A Day for Doreen Valiente
The Charge of the Goddess Conference
Americans have what they call Big Name Pagans. Here in Britain we don't have such things, partly because the initialism "BNP" stands for something altogether more sinister, and partly because we on this side of the herring-pond don't believe in encouraging people to give themselves airs. We do have a few esteemed elders, people who've been around rather a long time, but if they're rash enough to start making pronouncements you can be sure we'll make a point of disagreeing with them.
Quite a few of the BNPs we don't have were at the Day for DoreenValiente in Conway Hall on Sunday 13 September.
Ronald Hutton was the first speaker, and he revealed that back in the 1990s he was asked to submit a couple of names to be considered for the revised edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He suggested Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders, but they were turned down because the compilers didn't believe they had contributed to the national life of Britain. So (as he tells it) he went away and wrote "Triumph of the Moon". Not long after it was published, the ODNB people were back. They'd read the book. They agreed that they must have GG and AS - but they must also, they said, have Doreen Valiente.
(Since Oxfordshire libraries subscribe to the online ODNB, I looked her up when I got home, and there she is - a splendid article written by Ronald Hutton himself.)
Why was she so important?
Firstly, he said, because of her strength and her style. The disadvantages she faced were many. She was embracing Paganism and witchcraft at a time when it was the very thing that British society had defined itself against for the past 500 years. She was a woman at a time of male domination, when what mattered were "founding fathers". She clashed with Gerald Gardner and with Robert Cochrane when she asserted herself. She was self-educated, and she lacked the radiant physical beauty of Maxine, Patricia, Janet and Vivianne (and since Ronald expected us all to know who they are without adding their surnames, I'll assume the same. Three of them were there on the day).
Despite these obstacles, Doreen towered over everyone.
Her second strength was her amazing poetic talent. She wrote seasonal rituals for the solar festivals; she wrote the Charge of the Goddess; she wrote the Dryghten Prayer; and she wrote a complete Book of Shadows, containing the invocation which starts "Black spirits and white ..". She was very modest about all this: she rested, she said, on older sources such as the Carmina Gadelica. Certainly there are echoes, but what she wrote, Ronald pointed out, was actually very different. The Charge of the Goddess may have been inspired by Apuleius, but her words are completely original. "Dryghten" is an Anglo-Saxon word for "God", but all the rest is hers. The first line of "Black spirits and white" is a quotation from Dekker, but everything else is pure Valiente.
Thirdly, she was a pioneer of the history and the sources of witchcraft and Wicca. In 1962 she published "Where Witchcraft Lives", about current and medieval witchcraft in Sussex. Later she wrote a history of contemporary witchcraft, "An ABC of Witchcraft Past & Present", which traces its links with Hinduism and other spiritualities. In collaboration with Janet and Stewart Farrar she explored the literary sources which inspired Gerald Gardner, and she tracked down the elusive "Old Dorothy". Meanwhile she re-invented herself as a country lady, complete with the Dorset accent which she kept throughout her life.
Doreen continued to explore the dangerous and the counter-cultural. She introduced new rituals and she wrote a liturgy for Robert Cochrane. In 1978 she published "Witchcraft for Tomorrow", which included a ritual for self-initiation. This was in tune with the spirit of the times, ushering in a decade of self-discovery during the 1980s, with second-generation feminism, and, exemplified by Starhawk in America, a new strain of female power. She encouraged people to explore for themselves and to write their own liturgies.
Doreen was born a witch and a poet, said Ronald Hutton, and she was made a Wiccan by Gardner and a traditional witch by Cochrane. Finally, her influence has spread beyond witchcraft and Wicca: she set out the cycle of eight festivals and the circle-casting procedure which is largely followed (in many different ways) by all the current Pagan paths.
Making notes on Ronald Hutton's talks always takes it out of my writing hand, so I missed most of the next speaker, the Portuguese witch Isobel Andrade, whose practice was inspired by Doreen Valiente's book "Natural Magic". Isobel and her husband Jose Ferreira helped to develop the project of an international Pagan Federation, and became co-ordinators for Portugal, Spain and Brazil. So widely spread the ripples cast by Doreen Valiente!
Marian Green, who spoke next, is well known to all of us for being completely down-to-earth, often literally. She entertained us with scurrilous stories of Doreen and others. One of her stories had Doreen wrapping all her ritual equipment in the then newly-invented plastic bags, and the whole coven chasing after them as they blew away in the pitch dark. This attracted the large number of cows which lived in Doreen's chosen field, who gathered round the witches, their eyes gleaming green and their breath rapidly becoming a not-very-mystic fog. Doreen, Marian said, didn't like cows very much.
The point, though, was that she and Doreen and the rest of the coven were doing their rite for the living earth: magic lived in the woods and hills and wild places. The worked in the dark, so everything was unscripted: you couldn't read in the dark, you had to act from your spirit and connect to the power of the land, or on a seashore to the power of the ocean.
Marian regaled us with the occasion when the occultist Bill (W.G.) Gray was invited. He thought he should sort out the weather by conjuring up a foggy evening, for privacy and security. Doreen, who knew these hills and knew there was no likelihood of interruption, wanted a clear starry sky. Up the hill they went. At the top, thick mist lay on the ground ? up to four feet high, with the starry sky above it!
Bill swung the thurible vigorously, but being unused to outdoor working he hit a tree, showered himself with hot ashes, hit himself on the forehead with the rebounding thurible, and decided he didn't like witches. He went back to working in basements.
For Marian and Doreen in those days the power of the elements was really there: they inspired us, she said, and they brought such power- she seldom experienced anything as powerful as the evenings with Doreen in the Sussex hills. Doreen has left a legacy of books and words of magical power, linking to the Goddess of land, sky, trees, and bringing that power through to share with others. When Doreen held these meetings they included witches, Druids, Christians, all varieties: there was no need to have any particular path or practice, all came together to celebrate and honour the power of the land.
Oh, and Bill Gray, Marian added, made a brilliant pantomime dame ?
Ralph Harvey, who was next on to the platform, was also entertaining in his uniquely bizarre and wacky way, but I took no notes, so he'll have to be left to the imagination.
After lunch, Maxine Sanders spoke on keeping the Craft "secret and sacred". She recognised, she said, that within the Mysteries there was room for all opinions, and began by saying that it is actually impossible to reveal the real secrets to people who are not in a mental or spiritual place to understand them. The Mysteries are hidden for a reason: being hidden means that not everyone will seek for them; but a true vocation will never be denied. Through initiation, the witch moves out of the mundane into the priesthood, into a commitment to the magical journey and movement out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, there are always exceptions to the rule of initiation.
Since the early 1970s, new lines and traditions are being introduced all the time. Over time, though, they often revert to the originals, mainly because this is what works. Modern or "progressive" witchcraft is different from the earlier 1960s version: there has been a transition from fear-based secrecy to a more open practice. The Craft does acknowledge sincere developments: the true witch is open to adventure.
However, Maxine said, she wanted to challenge irresponsible initiators who cause harm and/or give no training or support. Not all High Priestesses are good at teaching or at supporting initiates on their life-long experiential path. A few initiators travel around, visit places and initiate people and then go, leaving them to fend for themselves, and this is irresponsible. And some High Priestesses leave out magic altogether. Without magic one can be a Pagan and worship the Goddess, but to be a witch it's necessary to worship through the practice of magic. Doreen Valiente's philosophy was that everyone was capable of magic, some more than others.
Some parts of Wicca, Maxine continued, have lost the mystery and gained ordinariness, partly because they publish details of the mystery of initiation (and here, I hardly need to add, she was having a thinly-veiled dig at one or two of the other speakers in the programme). In this respect, the Craft is the victim of its own success: the books are in demand because there are not enough covens or initiators. But people who learn only from books can miss out on the necessary discipline. Self-discipline and work over time are needed; people are disappointed if they believe that results are possible without commitment and work. In some cases, in consequence, Wicca has lost power, and moved towards a purely intellectual exercise. The effects of real ritual, however, are not ordinary, and can be very scary. A pre-requisite for this work is mental stability.
Finally, it would be good to concentrate on our own development rather than criticising the paths of others - unless what they do is actually harmful. We all need a touch of self-mockery and great self-awareness, she said. The "evoked ego" is there to perform the magic and create the desired effect, but it's not for personal glory. We keep the magic secret in order to maintain the sacred.
Mary Rands was next, but I've only noted one point of hers - but that a telling one. Initiators, if any, she said, are only the channel of the Gods: it is They who initiate.
Next (it was a fast-paced, packed day) was one of Gerald Gardner's few surviving initiates, Fred Lamond. He talked about his early experiences of Gerald's coven, into which he was initiated in 1957 by Dayonis, as Doreen wasn't there. At that time there were tensions within the coven over Gerald's willingness to be interviewed for the Press, and it split shortly afterwards, with most of the coven members choosing to go with Doreen while Fred and a few others stayed with Gerald and Dayonis - although Doreen's part disbanded a year later.
Fred had no contact with Doreen for the next thirty years. Later, when he asked her about the split, she said that she couldn't bear to take an oath of secrecy only to see Gerald telling everyone all about it. To Gerald the oath was high drama; to Doreen it was a proper promise, to be taken seriously. Fred himself, he said, believed that secrecy is essential for new initiates, but the more experienced come to know what they can and can't talk about.
Robert Cochrane, Fred said, invented the term "Gardnerian", and ran them down because they were not "hereditary". Gerald, Alex Sanders and Robert all had a lot of ego and display, whereas this was not at all true of Doreen, whose contribution was crucial, and indeed has kept going long after Gerald's and Alex's claims of unbroken initiations are forgotten. Doreen had very little time for "lineage". A Long Island coven which gave out "pedigrees" to their initiates were not pleased when Doreen found this ridiculous and said so.
Fred's only quibble is over Doreen's claim that people can self-initiate: he holds that the term "initiation" implies admission into a group, and that self-initiation would be more appropriately called a dedication. Such people would still need to be initiated into a coven when and if they joined one, even if they needed no further initiation into the service of the Gods.
Following Fred, there was a panel which discussed questions from the floor. It was an impressive line-up: the panellists were Gavin Bone, Janet Farrar, Lois Bourne, Marian Green, Ronald Hutton, Zach Cox, and Jean Williams. A great deal of ground was covered, and the questions came thick and fast. In answer to the first, Janet said that being given her second and third degrees together, when she was in her twenties, was rubbish: she didn't have the necessary experience, and she doesn't agree with it. The next question and answer were very short: is the internet a help or a hindrance? Answer: both!
The next question was about "hyphen-Wicca " - "Christian Wicca", various fictional-character-Wiccas. Gavin replied that the real question is "Will it work?" He once saw a Klingon ritual in California, devised on the spur of the moment in response to a feminist objection to a straight "exclusive male" ritual; it worked. Jean answered, in relation to Christian Wicca, that there was some meeting-ground: there have been instances of women dancing circles in cathedrals, and there are increasing numbers of multifaith dedications and a general movement towards a greater honouring of nature. Much of the religious side of Wicca is very meaningful to meditative and mystic Christians. Where they part company, however, is over magic versus prayer. But the conflicts are on the whole not between the ideas, but at the level at which they're applied: there is no "one true way". Lois added that Gerald Gardner believed it was possible to be both a Christian and a Wiccan. There were a couple of further questions about the compatibility of Wicca with different cultures and nationalities: Janet replied that Wicca and its equivalents was the Old Religion of every culture in the world, and it's your own Deities who initiate and teach you: no man or woman can teach you the Craft.
Responding to a question about current developments, Marian was glad that Paganism has become acceptable, no longer gets a bad Press, and that the Police Federation can have its own Pagan group, Halloween is widely celebrated, and Scotland now has the validity of Paganism written into its constitution. Gavin, as the "new guy" who had arrived at Paganism in the 1980s, saw a repeating pattern over the years, with peaks of new ideas and new people, and troughs of consolidation: the ideas that are found to work are kept, there's a period of stability, then something else new happens. In the 1980s it was Shamanism; in the 1990s it was Buffy. We are currently in a stable phase, but there will be another wave of new ideas along in a year or two. Paganism evolves: if you believe in Mother Nature, you believe in evolution.
Next, a question about cyberpagans and youngsters: has Paganism become too mainstream? Ronald said that cyberspace represented the open frontier: it was good to have a measure of respectability, but Wicca and paganism also still represent revolution, and we shouldn't become just another stream in the supermarket: we should always progress. Zach saw cyberspace as part of the mythos of the 21st century, with God the Game Designer: Buddhism was at one end of the spectrum and cybernetics at the other. In Hebrew, he noted, "W" and "V" are the same letter, and the numeric values for the letters www are 666: perhaps the US fundamentalists will notice this one day! For Gavin, cyberspace is magic, pure energy, and it's the younger generation's medium: we all need to accept that, or we cannot pass on our knowledge.
Should we be teaching children the Craft? Yes, said Janet, teach them about all the religions, and they'll choose. Yes, said Gavin - all the other religions do, why can't we? We shouldn't teach them magic, but we should certainly introduce them to the festivals. The rest of the panel agreed.
One questioner had met a coven of "fundamentalist" witches who rejected anything "non-Wiccan", such as meditation, which they saw as belonging to an alien tradition. Jean replied that the Wiccan way was to teach, and learn, about everything that might be valuable: one-true-wayism is anathema. Gavin added that the first law of the Craft is "If it works, use it". Janet said that if a teacher forbids things and doesn't give a good reason, walk away from that teacher. Ronald cautioned that there can be practical problems for children, for instance at school or with friends, and that there sometimes need to be boundaries. He saw the current Craft as a series of concentric circles, starting in the centre with Gerald Gardner, moving out to his initiates, next to Wiccans who have learnt from Doreen Valiente's books, then to self-initiated covens in the US, and then to the new, self-invented traditions.
In response to a question about oath-bound material, Janet said that the original Book of Shadows was very thin: she and Stewart devised and put together the rituals which were eventually published in what became "A Witches' Bible". These rituals were meant as guidelines, and people were expected to work out their own: as a result, what Gerald Gardner started has been amplified year on year. Gavin agreed: Gardner and Alex Sanders simply gave frameworks. The Oath in Janet's and Gavin's practice relates to secrets within the group, just as in any therapeutic group: the secrets are to do with people, not pieces of paper. Ronald's take on this question was that there can be no one rule: each group or coven must interpret it for themselves Gerald's own "Witchcraft Today" published two full-scale rituals. In the US, however, particular groups have their own defining liturgies. As ever, if it works for you, do it.
Finally, a questioner asked whether there might ever be a specifically "Valientean" tradition of the Craft. Ronald spoke for everyone when he said that this was the last thing she would have wanted: Doreen's work is in all the strands of the Craft: don't let us tie her to just one!
The panel session was something of a marathon, and as a result I missed most of the talk by a charming young American, Will Kale (the only person there who was wearing a tie). He has been working with John Belham-Payne, Doreen's last working partner, to archive her legacy, under the auspices of the Centre for Pagan Studies.
The last speakers were Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone. Gavin had put together his own spiritual path, taking nature Gods from Hinduism, reincarnation from Buddhism, polarity from Taoism, before reading Doreen Valiente's "An ABC of Witchcraft" and immediately getting that "coming home feeling" of realising that he was a witch. In due course he met Janet and Stewart: Janet took him to meet Doreen, and he was immediately struck by how unassuming she was, as she told them to sit down while she went to make a cup of tea. Gerald Gardner's Book of Shadows, he said, was propping up one leg of her bed. Doreen never called herself a High Priestess outside the circle: she said that there were no lords or ladies in witchcraft except the Lord and the Lady.
Janet first met Doreen through Alex Sanders, who said that she was "reclusive and crotchety": she wasn't, except when she was interrupted while watching the World Cup. Janet and Stewart published some of Doreen's rituals, under the belief that they were rituals which had been handed down to Alex from his grandmother, and were criticised for revealing Craft secrets: however, Doreen wrote to Stewart telling him that she had written them, and was perfectly happy for them to be published.
In another letter, Doreen wrote that she hated the fact that her version of the Charge of the Goddess was being used all the time, when it had been intended only as a back-up if a priestess's own spontaneous invocation failed to materialise. The original Charge was a mixture of Leland and Aleister Crowley: Doreen re-wrote it, cutting out Crowley's phraseology, but found that she had still left echoes of Crowley, whose poetry she very much admired. She certainly never considered the Charge to be oath-bound, and wanted it published: she wanted people to read Janet's and Stewart's book rather than Lady Sheba's.
A further letter from Doreen addressed the "Craft Laws", which Gerald was said to have written and which Lady Sheba had produced in a much-expanded version. Gerald's "laws" had actually been written by Doreen. She was fed up with Gerald constantly giving interviews and sending material out. The coven tried to get a set of rules agreed, and Doreen typed them out, but Gerald said this was unnecessary since laws already existed. He then produced them, but Doreen and the others had never seen them before, and were sure Gerald had simply made them up on the spot. No laws existed, Doreen said, before 1957. Gerald was just as bad as Alex for publicity and invention.
Doreen herself, said Janet, was happy to curse if the occasion required it, as when there was a rapist at large in Brighton, where she lived. She wanted Wicca to be honest, and her approach to the Book of Shadows was either to track down the original or to write it herself. In doing so, she drew on the literature of the time.
Finally, summing up, Janet said that Doreen brought groundedness and reality to the Craft, as well as poetry, prose and liturgy.
The last part of the programme was a video of Doreen herself. It was a joy to see her again, if only on a screen. As John Belham-Payne said in his introduction, she was always smiling.
It was an excellent day, and a stellar cast of speakers (except of course that we don't have stars here). And there were others, not on the platform but simply being there: I was delighted to catch up with Vivianne and Chris Crowley, and to see Philip Heselton, to name but three. Congratulations and thanks to the organisers, the Centre for Pagan Studies and John Belham-Payne.
Next year: A Day for Gerald Gardner, on 19 September 2010.