The Priestess, the Witch, and the Women's Movement

514 Pages·2017·0English

Tel Aviv University
The Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities
The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies
Department of General History

The Priestess, the Witch, and the Women's

Movement: Women and Gender in British
Magical and Pagan Groups, c.1888 – c.1988

This dissertation is submitted for a PhD. Degree in the University of Tel-Aviv

By Shai Feraro

The dissertation was supervised

By Prof. David S. Katz

February 2016
Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………....i
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1
Chapter One: The Victorian Period…………………………………………………...…………34
- Spiritualism……………………………………………………………..………………..37
- Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society………………………………………………...40
- Anna Kingsford and the Hermetic Society………………………………………………48
- The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn………………………………………………..53
Chapter Two: The Edwardian and Interwar Period – Crowley, Fortune and Murray…………...70
- Aleister Crowley…………………………………………………………………………70
- Sex Magic and the OTO…………………………………………………………………74
- Dion Fortune……………………………………………………………………………..92
- Margaret Murray………………………………………………………………………..106
Chapter Three: The 1950s – 1960s: Gardner, Sanders and Cochrane………………………….114
- Gardner's Wicca………………………………………………………………………...114
- Robert Cochrane……………………………………………………………………......134
- The Regency……………………………………………………………………………141
- Alex and Maxine Sanders………………………………………………………………143
Chapter Four: Dianic and Feminist Witchcraft in America……………………………….……152
- Z. Budapest and Dianic Wicca……………………………………………………….....157
- Viewing radical/cultural feminism in Z Budapest's Writings…………………………..159
- Starhawk's Feminist Witchcraft and the Reclaiming tradition…………………………171
Chapter Five: Matriarchy Study Groups and the Arenas: Glastonbury, Greenham Common,
Summer Festivals and London…………………………………………………………….……189
- British feminists' views on Wicca and Feminist Spirituality…………………………...196
- Matriarchy Study Groups……………………………………………………………….202
- Glastonbury……………………………………………………………………………..217
- The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp………………………………………226
- Festivals, Conferences, and London……………………………………………………238
Chapter Six: Individual Case Studies of British Goddess Women and Dianic Witches connecting
British Wiccans and Feminism…………………………………………………………………250
- Pauline 'Asphodel' Long..................................................................................................251
- Kathy Jones……………………………………………………………………………..254
- Jean Freer……………………………………………………………………………….258
- Janet McCrickard……………………………………………………………………….270
- Felicity Wombwell……………………………………………………………………...274
- Shan Jayran……………………………………………………………………………..277
- Monica Sjöö…………………………………………………………………………….283
Chapter Seven: Main British Wiccan Authors React to WLM and Feminist Witchcraft………303
- The Sanders during the 1970s…………………………………………………………..304
- Stewart and Janet Farrar………………………………………………………………...306
- Patricia Crowther……………………………………………………………………….319
- Lois Bourne……………………………………………………………………………..330
- Doreen Valiente………………………………………………………………………...331
- Vivianne Crowley………………………………………………………………………344
- Marian Green…………………………………………………………………………...350
- Rae Beth………………………………………………………………………………...354
Chapter Eight: Women and Gender Issues among 1970s-1980s Wiccans and Wiccan-derived
Pagan, An Analysis of the Magazine Scene…………………………………………………....359
- Researching Zines………………………………………………………………………359
- The Wiccan……………………………………………………………………………..362
- The Cauldron…………………………………………………………………………...372
- The Aquarian Arrow……………………………………………………………………377
- Wood and Water………………………………………………………………………..378
- Beth Neilson, Loren Liebling, Imogen Cavanagh and Batya Podos…………………...385
- The Regency following the rise of the WLM…………………………………………..390
- Jo O'Cleirigh……………………………………………………………………………393
- Pagans Against Nukes…………………………………………………………………..395
- Moonshine………………………………………………………………………………405
- Phil Hine's Northern PaganLink News and Pagan News………………………………408
- Julian Vayne and Catherine Summers' Pagan Voice…………………………………...409
- Progressive Wicca and Dragon's Brew…………………………………………………412
- Kimberley Morgan's magazines and booklets………………………………………….413
- John Rowan……………………………………………………………………………..415
- The changing status of the Horned God………………………………………………..421
- Changes in gender relations during the 1980s………………………………………….425
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..………430
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………445
Acknowledgments
This dissertation could not have been written without the help and support of the following
organizations and individuals: My deep gratitude goes to my PhD advisor, Prof. David S. Katz,
whose insightful comments throughout the years spent working on this project helped me
transform my initial, more modest, idea into a dissertation spanning a whole century. His
commitment to my progress as a student and as a scholar has been truly unwavering.
The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies – under the consecutive leadership of Profs.
Billie Melman, Leo Corry and Aviad Kleinberg – has been an academic home in the full sense of
the word, and provided me with the best possible conditions for conducting my research,
including a generous monthly scholarship, a research allowance that enabled me to visit crucial
archives in Britain, and funding for interlibrary loans from the University library. Eilat Shalev-
Arato, The School's Secretary, was ever so kind and informative, and Iris Grunfeld and Daphna
Aronheime-Amar of the Sourasky Central Library Interlibrary Loans Department provided
immeasurable help. Between 2013 and 2016 the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the
Israeli Council for Higher Education granted me the prestigious Lev-Zion Scholarship for
Outstanding Ph.D. Students from Peripheral Areas, which – in addition to a generous monthly
scholarship – provided me with a substantial annual sum towards acquiring books, attending
overseas conferences, and visiting relevant archives.
Profs. Ronald Hutton and Ursula King, who served as the external reviewers of my
dissertation, provided me with insightful comments and vital notes which allowed me to further
perfect my work. I would like to extend my immense gratitude to Prof. Hutton, whose books on
contemporary and historical forms of witchcraft – and especially The Triumph of the Moon –
inspired me to embark upon this study almost six years ago. His continuous encouragement and
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advice over the years have been instrumental to my work. I furthermore wish to thank Dr. Isaac
Lubelsky, who has provided me with unremitting philosophical support and guidance for the
better part of a decade. Graham and Hannah at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, and
Hannah Lowery at the Special Collections Department of the Bristol University Library, were of
enormous help during my visit to the archives under their care.
Many other individuals provided crucial support over the course of this study, and while it
would be impossible to name all of them, some deserve special mention: Ilan Weiler gave me
unlimited access to his occult book collection (especially the works of Aleister Crowley) and
shared with me his immense knowledge of British Wicca and witchcraft. Orly Salinas Mizrahi,
my 'partner in crime' in the study of contemporary forms of Paganism in both Britain and Israel
did so as well, and as a fellow PhD student provided sympathy and emotional support in difficult
times. Hila Benyovits-Hoffman loaned me her copy of an obscure yet important work by Aleister
Crowley, and Ron Rosenfeld provided critical technical support when I was preparing the
dissertation for printing. Sheer Yoskovitz kindly allowed me have a book I purchased sent to her
US address and then brought it to me when she visited Israel. Haifa resident Nuri McBride, who
turned out to be the great-great granddaughter of Maud Gonne, transcribed several letters written
by Florence Farr in cursive English. Ethan Doyle White provided me with much needed scans of
certain back issues of The Cauldron. Prof. Kayoko Komatsu generously provided me with a copy
of her 1986 MA thesis and mailed me her personal archive on the Matriarchal Study Groups,
which turned out to be vital for my research. Prof. Henrik Bogdan shared with me a critical fact
regarding one of Crowley's OTO degrees when we met at a conference on Western Esotericism
at Colgate University.
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This dissertation – and indeed my entire academic activities – could not have been written
without the continuous support and encouragement of my family, and particularly my parents,
Avi and Hanna, and my grandparents, Ephraim and Batya, whose constant financial support the
last decade was instrumental to my ability to devote myself to academia and scholarship. Lastly,
but most importantly, I wish to thank Tom, my loving wife and best friend, for believing in me
and in my abilities and for never letting me forget my worth throughout the writing process of
this dissertation and the MA thesis that preceded it. Her ability to lift me up from the darkest of
moments, her comments on earlier drafts of my work and our shared interest in Paganism were
invaluable for my success as a scholar.

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Abstract

This dissertation endeavor to show how changes in views on gender and the place of
women in the modern world affected women's participation and position within British magical
and Pagan Groups, c. 1888-c.1988.
Victorian occultism is recognized by scholars for its refashioning and radical
transformation of Western esoteric tradition. One of these important – albeit under-researched –
transformations was the attitude towards women and their place within occult organizations. The
late Victorian period, while still dominated by the ideology of separate spheres of activities for
men and women, was also marked by important developments that affected the status of British
women, such as the gradual opening of higher education, the rise of ‘first-wave’ feminism and
the suffrage movement, and the appearance of the ‘New Woman’ trope. As late Victorians
debated ‘the Woman Question’, the status of women as leaders and members of British occult
groups was also changing. Spiritualism accorded certain women positions of respect and
influence as early as the mid Victorian period, but these were accorded precisely because
Spiritualist women were considered to be mere vessels through which the spirits could be
contacted. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, women like Madame were being viewed as
spiritual leaders in their own merit.
Many women (as well as men) gravitated toward Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, but
some TS members did not felt content with what they considered to be Blavatsky's over-
emphasis on eastern esoteric traditions. One of these individuals was Anna Kingsford (1846-
1888), a renowned occultist, women's rights campaigner and one of Britain's first female medical
Doctors, who in 1884 co-founded her own Hermetic Society – an organization that was
dedicated to promoting the comparative study of the philosophical and religious systems of the
east and the west, with special reference to the Greek Mysteries, the Hermetic Gnosis and the
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Cabala. In 1888, Kingsford's untimely death led two of the members in her now defunct
Hermetic Society to found a new Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD), that had been
thereafter described by researchers as the most influential of all British nineteenth-century
occultism initiatory groups. More importantly for the purposes of this dissertation, however, is
the fact that the Order was also the first of its kind in opening its ranks to women, and that
several of them even rose to prominent positions within the Order and wrote some of its teaching
papers. These developments, though, did not protect women initiates from being subjected to
some of the same attitudes, restrictions and gender roles which predominate Contemporary
Victorian society by their male counterpart within the Order.
The most notorious of Golden Dawn members was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who
was initiated into its ranks in 1898 and played a part in the Order's prolonged process of
dissolution during the first decade of the twentieth-century. By 1907 he had established his own
version of a Golden Dawn Order, one of four of such GD successor bodies, which he named
Argentinum Astrum. Sometime between 1910 and 1912 Crowley met a German by the name of
Theodor Reuss (1855-1923), who in 1906 founded an occultist Order called The Ordo Templi
Orientis (OTO). Crowley was duly initiated into the OTO and contributed to the Order by
writing rituals and developing Reuss's idea of 'sexual magic'. During the following decades he
also used the Order as a tool for spreading his own brand of religious tradition: Thelema.
Following the Great War, women over the age of 30 were granted the right of suffrage,
and by 1928 The Representation of the People Act in Britain extended the voting franchise to all
women over the age of 21. The 1920s and 1930s also gave rise to a new theory regarding the
European witch trials of the sixteen and seventeen centuries. This theory was developed by the
Egyptologist and Folklorist Margaret Murray (1863-1963), who claimed that the trials
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represented an attempt to eradicate a surviving pre-Christian pagan religion devoted to a Horned
God. Her theory dominated popular and academic discourses for decades and was finally
discredited during the 1970s, as historians began to critically approach the period of the
European witch trials.
Another woman who came into prominence during the interwar period as a leading figure
in the world of early twentieth-century British occultism was Violet Firth (1890-1946), who is
widely remembered today by her pen name of Dion Fortune. In 1919 she was initiated into one
of the four successor bodies of the GD: The Alpha et Omega. In 1928 Fortune left it in order to
establish her own organization, which was devoted to Christian mysticism. During the latter half
of the 1930s, however, she increasingly espoused a pagan approach to divinity in her writings –
with the Goddess being accorded an ever-increasing status – which later became an important
and acknowledged source of inspiration for Modern Pagan witches.
In the meantime, Crowley’s OTO activities dwindled considerably, as the Great Beast
approached the final years of his life. Following Crowley’s death, however, activities were
resumed by various successors. One of these individuals was Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), a
retired British civil servant and a member of the Folk-Lore Society, who was experienced in
various Western esoteric traditions. Gardner visited the aging Crowley at his home several times
during 1947 and was initiated by the latter into the OTO in the hope of reviving its activities in
England, but lost interest soon afterwards, embarking instead upon a quest for reviving (if not
conceiving) the ancient religion of pagan witchcraft as it was described by Margaret Murray.
Wicca – as the religion came to be known – began attracting both male and female followers
throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and in the meantime several other Wiccan-oriented traditions of
witchcraft begun to emerge in Britain, such as Alexandrian Witchcraft and the Traditional
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Witchcraft groups initiated and inspired by Robert Cochrane. Acting within loose structures, or
'covens', practitioners adhered to the Great Goddess and her consort, the Horned God, as
prescribed by Gardner.
Since its inception, Wicca has evolved into the most widely known and influential of the
denominations comprising 'Contemporary Paganism', an umbrella-term used for describing
modern attempts in the West for reviving various ethnic and magical traditions, mainly those of
the pre-Christian European world. Contemporary Paganism is built as a large network of small,
completely autonomous groups who make almost no real effort in proselytizing or owning
congregational buildings. Most Modern Pagans are not active in organized groups but work as
solitaries, who may join with other Pagans only occasionally; particularly during Pagan summer
festivals. Most Modern Pagans today reside within the United States and Great Britain, while the
rest are dispersed mostly throughout Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
As part of this dissertation’s analysis of the history of women's involvement in British
Magical and Pagan groups from the late-Victorian period to the late 1980 – as well as the ways
in which these burgeoning magical, spiritual and religious groups reacted to changing views on
women and gender relations during this period – I will attempt to claim that it was the second
burst of feminist creativity in both action and literature (widely referred to as 'second-wave'
feminism, or the 'women's liberation movement') that actually paved the way for an ever-
increasing involvement of women in the religious groups that would come to be labeled as
'Contemporary Paganism'. I will also analyze the ways in which British Wiccans reacted to these
significant changes, both in terms of Wiccan ideology and theology, and in terms of the gender
relations practiced within covens and in the Wiccan community at large.
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