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Robert Cochrane (26 January 1931 – 3 July 1966), who was born as Roy Bowers, was an English occultist who founded the tradition of Pagan Witchcraft known as Cochrane's Craft. Born to a working-class family in West London, he became interested in occultism after attending a Society for Psychical Research lecture, taking a particular interest in witchcraft. He founded one coven, but it soon collapsed. He began to claim to have been born to a hereditary family of witches whose practices stretched back to at least the 17th century; these statements have later been dismissed. He subsequently went on to found a coven known as the Clan of Tubal Cain, through which he propagated his Craft. In 1966, he committed suicide. Cochrane continues to be seen as a key inspirational figure in the Traditional Witchcraft movement. Ever since his death, a number of Neopagan and magical groups have continued to adhere to his teachings. ==Early life== As noted by Michael Howard, "factual details about Cochrane's early life are scant".〔 Page 5.〕 He was born in an area between Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush in West London into a family of eight children.〔Howard 2011. p. 41.〕 He later described it as a "slum", though this has been refuted by family members, who considered it a "respectable working class area".〔 There, he lived through the Blitz.〔 Some of his family emigrated to Australia, while he went to art school, living a bohemian lifestyle.〔 His aunt would later claim that he first took an interest in occultism after attending a talk of the Society for Psychical Research in Kensington.〔Howard 2011. p. 43.〕 During the early 1950s, he joined the army as a part of his national service, but went absent without leave; as punishment, he was sentenced to 90 days imprisonment in a military prison in Colchester.〔 He admitted to having a violent temper in his youth, but calmed after meeting Jane, whom he would later marry.〔 For a time he worked for London Transport as a blacksmith in a foundry; one potential reason why he adopted the mythical blacksmith Tubal Cain as a part of the mythos for his tradition.〔Howard 2011. p. 42.〕 He and Jane later worked as bargees transporting coal around the English Midlands, taking an interest in the folklore of the Bargee community, later believing that it contained traces of the "Old Faith".〔 By the start of the 1960s, he was living with Jane and their son on a London County Council-run council estate near to Slough, Berkshire; he did not like the neighbours, considering them "the biggest load of monkeys there have been trained since the Ark."〔 He worked as a typographical draughtsman in an office, but disliked his job.〔 He founded a witches' coven, but it soon broke up as one member died and he fell out with another.〔 Later, in the 1960s, he claimed that members of his family had been practitioners of an ancient pagan Witch-cult since at least the 17th century, and that two of them had been executed for it.〔 Page 7.〕 Claiming that his great-grandfather had been "the last Grand Master of the Staffordshire witches",〔 he said that his grandparents had abandoned the Craft and converted to Methodism, for which his great-grandfather had cursed them. He said that his father had practiced witchcraft, but that he kept it a secret, and made his wife promise to not tell his son, Robert. Despite her oath, according to Cochrane, after his father's death, her mother did in fact tell him, at which he embraced his heritage.〔 He asserted that his Aunt Lucy actually taught him all about the faith.〔 However, these claims would later be denounced by members of his own family. His nephew, Martin Lloyd, has refuted that the family were ever Witches, insisting that they were Methodists, while his wife Jane also later asserted that Cochrane's claims to have come from a hereditary Witch-Cult were bogus. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Cochrane (witch)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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