Star Wars, the world’s most evil man and the witch of Wincle

Perhaps we should start with, if not the sublime, then the ridiculous. However, who can judge whether what is to follow is either sublime or ridiculous?

Can we understand the workings of someone else’s mind – especially if that person is, or was, the leader of the richest country in the world?

And can we understand the motivation behind someone who befriended an evil soul who was known as the wickedest man on earth, bringing him to the Macclesfield countryside to show off its beauty and ending up being ravaged by him?

It is now more than half a century since a woman described as “the world’s most famous witch” lived above Macclesfield with her internationally-renowned pianist husband, but her macabre legacy lives on.

From there she went on to influence decisions made by former US president Ronald Reagan and there is a theory that she was the reason Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley twice went the beauty spot known as The Roaches above Leek. Researchers believe the evil duo had read of her visits to that place with a person known as “The World’s Most Evil Man”. To this day one television researcher thinks Brady and Hindley buried one of their victims somewhere around that area.

It was Sybil Leek, astrologer to the stars, author of 60 books, self-proclaimed witch, and adviser to Ronald Reagan, who claimed in her autobiography that Aleister Crowley – known as “The World’s Most Evil Man” and “The Beast” – took her, when she was a girl, to The Roaches and initiated her into black magic and satanic rituals, as well other matters.

As a result of her childhood memories she was always drawn to those high rocks and to the nearby East Cheshire hills around Wincle and Wildboarclough. When she had become world-renowned and was living in California and mixing with movie stars and world leaders she often returned to wander the area.

The late Mike Oldham, a quantity surveyor who was born and bred in Macclesfield but later lived at Bennetsytch, Wincle, once recalled to me a meeting he had with her when he came across her as she was walking the hills around the village. Mike Oldham studied the supernatural so he was more than interested in this larger than life person and he once related to me how, when he came across her, Sybil Leek had told him she loved the Wincle and Leek areas and found them places where she was able to perform her rituals with ease.

Sybil Leek was certainly married three times – possibly four – and her first marriage was to a leading pianist with London’s Royal Opera House. They lived together in Wincle until they split up.

Her mother was, according to her autobiography, able to trace her connections with the “old religion” back to 1134 and her father’s family claimed to have occult ties to the Russian royal family.

According to Sybil it was when she was the tender age of nine that she first introduced to Aleister Crowley. Crowley would regularly visit the Leek’s home and when there would read poetry to Sybil . Soon Crowley was explaining the art of “magick” to Sybil and he took her to The Roaches to initiate her into the black arts. What this entailed we have never been told but observers believe it would have involved sexual rituals.

She continued to see him right up until his death.

Although the two are now long dead, their legacies have ensured that The Roaches will be connected with both witchcraft and Satanism – and possibly murder -for a long time.

However, it must be said that her claims about Crowley have now been debunked by followers of “The Beast”.

She started life as the daughter of a back-tenter in the paper industry, and her entire life was an enigma.

It was when she reached the age of 29, or possibly older if her funeral card was correct (after her romance with the pianist at Wincle when she was a young woman) that she married a 72-year-old businessman who owned a pub. Some seven years later their divorce hit the national newspapers when the marriage ended and the judge, Mr Justice Barnard, said in Manchester Divorce Court: “I cannot help feeling that there is an old saying which amply fits the petitioner: ‘There’s no fool like and old fool.'”

She was one of the most widely-publicised witches of the 20th century. But it is now alleged that her claim to fame was because she simply dropped the name of Aleister Crowley in her books to further her career. In her book “Diary of a Witch” – one of 60 she wrote throughout her career – published when she was living the glitzy lifestyle in Hollywood, she related about being taken to The Roaches by Crowley, whose nickname was “The Beast”.

She wrote: “Among the many visitors to our household was one whom I shall always remember. He was good-looking by the usual standards, but I recall most vividly his penetrating eyes and his tremendous animal-like magnetism. I met him first when I was about eight years old.”

She tells of the two of them clambering across The Roaches.

However, this claim has been debunked by the American Order of the Silver Star, also known as Argenteum Astrum. The order, founded on Crowley’s writings, states: “This would place the meeting around 1931 (since she was born in 1923). Unfortunately, between 1930 through mid-1932 Aleister Crowley was living in Germany and wasn’t in England. But in all fairness, her memory might be just a little faulty in regards to how old she was when she met the Great Beast.”

It is known that Sybil was not the most truthful person when it came to her actual age.

The U.S. order states: “The most outrageous claim which Sybil Leek makes is when she says that one day Aleister Crowley cupped her tiny little face in his hands and spoke to her grandmother. ‘This is the one who will take up where I leave off . . . You’d better remember that, young lady. You’ll hear all sorts of things said about me and they’ll say the same things about you, but I shall have broken the ground for you.’”

Crowley is said to have then turned to Sybil Leek’s grandmother and said: “She is the one who will survive. She’ll live to see occultism almost being understood. That will be the day, won’t it, old lady?”

The order continues: “To some this will seem like simply historical rhetoric but to others it’s nothing less than pure fabrication.

Crowley had been born on October 12, 1875, in Warwickshire into a wealthy and religious family at the height of the Victorian era. In 1898, aged 23, he began his path of “magical enlightenment” by joining The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Other members included such notables such as William Butler Yeats, Constance Wilde, (the wife of Oscar Wilde), Algernon Blackwood and possibly, though records for his membership is shaky, Bram Stoker author of “Dracula”.

Crowley advanced quickly through the ranks before being “sacked”. He soon attracted world-wide infamy for his views on unorthodox religions, his excessive life-style and his over-the-top writings, and was dubbed “The Beast”, adding his own “666” to his appendage, which is the biblical “Number of the Beast”.

Belief that the world’s most famous witch and the world’s most famous “Beast” met on The Roaches has attracted visitors to the spot for many decades. Students of the supernatural, followers of witchcraft and Satanism and many more have journeyed to the high rocks because of these presumed connections. Could it be, therefore, that Moors Murderer Ian Brady twice visited The Roaches because of this “black magic” connection? Is this why he was photographed, standing on The Roaches, by his evil partner in crime Myra Hindley?

Norrie Mills, a television researcher and author, has worked on a documentary about the Moors Murderers. She has engaged geophysical searches in the area and has interviewed an elderly Macclesfield man – who lives just off Congleton Road – who is certain he saw them burying a body just a few miles out of Macclesfield. Manchester police were told of this and enquiries are continuing.

Shortly after the Second World War Sybil moved to Hampshire, living with gypsies in the village of Burley. She was made a Gypsy blood sister. Sybil had a pet jackdaw that she affectionately named Mr Hotfoot Jackson. Mr Jackson would accompany Sybil to all her coven meetings, and would sit perched upon her shoulder as the proceedings took place. The affection she was to show for Mr Hotfoot Jackson may well have been in recognition of the jackdaw that an ancestor of hers, a 17^th century witch named Molly Leigh, had as her familiar. Sybil also had a pet snake by the name of Miss Sashima and as a show of affection towards Crowley she called her pet rook ‘ Crowley ‘.

By the 1950s she had become a minor television celebrity after appearing on Southern TV to discuss witchcraft and the occult.

Then she moved to the USA in the 1960s where she soon became the darling of the talk shows, appearing with Ed Sullivan and others. Later, and as a result, Nancy Reagan invited her to the White House and it was not long before she became a personal advisor to the President.

Hollywood Stars flocked to her and she became a close friend of James Bond author Ian Fleming. Some years previously she had predicted he would become a famous author.

Pretty soon she became a close confidante with the President’s film starlet wife and when Reagan began to be affected by Alzheimer ’s disease, Nancy would not start the day without a ‘reading’ by Sybil. It is thought that this unlikely liaison resulted in advice that was passed on to the President from the First Lady – resulting in the Star Wars defence programme.

It is not known whether she ever returned to this area. Mike Oldham said of her said of her: “She was a weird sight walking around in a long cloak. She was full of her own importance and I was never surprised that she would become famous. She was destined for it. I remember one night in The Ship Inn she was reading everyone’s palms and she told me I would have a happy life. I think she was right about that. She also told me I would tell many people about her. She was right about that as well!”

All  ⓒ Doug Pickford 2016