by Wood Avens (Katy Jennison)

Doreen Valiente (1922–1999) is one of the most important figures in the history of modern religion. She wrote the Charge of the Goddess, the foundational liturgical text of Wicca; composed the Dryghten Prayer and seasonal rituals for the eight solar festivals; rewrote Gerald Gardner's original Book of Shadows into the form it largely takes today; tracked down the source materials behind Wicca's history; and set in motion the decentralisation of the Craft that made it available to millions. She was Gardner's High Priestess, Cochrane's collaborator, and the quiet engine behind a movement that by the time of her death had spread worldwide.

On Sunday 13 September 2009, the Centre for Pagan Studies organised "A Day for Doreen Valiente: The Charge of the Goddess Conference" at Conway Hall in London. The speakers included Ronald Hutton, Marian Green, Maxine Sanders, Fred Lamond (one of Gerald Gardner's last surviving initiates), Janet Farrar, and Gavin Bone — effectively every living elder of the Gardnerian and traditional crafts gathered to remember her. Wood Avens (Katy Jennison), a regular reporter on British Pagan events for alt.religion.wicca.moderated, was there, and wrote up her notes in this detailed record.

This is a primary document: a first-hand account of the testimonies of people who knew Doreen Valiente personally, who worked magic with her in the Sussex hills, who received her letters, and who built their practices on hers. As Ronald Hutton put it, her contribution has kept going long after Gerald's and Alex's claims of unbroken initiations are forgotten. The Day for Doreen Valiente was a reckoning — by the community she helped to make — with just how much she had given.

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 Doreen Valiente in Conway Hall on Sunday 13 September.

Ronald Hutton: Why She Mattered

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.

Why was she so important?

Firstly, 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.

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 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.

Isobel Andrade: Portugal

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: Magic in the Sussex Hills

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. They 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.

Maxine Sanders: Secret and Sacred

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.

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. 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. 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 followed, with one telling point: initiators, if any, are only the channel of the Gods. It is They who initiate.

Fred Lamond: Gardner's Coven

One of Gerald Gardner's few surviving initiates, Fred Lamond, 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.

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.

Panel Discussion

Following Fred, there was a panel which discussed questions from the floor. The panellists were Gavin Bone, Janet Farrar, Lois Bourne, Marian Green, Ronald Hutton, Zach Cox, and Jean Williams.

In answer to the first question, 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 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.

On the question of whether Paganism has 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. Gavin saw cyberspace as magic, pure energy, and it's the younger generation's medium. Should we be teaching children the Craft? Yes, said Janet, teach them about all the religions, and they'll choose. 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.

On 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 "A Witches' Bible", and these were meant as guidelines. Gavin: Gardner and Alex Sanders simply gave frameworks. The Oath in Janet's and Gavin's practice relates to secrets within the group — the secrets are to do with people, not pieces of paper. Ronald noted that each group must interpret it for themselves.

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.

Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone: Knowing Doreen

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.

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. Congratulations and thanks to the organisers, the Centre for Pagan Studies and John Belham-Payne.

Colophon

Written by Katy Jennison (Wood Avens), one of the most consistent chroniclers of British Wiccan events on alt.religion.wicca.moderated, where she documented Witchfest and other major Pagan gatherings for over a decade. This report covers the Charge of the Goddess Conference, held 13 September 2009 at Conway Hall, London, organised by the Centre for Pagan Studies. The conference featured Ronald Hutton, Marian Green, Maxine Sanders, Fred Lamond, Mary Rands, Isobel Andrade, Janet Farrar, Gavin Bone, Lois Bourne, Zach Cox, and Jean Williams.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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