2201
Maiden Story
Excerpted from "The Bardic Mysteries: The Book of the Fool," by the Whyte
Bard:
The Maiden, being young and giddy, was watching the Men and Women as
they played and laughed in the Garden one morning. She turned to the Fool,
blinked her eyes, and said, "They are so fine and good, smiling all the time.
How will they ever learn and grow if they have no obstacles; if there is no
pain?"
And Trickster smiled a mad smile, and gave the Maiden a box. It was a
small box, of something that might have been wood, but wasn't, and it had no
lock on it. It did, however, have a small, neatly lettered sign on its lid.
Trickster pointed to the sign, and said, "That's called 'writing.' I
haven't invented it yet."
"Oh," said the Maiden, "But what's in the box?"
"Oh," said Trickster, "You don't want to know!"
"I don't?" said the Maiden, slightly miffed, "But I'm Deity!"
"I know that," Trickster grinned, "But you still don't want to know."
"Well....all right." And the Maiden flounced away, very much put out.
Trickster watched Her go, and grinned. He then put the box down where
the Maiden could see it whenever She looked in that direction, and sauntered
away, eating an apple.
The Maiden looked at the box for several days.
"I wonder what's in there...." She would think to Herself. "That
Person is always up to some trick."
Finally, Her curiosity got the best of Her, and She walked into the
Garden and picked up the box.
She sat down under the apple tree, and spread Her skirts about Her,
and placed the box on Her lap.
She looked at it for a long time, and then thought, "Well! A little
peek inside can't do any harm..." And She opened the box.
Immediately, the lid sprang off, and a cloud of tiny things flew out!
They were like flies, or mosquitoes, and they buzzed crazily about Her head
for a moment, and then flew off in all directions.
Trickster stepped out from behind the tree.
"Well, now You've done it," He said.
"Done what?" asked the Maiden.
"Let loose what was in the box. Pain, and Suffering, and Envy, and
Hatred, and Jealousy, and War, and Covetousness, and Sloth, and quite a lot
more."
Just then, the box gave a great heave, and a very tiny, very bright
little Something flew out.
Trickster smiled a warm smile, and said, ".....and Hope. I'm an
eternal optimist. Want an apple?"
"I guess so," said the Maiden. "What did it say on the lid, anyway?"
"The usual. You know, 'Do Not Open This Box.'"
"Oh. I guess I messed up, huh?"
He smiled at Her, and said, "Not really. We would have had to do it
anyway, and this makes a better story, though they might get it wrong."
They both looked at the Men and Women, who were now sitting around on
the grass arguing with each other. A couple of the Men were fighting, and a
group of the Women were talking in whispers about another group of Women.
Another Man had fenced off a section of the Garden, while another was
coughing a little with a bewildered expression on his face.
"Excuse me for a bit," said Trickster. "I guess I have to be the One
2202
to finish this, and get them started up the Path."
He walked briskly over to the Men and Women, changing His Aspect as
He went, until He appeared as a different sort of Being indeed.
"Time to leave," said the Angel to the Men and Women.
"Yes, we know," they answered, only half sadly, and the Men and the
Women started out from the Garden, out on the Path Of Being Human.
Trickster watched them go, out from the Gates.
"Good luck....." He murmured, and he sheathed the Flaming Sword and
closed the Gates of Innocence.
Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so!
---------------------------------------------------------------
2203
The Sacred King
The Men and Women were hungry. They would eat of those that walk in
Fur, Fin and Feather, and thank them for their sacrifice, but that was not
enough. They would eat of the wild fruits of the Earth, but that was not
enough, for all of these must be found, and hunted, and a home cannot be
built on this.
And the Sacred King saw, and thought upon it for a time, and His face
grew grave and sad.
And He spoke to the Lady, and said, "I must die."
And the Lady grieved for Her Lord, and He fell upon His Sword, and
died.
The Mother buried Him in the Earth, returning Him to Her Womb, and
mourned, and Winter wrapped the World in ice and snow.
She covered the face of the Sky with dark clouds, and Her Tears of
rain poured therefrom in cascades and torrents.
And the Tears of the Mother wetted the ground, and the Sun warmed the
ground, and a green shoot appeared, poking its head out from the Womb of the
Mother, and grew as the days grew, longer and taller, until the golden hair
of the Sacred King once more waved proudly in the wind; until the Grain of
the Fields stood, row upon row, as far as the eye could see; until the Bounty
of the Mother, the Sacred King Himself, stood upon the World, ready to be
harvested.
"That was well done," said the Mother, "But it pains me to see you
die."
"It is as it must be," He said, "And does it not show them that Death
is an illusion; is but another change in a MultiVerse of Change? It feeds
them, too, and this is a good thing."
"You are right," She sighed, "But I just wish it could have been done
in a kinder way."
"Maybe," He spoke, lowly, "But it is as it is nonetheless."
Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so!
2204
The Gifts Of The Fool
The Men and the Women were hungry. All about them was the Mother's
Bounty, the Gift of the Sacred King, and no way to harvest it.
The Fool came, and took of the Earth itself, and mixed it with water,
and shaped a Pot. And He took of the Grass, and shaped a Basket, and Nets,
and Clothing.
And He took wood from the Tree. A straight piece of wood, and he took
a stone, the very Bones of the Mother, and shaped it to a point, and fastened
it to the wood, and made a Spear.
With another stone He made a Hoe, and with another he crafted a
Knife, and gave them to the Men and Women.
And the Fool spoke, and said, "Look you here at Tools. They give you
claws and fangs, and extend your reach longer than any of the Brothers and
Sisters-in-Fur, even as high as the stars themselves. They will bring you
food, and clothing, and shelter. They are good servants, but poor masters,
for they can also be used in the service of War, and War will harm and kill
you, and destroy what you have. Learn from Earth, and be wise."
The Men and Women were cold, and the winds of Winter blew over them.
Ice and snow rushed around them, and they huddled together, fearing.
But the Fool came to them, with a new thing.
He took wood from the Tree, and the Bones of the Mother, and made a
small circle. And with the wood from the Tree He made Fire.
And the Men and Women gathered around the warmth, as planets gather
around suns, and were glad.
And the Fool said, "Look you here at Fire. It is warm and good; a
good servant, but a poor master indeed. Learn from this, that some things are
good when used correctly, and very bad indeed when used wrongly. For Fire
will warm your homes, and cook your food, and do many things for you, but it
can harm you, and kill you, and destroy what you have. You will find many
things like Fire. Learn from Fire, and be wise."
And the Fool took the clay pot, and filled it with Water, and placed
therein the meat of the hunt, and the fruits of the Earth. He placed the pot
upon the Fire, and the Water rolled and boiled, and the smell was savory to
the Men and Women.
And the Fool spoke, and said, "Look you here at Water, the Blood of
the Mother. It will refresh you, and cool you, and shall be your servant. But
mind you do not let it be your master, for it will drown you, and flood you,
and harm you and kill you, and destroy what you have. It is soft, but of all
things it will wear thru even the hardest object. You will find many things
like Water. Learn from Water, and be wise."
The Fool sat beside the Fire, and hummed to Himself, and as He hummed
He clapped his hands in time, and He made yet another new thing, and called it
Song. And the Men and Women took up the Song, and sang, and rejoiced.
And the Fool said, "Look you here at Air. Song is of the Air, of the
very Breath you take. Song will comfort you in sadness, and rejoice with you
in celebration. Song will weave Words into Magic, and can bend the edges of
Reality. Treat it with respect, and do not misuse it, for Song, and Words,
can twist and lie and turn you to a harmful way; take away your individuality
and turn you to a Mob, that knows not what it does."
2205
"You swim in the Air as a Fish swims in Water. Keep it pure, and
live. Foul it, and die. It is your choice. And beware of the Storms of the
Air, for this insubstantial Element can destroy what you have, and kill you.
You will find many things like Air. Learn from Air, and be wise."
And the Fool took of the Sacred King, and He winnowed it in the Air.
He ground it between the Bones of the Earth, and He made flour, and wetted it
with Water, and baked it in Fire, and made Bread, the Body of the Sacred
King.
"Know that I am always with you," sang the Fool. "I am He who Saves,
He who Teaches, He who brings Light to the World. I bring peace with one
hand, and a sword with the other, that you may not stagnate, but might learn
and grow, and attain the very stars in the Heavens."
"You will always kill me, in many ways. I have been chained to a
rock, and crucified, and burned, persecuted, and hated. I have been banished
and slain, but always, always I return to you, and I will not be silenced."
"My words will be twisted, and misunderstood, but with each
generation you will strive ever closer to That which you reach for, forever
striving, forever attaining, and forever changing."
"Sometimes I will come in quiet, slipping in and out again before you
have known my Presence, and at other times I will come with the sound of
trumpets and proclaimations."
"But always I will come, and I shall be with you, always, to the End
of Time."
And He gave the Bread to the Men and Women, and said "Remember!"
And one approached, and said, "You have told us of Earth, and my
husband was digging therein, and it fell upon him and he died. Therefore I
shall kill you."
And another approached, and said, "You have told us of Air, and a
great wind has blown my mother from a high place, wherefrom she died.
Therefore I shall kill you."
And another approached, and said, "You have given us Fire, and my
daughter has burned her hand therein. Therefore I shall kill you."
And another approached, and said, "You have told us of Water, and my
son has drowned therein. Therefore I shall kill you."
And they took the Spear, made from the wood of the Tree, pointed with
the Bones of the Mother, and thrust it into the body of the Fool, and the
Fool smiled sadly, and, for the first time of many, died.
"Will you always do this Teaching, O Fool?" said the Lady.
"Assuredly so," replied the Fool, with a smile, "For are they not Our
children?"
"That they are," said the Lord, "But for how long shall You teach
them, and be slain in return?"
"For always," said the Fool. And he smiled, and a single tear coursed
down His cheek.
Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so!
---------------------------------------------------------------
2206
Death
He was old. He felt old. His body did not work right anymore, and he
was always tired. His eyes were rheumy, and there were pains in his joints
that woke him in the cold night time.
One night, as he slept, a soft white light filled his hut. He looked
up, and saw the most beautiful Lady he had ever seen standing in the room.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"Death," She answered, quietly.
"Death?" His reply was confused. "I never thought Death would be so
beautiful! We have always pictured you as some kind of spectre of fear."
The Lady smiled. "You only fear Death because you do not remember it.
Just as you fear Life, because you do not remember it. Come. Walk with me,
and be at peace."
He got out of the straw bed, and walked to Her. She took his hand,
and he looked back at the bed. He saw his body, laying there. Still and
unmoving. Dead.
"It's quite a shock, isn't it?" Her voice was calm.
"Am I .... dead?"
"Most assuredly so. Come."
They walked out of the cottage, hand in hand, and he noticed that
they were not walking thru the streets of the village where he had lived.
"Where are we?"
"You'll see in a moment. Wait."
"Am I bound for Hell?" he asked.
She stopped, and looked him in the eyes.
"There is no Hell. You have lived as most humans do, loving, hating,
being loved and being hated. You did the best you could with the Light you
had to see by. You have learned much, and earned much."
Her voice was low, but filled with a vibrancy that touched his very
soul.
They continued a little way down a hill, and then turned a corner, or
something very much like it, and he saw, and heard the laughter.
"Is it Heaven? What is it? It's beautiful!"
"This is the Summerland. Here you will rest a while, and play, and
perhaps meet old playmates again and discuss your Game, and ways to improve
It. It is time for you to remember all your lives."
She reached up, and softly touched him on the forehead.
"Now remember."
And he did.
---------------------------------------------------------------
2207
Rebirth
"It is time for you to go now."
The Lady spoke to him in a sweet voice.
"So soon?" he answered, "It seems as if I just arrived."
"It always does," she smiled, "But it's time to move on to another
life and another body. You'll like this one."
"I hope so. Buchenwald was not pleasant...."
"No, it isn't. But, like you folks say, 'that's Life!'"
He laughed, and stood up on the so-green grass.
"Yeah, I guess it is. See you in a while, folks."
The Circle of friends waved at him, wishing him luck and good
fortune, and he and the Lady moved off into a misty area.
"Pretty foggy here," he remarked.
"It will clear up soon," she said, and she took his hand.
They walked for a long time, until he saw they were on a quiet
street in a small town. It looked like a nice place. Around the corner was a
park, and in it, two people, a man and a woman, were sitting on a bench,
holding hands. They were deeply in love, and that love shone around them to
those with eyes to see.
"These are your parents. They're nobody special, but they're nice
people and you'll like them," She said.
"They look like nice folks," he replied. "Anything I need to know
before I do this?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. Life is one of those things that you
just have to experience on your own."
"OK," he said, "I guess You're right, all things considered."
The Lady laughed, and touched him on the forehead.
"Now forget, for a time, until you return to Me."
And he did.
---------------------------------------------------------------
2208
Creation Mystery
The Lord, and the Lady (and the Fool) were lonely. The All was not
complete; there was none to keep them company, and laugh with them. There
was none to know them, and none to be Their Children.
And the Lady said, "Let us go forth and make Life upon the many
worlds, that We may have Children, and a Family of Life within the
MultiVerse. And let Us make them in Our image, and love and be loved in
return."
And the Fool laughed, and asked, "Shall it be so?"
"No," said the Sacred King.
And the Fool asked a second time, and said, "Shall it be so?"
"Maybe," smiled the Youth.
And the Fool asked a third time, saying, "Shall it be so?"
"Yes!" said the Child.
And the Fool smiled, and said, "If we do this thing, it shall be a
wondrous thing indeed, for we shall make a Creature that shall have the Love
of the Lady, and the Strength of the Lord, and a Curiousity to match Myself.
It shall know Good and Evil, and Light and Darkness, and That which stands
between them, and shall be very near and dear to us. It shall be arrogant,
and willful, and cruel, but it shall also be kind, and gentle and loving. It
shall be all things, and nothing at all."
And the Fool laughed, and asked, "Shall it be so?"
"No," said Chaos.
And the Fool asked a second time, and said, "Shall it be so?"
"Maybe," smiled Trickster.
And the Fool asked a third time, saying, "Shall it be so?"
"Yes!" said Prometheus.
The Fool took up the stuff of stars, that whispers thru the
MultiVerse, and mixed it with the dry clay of earth, and mixed the substance
thereby made with the waters of the sea, and the tears of the Maiden, and the
birth-waters of the Mother, and the spittle of the Crone; wet it was with the
blood of the Sacred King, and the sweat of the Youth, and the milk on the
lips of the Child.
And the Fool laughed, and asked, "Shall it be so?"
"No," said the Crone.
And the Fool asked a second time, and said, "Shall it be so?"
"Maybe," smiled the Maiden.
And the Fool asked a third time, saying, "Shall it be so?"
"Yes!" said the Mother.
And the Fool smiled, and said, "Then let it be so, for I have asked
three times, and three times three, and thus it is and so it ever shall be!"
The Holy Fool bent, and sank to His knees, and She took the wet clay,
wet with the waters of the sea, and the tears of the Maiden, and the birth-
waters of the Mother, and the spittle of the Crone; wet with the blood of the
Sacred King, and the sweat of the Youth, and the milk on the lips of the
Child.
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And from that clay He made our Brothers and Sisters in Fur, Feather
and Scale, and all the growing things.
And one thing made of that clay was taken up by the Fool, and placed
aside.
And the Lady smiled upon Her Lord.
And the Fool turned, and It was Prometheus, and shaped the wet clay
thing further.
Side by side, He made them, that none should stand above the other,
but that all should walk as equals and partners, in joy and love.
And the Fool turned, and It was Trickster, who shaped us to be
curious, and to doubt, and from our doubt and curiousity, to learn, and to
laugh.
And the Fool turned, and She was Chaos, and placed a bit of Itself
within us, that we may change and grow.
And the Lord smiled upon His Lady.
Man and Woman Prometheus made, and the making and the shaping was as
years, and years upon years.
And the Fool began to dance.
And the Lady began to dance.
And the Lord began to dance.
They danced Life into the World, the Lady and the Lord, and the Fool.
They danced the moon, and stars, and Sun, and all that there is, they danced
into being.
And they danced Death into the World, for we must close the Circle of
our Being, and go forth unto newness.
They danced Life and Death, and still They dance, a never-ending,
ever-spinning Circle, endlessly spiraling upon itself, and uncoiling to start
anew; hand in hand They dance, to a Music They have made, endlessly creating,
and endlessly destroying.
Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so!
---------------------------------------------------------
2210
THE TRIPLE GODDESS
As the Maiden, I saw through your eyes as a child
Spring rains, green forests, and animals wild!
I saw you run freely on the Earth with bare feet!
I watched as you danced in the winds, blowing free!
I was there as you grew, getting stronger each day!
I brought you rainbows, chasing grey skies away!
I was there in your laughter - I was there in your tears!
I was the acceptance you gained from your peers!
I saw your first love and I felt your first blush,
As passion first stirred in the night's gentle hush!
I am there with you always in the fresh morning dew!
I bring you the crispness of beginnings anew.
As the Mother, I bore all the labor distress
Of birthing your child, and I felt the caress
Of your hand on the face of the new life so dear.
I heard its first cry, and I eased your fear!
I provided the milk which you fed from your breast
Till the baby grew strong, and with health it was blessed.
As she took her first step, I was there in your smile!
I was there while you nurtured your beautiful child!
On the first day of school, when the doors opened wide
I was there in your fear - I was there in your pride.
I am there with you always in the bright full of moon!
I bring you fertility - abundance in bloom.
As the Crone, I brought blessings of wisdom with age
[Wisdom not found by the turn of a page].
I was there as you taught the correct way to live:
To love and to trust - to take and to give!
I was there in the twinkle of your aged eye!
I was there in your thoughts of the years flying by!
I was there when you taught the Mysteries of old!
I was there in the fire warming you in the cold!
In the weariness of age, I was there with you, too...
I brought well-deserved rest and peace unto you!
I am there with you always in the darkness of night!
I complete your life cycle, guiding you toward the light.
Maid, Mother and Crone - We are all One -
Yet We are all separate, as each role is done.
We do not leave you - We're always there
As you walk through this life with your worries and cares;
As you dance in the spiral, We live inside -
Deep in your spirit - where nothing can hide!
No matter your path, no matter it's length -
We give you courage and We give you strength.
We are there to support you every hour of day
And deep in the night, when dreams take you away.
Our gifts We give freely, for you are our Child...
Yes, We are the Lady: Wise, Pure, and Mild!
-Kalioppe-
2211
A GODDESS ARRIVES
THE NOVELS OF DION FORTUNE
AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
GARDNERIAN WITCHCRAFT
by CHAS S. CLIFTON
No one occultist of the 20th century worked more vehemently in ad-
vocating a "Western" - and within that, "Northern" - path of esoteric
spirituality than did the English ceremonial magician, Dion Fortune.
She founded an esoteric school that still persists, but beyond that
direct transmission, her ideas seeded themselves into modern Neopagan
religion to the point that they seem completely indigenous, their
origins invisible.
Certain of Fortune's key ideas, however, were not so much transmitted
through her mystical writings and articles in The Occult Review of the
1920s, as they were passed on through a unique series of novels, one
of which stands fifty years later as "the finest novel on real magic
ever written," in the words of Alan Richardson, her most adept biog-
rapher1. Primary among these key ideas was her raising up of a lunar,
feminine divine power - not that she was the first modern magician to
do it, but by taking the two paths of ritual and literature she gave
the power two ways to go.
The second idea was that of egalitarian magical working, something she
came to late in her life (she lived from 1890-1946). This was a fairly
radical idea in that all her associations with the Theosophical
Society, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and her own Fraternity (later
Society) of the Inner Light included the idea of hierarchies and
grades, going back in her own self-proclaimed reincarnational history
to lifetimes among the sacred priestly caste of legendary Atlantis.
Both of these ideas are found in the Anglo-American branches of modern
Witchcraft, which first made its presence known in Great Britain in
the early 1950s, having, I suspect, been developed and codified into
its modern form during the later 1930s and 1940s. While a demonstrable
personal connection between the modern witches and Dion Fortune cannot
be proven - unless one had her entire mailing list circa 1939 in hand
- I think a literary connection can be shown.
Her ideas about an earth-based Western tradition of esoteric, magical
religion, which exalted the feminine principle, fit so neatly with the
cosmology of those modern witches who came out of a similar esoteric
British milieu, that the connection is unmistakable. The reason it has
not been acknowledged until recently is that to do so would conflict
with the frequent assertion that Witchcraft was the "Old Religion"
brought forward unchanged in its essentials from centuries ago.
Unfortunately for that assertion, the historical records, such as they
are, showed little evidence for secret goddess religion persisting
until recent centuries in Northern Europe. The voluminous "witch
trial" documents of England, Scotland, and France, which the archaeol-
ogist and folklorist Margaret Murray used to buttress her argument for
the survival of a pre-Christian religion, do not mention goddess
worship.
2212
If one looks for other evidence of a goddess arriving in the mid-20th
century, the other suspect typically is Robert Graves, whose widely
influential book, The White Goddess, was written in 1944. Parallel and
contemporary with Graves is Gertrude Rachel Levy's The Gate of Horn,
which treats much of the same material Graves does, principally from
the viewpoint of art history.2
The thesis of The White Goddess, which has been enormously influential
among modern Pagan groups, is "that the language of poetic myth
anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a
magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour
of the Moon-Goddess, or Muse,some of them dating from the Old Stone
Age (Palaeolithic), and that this remains the language of true poe-
try." Graves believed that this language "was still taught...in the
Witchcovens of medieval Western Europe."3
I do not contend that Graves and Levy supplied the dual male and
female divinities of most modern Witchcraft covens. Their books were
both first published in 1948, after Fortune's works had been in print
for a decade or more. Before examining the influence of Fortune's
works, however, I will summarise the "coming out" of the British
covens.
THE RE-EMERGENCE OF BRITISH WITCHCRAFT
In 1951 the British Parliament repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735 -
largely at the urging of Spiritualist churches, who objected to its
prohibition of mediumship. This statutory change unexpectedly led to
the emergence into public view of a religious tradition thought to be
extinct: Witchcraft.4 These British witches defied definitions of the
term common both in the vernacular and in anthropology textbooks. They
were of both sexes, all ages, and were not isolated practitioners of
maleficent magic; rather they claimed to be inheritors of the islands'
pre-Christian religions. Their religion was duotheistic: they wor-
shipped a male god, often called Cernnunos, Kernaya, or Herne; and a
goddess, sometimes called Aradia or Tana. Of the two, sometimes seen
as manifestations of a nonpersonal Godhead, the goddess had the
greater importance, and her earthly representatives, the coven's
priestess, had greater ritual authority.
Greatly condensed, this is a description of what came to be known as
"Gardnerian Witchcraft," after Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), who retired
from the British colonial customs service in Malaya in 1936, returned
to England and - as he described - was initiated into what he himself
thought was a dying religion in 1938.5 This was no overnight conver-
sion: Gardner was fascinated for many years with magical religion and
"practical mysticism". A recognised avocational archaeologist and
anthropologist in Malaya, during a visit to England in the 1920s, he
set out to investigate the claims of British Spiritualists, trance
mediums and the like.
As he wrote: "I have been interested in magic and kindred subjects all
my life and have made a collection of magical instruments and charms.
These studies led me to spiritualist and other societies..."6
Gardner wrote three books on Witchcraft, one novel, and two nonfiction
works. The novel was High Magic's Aid (1949), a stirring tale of late-
medieval English coveners dodging secular and clerical foes with
something of the feel of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe or Robert Louis
Stevenson's The Black Arrow to it. Interestingly enough, the "witch-
2213
craft" portrayed in High Magic's Aid differs from what was later
called "Gardnerian Witchcraft." In it the goddess is de-emphasised;
the rituals are more in line with the post-Renaissance traditions of
ceremonial magic.
Gardner's next two books, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) and Witch-
craft Today (1954), are more definitive of the tradition. All three of
the forenamed remain in print; an earlier novel, with the suggestive
title A Goddess Arrives, is long out of print, and I have not been
able to locate a copy. Gardner and his followers also produced a
"book" that was, until the early 1970s, passed on as handcopied
manuscripts: "The Book of Shadows." It is a collection of "laws" and
suggestions for running a clandestine coven, performing rituals,
resolving disputes between witches inside the group, and so forth.
Although it appears to be written in perhaps the English of the 17th
century, I have concluded that it was produced during and immediately
after World War II. Its atmosphere of secrecy and underground organ-
ising is not a product of the witch-trial era, but of the early years
of World War II when an invasion of southern England by the German
Army appeared quite likely, and patriotic Britons were planning how
they would organise a Resistance movement like those in France,
Norway, and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The woman often assumed to have birthed the idea of a Pagan under-
ground in Christian Western Europe was not Dion Fortune, but the
Egyptologist Margaret Murray of University College, London. Professor
Murray, better known as the time for her work with Sir Flinders Petrie
in Egypt, began researching Pagan carryovers while convalescing from
an illness in 1915. World War I had interrupted her work in Egypt, and
she wrote in her autobiography, My First Hundred Years:7
"I chose Glastonbury [to convalesce in]. One cannot stay in Glaston-
bury without becoming interested in Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy
Grail. As soon as I got back to London I did a careful piece of
research, which resulted in a paper on Egyptian elements in the Grail
Romance...
Someone, I forget who, had once told me that the Witches obviously had
a special form of religion, 'for they danced around a black goat.' As
ancient religion is my pet subject this seemed to be in my line and
during all the rest of the war I worked on Witches... I had started
with the usual idea that the Witches were all old women suffering from
illusions about the Devil and that their persecutors were wickedly
prejudiced and perjured. I worked only from contemporary records, and
when I suddenly realised that the so-called Devil was simply a dis-
guised man I was startled, almost alarmed, by the way the recorded
facts fell into place, and showed that the Witches were members of an
old and primitive form of religion, and that the records had been made
by members of a new and persecuting form."
Murray's researches into medieval and Renaissance witch-trial docu-
ments from Britain, Ireland, and the Continent (including those
relating to Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais) led to her writing three
books, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), The God of the Witches
(1931), and The Divine King in England (1954). In them she described
her evidence for the survival of a pre-Christian religion centred on
the Horned God of fertility (later labelled "The Devil" by Christian
authorities) up until at least the 16th century in Britain.
2214
As the late historian of religion Mircea Eliade wrote, "Murray's
theory was criticised by archaeologists, historians and folklorists
alike."8 Pointing out some parallels between medieval witchcraft and
Indo-Tibetan magical religion, Eliade gives qualified approval to part
of Murray's conclusions.
"As a matter of fact, almost everything in her construction was wrong
except for one important assumption: that there existed a pre-Chris-
tian fertility cult and that specific survivals of this pagan cult
were stigmatised during the Middle Ages as witchcraft....recent
research seems to confirm at least some aspects of her thesis. The
Italian historian Carlo Ginsburg has proved that a popular fertility
cult, active in the province of Friule in the 16th and 17th centuries,
was progressively modified under pressure of the Inquisition and ended
by resembling the traditional notion of witchcraft. Moreover, recent
investigations of Romanian popular culture have brought to light a
number of pagan survivals which clearly indicate the existence of a
fertility cult and of what may be called a "white magic," comparable
to some aspects of Western medieval witchcraft."
One may thus argue that the existence of Murray's three works "paved
the way for Gardner's reformation", as J. Gordon Melton of the In-
stitute for the Study of American Religion put it.9 Gardner's "reform-
ation" of whatever British witchcraft existed prior to his initiation
into it had both theological and ritual aspects. The works he and his
associates produced give a style of worship, a new set of ritual texts
- and increasing emphasis on the goddess-aspect as the tradition grew
- all of them pre-figured not in Murray's works but in Dion Fortune's.
A PRACTICAL OCCULTIST
In my experience, there is hardly a British, Irish or American witch
of the revived, post-Gardnerian traditions who has not read something
by Dion Fortune, and the same probably holds true in Canada, Aust-
ralia, or New Zealand. Until 1985, however, biographies of her were
nonexistent, even while the American Books in Print reference volumes
listed twenty of her books in that year's volume - not bad for someone
considered at best an obscure genre writer by the literary establish-
ment of fifty years ago and of today.
Neither her book on psychology, The Machinery of the Mind, written in
the 1920s nor her works on occult philosophy, nor her five "occult"
novels and volume of short stories received much critical notice when
they came out. Such notice as was received was almost worse than none.
A 1934 (London) Times Literary Supplement review of her book Avalon of
the Heart begins, "The author tells us that she is the last of the
Avalonians - of those who were drawn to Glastonbury as 'a centre of
ever-renewed spiritual and artistic inspiration,' whatever that may
mean."
And clearly the reviewer was not interested in finding out! Alan Ri-
chardson's 1985 work, Dancers to the Gods, while primarily about two
members of Fortune's magical order, contained the first well-res-
earched material on her life.10 He followed it with a full biography,
Priestess, two years later, an affectionate and sensitive portrait of
this woman whose spiritual trajectory has yet to reach the horizon.11
Charles Fielding's and Carr Collins's The Story of Dion Fortune
contains more details of her and her associates' magical work, but is
2215
written in a wooden "true believer" style and marred by numerous edi-
torial blunders.12
To summarise greatly, she was born Violet Mary Firth in 1890 in Wales,
where her English father, together with his wife's relatives, operated
a seaside hotel and health spa catering to a well-to-do clientele.
When her grandfather's death led to a dissolving of the partnership,
her father moved the family to London where he could live comfortably
off his inheritance. Her spiritual quest as a young woman led her to
Christian Science (which her mother adopted when it came to England),
Freudian psychology, the "Eastern wisdom" of the Theosophical Society,
the Qabalistic magic of the Order of the Golden Dawn,
8and study with an Anglo-Irish occultist, T.W.C. Moriarty, the model
for "Dr Taverner" in her book of short stories, The Secrets of Dr
Taverner. She would have liked to have studied Freemasonry, but could
not, being a woman.
She studied psychology while in her twenties, before the outbreak of
World War I, and practiced as a psychoanalyst for a time, the field
not yet being closely controlled by the medical establishment. Fortune
was probably the first writer on ceremonial magic and hermetic ideas
to draw upon and acknowledge the work of Freud and later Jung. In her
novel The Goat-Foot God, published in 1936 and dealing with the
effects of both psychological repression and past lives, its central
character, Hugh Paston, asks a friend,
"Are the Old Gods synonymous with the Devil?"
"Christians think they are.
"What do you think they are?"
"I think they're the same thing as the Freudian subconscious."13
After Moriarty's death she headed the Christian Mystic Lodge of the
Theosophical Society. In 1927 she married Thomas Penry Evans, a Welsh
doctor practising in London, nicknamed "Merlin" or "Merl" for his own
magical interests. They were priest and priestess, but never father
and mother. The marriage, magically productive but contentious in the
mundane world, lasted until 1939 when Evans left her for another
woman. Fortune continued to head their group, which became the Society
of the Inner Light and maintained, for a time, both a large communal
house in London and another establishment in Glastonbury. The Society
continues to this day, but Dion Fortune herself died of leukemia in
1946.
Her penname derived from the motto she took as her magical name in the
Golden Dawn, "Deo Non Fortuna", or roughly, "by God, not by Chance."
Her involvement with the Golden Dawn lasted roughly from 1919 to about
1922, and while these were the sunset years of the Order, which had
been founded in 1888, they set for her a significant pattern of what
an esoteric order should be.
That Fortune also eventually was influenced by Jung is apparent in her
work, although she was an occultist first and a Jungian second. Since
her time there has been a great deal of discussion of the "gods and
goddesses" by such neo-Jungians as James Hillman and Charlotte Downin-
g. Surely Fortune's blending of
psychoanalytical ideas, Hermeticism, Qabalah, and Christian mysticism
in the two orders she headed prefigures Hillman's question, "Can the
atomism of our psychic paganism, that is, the individual symbol-
2216
formation now breaking out as the Christian cult fades, be contained
by a psychology of self-integration that echoes its expiring Christian
model?"14
I doubt that Dion Fortune would have answered as dogmatically as H-
illman did, "The danger is that a true revival of paganism as religion
is then possible, with all its accoutrements of popular soothsaying,
quack priesthoods, astrological divination, extravagant practices, and
the erosion of psychic differentiation through delusional enthus-
iasms."
Where she did agree with Jung is that Western methods are best for
Western people. Jung wrote: "Instead of learning the spiritual tec-
hniques of the East by heart and imitating them... it would be far
more to the point to find out whether there exists in the unconscious
an introverted tendency similar to that which has been developed in
spiritual principles in the East. We should then be in a position to
build on our own ground with our own methods."15
Compare Fortune's chapter "Eastern Methods and Western Bodies" in Sane
in which she stated:16
"The pagan faiths of the West developed the nature contacts. Modern
Western occultism, rising from this basis, seems to be taking for its
field the little-known powers of the mind. The Eastern tradition has a
very highly developed metaphysics.... Nevertheless, when it comes to
the practical application of those principles and especially the proc-
esses of occult training and initiation, it is best for a man to foll-
ow the line of his own racial evolution.... The reason for the in-
advisability of an alien initiation does not lie in racial antagonism,
nor in any failure to appreciate the beauty and profundity of the
Eastern systems, but for the same reason that Eastern methods of
agriculture are inapplicable to the West - because conditions are
different."
It is clear from Fortune's novels that a "true", that is psychologic-
ally informed, Paganism, was indeed what she sought in the late 1920s
and 1930s. Time after time she created plots that mixed the t-
herapeutic and the magical, drawing characters who combined psycho-
logical acumen with non-ordinary wisdom. She defined her ideal mixture
thus in Sane Occultism: A knowledge of [occult] philosophy can give a
clue to the researches of the scientist and balance the ecstasies of
the mystic; it may very well be that in the possibilities of ritual
magic we shall find an invaluable therapeutic agent for use in certain
forms of mental disease; psychoanalysis has demonstrated that these
have no physiological cause, but it can seldom effect a cure."17
I see her as someone who shared a significant degree of philosophical
accord with what would become "Neo-Pagan Witchcraft", but who in
practice followed a different path. I have said her contribution to
"the Craft" has not been sufficiently acknowledged; there is one
exception. The works of two English Witches, Janet and Stewart Farrar,
produced during the late 1970s and early 1980s, frequently refer their
readers to Dion Fortune. In a recent instance, having laid out a
ritual based on one in Fortune's novel The Sea Priestess and having
received permission from the current leadership of the Society of the
Inner Light to do so, they write:18
"In their letter of permission, the Society asked us to say 'that Dion
Fortune was not a Witch and did not have any connection with a coven,
2217
and that this Society is not in any way associated with the Craft of
Witches.' We accede to their request; and when this book is published,
we shall send them a copy with our compliments, in the hope that it
may give them second thoughts about whether Wiccan philosophy is as
alien to that of Dion Fortune (whom witches hold in great respect) as
they seem to imagine."
Despite the Society of the Inner Light's disavowal, a good circumsta-
ntial case can be made that Fortune's works, particularly her novels,
could have influenced Gerald Gardner and his initiates. This insight
was brought home to me while reading The Goat-Foot God, published two
years before Gardner's initiation into the Craft. Its plot is typical
of Fortune: a person down on his or her luck and near psychological
collapse is rescued by a powerful magician or priestess and re-inte-
grated socially and psychically.
Hugh Paston, quoted above, is a wealthy Londoner on the verge of a
nervous breakdown following the death of his wife and his friend -
revealed to be her lover - in a car wreck. Aimlessly walking the
streets, Paston finds a used-book shop run by a scholarly occultist
who becomes the catalyst of his psychological integration. This incl-
udes finishing some actions begun by a heretical medieval prior in an
English monastery who may have been an earlier incarnation of Paston's
or who otherwise overshadows him. What caught my attention was a
remark given to the character of Jelkes, the bookseller, who in
guiding Paston's reading on magic tells him, "Writers will put things
into a novel that they daren't put in sober prose, where you have to
dot the Is and cross the Ts.19
Fortune's literary output was divided between novels and "sober prose-
". Other "sober titles" included Practical Occultism in Daily Life,
The Cosmic Doctrine, Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage and what
is often considered to be her masterpiece, The Mystical Qabalah.
Robert Galbreath, writing a bibliographic survey of modern occultism,
defined her message as "spiritual occultism."20
"Spiritual occultists state that it is possible to acquire personal,
empirical knowledge of that which can only be taken on faith in
religion or demonstrated through deductive reasoning in philosophy.
Further, this knowledge, arrived at in full consciousness through the
use of spiritual disciplines, is said to reveal man's place in the
spiritual plan of the universe and to reconcile the debilitating
conflict between science and religion. The goal of occultism, the-
refore, is the complete spiritualisation of man and the cosmos, and
the attainment of a condition of unity."
The novels, however, convey a parallel but somewhat different message.
They do it using a different vocabulary, a more consciously Pagan
vocabulary. While published statements of the Society of Inner Light
proclaimed it "established on the enlightened and informed Christian
ethic and morality," its founder's novels say repeatedly that
Christianity has had its day and a new Renaissance is dawning. After
his experience of inner integration Hugh Paston muses:21
"It is a curious fact that when men began to re-assemble the fragments
of Greek culture - the peerless statues of the gods and the ageless
wisdom of the sages - a Renaissance came to the civilisation that had
sat in intellectual darkness since the days when the gods had with-
drawn before the assaults of the Galileans. What is going to happen
2218
in our day, now that Freud has come along crying, "Great Pan is
risen!" - ? Hugh wondered whether his own problems were not part of a
universal problem, and his own awakening part of a much wider awakeni-
ng? He wondered how far the realisation of an idea by one man, even if
he spoke no word, might not inject that idea into the group-mind of
the race and set it working like a ferment?
Likewise, in The Winged Bull, set not long after World War I, Colonel
Brangwyn the magician tells his new student, one of his former junior
officers:22
"It [Christianity] had its place, Murchison, it had its place. It
sweetened life when paganism had become corrupt. We lack something if
we haven't got it. But we also lack something if we get too much of
it. It isn't true to life if we take it neat."
Later, during a ritual Brangwyn quotes Swinburne's poem "The Last
Oracle" in praise of Paganism past - it was this aspect of Swinburne
that G.K. Chesterton mockingly called "neo-Pagan" - making Murchison
remember "that great pagan, Julian the Apostate, striving to make head
against the set of the tide," and Murchison thinks to himself:23
"And the trouble with Christianity was that it was so darned lop-si-
ded. Good, and jolly good, as far as it went, but you couldn't stretch
it clean round the circle of experience because it just wouldn't go.
What it was originally, nobody knew, save that it must have been
something mighty potent. All we knew of it was what was left after th-
ose two crusty old bachelors, Paul and Augustine, had finished with
it.
And then came the heresy hunters and gave it a final curry-combing,
taking infinite pains to get rid of everything that it had inherited
from older faiths. And they had been like the modern miller, who
refines all the vitamins out of the bread and gives half the popul-
ation rickets. That was what was the matter with civilisation, it had
spiritual rickets because its spiritual food was too refined. Man
can't get on without a dash of paganism, and for the most part, he
doesn't try to."
The notion of injecting a key idea into the collective unconscious of
Western humanity appears over and over in Fortune's novels. It is not
surprising that the writer who had two favourite maxims - "A religion
without a goddess is halfway to atheism" and "All the gods are one god
and all the goddesses are one goddess and there is one initiator" -
should repeatedly call for attention to be paid to the Great Goddess.
In another of his soliloquies, Hugh Paston thinks, "Surely our of all
her richness and abundance the Great Mother of us all could meet his
need? Why do we forget the Mother in the worship of the Father? What
particular virtue is there in virgin begetting?"
DRAWING DOWN THE MOON
When the British witches went public in the early 1950s, the idea that
Christianity had had its day and furthermore was not always the right
path for Westerners was often heard. The major difference between
their religion and that portrayed in the witch-trial documents Mar-
garet Murray studied, however, was the reintroduction of worship of
the Great Goddess. She was seen both as Queen of Heaven and Earth/Sea
Mother, depending on the context. The best evidence for Fortune's inf-
2219
luence here lies in the construction of the key "Gardnerian" ritual
called "Drawing Down the Moon."25
In that ritual, developed and/or modified by Gardner and his contempo-
raries, the Goddess is invoked by the priest in the body of the
priestess. It is expected that a type of divine inspiration will res-
ult. Drawing down the Moon is a key part of every Gardnerian ritual c-
ircle - and its elements and purpose are easily discernible in Fort-
une's novel The Sea Priestess, which she was forced by publishers'
lack of interest to self-publish in 1938.26 Richardson, her biographe-
r, calls it and its sequel, Moon Magic, "the only novels on magic ever
written," considering the competition.
Although Gardner only hints at the workings of the ritual in his boo-
ks, his successors, the Farrars, explain it more fully in Eight Sabb-
ats for Witches.27 It comes after the drawing of the ritual circle - a
conscious creating and marking of sacred space, defined by the cardi-
nal directions and purified with the four magical elements, fire and
air (incense), water and earth (salt). While the priestess stands
before the altar (in a traditional Gardnerian circle she holds a wand
and a lightweight scourge in her crossed arms, like a figure of
Osiris), the priest kneels and blesses with a kiss her feet, knees,
womb, breast and lips. Then a shift occurs, both in language and
action. He ceases to address her as a woman and begins to address her
as the Mother Goddess, beginning with the words,"I invoke thee and
call upon thee, Mighty Mother of us all..."28
When the invocation is completed, the priestess is considered to be
speaking as the Goddess, not as herself. She may go on to deliver a
passage (authored by Doreen Valiente, whose role I deal with below)
that is based partly on material collected during the 1890s in Italy
by the American folklorist Charles Leland.29
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 bey-
ond death, I give peace, and freedom, and reunion with those who have
gone before. Nor do I demand sacrifice; for behold, I am the Mother of
all living, and my love is poured out upon the earth."
She may, of course, speak spontaneously; Janet Farrar comments that
"'she never knows how it will come out.' Sometimes the wording itself
is completely altered, with a spontaneous flow she listens to with a
detached part of her mind."30
Dion Fortune believed that a re-introduction of both ritual and ps-
ychological approaches to the Great Goddess would even the psychic
balance between men and women, a theme carried on today by a number of
feminist psychologists and writers, although with scant acknowled-
gment. She wished every marriage to take on an aspect of the hieros
gamos (divine marriage), and it is there that a parallel with Witch-
craft ritual lies, since many rituals turn on sexual polarity, both
symbolically and literally. Fortune foreshadowed this in The Sea
Priestess when she wrote:31
"In this sacrament the woman must take her ancient place as priestess
of the rite, calling down lightning from heaven; the initiator, not
the initiated.... She had to become the priestess of the Goddess, and
I [the male narrator], the kneeling worshipper, had to receive the
sacrament at her hands....When the body of a woman is made an altar
2220
for the worship of the Goddess who is all beauty and magnetic life...
then the Goddess enters the temple."
This is not just Fortune's description of the magical side of marri-
age, but a virtual schematic of the Drawing Down the Moon ceremony and
its concluding Great Rite, as Gardner called ritual intercourse at its
conclusion (something more frequently performed symbolically). As the
Farrars state, "The Great Rite specifically declares that the body of
the woman taking part is an altar, with her womb and generative organs
as its sacred focus, and reveres it as such."32
I would suggest that when the Farrars openly built a new ritual upon
the Sea Priestess, the "seashore ritual" mentioned earlier, which for-
ms Chapter X of The Witches' Way, they were openly admitting a debt to
Fortune which modern Witchcraft has always carried on its books.
To recapitulate, the circumstantial case for Fortune's influence on
the beginnings of modern Witchcraft fits the chronology. Gerald Gardn-
er's initiation took place in 1939 in Hampshire. In the late 1940s he
"received permission" to publish some things about Witchcraft in his
novel High Magic's Aid, which appeared in 1949 and had little of the
Goddess element in it. The Sea Priestess was written in the 1930s, but
only available in a private edition at first, while its sequel, Moon
Magic, was available in 1956.
The Great Goddess becomes more central in Gardner's works from the
1950s and is absolutely central to the Craft as it developed in that
decade. She did not, however, appear in Margaret Murray's works on the
alleged underground Paganism of the Middle Ages, which Murray wrote in
the 1920s. There may, however, be echoes of a Goddess religion in It-
aly, based on Leland's research there in the mid-1800s. Leland pr-
ovided another literary source for the Drawing Down the Moon ceremony.
The person who re-wrote that ceremony and gave Gardnerian- tradition
ritual much of its form is now known to be Doreen Valiente, who wrote
four books on the Craft as well. Her contributions to the texts are
discussed at length in The Witches' Way. Although not the only one of
Gardner's original coveners still living (i.e., after he moved away
from the coven that initiated him, most of whose members were elderly
in the 1930s), she has been the only one publicly involved in a
critical re-evaluation of the tradition's beginnings.
Although Gardner and Fortune were contemporaries, she does not know if
they ever met, she told me in a 1985 letter. She did, however, say
that she is "very fond of Dion Fortune's books, especially her novels
The Sea Priestess, The Goat-Foot God, and Moon Magic. It is notable
that her [Fortune's] outlook became more pagan as she grew older."
Whether this is a tacit admission that she drew upon Fortune's works,
I cannot say. Witches are known for oblique statements, and Valiente
walked a fine line between secrecy and disclosure.
Given England's size, its relatively interwoven cliques of occultists,
and the small number of novelists dealing with Pagan themes, it is
unlikely that Valiente and Gardner were not aware of Fortune's novels
at the time they were giving their religion its present form. As we h-
ave seen, Gardner was himself engaged in a conscious search for ma-
gical learning in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was in the 1930s that F-
ortune's novels began appearing, while the chapters of SaneOccultism
were published serially in The Occult Review , and influential British
journal it is unlikely he would have overlooked.
2221
Valiente, meanwhile, was initiated by Gardner as a priestess in 1953
and left his coven to form her own in 1957, the year after Moon Magic
came out. With such a coincidence of subject matter, place and dates,
it is difficult not to see Dion Fortune as a previously unadmitted but
significant influence on the development of Gardnerian Witchcraft.
Today the Goddess revival seems to have its "applied" and "theor-
etical" wings, with the Neo-Pagans in the first category and various
Jungians, writers on feminist spirituality and historians of religion
in the second. With her combined psychological and magical training,
Dion Fortune could be considered a foremother to each.
NOTES
1. Alan Richardson, Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune.
(Wellingborough, Northants: The Aquarian Press, 1987), p.37.
2. G. Rachel Levy, The Gate of Horn: A Study of Religions Concep-
tions of the Stone Age and Their Influence upon European Thought.
(London: Faber and Faber, 1948).
3. Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A historical grammar of poetic
myth. (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966), p.12.
4. Raymond Buckland, Witchcraft from the Inside. (St Paul, MN:
Llewellyn Publications, 1971), p.55. The law was a successor to
the Witchcraft Act of King James I, passed in 1604 and repealed
in 1736.
5. J.L. Bracelin, Gerald Gardner: Witch. (London: Octagon Press
1960).
6. Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today. (London: Rider & Co., 1954),
p.18
7. Margaret Murray, My First Hundred Years. (London: William Kimber,
1963), p.104. The title was no exaggeration; she was born in 18-
63.
8. Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions: Essa-
ys in Comparative Religions. (Chicago: University of Chicago Pre-
ss, 1976), p.56
9. J. Gordon Melton, Magic, Witchcraft and Paganism in America: A
Bibliography. (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1982), p.105
10. Alan Richardson, Dancers to the Gods. (Wellingborough, Northants:
The Aquarian Press, 1985).
11. ------, Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune. (-
Wellingborough, Northants: The Aquarian Press, 1987).
12. Charles Fielding and Carr Collins, The Story of Dion Fortune. (-
Dallas, Texas: Star and Cross Publication, 1985).
13. Dion Fortune, The Goat-Foot God. (London: The Aquarian Press,
1971), p.89
2222
14. James Hillman, "Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic."
Appendix to David L. Miller, The New Polytheism. (Dallas, Texas:
Spring Publications Inc., 1981), p.125
15. C.G. Jung, "Yoga and the West". In The Collected Works of C.G.
Jung. (London: Pantheon, 1958), Vol XI, p.534.
16. Dion Fortune, Sane Occultism. (Wellingborough, Northants: The
Aquarian Press, 1967), pp.161-2.
17. Ibid. pp. 25-6.
18. Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches' Way. (London: Robert Hale,
1984), pp. 95-6.
19. Goat-Foot God, p. 89.
20. Robert Galbreath, "The History of Modern Occultism: A Biblio-
graphic Survey." Journal of Popular Culture, V:3 (Winter 1971),
p. 728/100
21. Goat-Foot God, pp. 352-3
22. Dion Fortune, The Winged Bull: A Romance of Modern Magic. (Lo-
ndon: Williams and Norgate Ltd., 1935), p. 169. It is no coin-
cidence that the leading female character was named Ursula Bra-
ngwyn,a name used by D.H. Lawrence for a character in Women in
Love; Fortune was trying to re-state "the sex problem" on a "h-
igher plane" than Lawrence had.
23. Ibid. pp. 154-6.
24. Goat-Foot God, p. 349.
25. A term that deliberately or otherwise echoes Plato's description
in the Georgias of "the Thessalian witches who drawn down the
moon from heaven."
26. Dion Fortune, The Sea Priestess. (London: Wynham Publications Lt-
d., 1976).
27. Janet and Stewart Farrar, Eight Sabbats for Witches: and Rites
for Birth, Marriage and Death. (London: Robert Hale, 1981), p.
15.
28. The exact terminology may vary from coven to coven; the Farrar's
give Gardner's favourite.
29. Charles Godfrey Leland, Aradia: or the Gospel of the Witches. (L-
ondon: David Nutt, 1899). Leland may indeed have found some
fragments of a goddess religion. Gardner and Valiente expurgated
parts of it, such as the invocation of the Goddess as a poisoner
of great lords in their castles, and other homely arts.
30. The Witches' Way, p.68.
31. The Sea Priestess, pp. 160-1.
32. Eight Sabbats for Witches, p.49.
TEMPLES, COVENS AND GROVES - OH MY!
2223
by KHALED
There appears to be a fair amount of ongoing confusion as to what each
of these is and what each of them should be doing, so let me stick my
oar into it, too. But first, let's play the definition game.
CIRCLE Three or more people who gather together to work ritual or
Craft. Some are ritual only, some worship only, but most do
both. The following are all special cases of a Circle:
GROVE Circle usually led by, and under the auspices of, a coven.
Frequently eclectic in practice, Groves are commonly used as
an introduction to the Craft as a whole but not necessarily
to any given Tradition. Groves usually don't initiate. May
also be called a study group.
COVEN Circle gathering at least once per month (with a majority
gathering twice) for worship and/or magic. Membership tends
to be stable with gradual personnel changes. Normally prac-
ticing within a single Tradition, Covens typically have
strong group rapport. Most train their members to whatever
standard they use. Rites of passage (the "I" word) are the
norm.
TEMPLE Two or more Circles, generally at least one Coven (the Inner
Circle) and a Grove (the Outer Circle), the latter being
open to the public. Serves the public as a place to worship
and/or learn about the Gods with advanced training for those
seekers who meet the Temple's standards. I'm on shakier
ground here, never having run a Temple, but I see a Circl-
e/Grove open to the general public as essential to the
definition, while the strong affiliation to one or more
covens is a matter of observation (as is the relationship b-
etween Groves and Covens cited earlier.)
A fair number of practitioners do not distinguish among these terms
(nor, for that matter, among Wicca, Paganism and New Age). Feel free
to take issue with any of these definitions, but they are what I have
in mind as I write this. Let's take a closer look at what each of
these is and how they tend to function within Neo-Paganism.
A Circle is a gathering of, preferably like-minded, individuals for p-
urposes of magic and/or worship. None of those gathered need be of the
same Tradition, nor even Initiate, though it makes for better results
if at least some of them are. All Groves, Covens and Temples are
therefore Circles. The reverse, however, isn't always the case since
many Circles do not also meet the criteria for a Grove, Coven or
Temple.
A Grove, or Study Group, is a Circle of students learning the basics
of Neo-Pagan (or Wiccan or any of the other subsets of Pagan) worship
and Circle techniques. While normally under the tutelage of one or
more Initiates, the members are not necessarily being trained towards
Initiation in any particular Tradition, nor need the tutors be of the
same Tradition(s) as the students (nor even of each other).
2224
Mystery religions, by their very nature, aren't for everyone, nor is
any given Mystery suitable for all Initiates. The Grove is a way for
potential Initiates to take a good look at one or more Traditions
while learning how to handle themselves in just about any basic
Circle. If this isn't for them, they can easily drop it. If it is,
they can focus on the specific Tradition (or family of Traditions)
which seems to speak most clearly to them (assuming they were exposed
to more than one). Similarly, the tutor(s) can teach general techniqu-
es to any serious Seeker without worrying about an implied commitment
to Initiate someone unsuited to their particular Tradition.
Groves do not normally do Initiations (they're done by the sponsoring
Coven, if any), and tend to be oriented more towards teaching and
worship than towards magical practice. They are also more likely to be
fairly open to new members or even the general public than is the case
with established Covens, while study groups, in my experience at
least, are more likely to be invitation-only. The most effective Gr-
oves (or study groups, of course) are under the helpful eye, if not
out-and-out sponsorship, of an established Coven or family of Covens.
A Coven, on the other hand, is a regularly meeting Circle, all of the
same Tradition, at least some of whom are Initiates (and at least one
of whom holds Initiatory power if the Coven is to survive or grow).
Such a group tends to become very close ("closer than kin") and is
bound by the rules and styles (deliberately non-existent in some c-
ases) of its Tradition, and by its own internal rules and customs. A
member of a Coven is normally provided training and, when deemed
ready, Initiation or Elevation by that Coven's Priesthood/Elders.
There are also magical considerations which go into the making of a
Coven which further differentiate it from a Grove/study group, but it
isn't my intention to go into them here. Suffice it to say that they
are connected to the closeness and tend to enhance it. Because the
bond is tight, and because a Coven generally intends to be around for
a few decades, they're kinda fussy about who joins. The wise Seeker is
equally fussy about which, if any, Coven s/he eventually joins. You're
not joining a social club here, you're adopting, and being adopted
into, an extended family. And this time round you have some control
over who your kin will be!
Neo-Pagan Temples are a fairly new phenomena combining many of the
characteristics of Covens and Groves. I think that the clearest
description of just what they're about comes from the (draft) Const-
itution of the proposed Victoria (B.C.) Temple:
a) To minister to the Pagan community by way of providing support,
education, and sponsoring religious celebrations;
b) to establish and maintain a religious sanctuary and place of wor-
ship accessible to all who would worship the Goddess and the God;
c) to provide a seminary for the training of Wiccan clergy;
d) to provide accredited ordination for Wiccan clergy;
e) to provide accurate information about Witchcraft to all who would
ask and to engage in dialogue with other religious groups with the
purpose of furthering understanding and friendship between us; and
2225
f) to do other charitable acts of goodwill as will benefit the comm-
unity at large.
As stated in my definition of Temple above, I consider the provision
of Neo-Pagan (not necessarily Wiccan) religious instruction and servi-
ces to the general public to be essential, and provision of community
services to the local Neo-Pagan population highly desirable. To be
taken seriously in the wider world, we need to have our clergy recog-
nised by our government(s), which in turn means that we need to be
visibly providing training and ordination which meets government
accreditation criteria (which can vary significantly from jurisdiction
to jurisdiction). Such accredited ordination is most easily adminis-
tered through Temples.
To address a diatribe current on the Nets (computer Network Bulletin
Boards: Ed.) so long as the governments we seek accreditation from
think in Christian terms, then we will have to use Christian terms,
carefully defined to earmark differences in usage, to describe our-
selves to them. Sure, there's some danger of picking up some ina-
ppropriate (to Wicca) ways of thinking along with those terms, but
we're more likely to import them with converts who were raised as C-
hristians. The solution to both problems is the same: clearly unde-
rstood (by the tutors above all!) religious instruction. And if a
Christian notion isn't inappropriate, and if it's truly useful, why
shouldn't we adopt it? Religious intolerance itself is inappropriate
to Wiccan thought, and I think we should be clearer in condemning it.
So how does it all tie together? I think that the Neo-Pagan community
needs a mix of solitaires, coveners and templers, along with sig-
nificant variety among their Traditions, to remain intellectually and
spiritually healthy. We also need umbrella organisations capable of
meeting the needs of each of them, not only for credibility with gov-
ernments and the general public, but to spread new (and not so new)
ideas around the very community they should exist to serve. I'll talk
more on what this umbrella organisation should look like in a bit. For
now, let's get back to roles of the different types of Circle.
One of the things that fascinates about the Craft is our teaching that
the Gods don't need a Priesthood to run interference between Them and
Their worshippers. Nor is this a new idea. Heroditus recorded with a
certain amazement that Persians must call on a Magus to perform every
little sacrifice, whereas among the Greeks of his time, anyone,
including housewives and slaves, could sacrifice at any time, assuming
they had the desire and the means. We have a Priesthood because some
people feel called to a deeper understanding and expression of
their faith than is the case for many. And while They don't need
Initiated Priesthoods, humans find them very useful both as a source
of thoughtful religious instruction and as a ready source of warm b-
odies to stick with the administrivia of organising group ritual.
Like sex, however, effective worship isn't something that just comes
naturally. It must be learnt, and practised. Groves, festivals and
Temples are all good places to learn the fundamentals, assuming you
weren't fortunate enough to learn them at home. They are also good
places to socialise with people who think much the way you do, a
deeply-seated human need we do well not to overlook. If your need runs
deeper, you will find Priesthood there to talk to. If your needs prove
more mystically oriented, they should be able to arrange contact with
2226
one or more Covens, who can in turn, if appropriate, Initiate you into
whichever flavour of the Mysteries they practise.
Different Circle structures serve different needs. None is superior to
the other except to the extent that it serves your needs better. For
those of us simply seeking to express our religious feelings in
sympathetic company, whichever form best serves that expression is all
we're likely to need. But those of us who feel called to serve the
greater community will need all of them to achieve the mandate we have
set ourselves.
To return to our model umbrella organisation, to serve a significant
majority of the community it will have to address as many of the r-
ather different needs of solitaires, Covens and Temples as is feasible
without stepping on the concerns of any of them. To be effective, it
has to have some standards, but it can't impose them from above witho-
ut violating the sovereignty that all three segments of the community
value rather highly.
One of the difficulties with any ideal is that it manifests imperfec-
tly, if indeed it can be brought to manifestation at all. Rather than
a discouragement, however, I find that a challenge: to bring about the
best fit possible between reality and our ideal. Here then are my
ideas on some of the attributes such an organisation can aim for. To
start from the top, I think the stated purpose of the organisation
should be to serve as a liaison between member clergy and the Es-
tablishment, whether government or public. Why clergy? Because we
don't need government approval simply to worship our Gods, especially
if we're doing so discreetly and on private property.
It's our institutions which need public recognition in order to be a-
ble to avail themselves of public resources available to other, alrea-
dy recognised, religions, not the worshippers themselves. And ins-
titutions effectively mean the clergy. Note I don't say Priesthood. I-
t's one of the earmarks of the Craft that all Initiates are clergy,
but in many of our Traditions, Priesthood requires a deeper underst-
anding of traditional lore and techniques.
The immediate needs such an organisation should attempt to fulfil are
essentially three:
1) Establishment of a Seminary to provide the training necessary for
government accreditation as a minister of religion for those who
need or seek said accreditation. To achieve this it will be
necessary to look into the minimal training expected by any
intended licensing bodies and ensure that those standards are
being met or exceeded by all graduates of said certification pro-
gram. This accreditation is to serve no other purpose within the
organisation: all of our members will be recognised by us as
clergy, whether or not they seek further accreditation.
2) To act as a public relations and information office on the Craft
to the general public. If we exist, we will be used as an infor-
mation source, so we might as well plan on it and do the job pr-
operly.
3) To act as a Craft contact and social network to facilitate Pagan
networking among members and non-members alike.
2227
To expand upon the seminary somewhat, any member should be able to sit
for an examination without taking the associated classes (a process
known in Ontario as "challenge for credit"). If s/he passes, s/he is
given the credit, if not, the associated courses must be taken before
s/he may sit for another examination on that subject. In this way we
can grant credit for existing knowledge without in any way comprom-
ising our standards. I think it would be a very bad idea to grant an
exemption from this procedure to anyone.
Because very few of us are likely to be able to drop everything for a
couple of years to travel to wherever we happen to establish the
campus, one should be able to complete the courses necessary for
certification by correspondence. Nor should the topics of instruction
be limited for those required for accreditation with government.
Let's also see to it that our ministers have a grounding in the phil-
osophy of religion, comparative religion (especially comparative Pagan
religion) and chaplaincy as well. Note too that I keep referring to
the document as a Certificate, not a college degree. A university
level of education, while great for the egos of graduates, is unneces-
sarily high to meet the needs of our Pagan laity - a Community College
is much more appropriate. The stages of learning in a guildcraft are
apprentice, journeyman and master, NOT baccalaureate, master and
doctor! Mind, I have no objection to our Seminary offering college
level courses, nor any other course or seminar it may choose to offer.
I merely object to the insistence in some quarters that since most
Christian ministers must hold graduate degrees, then by golly ours
must too! Horsefeathers!
Our Organisation then breaks down into a Seminary to provide internal
education, and accreditation, to Pagan religious tutors; a PR office
to provide external education, and referrals to the public; and one or
more Festivals, and no doubt a periodical (e.g. a newsletter), to p-
rovide for contacts and networking both internal and external.
Further, I see our Organisation as an ecclesia in the ancient Athenian
sense of the term, and assembly of all those having the right to vote
in our affairs. I don't feel the ecclesia should either set or attempt
to enforce any standards beyond those required for government ac-
creditation and a minimal ethical standard for membership. I feel that
membership should be restricted to ordained clergy within a Pagan
tradition, nor should the ecclesia itself set any standard as to what
does or does not constitute clergy (though I expect it may have to
define criteria for determining what is or isn't Pagan). All this
because any other approach compromises the essential sovereignty of
our Covens and Temples (for which purpose I see a solitary as a Coven
of 1).
Since our membership is composed of clergy, not Covens and Temples, I
favour one-person-one-vote. Certainly, groups with a large number of
ordained members will thereby gain a larger number of votes in the
ecclesia, why not? The ecclesia has no authority over individual
members nor the organisations they may represent. Its most extreme
power is to suspend the membership of persons found to be in violation
of the ethical code, which code is set and policed by the members
themselves. Or to appoint officers to manage the ecclesia's property
and affairs, which officers will be legally and constitutionally
answerable to the membership.
2228
On the topic of polity, I see the ecclesia/AGM as setting policy which
is then administered and interpreted by the officers. The officers
should have no power to set policy themselves. Our structure should be
absolutely minimalist to avoid unpleasant takeover bids later. Any
office or function which doesn't need to be there, shouldn't be there.
If someone has grounds for an ethics complaint, an ad hoc committee
should be assembled to look into it. If amends are made or the objec-
tionable behaviour corrected, then the case should be dropped (i.e.
the committee is focused on correcting unethical behaviour, not
punishing it).
On the subject of officers and their terms of office, I rather like
the notion of electing them in alternate years for two- year terms. A
one-year term is too hard on continuity. One possibility to avoid
little fiefdoms is to provide each function with two officers, one
senior and the other junior. Each year the senior officer retires, the
junior officer becomes the senior and a new junior officer is elected.
Continuity is preserved, and each officer gains an assistant who has a
year in which to learn the ropes. I think that barring the outgoing
senior from seeking re-election as a junior would be wasteful of
resources, myself, but it would certainly serve to break up fiefdoms
even further, should the ecclesia happen to be particularly paranoid
about them.
A not-so-little proposal, but the subject is an important one. This is
only somewhat-baked, and I see the need as both real and immediate, so
please give me some feedback on this.
2229
THE FEMININE CURRENT IN THE GOLDEN DAWN
by Peregrin
(A version of this article first appeared in SWEEPINGS).
Many Wiccans and Pagans, whilst declaring themselves "eclectic" seem
to avoid the Golden Dawn like the plague. This is quite understanda-
ble, since on the face of it the GD seems to be counter to most of the
Pagan philosophies. (The open hostilities and down putting directed at
Wiccans that pour out of some GD practitioners does not help the
matter either.)
The GD Is often viewed as inflexible, patriarchal, authoritarian and
stuck up its own behind. A few Wiccans do practise the GD, but most of
these, I feel do so with the belief that the two are watertight compa-
rtments - that is Wicca is a religion and the GD a "system". Most
(including myself), if they confide in you will admit that they view
the GD as more "powerful" - at least in the magical as opposed to the
religious sense.
It is my aim here to show that the essence of the GD is not inherently
patriarchal and opposed to Pagan ideology. This I believe can be r-
eadily observed if we remember that the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn was a late 19th century outward manifestation of a spiritual
system aeons old. The essence of the system would therefore be con-
tained within, but not altered by, and outward form that reflected
late 19th century western occult ideology. (Remember also that the GD
first emerged via Masonic sources and thus the outer form was heavily
coloured by that system.) This essence can however be readily "tapped
into". This will then help the magician avoid being trapped into
"believing" the GD's outer form. The essence I speak of is, of course,
the Goddess.
On the face of it to say that the GD's essence is Goddess sounds
absurd. But please do not judge the GD book by its cover. Forget the
outer form, forget the Victorian pomposity, forget the props. Let's go
a little deeper.
First off, the original GD System relied heavily on its ceremonial in-
itiations. The process of initiation (even the mimicry of ritual
initiation) always involves a death and re-birth, which can only truly
occur via Goddess, since only the "female" force of the universe can
give birth. Thus straightaway we see that at the core of the GD is an
unrecognised Goddess force. To deny it is to say that either, a) the
GD initiations do not involve a re-birth; b) something other than Go-
ddess can give birth; or c) the GD initiations are not effective,
which anyone who has undergone them will heartily dispute.
Christopher S Hyatt, the main collaborator with the late Israel Regar-
die before his death, in a recent book - The Secrets of Western Tantra
- makes several hints which echo the views I express. Says Hyatt, when
tracing the link between the GD and the Tantric Goddess:
"...one attribute among many others which gives the whole show away is
the equality between male and female adepts." (p.69)
For a Masonically derived Order in Victorian England this was an unpr-
ecedented and daring move. Yet this had to, and did occur, since the
Order's essence is based firmly on Goddess and the co-equality of the
2230
sexes. Looking a little more closely at the formation of the Order
will also show many other clues regarding the hidden Goddess essence.
Firstly, the leading light of the Order, S L MacGregor Mathers, was an
ardent supporter of the equality of the sexes and the young feminist
movement. In his introduction to "The Kabbalah Unveiled" he sets the
record straight concerning the nature of divinity:
"...the translators of the Bible have crowded out and smoothed up eve-
ry reference to the fact that Divinity is both masculine and femini-
ne... now we hear much of the Father and the Son, but we hear nothing
of the Mother in the ordinary religions of the day."
Presuming the hidden Goddess essence and following the mythology of
the Order, it becomes apparent why the "Secret Chiefs" chose such a
person to lead the GD. If the Order's essence was patriarchal they
would surely have chosen a different man.
Continuing with the examination we find that the Outer Order rituals
are based upon a set of cipher manuscripts. In those manuscripts, as
published in "The Secret Inner Order Rituals of the Golden Dawn", we
find the candidate is often referred to as "she". In an age when women
were still calling themselves "brothers" and "chairmen", this is
significant.
Further, the Order was chartered and given authority (ie, symbolic
life) by a woman (Sr SDA). Now admittedly serious doubt has been cast
upon this history, but regardless of whether the events occurred in
shared space-time or Westcott's mind, the symbolism is important - it
is a symbolic birth performed by a Goddess figure.
This theme is further developed in the naming of the first true GD
temple in England (and the initial temple of many GD Orders worldwide)
as the Isis-Urania temple. Thus the Order is visibly dedicated to, and
under the influence of, the Goddess. Behind all things, even GD t-
emples, is the Mother.
Before having a quick flick through Regardie's "The Golden Dawn" to
see what Goddess essence we can find there, let's pay attention to
some of the more prominent proteges of the Order. Firstly Mathers
himself went on to utilise his GD adeptship to develop, along with his
wife Moina, the Rites of Isis in Paris (the couple nearly always
worked as a partnership in their occult work.) Secondly Aleister Cr-
owley, despite his male ego, misogyny and viciousness went on to pr-
oduce a sort of Nuit "cult", using GD based techniques. Crowley him-
self is an excellent example of my point that inner essences do not
necessarily reflect outer forms and vice versa. It is hard to imagine
that such a person as Crowley (the man) could act as medium to such
Goddess inspired beauty as the closing paragraphs of the first chapter
of Liber Al vel Legis. Yet Goddess came forth anyway. Crowley, like
the GD was outwardly patriarchal, but contained the essence of God-
dess. There is no more Goddess inspired thealogy than Crowley's maxim,
"Do what Thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
Dion Fortune, initiate of the Stella Matutina, also used GD based tec-
hniques to help formulate her Pagan workings, the focus of which was
the Goddess Isis.
2231
The most obvious evidence of Goddess in the GD is the Rose-Cross, the
symbol of the combined female and male forces. The GD's Inner Order,
the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis claimed a Rosicrucian lineage, and
the links between the Rosicrucians and Goddess have been detailed
beautifully by Gareth Knight in his book, "The Rose Cross and the
Goddess".
We come then to the GD tarot, and find it restoring the court cards to
an equal sexual balance based upon the Tetragrammaton. The male knave
(page) of the exoteric packs of the era was correctly replaced by the
female princess, symbolic of the Earth Goddess.
In Qabalistic philosophy we find the spirit of the Divine often refe-
rred to as Shekinah, which is seen as having a female essence. This is
shown clearly by Mathers when he correctly translates a passage from
the Sepher Yetzirah:
"...AChTh RVCh ALHIM ChIIM: Achath (feminine, not Achad, masculine)
Ruach Elohim Chiim; One is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life."
This thealogy is followed in the GD. Israel Regardie shows this in his
ritual for Spiritual Advancement, which is based firmly upon the Z
documents of the Inner Order. Here he implores the Mother of Goddesses
and Gods (Aima Elohim) to aid him in his quest. Regardie even uses a
cauldron as a symbol of the Great Mother. This, believe it or not, is
not a Wiccan ritual, but pure Golden Dawn.
The main weapon of the RR et AC adept, the Lotus Wand, has embodied
within it much Goddess essence. It is described as, "...a simple wand
surmounted by the lotus flower of Isis. It symbolises the development
of creation." (The Golden Dawn, 5th ed. p224.) This indicates that the
creation of the Spirit, the Heavens and the Earth comes from the Great
Mother Isis. The wand also represents the Kundalini - a feminine
Goddess force. This to me is a beautiful tool, alive with Goddess,
much more so than the Wiccan athame (which is objected to by some
feminist Witches as being aggressive and masculine).
Finally let us return to initiations. The two most important init-
iations of the GD/RR et AC system, the Neophyte and the Adeptus Minor
ceremonies, both contain the hidden Goddess essence.
The Neophyte ceremony is based on the myth of the Slain and Risen
Osiris, where the candidate acts as the Slain Osiris. This myth ho-
wever is a later patriarchal rendition of the Ishtar and earlier Inna-
na myth of Goddess descending into the Underworld. The Goddess is thus
present deep within the archetypal theme of the ceremony. Further, the
act that seals the initiation proper, the final consecration, is
conducted by Officers representing "the Goddesses of the Scale of the
Balance". And as the badge of the grade is placed upon the new init-
iate, "... it is as the two Great Goddesses Isis and Nepthys, stret-
ched forth their wings over Osiris (the initiate) to restore him again
to life." The candidate is thus re-born to a fuller life by the power
of Goddess.
The Adeptus Minor ceremony contains much Goddess essence quite openly.
The clearest example of this is the Vault of the Adepti, and obvious
symbol of the Womb of Goddess. As Regardie briefly points out in his
introduction to the Golden Dawn, the candidate is led through the Twin
Pillars which symbolise the vagina and into the womb itself. There she
returns to the Great Mother and is re-born and out through the vagina
2232
once more. The symbolism is so obvious, so beautiful and so potent,
and I am surprised some Wiccan/Pagan group hasn't adapted the ceremony
in their own workings.
From the foregoing it can easily be seen that Goddess is alive and
well within the GD - at least in its essence. Sadly not many GD adepts
are aware of this. Most GD magicians get too caught up in the outer
form and potency of the system to notice where the energy and beauty
originate. I am not claiming that the GD is, or should be, a religion.
It is not, and its essence is not. The essence is however Goddess and
Her continuing manifestation in this world. If we are to remember and
consciously perceive this it will transform our GD work. Then the GD
will no longer be "dry" and without life - the perceptions most
Wiccans and natural Goddess worshippers intuitively feel.
For 100 years the Golden Dawn has concealed Her, the Mother of Light,
Life and Love. But now in this time when She is being worshipped by so
many in so many different ways, the Golden Dawn will at last reveal
its secret. And just as the Stone that the Builders rejected shall
become the Cornerstone of the Temple, so too shall Goddess become the
key to the 21st century manifestations of what is now the Golden Dawn.
The new Golden Dawn shall one day become as important as the Wiccan
movement in the collective invocation of Goddess. This process is
already beginning, and we can all take part in and promote it if we
Will. But whether we chose to or not, now is the time to bury the
false split between ceremonial and Pagan magic, for both are born of
the Mother and both will lead us back to her.
2233
THE RITUAL ABUSE SCANDAL IN BRITAIN
1991 reviewed & summarised by MICHAEL HOWARD
(This article first appeared in issue 63 of THE CAULDRON)
FEBRUARY: The liberal minded "Guardian" abandoned all its principles
and published an astonishing attack on the Craft written by left-wing
journalist Beatrix Campbell attempting to link it with so-called
"Satanic ritual abuse". Transcripts of interviews with children in the
Nottingham case were re-printed. This confidential information had
evidently been leaked to Campbell, who is known to be sympathetic to
the fundies. The article coincided with a failed attempt in Parliament
by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens to make it illegal for children to attend
pagan gatherings, Spiritualist Church services, New Age events or ps-
ychic fayres.
MARCH: Social workers and police seized nine children from their homes
in the Orkneys in Gestapo-style dawn raids alleging "ritual abuse".
This claim had originated from the confessions of other children
involved in a normal abuse case. It was alleged a hooded, masked and
cloaked figure known as "The Master", who also dressed as a Mutant
Ninja Turtle, and who was identified as the local vicar, had led
dances around a bonfire at a local quarry. Police seized items associ-
ated with "black magic" from the parents' houses. These included a
book of erotic poetry, and Oriental statue of a couple making love, a
letter written to the tooth fairy by one of the children, and a Guy F-
awkes mask! A week later the majority of children placed into care in
1990 following allegations of widespread "ritual abuse" on a Rochdale
council estate were returned to their parents. In court the police
said they had found no evidence and the social services were criti-
cised for their methods. The Rochdale case was followed by an official
statement by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for the UK, Sir John
Woodcock, who said the police had absolutely no evidence that "ritual
abuse" existed, He said that concern about the subject had been
exaggerated and got out of control.
APRIL: The children in the Orkneys case were released by order of the
local sheriff. Angry parents besieged the social services department.
In Ayrshire ten children were taken into care amid fantastic alle-
gations of human sacrifices and rituals held in a haunted castle, gra-
veyards, and a hot air balloon by parents dressed as clowns! Granada
Television's "World in Action" programme exposed the methods used by
the social services to extract confessions from children. A child
psychologist was quoted as saying that these methods were themselves a
form of abuse. Police in Aberdeen confirmed they had dropped charges
against six adults arrested for "ritual abuse".
JUNE: A doctor in Brighton claimed there was widespread "ritual abuse"
in Sussex involving animal sacrifices and "naked circle rituals" in
local woods. A police officer in charge of the child abuse unit in
Brighton said she was aware of the allegations but had no knowledge of
any confirmed case. Media reports suggest leading fundies involved in
spreading the "ritual abuse" myth in the UK were being secretly funded
by an extreme right-wing American group who believe the British Royal
family are international drug smugglers!
AUGUST: Three young sisters were put out for adoption following the
allegation of "ritual abuse" by their mother, her boyfriend, and their
grandparents. This
2234
was despite the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service had found no
evidence and were not contemplating criminal charges. "The News of the
World" did one of its famous exposes on the Paganlink-Up Gathering,
looking for evidence of "ritual abuse", but naturally found nothing.
The judicial enquiry into the Orkneys fiasco began with social workers
admitting they had ignored guidelines laid down after the Cleveland
affair. The social services Director claimed there was a widespread
conspiracy among the islanders to cover up the alleged abuse which
involved the vicar, local GP, and district nurse.
SEPTEMBER: It was revealed that none of the children in the Orkneys
"ritual abuse" case showed medical signs of sexual abuse. "The
Independent on Sunday" suggested stories of circle dancing had arisen
from a Hallowe'en fancy dress party held by the Brownies at the Church
Hall.
OCTOBER: BBC Wales television programme "Week In-Week Out" exposed the
activities of Maureen Davies, the Rev Kevin Logan, et al, and alleged
they had fabricated evidence of "ritual abuse" in North Wales.
NOVEMBER: The trial at the Old Bailey of a gypsy family allegedly
involved in Satanic rites and child abuse collapsed after one of the
child witnesses admitted fabricating evidence. It was said she got her
ideas from pornographic magazines. Two of those accused - who are
evangelical Christians and prison visitors - are seeking compensation
and taking their complaints to the Court of Human Rights in Stras-
bourg. One of them said he had been pressurised by the authorities to
sign a false confession. The Orkneys enquiry nearly ended when some
participants said they could not afford the legal costs without gov-
ernment help. The inquiry is costing œ100,000 (A$ 235,682) per week
and is expected to last until the end of 1992! Allegations were made
that the dawn raids were required because social services received i-
nformation that parents had threatened to use guns to stop their
children going into care. The saga continues.....
Two lessons have been learnt from last year's events. Firstly that the
ritual abuse myth is not a right-wing conspiracy. Left-wing journali-
sts, so-called Liberal publications like the "New Statesman" and the
"Guardian", and even Labour's spokeswoman on child affairs, have
supported the fundies. Secondly, while the authorities are wasting
millions of taxpayers' money investigating the "ritual abuse" myth and
dragging innocent people through the courts, resources are being
diverted from catching the real child abusers in our sick society, who
sadly include Christian priests and social workers.
2235
WARRIORSHIP
by Swein Runestaff
There has been much written on warriorship in recent times and i-
nterest in the subject shows no sign of diminishing. As Pagans we must
come to understand our warrior ancestry and, more importantly, adapt
its principles to modern life. If we fail in this task, we face the
prospect of becoming either meek and herded sheep, or branded outlaws,
condemned as were our ancestors, for our heresy.
Although I have read widely on the historical evidence, my own u-
nderstanding comes mainly from my training in a living Norwegian
tradition and in the Rune-Gild. There are many academic theories and
conjectures about the role of the warrior in Pagan society but very
few academics who understand warriorship. We Pagans do not have the
luxury of theorising, no matter how clever those theories may seem. If
they are not of practical benefit to us in daily life, they amount to
nothing more than intellectual wankery.
Paganism is about freedom. Freedom from dogma, freedom from our ne-
gative conditioning, habits, and inhibitions, freedom from our self-
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