Doreen Valiente an Interview
"Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals".
-Doreen Valiente
"If that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find without". Doreen Valiente "Let my worship be within the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.”
-Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess
"Therefore, let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you".
-Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess
"And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not, unless thou know this mystery: that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee”
-Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess
"And you who seek to know me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: For if that which you seek, you find not within yourself; you will never find it without".
-Doreen Valiente, Charge of the Goddess
Doreen Valiente
Jan. 4, 1922 - Sept. 1, 1999
Doreen Valiente is considered by many to be the "mother" of the contemporary pagan movement. She was an early initiate of Gerald Gardner's in the 1950's and made many significant contributions as a writer and ritualist. Her books include "Natural Magic", "An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present", "Witchcraft for Tomorrow", and "The Rebirth of Witchcraft".
This Fireheart interview was conducted by Michael Thorn in 1991.
Elegy for a Dead Witch
by Doreen Valiente
To think that you are gone, over the crest of the hills,
As the Moon passed from her fulness, riding the sky,
And the White Mare took you with her.
To think that we will wait another life
To drink wine from the horns and leap the fire.
Farewell from this world, but not from the Circle.
That place that is between the worlds
Shall hold return in due time. Nothing is lost.
The half of a fruit from the tree of Avalon
Shall be our reminder, among the fallen leaves
This life treads underfoot. Let the rain weep,
Waken in sunlight from the Realms of Sleep
Doreen Valiente
FireHeart, Interviews Doreen Valiente
FH: I must say that you're not what I expected from your picture in "The Rebirth of Witchcraft". You looked older and a lot more decrepit, and you're actually very with it and lively and younger than I thought.
DV: Well, I was rather a lot more decrepit. I've got a good day at the moment, but I have been absolutely laid out with arthritis. The trouble is that when it gets you, there's not very much you can do about it. The doctors want to put you on all sorts of drugs which have a worse effect on you than the arthritis, and I'm very dubious of taking any of that stuff. The only thing that I find does any good is an herbal ointment. It does a great deal of good, but the trouble is it really stinks the place up.
FH: Sometimes the best medicine tastes very bad, like cod liver oil.
DV: They used to fill me up with that stuff when I was a kid. I don't believe it ever did me the slightest bit of good, and I'm sure it was very bad for the cold. Arthritis is very limiting. When you've got it, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. You just have to try and keep warm. And sometimes it gets into the joints of your hands and makes it painful to write. You don't know where you haven't got it when it really gets you. Actually, it's probably a combination of old age and cussedness.
FH: Maybe it's karma or the threefold return, and they're saying, "We'll give it to her one way or the other."
DV: I don't believe this stuff about the threefold return, you know. I've always been very skeptical about that, but I'm a lot more skeptical than I used to be. The older I get, the more skeptical I get. I don't believe in all sorts of things that I used to believe in.
FH: Where do you think the threefold idea came from?
DV: I think old Gerald cooked it up in one of his rituals, and people took it terribly literally. Personally, I've always been skeptical about it because it doesn't seem to me to make sense. I don't see why there has to be one special law of karma for Witches and a different one for everybody else. I don't buy that. But there's an awful lot of things I don't buy.
FH: What do you buy?
DV: Well, I'm really interested in reincarnation because I think it does explain a lot. I've got a lot of feeling of affinity with Egypt, you know, and I've got a feeling that I was around in that time. I remember reading a book about ancient Egypt which purported to talk a lot about the time of Akhenaton, and I found myself getting very angry about this book, almost wanting to sling it across the room and shout "It wasn't like that at all!" And then I thought to myself, "What are you getting so angry about? This is stuff that happened centuries ago." But I think reading that triggered off the feeling that I was around then. Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt so strongly about it. Since then, I've managed to recapture a few more bits and pieces, but of course, there's no proof of any of these things.
I've also got a very strong feeling that Mrs. Thatcher... Have you ever noticed how much she resembles the first Queen Elizabeth? And there's a striking resemblance in the way that they ran the country, too. The spirit of Elizabeth's reign was there very much. It wasn't such a good reign for the common people. We'd better not stray into the realm of politics.
FH: There's politics in everything. Even in the Craft.
DV: I wish there wasn't. That's one thing that makes me wonder whether the old coven structure hasn't had its day. It served the purpose for which it was organized in the days when we were forced to be an underground group. I can well imagine that the coven structure was really what kept the Old Religion alive. But I think that's all changing. Today, we're becoming much more individualistic. For one thing, a lot of the real traditional covens were family affairs, and people lived in the same village and didn't move very much, possibly for centuries. They knew jolly well there who they could trust and who they couldn't. They would know that Uncle Harold was a devious old so-and-so, and that Cousin Herbert would sell his grandmother for fourpence. They knew who to trust and who not to trust because they knew these people. Likewise, you couldn't try to kid them that you were the Lord High Adept and Great Mucky Muck because they would say, "Come off it, we knew you when you were a twinkle in your father's eye." Those were the circumstances in which the old covens were founded. They were strong because they were founded on Witch blood and on people who knew who they could trust and who they couldn't trust. They were almost a product of the soil itself.
FH: If you think that covens have outlived their usefulness, what do you think is the next mode of teaching and practice?
DV: I think they will have to transform. Instead of politics entering into it, which is largely a matter of who's going to be top Witch, I think they'll be organized on a much more individualistic basis. People will practice on their own or with two or three kindred people. Instead of large covens like there used to be, there will be a lot more smaller groups, and they will do their own thing. I don't think that's a bad thing at all, within some sort of general framework. I'm not a believer that there's one sort of orthodoxy that everybody's got to conform to.
FH: We're not really concerned right now about the survival of the Craft. That's pretty much assured.
DV: Well, Gerald was concerned about that because he could see that most of the people in the Craft were old. He and Dafo were about the youngest ones there in the New Forest coven, so he told me, and he feared that very much once they were gone, who was going to carry on? People were afraid to initiate their children in those days, and they would wait until they were pretty grownup. Mind you, I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think children should be pushed into doing something just because their parents did it. But he was really worried that if they didn't get some younger people into it, the whole thing was going to fade out. And he didn't want to see that. Whether it would have done or not if it hadn't been for him, is a good question. That was the purpose behind his publicity seeking.
FH: Did you ever expect, when you started working with Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, that Witchcraft would become the large-scale movement that it has?
DV: No. Never for a moment did I think that it would become the large-scale movement that it has. Sometimes I sit down, and I can hardly believe it. It's amazing. I don't think that it's to the credit of me, Gerald Gardner or any individual. I think it is simply the fact that it was an idea whose time had come.
FH: What do you think Gerald thought would happen as a result of his writing? That there would be a few covens?
DV: I'm not sure he even expected a few covens. He just wanted to let people know that Witchcraft was still alive. It was only when people started writing to him, and I know he got sacksful of letters. .. of course, the joke was that the more the Sunday newspapers denounced him, the more he got sacksful of letters. And, poor old boy, he really didn't know what to do about it. He started trying to meet up with a few people who seemed a bit sensible, and it went on from there. But not for one moment, I don't think, did he ever envision that it would be stretching literally from USA to Australia, and now the Soviet Union.
A fellow Witch came round to have a chat with me the other day and told me that he'd seen an article in "The Times" about the reemergence of Witch covens in Russia and in other countries formerly known as the Iron Curtain countries. The spark has still stayed there alive, the ember is bursting into flame again. Also, of course, it gives the lie to all the clever people who say that old Gerald invented it all, because he didn't, you know. He put it into a form which people could use. But I don't believe he invented the basic idea behind it.
I've had quite a lot of correspondence recently with my old friend, Aidan Kelly. What he said before, or what I thought he was saying, was that Gerald Gardner and I had entered into a conspiracy to deceive the public. Well, I wasn't wearing that one and got riled accordingly. I think he's accepted it now that I didn't enter into any conspiracy to deceive people. With regard to old Gerald, well, . . I won't claim for a moment that he was the incarnation of truthfulness, but I don't believe he invented the whole thing. I think there was an old New Forest coven, and I think he did contact it. The big question, of course, is how much of the Witchcraft ideas that we've got today were brought in by old Gerald and how much were really traditional from the old New Forest coven. That's the question I don't know whether we'll ever really find the answer to because, unfortunately, there is so much which is lost, and there is so much controversy about it. So much has to stay a matter of opinion upon which people must make up their own minds. If I was younger and had lots of money, I would make my basis down in the New Forest and try and do a bit of original research --- try to hunt up some remnants of what really went on there. Whether it will ever come out, I don't know.
In those days, people had to cover their tracks a lot more than they do now. Believe me, the Witch who told Gerald that Witchcraft doesn't pay for broken windows wasn't kidding. In those days, it really was extremely dangerous to have anything to do, not only with Witchcraft as such, but with the occult at all. It wasn't at all respectable like it is now. Far from it, in fact. People didn't have the same sort of rights as they do now. There are laws now that prevent you from being put into the street if your landlady doesn't like what you're studying or dismissed from your job because your employer happens to be an evangelical Christian or something like that. They can't kick people around quite as much nowadays as they used to be able to. In the old days, people really were very much more vulnerable than they are now. They jolly well had to keep quiet, and they had to cover their tracks, and they had to be terribly respectable. Dion Fortune, for instance, certainly tried to have a mystical Christian side to her organization to counter-balance the active Pagan side of it. Unfortunately, eventually it didn't work. But it was only people who were either wealthy enough to thumb their noses at their neighbors or were able to keep very quiet about things who could pursue these things at all. You wouldn't walk into a public library in those days and find books like you'll find there today. They wouldn't be allowed.
FH: So, when Gerald's books did come out, the people he was working with were not pleased?
DV: Well, no. Old Dorothy was an educated woman. She had her head screwed on pretty well when she advised Gerald against dashing into print. I'm afraid discretion was not Gerald's strong point, and he wanted to dash into print and reveal almost everything. She persuaded him instead to put it in the form of an historical novel. Well, that's fiction. But I think a lot of ideas come out in fiction which convey more occult information than books which are ostensibly written as nonfiction. Dion Fortune's best books, in my opinion, are her fictional books. I must admit that I've never succeeded in reading "The Cosmic Doctrine." Like the famous book in H. P. Lovecraft stories, it does not permit itself to be read. But her fictional books I find full of information and interest.
FH: If the group that he was working with was doing rituals other than what he pieced together later, did he have a book of those rituals?
DV: Whether there's any truth in this or not I don't know, but his associate, Mr. Cecil Williamson, who actually first started the Witchcraft Museum, said that Gerald had an old book which was not a very big book. It was a manuscript book, and he used to keep this very carefully. Unfortunately, one day when he was showing visitors round his museum in the Isle of Man, this book was stolen and the going of it has never been solved. Now what book that was I don't know. It's not, I don't think, a book that I've ever seen. What the contents of that stolen book were, why it was stolen, and whether it will ever turn up again we don't know.
FH: In your opinion, what are the differences in how the Craft is practiced in Britain and America, and why do you think those differences exist?
DV: I think we're much less formalized over here. Of course, I haven't been to America so I can't speak from personal experience, but everything in America seems to be so much more organized, and in a way, that worries me because I think it's taking some of the fun out of it. It's all getting a bit heavy. I don't know whether Americans are a bit more inclined to organize things than British people. Of course, we're chronically disorganized over here, and we've got the great tradition of British eccentrics of every kind. I think we're a lot more informal over here. We don't hold big Merry meets like you've got over there. It's probably simply because we don't have so much money. It must cost an awful lot of money to organize one of these. It must be great fun.
FH: It's a unique experience because you get together with people who have done lots of different things and their rituals --- you can see what other people do. It's very communal. It's interesting because there's such a variety in what people do in terms of witchcraft in the States.
DV: They do try over here to organize something like that at Halloween. Shan Jayran has been organizing a festival, usually somewhere in Battersea, and I hear it's been very successful, although I've never actually been up to them. But it's not an outdoor occasion like you have over there. Basically, USA is a very much bigger country. You've got a bit more elbow room out there, you see. But we do manage to have some outdoor meetings and quite a few people go to them. but you can't do it quite so openly here. You can't hire grounds without the local church kicking up a frightful row and all that sort of thing.
FH: It's never without problem in the US either, though. Sometimes it takes very careful explanation to the campground about exactly what you're going to do.
DV: One of the things which we have been getting over here are all these yarns about what they call satanic child abuse, which, of course, they equate with Witchcraft. All that started off in USA, and a lot of it has been exploded in the USA and shown to be nonsense. So now it's been imported over here --- a whole new market. It's been assiduously spread by certain of these extremist evangelical organizations.
The horrifying thing is --- and this is a really horrifying tale --- that in Rochdale, the local social services and social workers, after attending a seminar in which they were indoctrinated with all of this stuff and given a list of indications of how to spot satanism and satanic abuse of children, which apparently, they swallowed whole, swooped on these people's houses at dawn and carted their children off. The awful thing is that they also managed, by legal means, to fix things so that not only were these people deprived of the custody of their children. but they were forbidden to say anything about it. That sounds incredible in a democratic society in Britain in 1990, but it is a fact. And it has only been recently that the national press has found out what is going on and has started to kick up a row about it that this has come to light. Some of the children have now been returned. Others are still, as they call it, "in care." The parents were denied legal aid at first, but they are now getting legal aid to sue for the return of their children. There is going to be a big High Court case about it and a government inquiry, but these things have only come about because the national press found out what was going on and said, "What the hell is going on here in Britain in 1990?" I'm not saying, of course, that the children were not being abused. We don't know whether they've been abused or not. Unfortunately, there is an awful lot of child abuse goes on. But that is a very different thing from saying that this is done as a ritual to Satan or as part of a Witchcraft ritual, and that is what these people are trying to make out.
Fortunately, also, the chief constable of Nottingham, where all these satanic allegations started, says that he is going to send a special memorandum to the Home Secretary telling him that there is no evidence whatsoever for satanism being involved in these cases in any way, and deploring this myth which he says, "is sweeping the country like Asian flu."
Also, the Chief Constable of Manchester has totally repudiated these stories of Witchcraft and satanism connected with child abuse, saying that his officers have thoroughly investigated it. They've found no bodies, no babies cooked in microwave ovens. That was one of the allegations, believe it or not. They've found no bones. They've found no secret meeting places, nothing. Not one of these stories that has been told over here has been backed up by any proof whatsoever.
There's one thing that puzzles me about these people who claim to have witnessed ritual murders and all this sort of thing. They'll tell of things. They'll tell it on television. They'll tell it in books. They'll tell it to the newspapers. But I've noticed there's one place that you can never seem to get them to go and tell it. Why the hell don't they go and tell it to the police? Very often we've had people making these claims here in Britain and the police have interviewed them and they've usually come out afterwards and made a statement saying that they could find no evidence of it whatever. But, these people say, "We couldn't go to the police because we were too frightened." Well, in that case, why are they speaking out now? Why aren't they frightened now? If they'd gone to the police, the police could give them protection, as they very often do in cases of serious crime, and you can't get much more serious than ritual murder. So why, if they were really concerned about this and they repented of it and they wanted to be out of it, why didn't they go to the police with their story? That. in my opinion, is what you used to call the $64,000 question, and we've never had a sensible answer to it. And I'd like to ask it of all of them.
These allegations of ritual murder were all over our papers at first, but I've noticed that they've been rather small lately, now that these investigations have been brought to a conclusion and the chief constables themselves have come out and said they have found no backing up for them whatsoever. In fact, some of the people who gave evidence to these social workers about satanic abuse now say that they were simply brainwashed into it by continuous questioning by these social workers. One girl said, "They just wouldn't take no for an answer. They wouldn't leave me alone." Well, this is rather like the medieval witchcraft investigations. The inquisitor wouldn't take no for an answer.
As I say there is going to be a government inquiry and a High Court Case for the return of these children to their parents. Under the British judicial system, if there is a court case pending about something, you can't have a lot of stuff in the newspapers about it while it is, as they say, subjudiciary. It's not allowed. Afterwards, they can say what they like, but they mustn't come out with a lot of stuff for and against until that case has been heard because that, they feel, is infringing on the privilege of the judge and the court. So, we shall wait now with very great interest to see what happens when this High Court case comes out and the government inquiry comes out. It's scheduled, I believe, to last for about six weeks. And it is going to cost the poor wretched taxpayer a few million.
FH: There goes the poll tax.
DV: Yes, there goes Rochdale's poll tax. There is a certain element among the Christian churches of what I think they call the evangelical persuasion, which is very, very fanatical on the subject, not only of Witchcraft and satanism, but of everything whatsoever connected with the New Age, even vegetarianism. Anything which is connected with the New Age is under the influence of Satan.
FH: Any independent thinking.
DV: Yes, that's really what it's all about, any independent thinking. I heard a lovely tale awhile back about one of these chaps. They were having a public meeting in a shopping mall, and they were giving out tracts and buttonholing people. One of them came up to a woman who was a Witch and said to her, "The first thing we want you to know is that God loves you," to which the Witch, being very polite, promptly replied, "Yes, I know she does." And the gentleman got very upset and accused her of being blasphemous.
FH: What do you see as the interconnection between the Craft/Pagan movement and other movements such as the New Age and Women's Spirituality movements? It does seem, with the green movement over here and with the 20 years for Earth Day and concern about the environment, that the Craft is coming together with those things in some places.
DV: Oh yes, I think it should. I think there's a vital interconnection there. Why the Craft came out into the open in the 1950s was not really due to the efforts of any one individual, but simply because it was an idea whose time had come, and these other things are ideas whose time has come. They are going to be a part of the Aquarian Age. This is the historic movement that's going on, and that's what I find so very interesting to watch. I'm too old now to do much more except watch. But I do watch with great interest, I can tell you.
We're beginning to see now how a lot of the persecution of Witches in historic records was really very much concerned with the persecution of women and putting them in their place, as they regarded it. Uppity women were regarded as being Witches and suspected of being Witches, and a lot of the women healers were degraded to being regarded as Witches simply because they were women. Only men could practice medicine. Nowadays, we're beginning to see how the connection between feminism and Witchcraft is not something that's new. It's something that's been there all along. In fact, it's something that's vital at the foundation of it.
FH: It's an interesting resurgence all at once.
DV: That's the point, you see. The resurgence all at once. Why should that be? Simply because there is, I think, some sort of historic movement --- what one of the old prime ministers called once "the winds of change blowing," which is a very appropriate expression for the Aquarian Age. Aquarius is an air sign and it's the winds of change that blow. There's no way that anybody could stop it. It's the wind of change that blew down the Berlin Wall.
FH: Some people say that the New Age is the old stuff repackaged.
DV: Yes, it is. That's exactly what it is. I don't know whether New Age people would accept this, but I think a lot of the New Age is really the old Witchcraft. And, of course, that is why the Christian fundamentalists are so much against it because they think the same thing. I think we should try and work with the New Age and Women's Spirituality movements and movements of that kind because all of these things really are converging into one goal. They're helping the evolution of humanity into the Aquarian Age, and if we're not interested in doing that, then we're not doing anything very useful. I think people should not think of Witchcraft as just something which is there to do selfish little rituals to get you something to make your life easier. It is there perhaps to make people's lives easier, and by all means there are times to use it in that way, but we should have a wider vision of it. We should be prepared to work with the New Age and Women's Spirituality movement and the green movement and regard them as important.
FH: But anything can be a little too orthodox after a while - even a Goddess religion.
DV: I think it would be rather unbalanced if you had a religion that only worshipped the Goddess, because it's ignoring half of humanity. It's repeating the same mistake in a different way. I don't want to see that happen. I would rather see people have a more balanced view to realize that you need the God and the Goddess, that. really, you can't have one without the other. I don't think so anyway, Personally, I've always been very fond of old Horny and want to see him still take a prominent part in the rituals.
FH: I think there's been, since the `50s, an attempt to maintain a balance. But was there a predominance of the Goddess in the `50s because there was such a subjugation of women, or was there always an attempt to make a balance?
DV: I think there was always an attempt to make a balance. When I first came into the Craft in the 1950s, we had both the Goddess and the God. There was never any question about that. Dear old Aidan Kelly keeps on saying, "You must have introduced the Goddess worship," even though I've told him a half a dozen times that I hadn't. But when I came into the Craft in the 1950s, we had both deities, and there was never any question about this or any idea that this had been newly introduced.
FH: I think one of the reasons --- and I can't really speak for Aidan or the way he thinks --- is that you wrote what's really the major liturgy or the major piece of poetry for the Goddess in the Charge.
DV: Oh yes. I wrote that, Gerald had a version of the Charge which had a lot of Aleister Crowley's writing in it. And mind you, Aleister Crowley, in my opinion, was a marvelous poet and he has always been undervalued in English literature simply because of the notoriety which he made for himself and reveled in. He loved being called the wickedest man in the world and all that sort of nonsense. The thing is --- as his latest biographer, John Symonds, says --- he couldn't have it both ways. If he wanted to get himself that lurid reputation, which he worked very hard at for many years, then he wasn't, at the same time, going to get a good reputation in English literature, in spite of the fact that a couple of his poems are in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. I think it's a pity that he's not had the recognition that he deserves, really, and perhaps later years will remedy that.
But Gerald had a version of the Charge, which I think was quoted in Stewart Farrar's book. And I told Gerald, "Look, so long as you've got all this stuff from Aleister Crowley in your liturgies, you're not going to get accepted as being anything connected with white magic, because his reputation is such" --- and unfortunately, most of it was quite well deserved --- "that people are just not going to accept this and take it seriously so long as they think you're an offshoot of Crowley's OTO." What he said, in effect, was, "If you think you can do any better, get on with it," and that's just what I tried to do. I did the best I could with what I had available, and no one has been more surprised than myself to see the influence that the Charge has had.
FH: It's just like Gerald didn't quite expect what would happen to the movement after writing a few books. And now we have people all over the world.
DV: The New Age, the Aquarian Age, is coming in and it will come in however much people try to prevent it. Of course, it may come in less easily and less peacefully because of people's prejudices against it, but it will come in eventually. You can't stop the tide.
FH: Do you think that Witchcraft and Paganism can and will grow to become a more mainstream religion in our western culture?
DV: I don't know. I feel rather intimidated at the idea of a mainstream religion. I think I would be happier if we were more what old Gerald used to call "the cult of the twilight divinities." I mean, on the edge of civilization, away from the mainstream religions. This is the idea that Colonel Seymour develops in his very fine article on the old Religion.
FH: In "The Forgotten Mage"?
DV: That's it. He has the idea of the mystery religions as not being in the mainstream but being the byway, "the road that wanders over the ferny brae," as the old ballad has it. I think that is where the magic of the old Religion comes into it --- that it's not a mainstream religion, it's not an orthodox religion. And when you see the results of the orthodox religions, I'm very glad it isn't. If you look at all the wars that are going on in the world today, it's hard to point to one of them that's not got orthodox religion and fundamentalism at its root somewhere. Heaven preserve us from religious fervor when it takes to blowing people to pieces.
But some people need organized religion. We tend to take from "The Key" and this sort of thing. Well I do, at any rate. Yet I have been one to say that I think organized religion is an unmitigated curse to the human race, and you've only got to pick up a newspaper today to see the evidence for that. At the same time, a lot people need an organized religion, and we mustn't lose sight of that fact. That. of course, is where poor old Akhenaton went wrong, you know. He took away the common people's simplistic beliefs and a lot of gods and goddesses, and what he gave them in return they couldn't understand. They couldn't understand his one god far away. They wanted their old gods who lived almost in their homes. And consequently, his great religious reform in ancient Egypt didn't survive his own death very long.
FH: It's interesting how people's religious beliefs really do affect how they see life, and death as well.
There was a joke once about the Summerland. Somebody died and was talking to a friend in the afterlife near a high, walled enclosure. He said, "What's that in there?" and his friend replied, "Oh, those are all the Gardnerians in their Summerland. They think they're all alone in the afterlife, like they're the special ones."
DV: I think, you know, there could be quite a lot of truth behind that sort of idea because you often hear about different religions having their different afterlife. The Muslims have got a rather good afterlife, I think. They've got lots of beautiful houris waiting on them. I think it's very nice indeed and good luck to them. It beats playing harp hands down, I'd say. The Buddhists say, "Yes, we have all these beautiful things, but we realize it's all illusion." And the red Indians used to have their happy hunting ground. It wouldn't surprise me at all if --- at first --- people do find themselves in something which they have built up in their minds as their idea of heaven. I dare say there are quite a few people sitting up in the Christian heaven merrily twanging away on harps and thinking that this is it --- they've made it. And it's only after a while, I should imagine, that perhaps they begin to look around them and think, "I wonder if this is real." And perhaps they then realize that this isn't real. Also, I'm quite sure that quite a few people in very stern and devout Christian circles have probably got quite a good mock-up of hell as well. Do you know about that wonderful book by James Branch Cabell where the hero went to hell and he met a very upset, discontented little devil who said he was worked to death because all these people complained that the fire wasn't hot enough? He said," I run around and do my best to make the fire hotter." I think that people very possibly make for themselves, at first, the sort of afterlife which they've built up in their own minds. I'll settle for a Pagan afterlife any day.
FH: Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki wrote in one of her books about developing a place ahead of time where you would go when you died that would be familiar, and then afterwards, you would go off from there into whatever it is that you go off into. That way, if you were killed suddenly, you would realize that you were dead because you would go to that place automatically, rather than wandering around not really figuring out that you had died.
DV: I think that, very possibly, there are quite a lot of people like that, you know, as they say wandering around not being able to figure out what's happened to them. That might account for quite a lot of hauntings and poltergeist manifestations. I think there's a lot of truth in what spiritualists teach. They've certainly made more progress in learning about the afterlife and trying to get people to think a bit intelligently about it than all the orthodox churches. Of course, the orthodox churches make it a mystery. You can't know anything about it and you mustn't ask, which is nonsense. They don't want people to know anything about it because you can't have people setting up to be their own priests and their own priestesses. Otherwise, a fellow's occupation is gone.
FH: You have to keep the priest class in there to gather the money. There's actually been a lot of controversy about money in the Craft in the States, about people getting paid for things like teaching a class. Accepting money is a big taboo in certain areas because people feel you shouldn't involve money in our religion.
DV: That's all very well if you can afford to do it. But people have got to pay their way, haven't they? And if someone is teaching a class, for instance, and not engaging in other paid work, they're giving their time. It's all very well to say we must not ever take money for anything like that, but how are people going to live? They've got to pay their mortgage or their rent. They've got to pay their taxes and they've got to buy food and clothes. How are they going to live if they don't have some means of income? If you're not going to allow ordinary people who have ordinary financial concerns to take part, then you're going to make it exclusively the playground of the rich who can afford to do this sort of thing. I think that people have got to be a bit practical about that. They've got to work out the practicalities of the thing.
FH: Some people feel that you shouldn't make a career of Witchcraft, shouldn't be doing it full-time in terms of priesthood and teaching, that it shouldn't be your job.
DV: Of course, people in all other religions make it their job, don't they? They get paid for it.
FH: I think that's their objection. They don't want it to be the same.
DV: It isn't Witch high priestesses that live in palaces. It's Christian bishops. That's what they call it today --- the Bishop's Palace. People in the church, whether it's the Anglican church or any other church, they have to have a salary or otherwise they can't devote their services full-time to it. I think that people have to work out a reasonable, practical compromise about that. Dion Fortune used to say, and I'm very fond of quoting her, "It's no good being so heavenly minded that you're no earthly use." I agree that it shouldn't be done for money exclusively, not making money the object of it, but at the same time, you've got to have that practicality which gets things done. Otherwise, it's just going to be a hobby for the rich, as occultism was before the present-day revival.
FH: Certainly for people like Crowley. He had the money and the leisure time to indulge himself.
DV: He was actually the son of a wealthy brewer and was left a considerable legacy. He was sent by his father to Trinity College, Cambridge, and of course, he did all right until the legacy ran out. Then he had to subsist, as Gerald Hamilton, one of his friends, delicately put it, upon involuntary contributions from his friends, which made it rather a sordid story. The latest version of his biography is John Symonds' "King of the Shadow Realm".
FH: Many people who have been in the Craft for a long time feel that the tremendous growth in numbers has been bad for the Craft and the Craft has become more a fad than a religion, and that the magic is gone. Do you agree with this?
DV: No, I wouldn't agree with that, I don't think the Craft becomes a fad unless you let it become a fad. I don't think the magic can ever entirely go, although it can be marred by considerations such as bringing in monetary profit for it, and so on. I think if you start making a business of it, then the magic very soon evaporates. It just depends on what sort of a business they make of it. If the sole end is to make money out of it, then the magic's gone already. The magic can never entirely go, because what the Craft is basically rooted in is nature, and nature is there --- the elements of life, trees, the wind, the fire, are all around us. This is the basic magic of the Craft, and that is part of life itself. It isn't that the magic is gone. It's just that we've lost touch with it. As for the growth in numbers, well I don't know. You can't say to people, "We don't you want you in here." It's rather like the old line: "We are the Lord's anointed. All others will be damned. We've got no room up here for you. We can't have heaven crammed." What right have we got to deny people the right to worship the old gods and the right to feel kinship with nature? There are some who inevitably are going to be the wrong sort of people. They come to it for selfish motives, but they'll very soon show themselves up. They, in the end, are the biggest losers because they've had their chance and blown it.
FH: There are people who think that some people have initiated masses of people into the Craft, and that's a mistake. They should be more selective.
DV: I certainly agree with that. I think that a lot of trouble has arisen from initiating the wrong sort of people without stopping to think a bit. You're not doing them any favor by initiating them into something that they're not capable of grasping the real meaning of, and you're certainly not doing yourself any favor by bringing in people who are unsuitable. I certainly think that people have initiated people for the wrong motives, sort of to make certain they've got a coven of a full thirteen. And really, you can do much better work with two or three people who really know what they're doing.
FH: In the American Craft/Pagan community, we talk about building a foundation and support structures around which Witchcraft and Paganism can evolve to fit he needs of its members. As someone who has been foremost in helping to create the shape of contemporary Witchcraft, do you have any insights on how this might happen?
DV: Building a foundation and support structures? I don't really understand what that is about.
FH: The idea is like building community. Just like Christians might have a senior citizens home.
DV: Oh, how marvelous! A senior citizens home for Witches. I can just picture it.
FH: And raising people's children, and support groups.
DV: This really. . . I mean, when I first started out as a Witch, you couldn't go into a shop and buy a wand like you do today. I don't know what would have happened. They couldn't run a shop like that. They'd have been closed down by the police. They wouldn't have been allowed. It would be quite amazing if any of us who came in the beginning of the 1950s are still around to see it. We just wouldn't believe it. You couldn't buy a pack of tarot cards in those days. Literally. I tried for ages before I was able to get a pack of tarot cards, and nowadays, you can buy any number of packs of tarot cards.
FH: As with other religions, to have the social and Community support so that we can take care of our own and not have to depend on other people. Schools for children and affinity groups.
DV: I find it very. . . A senior citizens home! I can't get over that. I think that's super.
FH: We'll have the wings named after various people. The Doreen Valiente Memorial Temple.
DV: I'm quite horrified by some of the stuff that is getting out: "Oh, you pretty well founded the Craft in those days," and so on. I have awful visions of processions to the shrine of St. Doreen in the year 2070. The trouble is I can't think of any way of cashing in on this until after I'm dead. It is a great pity. But I tell you what, I think I'll do my dentist a favor because he's a very good chap. I'll put him wise to what's going on and tell him to get out an old molar or something, and after I'm gone, they can cook up something like the Temple of the Tooth that they've got in Kandy in Ceylon. It's supposed to be the tooth of Buddha and they parade it through the streets on the back of an elephant once a year. Everybody gets thoroughly into a state of religious ecstasy and a good time is had by all. So I think I'll put my dentist wise to this. I wouldn't mind seeing him profit out of it, and if he hasn't got a tooth of mine, he can substitute the tooth of somebody else. Actually, some spoil sport examined the sacred tooth in Kandy some years ago and said it was the tooth of an animal, probably a dog. But it didn't seem to put any damper on the proceedings.
FH: They did it to Elvis Presley. They have a piece of toast he took a bite out of, or a spoon he used once.
DV: They don't really!
FH: They really do things like that.
DV: Would you like to buy some old spoons as an investment?
FH: You have to be very careful who you leave them to. They'll have a big auction, and they will be worth a fortune. But again, you won't get to benefit from it.
DV: That's the boring thing, isn't it? I think it's a rather horrifying thought. It's like the rhyme about old Crowley. "There met one eve in a sylvan glade, a horrible man and a beautiful maid. Where are you going, so meek and holy? I'm going to temple to worship Crowley. So, Crowley is God then? How did you know? Well, it's Captain Fuller that told us so. And how do you know that Fuller was right? I'm afraid you're a wicked man, good night. While this sort of thing is styled success, I shall not count failure bitterness." That was Crowley's little poem about it. The joke is, you know, that they do sell Crowley relics. I've seen some of them being offered at the most frightful prices. There's not a lot you could do about the relic industry. The trouble is I can't think of any way to benefit from it while I'm alive.
We were talking foundation and support structures in the community. How it might happen, I don't know. It will probably happen of itself. At the moment, we're in the very difficult situation of not being able to educate our children. It rather galls me that every other religion in the world can educate their children in their ideas except us. At the moment, owing to all this satanic child abuse scare, it really would be very difficult for people to bring up their children in the ideas of the Craft, and I don't see why we should suffer that discrimination. So the day will come, I think, when we will have to have something like the Witch equivalent of a Sunday school. I don't know if we'll have it. But why shouldn't we tell our children about what we believe? The Christian fundamentalists will raise a great hoohah about it, of course. We've been talking quite happily about how the old coven structure has served its purpose and all that sort of thing, but then, you see, we may be wrong on that point. We have to think of that because when you see the fanaticism of some of these people, it's quite frightening. But other religions can bring up their children in their ideas, and as you say, we could have support groups for people. There are many kinds of people who need support groups. Most of these support groups are now run by Christian religious communities, and some of them do some very good work. But we certainly ought to consider the possibility of doing that sort of thing ourselves.
FH: Some of it takes money. Building up that money from people who really don't have a lot is difficult.
DV: I feel most of the people in the Craft are not wealthy people, and most of the things are more or less done on a shoestring. Maybe that's not a bad thing. I think the day will come when we shall be doing that sort of thing --- support groups of these kinds for older people, younger people and people with problems. Yes, the developments and the way that it is moving are really quite amazing. These structures will come. I think they'll more or less form themselves.
FH: What are you writing now? Are you writing another book?
DV: Well, yes. I'm trying to cook up the ideas for writing a book especially directed at the lone practitioner of Witchcraft, whether by choice or where circumstances compel them to be, where the person has to work on their own or perhaps with just a partner or a couple of people. I think that's one of the chief ways in which the Craft is going to develop, that it's going to be much more on an individual basis. I'm going to try to make a book of spells, rituals, and that kind of thing which will be of help to people like that. I also collaborated on a book with an old friend of mine, Evan John Jones.
FH: Is that "Witchcraft, A Tradition Renewed"?
DV: That's right. He wrote what I thought was a very interesting book. and so, I helped him get it published by editing it a bit. He wrote a lot of it from inspiration, and he didn't really know how it was going to come out until he'd written it down. It is based on the ideas that he and I developed when we worked with Robert Cochrane. Some of those he has modified a bit to make them more suitable for the present day, to be more forward-looking rather than backward-looking. But this is quite a different sort of ritual from what I think most people do, although he has got some friends in USA that are practicing these rituals now, and he keeps in touch with them. Apparently, they find them successful. Anyway, I hope people will be interested in it and not think that I'm trying to knock other forms of Witchcraft because I've helped him to get this out, but I think that we need different viewpoints, different traditions.
FH: The Craft seems optimally poised in this situation to integrate a lot of these things together, like the Green movement which is concerned with the Earth, and the feminist movement which is concerned with the role of women, and the New Age movement which is concerned about the spirituality of the individual. It seems as though the Craft integrates all of these, so that it could take a leadership role because it's a synthesis of these different movements.
DV: I think it's going to be part of the Aquarian Age which is coming in. That is how I visualize it. Of course, it's not easy for us to see just how that's going to develop. Sometimes you think we're all going to hell in a handcart and there's nothing you can do about it when you see some of the things on television. And then you hear of some other developments which suddenly makes you feel more hopeful, as if things are going to work out in spite of all the forces of darkness, that things are going to work out to a better age. I think the world is gradually reshaping itself. There is some force there --- call it Gaia or the force of evolution. Call it the inner planes. Call it what you will, but I think there is some force at work which has something to do with human evolution, and it is helping us on to the next step, whether we choose to try to go along with it or not. We can choose to try to go against it if we want to, but I don't think it will get us anywhere if we do. I mean, who would have believed that the Berlin Wall would be practically blown away by the wind of change. But it has happened. And this is not happening by force of arms. It is not happening by politicians' planning. It's happening by a sort of movement of the human spirit, if you can call it that. These things are happening. The world does change. It's like the famous Chinese curse. "May you live in interesting times." We do.
FH: What is your vision of the future of the Craft?
DV: It may, I hope, take that kind of part. That's what I would hope and like to see it do. I don't know whether I'll ever live that long, but I would love to see some of these big open-air meetings like you have in the States over here. I think they're wonderful, and I would like to see a lot of other people attending them, not only Craft people, but New Age people, feminists, and people concerned with the Green movement. I would like to see us working together. I think that's the future of the Craft. But we can't be exclusive anymore. There was a time when we had to be because it was literally a matter of life and death. We were rather like the resistance movement during the war. If we spoke out of turn, we stood the chance not only of destroying ourselves but our associates as well. You jolly well learned discretion the hard way in those days. I think that era is gone. There are forces at work among the fundamentalists of various religions which would like to see those days brought back. I don't think they're going to succeed, I think human evolution has gone too far for that. They might have some temporary successes. They may win some battles. but they're going to lose the war. I hope that we shall fulfill that role as a leader. I'm not saying the leader, because we don't need one leader and all the rest followers. We've had enough of that. But I think we will take a leading part in bringing in the New Age, and I want to see that. I don't know if I'll live that long. I hope so.
I love that story about Susan Anthony that Zsuzsanna Budapest tells in her book. Some journalist asked Susan Anthony, because she didn't believe in orthodox religion, I suppose, "Where do you think you're to go when you die?" She said, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay around and help the women's movement." So even if I don't live long enough to see these things, I'll be around to make a nuisance of myself.
http://www.earthspirit.com/fireheart-interviews-doreen-valiente-part-two
Doreen ValienteReprinted with the gracious permission of Raymond Buckland from this book "The Witch Book. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism.
Doreen Valiente was one of Gerald Gardner’s High Priestesses. With him, she coauthored what became known as the Gardnerian Book of Shadows, the book of rituals used in that tradition of Wicca. Although that book is a gathering of material from a wide variety of sources, much of it originated with Valiente. She was one of the most influential people in the Wiccan revival.
Doreen Dominy was born in London, England, living in Horley, Surrey, in her early years even though her family came from the New Forest area of Hampshire and from Cerne Abbas, Dorset. She read extensively on Theosophy as well as the writings of Aleister Crowley, her interest in matters occult growing rapidly. In 1944 she met and married a wounded and recuperating refugee from the Spanish Civil War.
Valiente learned of the Folklore Center of Superstition and Witchcraft, opened in 1950 by Cecil Williamson at Castletown, on the Isle of Man, and entered into a correspondence with Williamson. From him, Valiente learned of an existing Witchcraft coven in New Forest, and she eventually became acquainted with Gerald Gardner, a member of that coven. Gardner presented her with a copy of High Magic’s Aid, his novelized version of Wiccan practices. Valiente’s husband was not interested in Wicca but did not stand in her way. By 1953 Gardner had initiated Valiente into his own coven, which was then separate from the original New Forest group.
By the end of 1957, Valiente left Gardner’s coven and formed her own with a man named Ned. From 1964 till 1966 she received a series of trance communications from a spirit claiming to be a Witch. He gave his name as Jack Brakespear and said that he lived in Surrey in the early nineteenth century, where he had a coven. Later, in 1978, Valiente incorporated some of this spirit material in her book, Witchcraft for Tomorrow. In that book Valiente also criticized such people as Lady Sheba, the self-proclaimed “Witch Queen of America,” who published the Gardnerian Book of Shadows under her own name, claiming it to be “words handed down by word of mouth for generations.” Several writers have claimed great antiquity for their particular tradition while producing only a version of the Gardner-Valiente writings.
Valiente’s husband died in 1972. For the later years of her life Valiente lived in Brighton, Sussex, on the south coast of England. She became very much a recluse until her death on September 1. 1999.
ELEGY FOR A DEAD WITCH
by Doreen Valiente
To think that you are gone, over the crest of the hills,
As the Moon passed from her fulness, riding the sky,
And the White Mare took you with her.
To think that we will wait another life
To drink wine from the horns and leap the fire.
Farewell from this world, but not from the Circle.
That place that is between the worlds
Shall hold return in due time. Nothing is lost.
The half of a fruit from the tree of Avalon
Shall be our reminder, among the fallen leaves
This life treads underfoot. Let the rain weep,
Waken in sunlight from the Realms of Sleep.
OBITUARY FOR DOREEN VALIENTE
On Wednesday 1st September 1999 at 06.55 am, Doreen Valiente passed into the Summer Lands in her hometown of Brighton.
There are few who had met her who did not find her unassuming, modest, and unpretentious. There were many reasons for her to be the opposite though. She was (and still is) the mother of one of the fastest growing religions of the later 20th Century - Wicca.
Her books have introduced thousands to the concept of the Goddess for the first time, as well as the joys of a fresh spirituality. While many who had done far less had donned titles, her humility prevented her from ever using a title such as ‘Queen of the Witches’; but she more than anyone was responsible for its growth, it’s poetry and beauty in its ritual.
And in her own words (From the Charge of the Goddess):
“I am the Gracious Goddess, who gives the gift of joy unto the heart of man. Upon earth, I give the knowledge of the spirit eternal; and beyond death, I give peace and freedom and reunion with those who have gone before.”
May the Great Goddess Indeed welcome her with open arms. May she be re-united with those she has loved. She will be sadly missed by all who practise the Old Religion.
(Obituary written by: Janet and Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone.)
Is Self-Initiation valid by Silvershoe
It has been Written on several sites that a person cannot self-initiate and call themselves either Gardnerian or Alexandrian.
Here are some contradictions:
Maxine and Alex Sanders Initiated Stuart and Janet Farrar, that is a provable fact.
(Although there are various contradictory references to how and where Alex sanders was initiated).
In the Farrar's Book the Witches Bible it gives reference to self-initiation.
Maxine sanders claims self-Knowledge is Enough which is also written in many books she has written.
Though it is not possible to self-initiate into the Degree system.
There are several positions of trust held by people placed around the sacred space to facilitate the Degree and would that deny anyone who has apparently self-initiated access to a Coven and also, they can call themselves anything they wish from Neophyte to High planetary magus of whatever they want.
Though cannot enter Any Coven Known but can start their own.
Does that nullify the coven if a coven-initiated linage tracer comes to visit and finds the ritual has no bearing on the original initiations and degrees of the Gardnerian or Alexandrian traditions.
There are several other traditions that sprung up after Gardner was Published But absolutely none can be verified although many thousands have investigated those claims.
So, is Self-initiation Valid?
The Triple Goddess Origin
Posted by Quasizoid
The Triple Goddess is the subject of much of the writing of Robert Graves, and has been adopted by some neopagans as one of their primary deities. The term triple goddess is sometimes used outside of Neopaganism to refer to historical goddess triads and single goddesses of three forms or aspects. In common Neopagan usage the three female figures are frequently described as the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, each of which symbolises both a separate stage in the female life cycle and a phase of the moon, and often rules one of the realms of earth, underworld, and the heavens. These may or may not be perceived as aspects of a greater single divinity. The feminine part of Wicca's duotheistic theological system is sometimes portrayed as a Triple Goddess, her masculine counterpart being the Horned God. Many other neopagan belief systems follow Graves in his use of the figure of the Triple Goddess, and it continues to be an influence on feminism, literature, Jungian psychology and literary criticism.
Origins
The relationship between the neopagan Triple Goddess and ancient religion is disputed. Ronald Hutton, a scholar of neopaganism, argues that the concept of the triple moon goddess as Maiden, Mother, and Crone, each facet corresponding to a phase of the moon, is a modern creation of Robert Graves, drawing on the work of 19th and 20th century scholars such as especially Jane Harrison; and also, Margaret Murray, James Frazer, the other members of the "myth and ritual" school or Cambridge Ritualists, and the occultist and writer Aleister Crowley. The Triple Goddess was here distinguished by Hutton from the prehistoric Great Mother Goddess, as described by Marija Gimbutas and others, whose worship in ancient times he regarded as neither proven nor disproven. Nor did Hutton dispute that in ancient pagan worship "partnerships of three divine women" occurred; rather he proposes that Jane Harrison looked to such partnerships to help explain how ancient goddesses could be both virgin and mother (the third person of the triad being as yet unnamed). Here she was according to Hutton "extending" the ideas of the prominent archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans who in excavating Knossos in Crete had come to the view that prehistoric Cretans had worshipped a single mighty goddess at once virgin and mother. In Hutton's view Evans' opinion owed an "unmistakable debt" to the Christian belief in the Virgin Mary.
The twentieth century poet and mythographer Robert Graves claimed a historical basis for the triple-goddess, and an ongoing tradition of her worship among poets, as noted below. He cited for example Pausanias who recorded the ancient worship of Hera Pais (Girl Hera), Hera Teleia (Adult Hera), and Hera Khera (Widow Hera, though Khera can also mean separated or divorced) at a single sanctuary reputedly built by Temenus, son of Pelasgus, in Stymphalos. The Roman goddess Diana Nemorensis was a triple goddess, ruling the sky the earth and the underworld, associated especially with the moon. Robert Graves cited a reference to her by the Tudor poet Skelton (following Ovid's Metamorphoses) as an example of the triple goddess's continued relevance to poets (see below). James Frazer's seminal Golden Bough centres around the cult of Diana Nemorensis.
Robert Graves
According to Ronald Hutton, the concept of a Triple Goddess with Maiden, Mother and Crone aspects and lunar symbology was Robert Graves's contribution to modern paganism. According to Hutton, Graves, in his The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948), took Harrison's idea of goddess-worshipping matriarchal early Europe and the imagery of three aspects, and related these to the Triple Goddess.
Graves wrote extensively on the subject of the Triple Goddess who he saw as the Muse of all true poetry in both ancient and modern literature. He thought that her ancient worship underlay much of classical Greek myth although reflected there in a more or less distorted or incomplete form. As an example of an unusually complete survival of the "ancient triad" he cites from the classical source Pausanias the worship of Hera in three persons as girl, wife, and widow. Other examples he gives include the goddess triad Moira Ilythia and Callone ("Death, Birth and Beauty") from Plato's Symposium the triple goddess Hecate; the story of the rape of Kore, (the triad here Graves said to be Kore, Persephone and Hecate with Demeter the general name of the goddess); alongside a large number of other configurations. A figure he used from outside of Greek myth was of the Akan Triple Moon Goddess Ngame, who Graves said was still worshipped in 1960.
Graves states that his Triple Goddess is the Great Goddess "in her poetic or incantatory character", and that the goddess in her ancient form took the gods of the waxing and waning year successively as her lovers. Graves believed that the Triple Goddess was an aboriginal deity also of Britain, and that traces of her worship survived in early modern British witchcraft and in various modern British cultural attitudes such as what Graves believed to be a preference for a female sovereign.
Graves regarded "true poetry" as inspired by the Triple Goddess, as an example of her continuing influence in English poetry he instances the "Garland of Laurell" by the English poet, John Skelton (c.1460-1529) Diana in the leaves green, Luna that so bright doth sheen, Persephone in Hell. as evoking his Triple Goddess in her three realms of earth, sky and underworld.
In the anthology "The Greek Myths"(1955), Graves systematically applied his convictions enshrined in The White Goddess to Greek mythology, exposing a large number of readers to his various theories concerning goddess worship in ancient Greece. Graves posited that Greece had been settled by a matriarchal goddess worshipping people before being invaded by successive waves of patriarchal Indo-European speakers from the north. Much of Greek myth in his view recorded the consequent religious political and social accommodations until the final triumph of patriarchy. Graves did not invent this picture but drew from nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship. This account has not been disproved but alternative explanations have emerged and is not accepted as a consensus view. The twentieth century archeologist Marija Gimbutas (see below) also argued for a triple goddess-worshipping European neolithic modified and eventually overwhelmed by waves of partiarchal invaders although she saw this neolithic civilization as egalitarian and "matristic" rather than "matriarchal" in the sense of gynocratic.
While Graves's work has encountered much criticism in academic literature The White Goddess - Wikipedia & The Greek Myths - Wikipedia it continues to have a lasting influence on many areas of Neopaganism.
ROBERT COCHRANE’S LETTERS TO ROBERT GRAVES
Posted by Quasizoid
When Robert Graves’s The White Goddess first appeared in 1948, published responses were generally marked by puzzlement. Graves’s argument that all true poetry, up to and including his own, was inspired by a Muse-Goddess, and that this same Goddess had been worshipped throughout Europe until her cult was suppressed in late prehistoric times by waves of patriarchal invaders, was so learned, complex and challenging that few reviewers felt able either to endorse or dismiss it. Informed comment came mainly in the form of a few reviews by specialists. The poet John Heath-Stubbs wrote a perceptive appraisal [1] hailing the book as ‘a plea for a return to imaginative, mythopoeic, or poetic forms of thought, as distinct from the abstract “Apollonian” thinking which has become dominant in the West.’ Less sympathetically, professional archaeologists such as Glyn Daniel attacked Graves’s use of archaeological evidence, calling his views “extravagant and improbable”. [2]
The general public, however, reacted with enthusiasm. The British edition of The White Goddess sold out and was reprinted within five months. Graves was able to publish a second, slightly revised edition in 1952, and a more fully revised paperback appeared in 1961. Not only did the book sell well, it elicited a mass of correspondence. Letters flowed to Graves at his house in Deya, Mallorca, from an increasing number of readers keen to discuss not only poetry and archaeology but magic, witchcraft, folklore and psychic experiences. Robert Graves’s exploration of Goddess-worship had touched a deep psychic spring: without knowing it, people had evidently been waiting for such a book and it liberated a pent-up flood of responses ranging from the learned and thoughtful to the egoistic and eccentric.
Among those who wrote to Graves was a certain R.L Bowers of Slough. Roy Bowers (1931-1966) is better known by his pseudonym of ‘Robert Cochrane’, under which he established the Clan of Tubal Cain, a witchcraft organisation claiming deep traditional roots and entirely distinct from the ‘Wicca’ which had been propagated from the late 1940s on by Gerald Gardner. Little is known about Cochrane’s early life, and the available facts are conveniently summarised in two books which also collect his writings with additional material by Evan John Jones and Michael Howard. [3] A working-class Londoner, born in poverty but claiming hereditary connections with witchcraft, Cochrane seems to have turned his hand to many things before becoming known as an authority on witchcraft. He claimed to have worked as a smith in a foundry, and also as a bargee on the narrow boats which as late as the 1950s were still used in some areas to transport coal.
‘By the 1960s’, as Michael Howard has written, ‘Cochrane and his family were living on a modern housing estate at Slough in Berkshire. At that time he was working in an office as a typeface designer.’ [4] He came to a certain prominence in November 1963 with a letter in Psychic News, which was followed by several articles in Pentagram, journal of the short-lived Witchcraft Research Association. It is not clear when Cochrane first formed, or took over the leadership, of a coven, but certainly a fully-fledged working group was in existence by 1964. Late in 1965 he was contacted by Joseph B. Wilson of Kansas, an enquirer into witchcraft, and the two men exchanged letters intensively for the next few months. Wilson drew on material from Cochrane’s letters for the basis for his ‘1734’ witchcraft tradition. But by then Cochrane’s life, and his brief career as a known occultist, were drawing to a close. As is well known, he died at midsummer 1966 from an overdose of belladonna.
Given the shortness and obscurity of his life, Cochrane’s heritage is a remarkable one. At least two lines of practice descended directly from his work – the Clan of Tubal Cain and the 1734 Tradition – continue at the present day. Apart from these, however, his work is represented only by the relatively small number of his articles and letters to have survived. The discovery of two previously unknown letters from Cochrane to Robert Graves is therefore particularly exciting.
The White Goddess is known to have had a great influence on Cochrane’s thinking. His letters to Joe Wilson are peppered with references to the book. In the first of the letters he describes himself as ‘an admirer, and a critic, of Robert Graves’ [5] and in the fifth he writes of how the Goddess ‘rends her poets/lovers apart before finally making them all wise. Graves follows this theme in The White Goddess’. [6] In his tenth letter to William Gray he states that ‘Robert Graves writes a great deal of nonsense about many things, (Mainly because he tried to explain everything), but he was absolutely accurate when he wrote that the protean Goddess was the true inspirer of the poet, and that all real poetry must deal with the themes that She is Mistress of.’ [7] But these explicit references to Graves are merely the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who knows The White Goddess can see, time and again, that Cochrane’s ideas were deeply nourished by the book. It is fascinating to know that Cochrane actually approached his inspirer, and debated with him, by letter.
Robert Graves (who died in 1985) was in the habit of answering, and keeping, all his incoming correspondence. The incoming letters, formerly in Graves’s house in Deya, Mallorca, are now held by the St John’s College Robert Graves Trust. (Sadly, Graves did not keep copies of the letters he wrote.) I first noticed the Cochrane letters in 1996 when I was preparing a new edition of The White Goddess but at that time, I did not know the identity of ‘R.L. Bowers’. Even then, however, I was struck by the powerful intensity and poetic style of the letters, which clearly came from no ordinary reader. More recently, knowing the identity of their author, I have returned to the letters, and am delighted to be able to publish them here with the kind permission of Val Jones, whom I thank most warmly, and William Graves, and the St John’s College Robert Graves Trust.
Frustratingly, the letters are undated, and the envelopes were not kept (Graves habitually threw these away as he opened his letters). Disappointingly also, Graves’s replies have not survived, and were probably destroyed with the rest of Cochrane’s papers soon after his death. All that we can say about the dating of the letters is that they were probably not written before 1963, though the signature ‘R.L. Bowers’ may indicate a period before ‘Cochrane’ had firmly adopted his alias. The second letter mentions the Black Goddess, the more domesticated and less capricious and less terrifying counterpart to the White Goddess whom Graves had announced in his 1963 lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry. It is unlikely (though just conceivable) that Cochrane attended any of the lectures. But the Black Goddess was described, in material derived from the lectures, in Graves’s 1965 book Mammon and the Black Goddess, which Cochrane could easily have read.
Cochrane’s second letter indicates that Graves had raised the question of Islamic influence. At this period Graves was much under the influence of Idris Shah, whom he had met when Shah was acting as secretary and companion to the elderly Gerald Gardner. Shah and Gardner had visited Graves in Palma in 1961, and although Graves did not take to Gardner, Shah had maintained contact and had written to Graves extensively about the influence of Islamic thought (and Sufism in particular) on European witchcraft and magic. Presumably Graves had brought this up in his reply to Cochrane’s first letter. It was under Shah’s influence also that the Black Goddess had been envisioned by Graves, on the basis of Shah’s claim that for Sufis, black was the colour of wisdom.
In his first letter, Cochrane mentions ‘a carved dolmen in Brittany’ which depicts both Christ and ‘eight circles with the bell Goddess above them’. This is the same dolmen which he described in his sixth letter to Joseph Wilson: in the same letter he enclosed an illustration showing the dolmen, removed from a book – possibly from Witchcraft, the Sixth Sense – and Us, by ‘Justine Glass’ (Enid Corrall), published in 1965. Cochrane had brought the monument to her attention when she was working on the book, and she had included a photograph of it.
Though the material in the letters is bound to deepen our understanding of Cochrane and his ideas, much of it is broadly self-explanatory. A puzzle, though, is his reference near the beginning of the first letter, to ‘the “Guiden Corn”’. The phrase does not occur in The White Goddess, and I have been unable to find any explanation of it elsewhere. The best I can do is to point out that Guiden is Cornish for ‘tree’ and appears in certain glossaries of Celtic languages as ‘Guiden (Corn.)’ with ‘Corn.’ being, of course, an abbreviation for ‘Cornish’. It seems just possible that Cochrane found the phrase in some such book and misunderstood it as a pagan religious or magical term.
What is clear, however, is the breadth of Cochrane’s reading, the depth of his thought, and the passionate eloquence of his letters. The poetic force of certain passages is unforgettable, above all at the moment of personal revelation in which he confesses: ‘I sometimes feel when I am wandering around in the marshes of the old knowledge, that the dam upstream is going to burst and the whole of humanity is going to be submerged by fifty thousand years of pre-history, swamping the neat subtopia conventions of the last thousand years.’ Many readers will know exactly what he means. The letters are typed, with a very few handwritten insertions which I have not specially indicated because they fit perfectly into the flow of the sentences. Because of the importance of these letters, I give them here exactly as written - repetitions, misspellings, typing errors and all. The dots at the end of the second letter are in the original, and do not indicate omissions. Incidentally, until 1974 Slough was in Buckinghamshire, so that the address was correct for the time.
26 Tomlin Road, Britwell, Slough, Bucks.
Dear Robert Graves,
I have read and re-read your book, ‘The White Goddess,’ with admiration, utter amazement and a taint of horror. I can see your point when you write of inspirational work and realize that it must have resulted from quite an internal ‘pressure,’ since from my own experience, that is the way she works. However, I am just pointing out some other factors that might interest you in the manifestation of the ‘Guiden Corn’. There is some evidence to support the theory that the British and French pagans believed in stages of spiritual development and maturity and had incorporated this into thier religious beliefs. There is still in existence a carved dolmen in Brittany that has all the witch symbols and mysteries arrayed upon it, surmounted by a carving in the round of Christ, which archeologists describe as a depiction of the passion of Christ. It dates from 1674 and to the best of my knowledge, (I come from an old witch family and although the family’s beliefs were moribund at my father's birth, I know enough to get along) the carving is anything but Christian. In this carving there is the eight circles with death supporting the bell Goddess above them. These, so I was told, represent the eight states or worlds of manifestation, and since they appear to correspond with Jungian psychology which is a rehash of much of the Mystery systems, the rest is quite interesting. Also, there are other factors connected with this ninefold unfolding of the spirit. There is amongst many, an old m.s in which an epic hero by the name of Libius Disconis undertakes nine adventures accompanied by Ellen and one dwarf. In these adventures all the enemies defeated are of the true mythological flavour, and Libius evidentally ends by releasing the Goddess in one of her most dangerous forms and marrying her. However, it is the progress of Taunhasser in its original form. The damned thing eludes me, since I am unable to make up my mind whether it is seasonal or psychological. I would be interested to hear of what you can make of it. It has the advantage of the various tribal animals and heroes of the Druidical system in corporated in it, and it may possibly be an opening to the mystery that still surrounds much of the iconography of the old religion.
Incidentally, the battle of the trees may also be a system equivalent to the tree system of twelth century magic. There are many points in common between the Hermatic and Kabbalists meditational system and the trees of Talisien. A friend of mine has claimed that he has worked it out, but until it fits to the endocrine glands of the body, I personally cannot see how this can be so. The kabbalistic tree of life along with the book of Thothh seems to belong more to Appollo than the Goddess. I think that you are absolutely right when you say that she is the prime source of inspiration.
Yours sincerely,
R.L. Bowers.
P.S. My apologies for writing, but I have found so much of interest in your books that I almost feel that you are an old friend.
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26 Tomlin Road, Britwell, Slough, Bucks.
Dear Robert Graves,
Thank you for your unexpected and very welcome letter. I find your point about the influx of the Islamic societies interesting, but apart from Gerald Gardner’s covens and Idris Shah, I have not heard of it before. I have been told that my grandfather’s grandfather dressed in skins and horned head-dress for ritual practice Since he was an ‘Old Man’, (high priest, devil, what you will,) I fail to see that Islamic practice or belief had reached so far, since, as you will know, the Sufi and kindred societies did not enact the part of God; Thier aim was to achieve a mystical state vide various practices. To the best of my knowledge, that was not the aim of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire witches. Flags, flax, fodder and Frig was their total aim, good crops, healthy children and some power to strike back at the oppressor was the aim, and in my opinion they succeeded. There was poetry, there was mysticism, but these were either side effects or something that belonged to the individual rather than the group. However, there may be a very distinct difference between the witches of the west and of the midlands. They still used the triple stave or ‘stang’, and used deer antlers, not bull horns for certian purposes (Incidentally the stag of seven tines may have a meaning to each of the tines), and to the best of my knowledge they did not use the ritual star, or the binding thereof as part of thier ritual, instead they used the deathshead and bones. I agree that there has been an influx of Eastern magic and mysticism, but the question is upon the distance that it spread. In my personal opinion there are two distinct kinds of witches (and taking into account the events over the last fifteen years, three kinds) and it may be that they lived in mutual toleration of each other. However, according to some research I have done upon this particular branch, it mayhap that this division was originally social, and there is quite a difference between the peasant and the squires' mysteries. I leave it to your superior knowledge to see whether there is any truth in this statement. But as a sort of interesting sideline, there is pretty good evidence that the gypsies infiltrated into the English clans, and for that matter elsewhere. They may have carried various Indian practices with them. The whole ruddy subject gets so confusing that I usually end up with fresh knowlegde about something that I had no intention of examining. Still, it is something that once picked up, you can’t put it down again. I sometimes feel when I am wandering around in the marshes of the old knowledge, that the dam upstream is going to burst and the whole of humanity is going to be submerged by fifty thousand years of pre-history, swamping the neat subtopian conventions of the last thousand years. King Log has already sunk, but they still worship the memory.
I was interested in your description (one of the difficulties of communication – ‘interested’!) of the physical appearance of the Goddess symptons (Gawd, my spelling). I am not biased towards the poetical aspect but more towards the Black Goddess, so my knees do not shake or eys run, but I do get a sudden feeling of intense pressure, something like an approaching storm. It is as you say a physical thing, almost a desire to run and find shelter. I have also ‘seen’ the Goddess, although She was riding a white horse, maybe it was artistic vision, I do not know, but I was genuinely terrified for the following week. At the present moment I have the best of both worlds with the Black and the White. Of course, I will pay for it later, hire purchase is no new thing...
Yours sincerely, R.L. Bowers.
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References: [1] New English Weekly, 8 June 1948, pp. 130-1. [2] See Graves’s responses to these hostile criticisms in Robert Graves: The White Goddess, ed. Grevel Lindop, Faber and Faber (London), 1997, Appendix B. [3] See the Roebuck in the Thicket: An Anthology of the Robert Cochrane Witchcraft Tradition by Evan John Jones and Robert Cochrane, ed. Michael Howard, 2001 and The Robert Cochrane Letters: An Insight into Modern Traditional Witchcraft, by Robert Cochrane, ed. Evan John Jones and Michael Howard, 2002; both from Capall Bann (Milverton). [4] Roebuck in the Thicket, p. 7. [5] Robert Cochrane Letters, p. 17. [6] Robert Cochrane Letters, p. 43. [7] Robert Cochrane Letters, p. 124.
Biographical note: Professor Grevel Lindop is an author, lecturer, and editor who writes for The Times Literary Supplement and also contributes essays and reviews to several other magazines. His book Travels on the Dance Floor about salsa was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in August 2008. In 1997 he edited a new edition of Robert Graves the White Goddess for Temenos Press. His other works include a biography of the poet Thomas de Quincey and a guide to the Lake District. He is currently working on a biography of Charles Williams for Oxford University Press.
The Wiccan Sabbats 
Anthropologists and folklorists have various theories about the eight “Wheel of the Year” Sabbats, or holy days related to the seasons and positions of the sun. Many sources show that all of these holidays were observed by the ancient Britons. Others believe that prehistoric societies celebrated just the Solstices and Equinoxes. Some maintain that the Druids only held rites on the “cross-quarters”: Imbolc, Bealtain, Lughnassadh and Samhain. These “quarter days” were used in the British Isles to divide the year for the purpose of paying rents, taxes and wages. Dr. Margaret Murray found evidence to support the idea that the Saxons brought the equinox holiday customs to Britain, but other archeologists argue that the seasonal holidays were celebrated long before the Celts began trade with the Germanic tribes.
There are debates about whether the Celtic holidays began at sunset, moonrise or the first full or new moon before or after the day, and whether they were solar events, seasonal celebrations, fire festivals, agrarian (farming) holidays, animal herding schedules, secular observations, or all of the above. Some scholars suggest that the eight holidays were created by Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) and Rev. Edward Celtic Davies during the “romantic Druid revival” of the late 1700s. Others think that Gardner and his contemporaries wholly invented the Sabbat rituals. It’s interesting to note that the ceremonies in the original Gardnerian Book of Shadows have plain English names, such as August Eve or Spring Equinox. Of course, the word “Sabbat” itself came from the “Sabbath” of the Judaic tradition or perhaps from the French word for “celebration”. Both of these sources have roots in the Greek word “sabatu”, or the Latin “sabbatum”, which roughly translates as “to rest”.
I personally believe that all eight seasonal holidays were celebrated in the British Isles from at least the Neolithic era until the present day. Evidence includes the placement of dolmens, tomb doorways and the architectural design of various sacred sites to align with sunrise, sunset or moonrise and moonset on these specific days. The Sequani Calendar, a bronze tablet discovered near Coligny France in 1897, depicts solar and lunar events during the Solstices and Equinoxes, as well as the cross-quarter days. Many of these events correspond with the constellations, linking sacred astronomy, archeology and geometry. Most of the holidays coincide with astrologic occurrences, such as the Sun entering Libra on the fall equinox. Artifacts relating to the Sabbats have been found within sacred sites and in the excavations of ordinary homes and businesses.
And no matter what some scholars write, there are plenty of modern celebrations that correspond to the wheel of the year. To me, it’s just too coincidental that so many Christian holidays occur close to the events related to Pagan sabbats. Not to mention that so many customs and ceremonies associated with the holidays have nothing whatsoever to do with Christian belief or practice. Many holiday traditions endured in the rural working-class of Britain and America until the early twentieth century, documented by historians and family archives. Some customs are no longer practiced, but several of them survived to the present day.
Modern Pagan / Wiccan names for the holidays:
Feb. 2 – Candlemas, Lady Day, Brigit’s Day, Imbolc
March 21 – Oestara, Ostara, Eostare, Eostre, Spring Equinox
May 1 – May Day, Beltain, Beltane
June 21 – Summer Solstice, Leitha, Litha, Midsummer Day
August 1 – Lughnasa, Lughnassadh, Lammas
Sept. 21 – Mabon, Madron, Fall Equinox, Autumnal Equinox
Oct. 31 – Hallows, Hallowmas, Hallowe’en, Samhain, Celtic New Year
Dec. 21 – Winter Solstice, Yule, Midwinter Day
Welsh Names:
Feb. 1 – Calan Fair, Nos Gwyl Fair (was not widely celebrated in Wales)
Spring Equinox – Alban Eilir, Gwyl Canol Gwenwynol
May 1 – Bealtaine, Calan Mai, Nos Galan Mai
Summer Solstice – Alban Hefyn, Alban Hefin, Alban Heurin, Gwyl Canol Haf
August 1 – Calan Awst, Nos Gwyl Awst, Gwi Awst, Ffhaile Llew, first harvest (was not widely celebrated in Wales)
Fall Equinox – Alban Elfed, Gwyl Canol Hydref, second harvest
Oct. 31 – Calan Gaeaf, Nos Galan Gaeaf, various other spellings, final harvest, New Year, Merry Night
Winter Solstice – Alban Arthan, Gwyl Canol Gaeof
In addition to these, there are a lot of other Welsh holidays – Pagan, Christian and national, including St. David’s day on March 1, Rhiannon’s day on Dec. 18, Merry Night whenever you’re finished harvesting, and many more.
Irish Names:
Feb. 7 – Oimelc, Imbolg, La Fheile Brighde
Circa March 21 –Mean Earraigh (not widely celebrated in Ireland)
May 6 or 7 – Beltaine, Beltene, Beltine, Cetsamhain, Sam (beginning of summer)
Circa June 21 to 24 – Mean Samraidh
August 6 or 7 – Lughnasa, Lunasa, Lughnassadh
Circa Sept. 21 to 23 – Mean Foghamar (not widely celebrated in Ireland)
Oct. 31 to Nov. 7 –Samhain, Samhaine, La Samhne, Gam (beginning of winter)
Circa Dec. 21 – Mean Geimhridh
In Ireland the year is divided into “Raitheanna”, quarters and cross quarters, headed by “Raithe”, the beginning day of the quarter. The “true quarters” are Samhain, Imbolg, Beltain, and Lughnassadh. The others are called “crooked quarters” and refer to either the seasonal solstices and equinoxes or Christian holidays such as St. John’s Day on June 24th. Some believe that these sacred days were celebrated on the new or full moon following the solstice, equinox or true-quarter day.
The dates listed above may have shifted to the present holiday dates after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. This measurement was designed to show the actual length of time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun. In 1582, Pope Gregory decreed that calendar should drop 15 days to rectify solar time with the actual date. The Protestant Germanic countries didn’t change their calendars until 1700. By this time, the calendar date trailed the seasons by 11 days. Britain finally changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian system in 1752.
There are many other English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh holidays with Pagan overtones, including Twelfth Night, Plough Monday, Witsunday, Martinmas, Rag Day, Up Hella Aa, Hogmany, the Muckle Supper and so forth. For expedience I’ve listed some of them under the modern neo-Pagan name for the holiday (see below) .
Rituals: What the ancients (probably) did:
*Honored the fertilization, pregnancy and birth of people and animals
*Lighted fires on hilltops and within holy sites, burned sacred wood
*Divination using natural methods such as the flight of birds
*Worshipped at sacred wells and springs
*Shamanic trancework, ecstatic rituals
*Hoodening – dressing in animal skins for the purpose of hunting or animal fertility
*Burned a Wicker Man or other effigies
*Used natural events to schedule actions related to nomadic herding – moving to new graze land, slaughter of herd animals
*Brought greenery indoors in winter, decorated with greenery and flowers in springtime
*Herbalism for healing, protection and magic
*After agriculture was invented, celebrated the planting, harvest, and threshing of grain
*Created talismans for homes, barns, workplaces and travel
*Performed rites to promote craftsmanship, hunting, fishing, and domestic harmony
*Plow ceremonies on Imbolc, planting rituals between Spring Equinox and Bealtaine
*Harvest ceremonies between the first of August and the last day of October
*Ritual cleaning of the home
*Held dances and agricultural fairs with games, feats of skill and sporting events
*Told and acted out stories in a ritualistic manner
*Placed holy objects onto sacred trees or bushes, decorated trees with ribbons or trinkets
*Held gatherings at sacred sites, including Newgrange and Stonehenge
What the ancient Celts did NOT do:
*Build the standing stone monuments… most were erected by earlier inhabitants
*Lighted candles on Imbolc – this tradition likely dates to Medieval times
*Colored Easter eggs – This custom came from the Slavic and Baltic territories, by way of the Saxons, probably during the early Middle Ages; however, there is some evidence that the Celts dyed eggs red with ochre or madder to represent birth.
*Lammas Loaf – The ancients probably never baked anything with trinkets in it, such as figgy pudding with a sixpence, or a loaf of bread with prizes. These customs likely developed in more modern times, with the invention of the brick or iron oven. This may date the practice as a “mere” two thousand years old. Some traditions had objects associated with divination hidden in mashed potatoes or turnips.
*Called the Fall Equinox holiday “Mabon” – this name was likely invented by Valiente or perhaps Aidan Kelly
*Trick-or-Treat – Not as we know it today. Mummers’ plays, wassail processions, hoodening parades and other house-to-house customs may have contributed to the modern tradition.
*Carved pumpkins – Instead they carved turnips, placed lights in small clay or chalk vessels, or used burning rushes or torches in processions.
*Put a Yule tree in the house – Ancient people often decorated trees outside using ribbons, rags, food offerings, trinkets, coins, and sacrificial animals (sorry – the Romans wrote about this often enough for it to be true.) Many ornamented trees or bushes are found near sacred wells in the British Islands up to the present day. Tying a rag or ribbon to their branches is believed to have magical or healing effects. The custom was not specific to any one holiday. The decorated Yule tree was a later tradition brought from Scandinavia and Germany.
Which leads us to – The meaning behind the Pagan holidays:
Much of the information Mr. Gardner found about the “Wheel of the Year” holidays came from Sir James G. Frazer’s book of comparative folklore, _The Golden Bough_, first published in 1890 and revised in 1922. Some scholars like to say that Frazer was “discredited”, but this is not true. Frazer was a Fellow at Cambridge University, where he translated classic literature, including Homer. He wrote over twenty other books, several of which are still in print and used to teach mythology in college courses today. Frazer’s theory about every religious system containing a “sacrificial king” hasn’t held up to scrutiny, but many of his other ideas have been supported by historians.
For _The Golden Bough_, Frazer did ethnographic studies of European Pagan customs by sending letters to missionaries who had witnessed the ceremonies firsthand. (So yes, they said things like “The Celts worshipped the trees” because in the context of the late 19th century, that is what they thought they were observing.) Frazer then paralleled the European traditions with Christian legends, as well as Greek and Roman literature, in which he is still considered to be an expert. He wrote extensively about his findings, noting similarities and differences and making speculations about the origins of worship. Other writers, sociologists and folklorists have made similar observations about these Pagan holiday customs.
A popular historian recently accused some of the anthropologists of manipulating data on the seasonal ceremonies. Supposedly, they asked participants to include certain elements such as “fire worship” in their rituals. However, this does not take into account the similarities found in ceremonies held across Europe during nearly 150 years of study. Many of these traditions were also documented by local folklore societies or family historians, who interviewed older residents with the intent of preserving individual town histories. Some of the rites vary in minor ways, such as the wording of song lyrics. Many of the traditions that Frazer wrote about were photographed, often by family members with no scholarly agenda, and these pictures now appear online. Several of the customs are still practiced in isolated European communities or are being revived in the present day. Here are a few:
Imbolc, Imbolg, Oimelc – Translations: In Belly, In the Bag, Sheep’s Milk. This was one of the four holidays believed to be celebrated by the ancient Irish. The day was originally intended to commemorate the birth of lambs, an economically important event in past times. Several rituals were performed to enhance the fertility of the flocks, such as wreathing them with ribbons and blessing them, or putting up talismans in barns. Other sheep-related rites including drinking ewe milk and eating the last stored mutton. Cheese made from sheep milk was sometimes served for breakfast.
Imbolc was the day to begin plowing the fields, as the climate was warmer during the Bronze and Iron ages. Pliny the Elder noted in the first century C.E. that the Celts had better plows than the Romans, and that they began plowing “early”. These tools were also used to cut turf for fuel. Plowing games and races were enjoyed, with attendant feasting. Some customs, such as Plough Monday, now celebrated in Britain near Twelfth Night or the Christian Epiphany, may have originally been related to Imbolc. A plow is decorated and carried from house to house by plow boys, plow jacks or plow stotts, young men dressed in rags with blackened faces who sing rowdy songs and beg for treats. Sometimes they were even called “plow witches”. Homeowners that refused to give them an offering would risk having their front yard plowed up. The Ploughboys are sometimes accompanied by a Molly or Malkin, a man dressed as a woman who performed a lively rustic dance. This custom was first written about in the sixth century, when some plow jacks got into trouble for plowing up the kirkyard in Scotland.
The custom of dressing a Straw Man or Straw Bear and parading him through the streets is also part of this holiday in Scotland, Ireland and Northern England. This may have come from the Germanic countries, because the Saxons had outposts in these locations. A similar straw figure is used in Norway and Germany in recent times. This figure may originally have been related to the fertility of the fields, or he may have served as a symbolic scarecrow. Imbolc was also the day that greenery left over from Christmas or Yule was removed from the home. It was often ritually burned. In some locations, it wasn’t removed until spring. Both the straw bear and the greenery may have protective or talismanic qualities, removing “evil” from the locality.
Brighid’s Day or Bridget’s Day was adapted by the Catholic Church as a saint’s day on February 1st or 2nd, very probably derived from ancient Irish worship of the goddess Brighid. It was celebrated on the Continent as well as in the British Islands. In Britain, it was observed as the Wives’ Feast. This holiday was never that important to the Welsh or Scots. Irish women create equal-armed Brighid’s crosses, which may have been an older custom which was Christianized during the Middle Ages. These crosses were made from rushes or straw saved from the last sheaf of grain harvested in the fall, and were used to bless and protect the home or cattle barn. Like the Celtic cross, they may represent the sun or the compass points. Women would also create “Bridey” dolls of straw and cloth. These were taken to sacred wells to be anointed and blessed. Villagers would decorate these holy wellsprings on Brighid’s Day, including the font at Kildare in Ireland dedicated to St. Bridget. There are hundreds of symbols, sacred sites and legends of Brighid, both as goddess and Catholic saint. Many can be found online.
Oestara – The use of the name may be old, or may be the invention of Doreen Valiente, who sought balance with the divine feminine. The word Easter may have come from a little-mentioned Teutonic goddess Eostare or Oestara, or possibly Esther, Astarte or Ishtar. It might derive from the Norse “aestur” which means to “grow warm”. After the rise of Christianity, the Venerable Bede wrote about “Eostur Monath” or “Eastre”, which took place in April on the European continent. It’s notable that he used this name rather than calling it “Paschal month” for Passover or the passion of Christ. Alban Eilir can be translated as Time of Spring or Light of Earth in old Welsh. . The equinoxes mark a time of equal daylight and darkness, and the dates when the sun crosses the celestial equator.
Dr. Margaret Murray wrote that the equinoxes were never celebrated in Britain until the Saxon invasions – but that would make the holiday “only” 1, 600 years old. There is archeological evidence that spring equinox customs may have been celebrated in ancient times in Great Britain, then died out during the Iron Age, and later revived during the Roman occupation. The Sequani Calendar marks the equinoxes as astronomic events, as do various sacred sites of the British Islands
The Romans used either the first of March or the spring equinox to mark the first day of the new year. With the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian in Europe, the day of the new year moved from sometime between March 25th (Lady Day) and April 1st, to the first day of January. This change may be the precedent for April Fool’s Day. People who still celebrated the new year around the equinox were called “April fish”. Some of the current April Fool customs may be related to the first day of spring, or they might have come from the tomfoolery originally associated with Bealtaine.
Coloring eggs may have had a ritual significance as early as the Bronze Age on the European continent and in the Scandinavian, Baltic and Slavic countries. Fragments of dyed eggs have been found in excavations of Saxon homes, and creating elaborate multicolored eggs are a Scandinavian art. Pace Egging endures as a working-class tradition in rural England and Ireland and may be based on a Pagan rite, although the name likely derived from “paschal”. On Easter, eggers go from house to house, singing songs, performing short plays and begging for colored eggs or treats. One description of the eggers says that they originally wore animal skins, linking the custom to hoodening. The term “egging him on” came from the bad puns and insults which Pace Eggers yelled at those who refused to give them a treat. An older celebration included looking for bird’s eggs in nests, because birds will not usually lay their eggs until the weather is warm enough for their survival. This information would be vital to an agrarian society, and the need to plant crops after all danger of frost is past.
Folklore relating to hares and rabbits comes from both Celtic and Saxon traditions. The moon in March is called the “Hare Moon”, and the saying “mad as a March hare” refers to the crazy behavior of mating bunnies. Witches were said to transform themselves into hares, which may be the remnant of a shamanic belief in animal totems. (The word totem is used here to mean a spirit being, helper or guide in the form of an animal, or a special creature which the seeker has an affinity with.) Seeing a hare before sundown was said to bring good luck, but after sunset it may be an ill omen. And “hare pie” was a favorite dish amongst peasants and nobility alike.
Hot cross buns may have been baked as a Pagan tradition, before their use as an Easter treat. The cross may represent the directions, the quarters of the moon, or it may be a solar cross. In some locations they were hidden away in the attic as talismans.
The early Catholic Church held St. Patrick’s feast Day on March 17th and Lady Day on March 25th, both close to the spring equinox. The Christian holy day of Easter is held on the Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox, which has distinct Pagan overtones. The rites of spring were celebrated in Wales with sowing and planting activities, including plowman games. This may be patterned after the Roman rites of spring, which was also a time of feasting and games. Of course, the pre-Lenten Carnival or Mardi Gras activities have their roots in Pagan celebrations
Our next installment of "Another Pagan History", PART 5, will include the Sabbats from Bealtaine to Lughnassadh. PART 6 will include the holidays from Mabon to Yule. Ya'all come back!
Footnotes:
If I wrote a bibliography for this essay series, it would probably be fifty pages long, so please go explore for yourself. All of the information contained in the text was either found online, in books attributed to the authors mentioned, in artwork or artifacts found in museums. Some of the information even came from news articles found in “The Wren’s Nest” here on “The Witches’ Voice”.
If you wish to explore a topic for yourself, I suggest using Google.com and typing in each subject, for instance, Gardner + “Book of Shadows”, “Gwen Thompson” + Rede, England + “harvest rituals”, pentagram + “witches foot”. Try using different wording, such as England + folklore, or Britain + folklore.
You’ll find some sources that insist that a custom is really old, especially on local history sites, in museums, and tourist excursion brochures. Others will be just as adamant that a custom is newer and without Pagan roots, such as the folkplay study. Many of the sites that I used to learn about the holidays / sabbats are from British and Irish tourist websites, which have really cool pictures of the customs.
Copyright: Copyleft 2006 by A.C. Aldag. Please feel free to reproduce this essay series, but please give credit where credit is due. Thanks!
Gerald Brosseau Gardner, Witch, Occultist, Father of Modern Wicca
Gerald was one of three sons and suffered severely with asthma. At age four his nurse Josephine ”Com” McCombie convinced his parents to permit him to travel with her in Europe during the winter, this was to alleviate his asthma. She eventually married a man in Ceylon and took Gerald with her, where he worked on a tea plantation. He later worked in Borneo and Malaysia.
While in the Far East Gerald became acquainted with the natives and familiar with their spiritual beliefs, which influenced him more than Christianity. He was fascinated by the ritual daggers and knives, especially the Malaysian keris; a wavy blade dagger, and wrote Keris and Other Malay Weapons, which was published in Singapore in 1939. The book established Gerald as the world authority on the keris. It remains the standard on the subject and was reprinted posthumously in 1973.
Between 1923 and 1936 Gerald was employed by the British government in the Far East as a rubber plantation inspector, customs official and inspector of opium establishments. He made considerable money in rubber which allowed him to dabble in his great interest of archaeology. He claimed to have discovered the site of the ancient city of Singapura.
Gerald retired in 1936, at the age of 52, and they moved to England. Much of Gerald’s time was spent on archaeological trips throughout Europe and Asia Minor. It was in Cyprus that he saw things which he had previously dreamed about which convinced him that he had previously lived there in another life.
Apparently on medical advice, Gerald took up naturism on his return to England, and also pursued his interest in the occult. He and his wife lived in the New Forest region of England, where he was initiated into a traditional Wiccan coven by ”Dafo”; Edith Rose Woodford-Grimes, a member of the New Forest Coven in September of 1939
The coven, including Gerald “Scire”, joined with other Witches in southern England on July 31 (Lammas Eve), 1940, to perform a ritual to prevent Hitler’s forces from invading England. Five members of the coven died shortly afterwards. Their deaths were blamed on the power drained from them during the ritual. Gerald, himself, felt his health had been adversely affected.
Through the introduction of Arnold Crowther Gerald met Aleister Crowley in 1946. For a brief number of years, Gerald was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), a magical order of which at one time Crowley held leadership. Crowley had once practiced Witchcraft as Gerald wrote in a letter to his recent acquaintance Cecil Williamson Feb.8, 1950: “By the way Aleister Crowley was in the Cult but left it in disgust. He could not stand a High Priestess having a superior position and having to kneel to her and while he highly approved of the Great Rite, he was very shocked at the nudity. Queer man, he approved of being nude in a dirty way, but highly disapproved of it in a clean and healthful way. Also, he disapproved of the use of the scourge to release power for the practiced reason if you teach a pupil the use of the scourge, he can get a mate and do it on his own. If you have a highly paying pupil, if you teach them the concentration and meditation method, they go on paying you for years. But he didn’t simply pinch lots of the witch's ritual and incorporate it in his works. He claimed that he rewrote the Rituals for them, but I doubt this. He did rewrite some Masonic rituals and made an awful hash of them.”
There is speculation that Gerald asked Crowley information about Craft rituals, which he might incorporate into his own, but this is doubtful as there is no evidence suggesting that Crowley gave him any specific Craft material.
Though it was his desire to write about the survival of Witchcraft, his coven would not allow it because at the time Witchcraft was still against English law. He published a fictional account of Witches in 1949 under the penname Scire, called High Magick’s Aid. The work included rituals which he had learned from his coven, and the worship of the Horned God, but the Goddess was not mentioned.
Gerald broke from the New Forest coven to form his own coven in 1951, the year that the law against witchcraft was repealed. In the same year he traveled to the Isle of Man, on which was a Museum of Magic and Witchcraft which had been established by Cecil Williamson and housed in a 400-year-old Craft farmhouse. Cecil originally named it the Folklore Centre and intended it to become a center for currently practicing Witches. Gerald became the “resident Witch” and added his personal substantial collection of ritual tools and artifacts. Gerald purchased the museum from Williamson
In 1953, Gerald initiated Doreen Valiente into his coven. The coven’s rituals were virtually identical to those that Gerald described in High Magic’s Aid. Since the material which he inherited from his first coven was fragmentary, Gerald reworked the material. He ‘freshen’ the rituals with his own work, adding quotations and extracts from Crowley’s work. Doreen discouraged this, advising Gerald that Crowley’s material was inappropriate because it was “too modern,” thus most of Crowley’s work was subsequently deleted through rewriting of the material. Gerald and Doreen collaborated through the years of 1954 to 1957 on writing ritual and non-ritual material. The body of work, or Book of Shadows, became the authority for what is currently known as the Gardnerian tradition.
In 1954 Gerald published his first nonfiction book about Witchcraft, Witchcraft Today. The book supports the theory of the British anthropologist Margaret A. Murray, that modern Witchcraft is the surviving remnant of organized Pagan religion which existed during the witch hunts. Margaret wrote the introduction to the book.
The book’s immediate success gave emphasis for new covens rising up throughout England and Gerald suddenly found himself in the spotlight. Due to his numerous media appearances the press referred to him as “Britain’s Chief Witch,” a title he did not seek. He was not interested in exploiting his fame for money and personal glory. In 1959 he published his final book, The Meaning of Witchcraft.
In the winter of 1963 he met Raymond Buckland, an Englishman who had moved to America. This was shortly before Gerald was to leave for Lebanon. Raymond was initiated into the Craft by Gerald’s High Priestess Monique Wilson (Lady Olwen). It would be Raymond who would introduce the Gardnerian tradition to America.
While returning from Lebanon aboard ship on the morning of February 12, 1964, Gerald suffered a fatal heart attack at the breakfast table. He was buried the next day (February 13) in Tunisia, the ship's next port of call. His funeral was attended only by the ship's captain.
In his will, Gerald bequeathed the museum, his ritual tools and objects, notebooks and the copyrights to his books to Monique. Other beneficiaries of his estate were Patricia C. Crowther and Jack L. Bracelin, who authored an authoritative biography of Gerald, Gerald Gardner: Witch (1960). Monique and her husband kept the museum opened for a short time while holding weekly coven meetings in Gerald’s cottage. Eventually the museum was closed and most of its contents were sold to the Ripley organization, which dispersed the objects to various museums.
Doreen Valiente described Gerald as a man “utterly without malice,” who was generous to a fault and who possessed some real, but not exceptional, magical powers.
One of Gerald’s missions was to attract young people to the Old Religion. In Witchcraft Today he said science was replacing reliance on the old ways:
“I think we must say good-bye to the witch. The cult is doomed, I am afraid, partly because of modern conditions, housing shortage, the smallness of families, and chiefly by education. The modern child is not interested. He knows witches are all bunk...”
The Witch's Eight Paths of Power Book & On-Demand Course Trailer
Alex Sanders and Maxine Sanders (Alex: 1926-1988) (Maxine: 1946- )
the son of Harold, a musician, and Hannah Carter. His Welsh grandmother, Mrs Bibby, was apparently a cunning woman and medium who gave him an early interest in the occult. His mother was also a medium as was Alex and all his brothers. The young Alex Sanders (he later changed his surname toSanders by deed poll) became quite well known as a trance medium where he lived.
Alex claimed to have been initiated into the Craft by his grandmother at the age of seven, after he interrupted one of her solitary rituals, was later determined to be a hoax. According to Sanders, neither he nor the family had any idea [Mrs Bibby] was a witch, but she gave him no time to brood. She had the clothes off him, initiated him on the spot, and told him that he was now a witch too and that various dreadful things would happen if he betrayed the secret. Bearing in mind that Alex was a seven-year-old child at the time, the claim is more redolent of child abuse than witchcraft as understood by today practitioners. His assertion was that his book of shadows was given him by his grandmother is therefore also certainly false, it is fundamentally a Gardnerian one with some differences and some of the prose sections missing.
Alex, was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca on March 9, 1963 by Medea of the Derbyshire Gardnerian Coven. Medea also initiated Sylvia Tatham and raised Patricia Kopanski to the Second Degree. Patricia Crowther had refused to raise Kopanski to the Second Degree in her Sheffield Coven, so Pat left. When Medea’s husband suddenly died, she closed her Coven and left the area, leaving Pat, Alex and Sylvia without a Coven or a complete BOS. They started their ownCoven in Manchester, with Pat as HPS, Alex as acting HP and Sylvia as Maid. After Sylvia received her Second andThird Degree Initiations from Scotty Wilson (Loric) at Gardner’s Witches’ Mill Coven, she initiated Alex to the ThirdDegree, and brought a complete BOS from the Witches’ Mill. Pat left the Coven when Alex refused to marry her, andSylvia became the HPS. After Sylvia left for New Zealand and the Coven dissolved, Alex formed a new coven with PaulKing and Maxine Morris in late 1964. Alex made Maxine, a redhead who dyed her hair blonde, his High Priestess.
Alex married Maxine December 1965 in one of the earliest examples of a Wiccan hand fasting. In June of 1967, Alex andMaxine Sanders moved to London, where they became well-known in the city’s alternative scene, providing introductory talks on witchcraft on a weekly basis.
Alex reversed some of the reforms of Doreen Valiente, making the God and Goddess once again equal, adding Kabbalistic ceremonial magick, and changing the coven emphasis from group activity to individual magical development. Sanders proved to be just as passionate about promoting “the Craft” as Gardner, and, consequently, the number of Alexandrian covens grew to rival the number of Gardnerian covens. Sanders’ initiates started calling themselves ’Alexandrians’ to differentiate themselves from the Gardnerian in May 1966, after Pat Crowther and Rae Bone denounced Sanders. They claimed, wrongly, that he was not properly initiated, carrying on a feud that had simmered between them and Medea and Pat Kopanski. Medea was one of those Witches Gardner had initiated in a frenzy of initiations that Crowther and Bone considered poor judgement on his part. The Alexandrians and Gardnerians have constantly cross-fertilized each other, until today their similarities outweigh their differences.
In 1970, Alex and his High Priestess Maxine, initiated Stewart and Janet Farrar into their ‘tradition’. As a writer, Farrar started writing about the Alexandrians. Alex provided much of the material for the book What Witches Do, published by Stewart in 1971. Stewart and his wife Janet were two of his Alex’s enthusiastic followers. It was Stewart who came up with the popular name of “Alexandrian” for the tradition of Wicca founded by Alex. Later, Stewart mixed the Gardnerian and Alexandrian Traditions in his work. Prior to his recent death, Farrar switched to a Gardnerian format for his Witchcraft.
After Alex and Maxine’s marriage dissolved between 1972-1973, Alex made a bonfire of his private papers, including those relating to his time as a Witch. Alex was a gifted medium from a family of mediums, and he worked with another medium named Derek Taylor. Two of the manuscripts produced were called The Southern Quarter Speaks: Set and Sekhmet and Derek Taylor’s work Children of the Stars. Alex also claimed to have been initiated into one of the oldest continuous covens on earth, ‘The Ordine della Luna’ in Constantinople. Before his death in 1988, Alex gave a charter toDerek to establish ‘The Ordine della Nova’, a coven pursuing the Great Work as the stellar mysteries of the DivineMother ignored by Wicca. The two groups work closely together and were often referred to as the Ordine Della LunaNova, but they were two separate Orders.
Alex died of lung cancer in a hospice on the East Sussex coast of England, close to where Aleister Crowley had also died four decades earlier. He died at the age of sixty-one, on Beltane April 30, 1988.
Both Gerald Gardner and Alex conferred a secret Fourth Degree upon those initiates they deemed worthy. Gerald’s was the OTO Fourth Degree, while Alex used the Adeptus Minor Ritual of the Golden Dawn. Although both of their traditions contain some seed of the old Cunning Craft, they contain even more that is different and stand alone as a newly created religion of Witchcraft generally known as ‘the Craft’ or ‘Wicca.’ Both the Gardnerians and the Alexandrians exported their Craft to other countries before it came to the US, and neither showed much interest in ‘colonizing’ the US with Wicca.
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Alex Sanders and Doreen Valiente Speak
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