To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/09/20 04:02
Subject: [K-list] Sad Day for the Witches
From: raymond.wand
On 1999/09/20 04:02, raymond.wand posted thus to the K-list:
DOREEN VALIENTE had the odd position of having to defend herself against the
charge of starting a new religion. It has been alleged that the contemporary
cult of Witchcraft, known to its practitioners as "Wicca", had been invented
by her in the 1950s. She flatly denied this, though shewas an important
figure in the revival, and did admit to having amended and augmented the
"Book of Shadows", as the Witches' sacred text is called.
Valiente had a fascination with Witchcraft from her early childhood, having
her first spiritual experience at the age of nine. However, she was brought
up as a Christian and sent to a convent school, which she walked outofat the
age of 15 and refused to return. The general view at the time was that
Witchcraft had died out.
In 1952- one year after the repeal of the last Witchcraft Act - Valiente got
in touch with Cecil Williamson, founder of the Museum of Witchcraft in the
Isle of Man; Williamson introduced her to a retired colonial civil servant
named Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated into Witchcraft in
the New Pbrest in 1939, andnowran his own coven. Valiente herself was
initiated by Gardner at the following summer solstice.
At this time Witchcraft was being attacked from two sides: by Christians who
maintained their old opinion that itwas all Devilworshlp, and by
rationalists who insisted that there was no such thing as Witchcraft. She
quickly discovered that the theology of Witchcraft was purely Pagan, and
that they did not therefore even believe in the Devil, whom they regarded as
a Christian invention. On the otherhand, she felt that the rituals did
release a real power from within.
Gardner admitted that the rites he had been taught were "fragmentary".
Valiente had a natural gift for poetry, so shewrote many songs and chants
tobe used in the Craft, such as "The Witches' Rune" and the "Invocation of
the Horned God". Gardener's attitude to publicity differed from Valiente's.
She believed it was absurd that he demanded oaths of secrecy from new
initiates, while giving interviews to Sunday newspapers. She was very quiet
about her own involvement at this time, not wishing her Christian mother to
know. In 1957 she left to found her own coven.
After her mother's death in 1964, Valiente became more open about what she
was. In her home town of Brighton she was a well-known figure, and often
gave interviews to the Evening Argus defending the Craft against
ill-informed attacks. But from the 1960s the explosive growth of Wicca made
her famous around the worid. This led to a backlash, with accusations that
she was guilty of, as it were, religious forgery.
Inresponse she collaborated with Janet and Stewart Farrax to produce The
Witches Bible Compleat (part i 1981, part ii 1964), in which she carefully
explained which ritual texts she had written and which she had not. She
wrote several other books including An ABC of Witchcraft (1973), Witchcraft
for Tomorrow (1978) and The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989).
Gardner had claimed that his 1939 initiation hadbeen given by "Old Dorothy"
Clutterbuck, a wealthy Hampshire woman. In 1980 an American professor
alleged that no such person had ever existed. Va- liente investigated and
eventually proved, not only that she had been real, but that in 1939
Cluttetbuck and Gerald Gardner had lived in the same village.
In later life, as the Witchcraft and Pagan revival became a mass movement,
she had the strange experience of finding material which she had originally
composed for a select few becoming common property. In 1985, whilst browsing
amongst stalls at a "Psychics' and Mystics' Fayre", she came across a pile
of printed sheets with the title "The Charge of the Goddess". Seeing her
interest, the stallholder started to explain that it was a form of Witches'
credo. She was obliged to say, "I know, I'm Doreen Valiente; I helped to
write it."
In 1997 Doreen Valiente spoke to more than a thousand people at the Pagan
Federation Conference. As she remarked, when she had first met Gerald
Gardner, 45 years previously, she could never have dreamt that one day she
wouldbeup in front of so many people. But the general feeling amongst the
audience was that she had done more than anyone else alive to revive the
Craft, and they gave her a standing ovation.
She left no close relatives, and her principal beneficiary will be the
Centre for Pagan Studies, in Surrey.
Doreen Dominy, witch born London January 1922;
married 1944 Casimiro Valiente (died 1972);
died Brighton, East Sussex 1 September1999.
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