Eddie Buczynski

Who was Eddie Buczynski?

Edmund "Eddie" Buczynski was a prominent American Wiccan and archaeologist who founded two separate traditions of Wicca; Welsh Traditionalist Witchcraft and The Minoan Brotherhood.

Born to a working-class family in New York City, Buczynski initially planned to become a Roman Catholic priest, before abandoning this idea and embracing his homosexuality by moving to Greenwich Village and associating with the city's gay scene. Befriending the Wiccan Leo Martello, he was introduced to Herman Slater, with whom he entered into a relationship and together they opened up an occult supply store, The Warlock Shop. Initially initiated into the New Haven coven of Gwen Thompson, a part of the New England Covens of Traditionalist Witches, he rose to the position of acting high priest before leaving to found his own tradition, Welsh Traditional Witchcraft, in 1972. Although the tradition proved a success and soon spread, Buczynski himself moved on to Gardnerian Wicca, which he was initiated into in 1973.

In 1974 he was ordained into the Church of the Eternal Source, a Kemetic Pagan group, but moved on again in 1977, when he founded the Minoan Brotherhood as a Wiccan tradition for gay and bisexual men. Turning to academia, from 1980 to 1985 he studied for a bachelor's degree in Classical archaeology at Hunter College, which he followed up with a master's degree in the subject at Bryn Mawr College from 1985 to 1988. Buczynski was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988, and died from a related Toxoplasma gondii infection the following year, converting to Roman Catholicism briefly beforehand.