Church of the poor - Jesus Army

Secrets
and Lies
JACQUI DOESN’T look like a witch, or
even an ex-witch. Not a trace of green
skin, no cat, no broomstick... Joking
apart, one might expect a woman who spent
many years meeting other pagans in tree
circles by night to have something – eccentric?
– about her. In fact, Jacqui’s a very normal,
very nice, cheerful mum of three (with
a talent for cooking choc-chip biscuits).
Yet, as we sit munching some of the said
(delicious) choc biscuits, she unfolds a story
that is not very “normal” – and certainly not
nice.
Jacqui grew up in what she describes as “a
very rural, very pagan part of England” in a
childhood of farms and fishing in the river
(“you could get brown trout”), of sunsets,
hedgerows and hay bales.
“I remember a mate going to sleep in the
hayfield and we built a ‘hayhouse’ around
them so when they woke up they were in
the dark” remembers Jacqui with a chuckle.
But her childhood wasn’t all idyllic. Jacqui
pauses, then quietly tells me about the
sexual abuse she suffered from a close family
member between the ages of four and
fourteen.
“He was a sailor in the Merchant Navy.
When he was on leave, he would shower me
with a lot of gifts; buying my silence.” Much
later, he was arrested for another sexual offence
and Jacqui went to the police with her
story – after years of painful silence.
“I think my parents knew,” reflects Jacqui,
“to a degree. I think they covered it up. Back
then sexual abuse was a taboo subject.”
Partly because of this troubled home
life, Jacqui would spend a lot of time with
her grandmother, a big influence on her. It
was her grandmother who first introduced
Jacqui to witchcraft.
“She would teach me things you would
say were very –” Jacqui searches for a word
and settles on “unchristian. Wax effigies.
Charms. And she would take me to meetings
of her friends.”
I lean forward. (This must be where the
broomsticks come in.) “A coven?” I whisper.
But Jacqui is nonchalant. “It was just a
meeting of friends. ‘Coven’ wasn’t a word
that was used – though it boiled down to
that.”
Jacqui’s exploration of the occult deepened
in her teenage years along with many
of her friends. But she is careful to point out
that she didn’t see it as “becoming a witch”.
“Teenagers today probably would term
it as that – the whole Americanised ‘Wicca
industry’. Twenty-plus years ago you
wouldn’t. It was more to do with worshipping
nature and the elements. Vibes. Channelling
positive energies.”
Not exactly Wicked Witch of the West,
I think to myself. At 20, Jacqui hitched to
the Midlands, got a job, and decided to
stay there. It was around this time she first
bumped into some people from the Jesus
Fellowship.
OXFORD ENGLISH “WITCHIONARY”
Coven. Noun: a group or meeting of
witches; often derogatory; a secret or
close-knit group of associates.
Occult. Noun: mystical or magical
powers, practices, or phenomena;
communicated only to the initiated.
Origin: late 15th cent. (as a verb)
from Latin occultare/occulere, ‘secret’/
‘conceal’, based on celare ‘to hide’/‘to
cover up’.
Pagan. Noun: a person holding religious
beliefs other than those of the main
world religions. Origin: late Middle
English from Latin paganus , ‘villager,
rustic’, from pagus, ‘country district’.
“I used to let them come round to my
place in bedsit land and we’d talk and pray.
I was quite open to God and began to take
steps away from paganism. They brought
their flapjack and flasks – and these odd
glass mugs. After they’d all gone, I realised
that there was a mug left under the bed. I
washed it up, thinking ‘I’ll give it back next
time I see them’. It never actually happened.
I mention it because that mug stayed with
me for years and has a part in the story.”
Jacqui’s involvement with the Jesus Fellowship
at that time was short-lived, mainly
because around the same time as meeting
them, she also met Jimmy – who she moved
in with and later married. They moved back
South-West and had three children.
Yet the marriage ran into difficulties:
Jacqui began to suspect that Jimmy was seeing
someone else.
“I became more and more convinced,”
Jacqui sighs. “Jimmy went off and did his
own thing a lot. He’d joined the police and
had so-called ‘training weekends’ and ‘duties’
. But things didn’t add up: receipts in
pockets from the wrong places and so on.”
Later Jacqui was to find that he had
indeed been having an affair. In fact he
had another family. At the time, they just
grew further and further apart. With Jimmy
increasingly absent, Jacqui picked up some
old friendships in the pagan scene.
During her years away it had all got
heavier.
“There was a guy called Dan who was
kind of running things. He was doing things
which I called ‘negative energy’. He would
summon spirits up – which was scary.
“He was ‘high priest’. You have certain
degrees that you go through when you are a
coven – ranks, basically. Dan said he wanted
me to be his ‘high priestess’, through a
ceremony called the Grand Rites. There are
two ways you can do this: symbolically or
Jesus Life One/2008 Page 10
www.jesus.org.uk