrane, but behind the scenes of these great players, there is a whole plethora of lesser known but equally dedicated people, without whose efforts the phenomenon that is witchcraft today would not have happened.  One among these lesser-known people was John Score, known to many in his day as “M”, the founder of an early influential newsletter magazine called “The Wiccan” and its background organization “The Pagan Front”. 

John Score was born in August 1914 in the village of Wimbourne, Dorset.  He was the eldest of three children, but destined to suffer ill health for most of his life.  Shortly after his birth he was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis, and later suffered with thrombosis and heart problems, despite this he led a full and active life.  Score was aware of his natural psychic abilities from an early age, and claimed to be able to see images from a number of past lives, as well as hearing things from a different time or age.  He could also read or sense things about people by handling personal objects, and often demonstrated this ability to his friends.   

As he was growing up, Score spent much of his time with his grandfather who worked for British Rail as a stationmaster.  He was fascinated with the station’s loudspeaker system and love to play with the microphone announcing train arrivals and departure time information.  This lead him to choose a career associated with transport and communication, and in 1931 he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) specializing in signals and communications.  During the course of World War II, Score advanced through the ranks and after the standard 15 years of service, retired in 1945 with the rank of Flight Lieutenant (Signals). 

Score was a tall and imposing man with a magnetic personality.  He was an idealist with an inventive mind, but was also extremely practical in the sense of organization.  He loved to socialise and enjoyed music, he could play the guitar, ukulele and violin, though only self-taught and played by ear.  After leaving the RAF, Score sought and gained employment in the civilian telecommunications industry, and in 1948 was responsible for setting up and directing the communications network used at the Olympic Games, held that year in London and for which he was awarded a Bronze medallion.   

During his career in the RAF and through the international cooperation he received during the Olympic Games, Score made many close friends around the world, most particularly in the United States.  He was also keenly aware of the social-political changes that were occurring on an international scale.  By the late 1950’s many politically inspired peace movements were beginning to form and in 1958-59, he became actively involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, helping to organize rallies against nuclear weapons. 

Since childhood, Score never lost his thirst for occult knowledge, he had studied astrology and taught himself to cast and interpret horoscopes, about which he was convinced that given a person’s exact birthplace, time and date, it was possible to predict in advance influences that would affect a person’s life.  He also made a study of palmistry and graphology.  Not surprisingly given his early experiences with clairvoyance, he was particularly interested in reincarnation, trance work and anything connected with the spirit world.  Working with a spiritual healer friend, during trance he was able to experience memories of his own past lives in ancient Egypt and Atlantis.   

With his inventive mind, Score researched ways to use his technical knowledge to develop an instrument for communicating with spirits, without the need of a human medium.  His work was done independently of other researchers in what eventually became known as the “electronic voice phenomenon”, the recording of spirit voices directly onto magnetic tape.  Score believed he achieved some success, but the onset of poor health issues forced him to leave his work incomplete. 

Due to the decline of his health, Score began to research different forms of natural healing and alternative medicines, including:  naturopathy, osteopathy, herbalism, biofeedback and homeopathy, he also turned vegetarian in order to naturally purify his body from chemically enhanced produce.  He believed that doctors were only of value for diagnosis and surgery, and that one should avoid their medicinal drugs, many of which he believed caused far more illnesses than they cured.  To promote his ideas on natural therapies, he organized a group, which became the forerunner of today’s much larger “Association of Alternative Medicine”. 

Score also experimented with channelling “divine healing powers” and is said to have compiled a list of over a hundred herbal and homeopathic remedies designed for specific complaints, and used to supplement and maintain the effects of magical healing.  He also developed a method of “saline oxygen therapy”, which was then used to good effect at a naturopathic institute in the United States.  For his work in this field, he later received an Honorary Doctorate in Naturopathy from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. 

It was about this time in the early 1960’s that Score first became involved with the newly evolving Wicca/Witchcraft movement.  Predominantly a nature-based religion combining a working craft, it fitted nicely with his own beliefs in the ancient wisdom of Old Religions.  He joined a group of Gardnerians practising near his home village in the New Forrest area of Hampshire.  Later he formed his own group called the “Order of the Golden Acorn” (OGA) to explore his own ideas of what he called “the Old Religion of Wisecraft”.  With his practical talents for wood and metalworking, Score made all of his own working tools including a magnificent ceremonial sword with a beautifully hand carved presentation case to keep it in.  

In the mid 1960’s Score served for a while as Chairman of his local Ratepayers Association, but his tenure was cut short when a tabloid newspaper broke an article about his involvement with “Craft” activities and he was forced to resign.  Unable to afford the legal representation it would take to clear his name, and take on the might of a newspaper, Score felt bitterly frustrated by the injustice of it.  As was his way, he determined it wouldn’t happen to others, and founded his own publication to counter religious discrimination in all its forms. 

In 1968 with himself as the editor, Score started one of the UK’s most popular and influential pagan newsletter magazines The Wiccan.  Under his direction and with the aid of friends, the Wiccan rose to prominence in both the UK and the United States.  This led to the founding of the “Pagan Front” here in the UK, and its counterpart the “Pagan Way” in America led by Ed Fitch and Joseph B. Wilson.  While each initially worked together with the same aims, each evolved separately.   

The founding of the Pagan Front in the UK was announced in the thirteenth issue of the Wiccan on the 02^nd September 1970; it was backed by Doreen Valiente with the support of three English covens, one Gardnerian and two traditional craft covens.  In November 1970 Doreen Valiente led a full moon ritual to inaugurate various divisions of the organization, and at Beltane on the 01^st May 1971, chaired the organization’s first National Convention meeting located in Chiswick, West London.   

Score earned the respect and affection of all those who he worked with, and even those who he disagreed with, but his views on the craft at this time were passionately opinionated and sometimes controversial, which made him both friends and enemies.  He favoured feminism, care of the environment, free contraception and abortion, and was strongly opposed to the concept of matriarchy, homosexuality, capital punishment and Alex Sanders, a person he considered to be a publicity-seeking charlatan. 

Score suffered from ill health through much of his adult life, particularly in his later years.  During his last two years he was mostly bedridden and often-in pain, but despite this he continued a prolific correspondence.  From his sickbed he made many phone calls advising friends and dealing with problems, while continuing to plan for the future of the magazine and organisation he had created.  Just two weeks before his death he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died on the 30^th December 1979.  John Score departed leaving behind his devoted wife Jean and two young sons, and a legacy that continued to grow after his passing. 

The legacy he left behind was the Wiccan newsletter magazine, by then the most influential pagan publication in the country, and the organization behind it the Pagan Front.  Score had established the Pagan Front to defend and protect pagans from unwarranted exploitation and prejudice, and to campaign through the media and official channels for Paganism to be recognized as a religion.  Over time as the organization grew, it also provided an important national and international networking service for its members.   

After his death in 1979, one of his friends a Gardnerian high priestess by the name of Leonora James took over as editor of the Wiccan and became the first President of the Pagan Front.  As an ex-Cambridge graduate trained as a philosopher and grounded in Greek and Roman classics, Leonora brought a much-needed intellectual flavour to the organisation.  Over the next few years she broadened the organisations base to make it more inclusive and representative of all pagan groups and traditions, adding and inviting Alexandrians, Druids, Heathens and followers of other pagan paths to join its affiliated membership.    

In 1981 the Pagan Front changed its name to the Pagan Federation, this to avoid any association with extremist neo-Nazi groups such as the politically active right-wing National Front, and further to better reflect the organisations role as an affiliation of different groups.  The organisations mouthpiece newsletter publication survived as “The Wiccan” for another decade, before it too received a makeover.  In 1994 it was given a full format glossy magazine style, renamed the “Pagan Dawn” and went on sale to the general public. 

Today the Pagan Federation is an internationally recognized organisation representing Pagan groups in over fourteen countries.  Its core function still remains much as it’s founder John Score had intended it to be:  “to campaign for Paganism to be legally recognised as a Religion, and for pagans to be able to practise their religion without fear of discrimination and prejudice”.  To this end the Pagan Federation works closely with institutions, government agencies and the general public to present and disseminate accurate information about Paganism, and to uphold the rights of pagans everywhere in accordance to the precepts of ‘Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, which states: 

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, this right includes the freedom to change his religion or belief, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”        

After the death of John Score on the 30^th December 1979, his wife Jean continued to run their coven group the “Order of the Golden Acorn”, but later passed it on to others to run while she concentrated on bringing up his family.  Jean Score died in 2002, honoured by a fitting tribute from her sons:  “She was the Moon to our fathers Sun.  He shone brightly, and she reflected his brilliance back onto everyone”. 

End.

Sources:

The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-paganism - By Shelley Rabinovitch

The Encyclopedia of Witches &Witchcraft - by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The Witch Book - The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism - By Raymond Buckland

The Triumph of the Moon - Ronald Hutton

Written and compiled on the 15^th May 2007 © George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be