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John Score
Written and compiled by George KnowlesThe 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, and was
initiated by Dolores North (the pen name of Madeline Montalban, also known as
The Witch of St Giles because she lived in St Giles High Street in London).
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
02nd 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 01st 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
30th 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 30th 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 Inventing Witchcraft, A Case Study in the Creation of a New Religion - by Aidan A. Kelly Written and compiled on the 15th May 2007 © George Knowles
Best wishes and Blessed Be
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