WITCHES U.S.A. by Susan Roberts

Witchcraft '71! Author Susan Roberts covers big names in the midcentury American witchcraft scene like Joseph Wilson, the Air Force man who publishes a quarterly zine called The Waxing Moon, and Bill and Phyllis Janney, heads of a Cincinnati coven. There's another Bill on the scene, last name Saffin, and together he and Janney are "the two Bills." Get ready to meet a lot of Bills and Eds and Jennies who all swish about mysteriously over coffee and casseroles and cocktail parties while dropping cryptic hints about the divine thread and the caves of the unknown.

Roberts' perspective emerges early as she claims that a witch named Joe told her to write this book the day before her agent calls with the same suggestion ... spooky, right? 

Joseph Wilson's zine

As far as gossipy guides to midcentury magic go, Roberts' work here pales in comparison to Today's Witches (1970) by Susy Smith. There's way too much self satisfied preening by random witchy ding dongs and too much filler from Roberts about how kind, beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful your neighborhood witches are. Watch out, though, because Roberts also warns us that witches can zap us if we cross them! This is a dopey section where Roberts claims on the one hand that dedicated witches won't use their powers to harm people, but on the other hand, the universe might hit us with karma if we cross them! How convenient!

The most interesting chapter concerns the law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander - yeah, that Nixon!

Yet the law firm in which President Nixon served as senior partner until his inauguration on January 20, 1969 — Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander — apparently agreed with the views of Bill and Joe when they filed a petition at 4:47 p.m. on June 7, 1968, before the National Labor Relations Board. They requested that the Board set aside the victory of the International Association of Machinists in an election held on May 31, 1968. The employer the Nixon firm represented was the General Cigar de Utaudo of Puerto Rico.

The attorney’s charge? Witchcraft. Their client, they claimed, was hexed.

The National Labor Relations Board puts the kibosh on things, but Roberts goes over the 13 page white paper on historical witchery the firm filed to support their claim. This overview, covering grimoires and folk traditions, makes up a good chunk of Robert's historical treatment of witchcraft, and elsewhere her background on the craft also repeats the basic witch-cult hypothesis that a lot of vintage witch books took as read. Beside the high point of the Nixon chapter, the real meaty bits here are the profiles of real, random witches across America, who despite all their protestations come across as your average atomized suburbanites, searching for deeper meaning just like the rest of us.

Roberts ends with a ritual of self-blessing to "bring the individual into closer contact with the Godhead."

Above, a 1974 edition from Phoenix House. Susan Roberts also wrote The Yogi Cookbook (1968) with Yogi Vithaldas and The Magician of the Golden Dawn (1978), about Aleister Crowley. Roberts briefly covers Crowley in Witches U.S.A. too, along with the de rigueur chapter on Anton LaVey. 

Bill Janney died in a car accident before publication, but Roberts (tastefully) doesn't ask if this could be another case of karmic zappage. Witches U.S.A. is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1971