An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Summers, Montague

A remarkable figure in the modern history of witchcraft is the late Montague Summers. He was a man almost as mysterious, strange and picturesque as the witches he wrote about.

A devout Roman Catholic, Montague Summers accepted completely the proposition that the Devil, or Satan, is a real and fearfully dangerous entity, and that witches are Satan’s servitors. All his books about witchcraft, brilliant and readable though they are, are written from this standpoint. Nevertheless, his contribution to the literature of witchcraft is a most valuable one, on account of the wide and meticulous scholarship which he brought to the subject.

He was generally known as the Reverend Montague Summers, or even as Father Summers; though precisely what kind of Holy Orders he was in is not clear.

Charles Richard Cammell, in his book Aleister Crowley (New English Library, 1969), has given us one of the few intimate descriptions of Montague Summers that we possess. Mr. Cammell reveals a very curious detail; namely that Crowley and Summers not only knew each other, but shared a mutual admiration! At one time both Crowley and Summers were living at Richmond, in Surrey, as was Mr. Cammell; and he tells us that they met in his flat and discussed their many interests in an atmosphere of friendliness and wit. One would give much to have heard their conversation; as they seem such complete opposites, though both men of truly singular brilliance.

Such a curious acquaintance would not, perhaps, surprise Mr. Dennis Wheatley, because in his brief account of Montague Summers, in the chapter on black magic in his Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts (Arrow Books, London, 1963), he states frankly that Summers inspired him with fear. He also tells us that he used Montague Summers’ physical appearance as a model for the sinister Canon Copely-Syle in his black magic story, To the Devil—a Daughter (Arrow Books, London, 1960).

It seems that Montague Summers had a private chapel in his home, which some people regarded as being rather strange and possibly dubious. However, the writer would personally take a lot of convincing that Montague Summers was secretly devoted to black magic.

That Summers had an enormous fund of knowledge about the occult, especially on its darker side, is indubitable; but he devoted a great deal of his literary career to writing against what he regarded as the black international conspiracy of Satanism. To him, witchcraft and Spiritualism were branches of this conspiracy. He defended the role of the Catholic Church in persecuting witches, whom he regarded as heretics and anarchists, as well as Satanists.

One story told about him was that he had a kind of special brief from high quarters in the Catholic hierarchy, to write about witchcraft and the occult; because in general Roman Catholic writers were not encouraged to deal with this subject, especially in such detail as Summers did. For this reason, the story went, although in Holy Orders Summers was not attached to any particular church or religious foundation, but lived apparently as a private citizen. How much truth, if any, there is in this assertion, I cannot tell.

Summers certainly wore clerical garb, in which he made a distinguished and striking figure, with his rather long silver hair, and fine soft hands sparkling with jewelled rings. Although not tall, his presence was very dignified; people stood somewhat in awe of him.

As well as living at Oxford and at Richmond, Montague Summers at one time resided in Brighton (my own town of residence). He always insisted that Brighton had a secret centre of black magic, and that the black mass had been celebrated at this hideout, which was somewhere in the tangle of old streets near Brighton Station.

From local enquiries, it appears that in fact there was an occult group in Brighton some years ago, which practised what Summers would certainly have described as black magic. The sacrifice of a cockerel was involved in some of the rites. Their meeting place was in the area Summers mentions.

As well as writing about witchcraft, Montague Summers had a great knowledge of the theatre and its dramatists. On one occasion, in 1921, his two interests were combined. He directed a revival of the seventeenth-century play, The Witch of Edmonton, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, with Sybil Thorndike playing the part of the witch. That must have been a remarkable theatrical event.

Montague Summers was responsible not only for his own original books on witchcraft, but for a whole series of translations and editings of older works on the subject, which were thus made available to students in the English language. Particularly valuable among these is his translation of the notorious Malleus Maleficarum.

Outstanding among Montague Summers’ own writings are his History of Witchcraft and Demonology (first published in 1926, and reprinted by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1969); The Geography of Witchcraft (London, 1927); A Popular History of Witchcraft (Kegan Paul, London, 1937); and Witchcraft and Black Magic (Riders, London, 1946). He also wrote with similar verve, colour, and total belief about vampires and werewolves—phenomena which he regarded as being allied to witchcraft, or associated with the activities of witches.