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  2211

Subject: 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 a
d-
          vocating a "Western" - and within that, "Northern" - path of eso
teric
          spirituality than did the English ceremonial magician, Dion Fort
une.
          She founded an esoteric school that still persists, but beyond t
hat
          direct transmission, her ideas seeded themselves into modern Neo
pagan
          religion to the point that they seem completely indigenous, thei
r
          origins invisible.

          Certain of Fortune's key ideas, however, were not so much transm
itted
          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 m
agic
          ever written," in the words of Alan Richardson, her most adept b
iog-
          rapher1. Primary among these key ideas was her raising up of a l
unar,
          feminine divine power - not that she was the first modern magici
an 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, somethi
ng 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 (l
ater
          Society) of the Inner Light included the idea of hierarchies and
          grades, going back in her own self-proclaimed reincarnational hi
story
          to lifetimes among the sacred priestly caste of legendary Atlant
is.

          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 demons
trable
          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, ma
gical
          religion, which exalted the feminine principle, fit so neatly wi
th the
          cosmology of those modern witches who came out of a similar esot
eric
          British milieu, that the connection is unmistakable. The reason
it has
          not been acknowledged until recently is that to do so would conf
lict
          with the frequent assertion that Witchcraft was the "Old Religio
n"
          brought forward unchanged in its essentials from centuries ago.

          Unfortunately for that assertion, the historical records, such a
s they
          are, showed little evidence for secret goddess religion persisti
ng
          until recent centuries in Northern Europe. The voluminous "witch
          trial" documents of England, Scotland, and France, which the arc
haeol-
          ogist and folklorist Margaret Murray used to buttress her argume
nt 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 wid
ely
          influential book, The White Goddess, was written in 1944. Parall
el and
          contemporary with Graves is Gertrude Rachel Levy's The Gate of H
orn,
          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 enormousl
y 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 h
onour
          of the Moon-Goddess, or Muse,some of them dating from the Old St
one
          Age (Palaeolithic), and that this remains the language of true p
oe-
          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 m
ale 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 17
35 -
          largely at the urging of Spiritualist churches, who objected to
its
          prohibition of mediumship. This statutory change unexpectedly le
d 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 practitioner
s of
          maleficent magic; rather they claimed to be inheritors of the is
lands'
          pre-Christian religions. Their religion was duotheistic: they wo
r-
          shipped a male god, often called Cernnunos, Kernaya, or Herne; a
nd 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 know
n as
          "Gardnerian Witchcraft," after Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), who r
etired
          from the British colonial customs service in Malaya in 1936, ret
urned
          to England and - as he described - was initiated into what he hi
mself
          thought was a dying religion in 1938.5  This was no overnight co
nver-
          sion: Gardner was fascinated for many years with magical religio
n and
          "practical mysticism". A recognised avocational archaeologist an
d
          anthropologist in Malaya, during a visit to England in the 1920s
, he
          set out to investigate the claims of British Spiritualists, tran
ce
          mediums and the like.

          As he wrote: "I have been interested in magic and kindred subjec
ts all
          my life and have made a collection of magical instruments and ch
arms.
          These studies led me to spiritualist and other societies..."6

                 Gardner wrote three books on Witchcraft, one novel, and t
wo 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 "wi
tch-




  2213

          craft" portrayed in High Magic's Aid differs from what was later
          called "Gardnerian Witchcraft." In it the goddess is de-emphasis
ed;
          the rituals are more in line with the post-Renaissance tradition
s of
          ceremonial magic.

          Gardner's next two books, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) and W
itch-
          craft Today (1954), are more definitive of the tradition. All th
ree of
          the forenamed remain in print; an earlier novel, with the sugges
tive
          title A Goddess Arrives, is long out of print, and I have not be
en
          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 fort
h.
          Although it appears to be written in perhaps the English of the
17th
          century, I have concluded that it was produced during and immedi
ately
          after World War II. Its atmosphere of secrecy and underground or
gan-
          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 Germ
an
          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 unde
r-
          ground in Christian Western Europe was not Dion Fortune, but the
          Egyptologist Margaret Murray of University College, London. Prof
essor
          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 Egyp
t, 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 obvious
ly 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 star
ted
          with the usual idea that the Witches were all old women sufferin
g from
          illusions about the Devil and that their persecutors were wicked
ly
          prejudiced and perjured. I worked only from contemporary records
, and
          when I suddenly realised that the so-called Devil was simply a d
is-
          guised man I was startled, almost alarmed, by the way the record
ed
          facts fell into place, and showed that the Witches were members
of an
          old and primitive form of religion, and that the records had bee
n made
          by members of a new and persecuting form."

          Murray's researches into medieval and Renaissance witch-trial do
cu-
          ments from Britain, Ireland, and the Continent (including those
          relating to Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais) led to her writing t
hree
          books, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), The God of the W
itches
          (1931), and The Divine King in England (1954). In them she descr
ibed
          her evidence for the survival of a pre-Christian religion centre
d on
          the Horned God of fertility (later labelled "The Devil" by Chris
tian
          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 folklori
sts
          alike."8  Pointing out some parallels between medieval witchcraf
t and
          Indo-Tibetan magical religion, Eliade gives qualified approval t
o 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-Ch
ris-
          tian fertility cult and that specific survivals of this pagan cu
lt
          were stigmatised during the Middle Ages as witchcraft....recent
          research seems to confirm at least some aspects of her thesis. T
he
          Italian historian Carlo Ginsburg has proved that a popular ferti
lity
          cult, active in the province of Friule in the 16th and 17th cent
uries,
          was progressively modified under pressure of the Inquisition and
 ended
          by resembling the traditional notion of witchcraft. Moreover, re
cent
          investigations of Romanian popular culture have brought to light
 a
          number of pagan survivals which clearly indicate the existence o
f a
          fertility cult and of what may be called a "white magic," compar
able
          to some aspects of Western medieval witchcraft."

          One may thus argue that the existence of Murray's three works "p
aved
          the way for Gardner's reformation", as J. Gordon Melton of the I
n-
          stitute for the Study of American Religion put it.9  Gardner's "
reform-
          ation" of whatever British witchcraft existed prior to his initi
ation
          into it had both theological and ritual aspects. The works he an
d 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 Fort
une's.



                                   A PRACTICAL OCCULTIST
          In my experience, there is hardly a British, Irish or American w
itch
          of the revived, post-Gardnerian traditions who has not read some
thing
          by Dion Fortune, and the same probably holds true in Canada, Aus
t-
          ralia, or New Zealand. Until 1985, however, biographies of her w

ere
          nonexistent, even while the American Books in Print reference vo
lumes
          listed twenty of her books in that year's volume - not bad for s
omeone
          considered at best an obscure genre writer by the literary estab
lish-
          ment of fifty years ago and of today.

          Neither her book on psychology, The Machinery of the Mind, writt
en in
          the 1920s nor her works on occult philosophy, nor her five "occu
lt"
          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 Ava
lon of
          the Heart begins, "The author tells us that she is the last of t
he
          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 biog
raphy,
          Priestess, two years later, an affectionate and sensitive portra
it of
          this woman whose spiritual trajectory has yet to reach the horiz
on.11
                 Charles Fielding's and Carr Collins's The Story of Dion F
ortune
          contains more details of her and her associates' magical work, b
ut 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 1
890 in Wales,
          where her English father, together with his wife's relatives, op
erated
          a seaside hotel and health spa catering to a well-to-do clientel
e.
          When her grandfather's death led to a dissolving of the partners
hip,
          her father moved the family to London where he could live comfor
tably
          off his inheritance. Her spiritual quest as a young woman led he
r to
          Christian Science (which her mother adopted when it came to Engl
and),
          Freudian psychology, the "Eastern wisdom" of the Theosophical So
ciety,
          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 D
r
          Taverner. She would have liked to have studied Freemasonry, but
could
          not, being a woman.

          She studied psychology while in her twenties, before the outbrea
k of
          World War I, and practiced as a psychoanalyst for a time, the fi
eld
          not yet being closely controlled by the medical establishment. F
ortune
          was probably the first writer on ceremonial magic and hermetic i
deas
          to draw upon and acknowledge the work of Freud and later Jung. I
n her
          novel The Goat-Foot God, published in 1936 and dealing with the
          effects of both psychological repression and past lives, its cen
tral
          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 Lo
dge of the
          Theosophical Society. In 1927 she married Thomas Penry Evans, a
Welsh
          doctor practising in London, nicknamed "Merlin" or "Merl" for hi
s own
          magical interests. They were priest and priestess, but never fat
her
          and mother. The marriage, magically productive but contentious i
n the
          mundane world, lasted until 1939 when Evans left her for another
          woman. Fortune continued to head their group, which became the S
ociety
          of the Inner Light and maintained, for a time, both a large comm
unal
          house in London and another establishment in Glastonbury. The So
ciety
          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 Chan
ce."
          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 D
ownin-
          g. Surely Fortune's blending of

          psychoanalytical ideas, Hermeticism, Qabalah, and Christian myst
icism
          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 conta
ined
          by a psychology of self-integration that echoes its expiring Chr
istian
          model?"14

                 I doubt that Dion Fortune would have answered as dogmatic
ally as H-
          illman did, "The danger is that a true revival of paganism as re
ligion
          is then possible, with all its accoutrements of popular soothsay
ing,
          quack priesthoods, astrological divination, extravagant practice
s, and
          the erosion of psychic differentiation through delusional enthus
-
          iasms."

          Where she did agree with Jung is that Western methods are best f
or
          Western people. Jung wrote: "Instead of learning the spiritual t
ec-
          hniques of the East by heart and imitating them... it would be f
ar
          more to the point to find out whether there exists in the uncons
cious
          an introverted tendency similar to that which has been developed
 in
          spiritual principles in the East. We should then be in a positio
n to
          build on our own ground with our own methods."15

                 Compare Fortune's chapter "Eastern Methods and Western Bo
dies" in Sane
          in which she stated:16

                 "The pagan faiths of the West developed the nature contac
ts. Modern
          Western occultism, rising from this basis, seems to be taking fo
r its
          field the little-known powers of the mind. The Eastern tradition
 has a
          very highly developed metaphysics.... Nevertheless, when it come
s 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 i
n-
          advisability of an alien initiation does not lie in racial antag
onism,
          nor in any failure to appreciate the beauty and profundity of th
e
          Eastern systems, but for the same reason that Eastern methods of
          agriculture are inapplicable to the West - because conditions ar
e
          different."

          It is clear from Fortune's novels that a "true", that is psychol
ogic-
          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 psyc
ho-
          logical acumen with non-ordinary wisdom. She defined her ideal m
ixture
          thus in Sane Occultism: A knowledge of [occult] philosophy can g
ive a
          clue to the researches of the scientist and balance the ecstasie
s of
          the mystic; it may very well be that in the possibilities of rit
ual
          magic we shall find an invaluable therapeutic agent for use in c
ertain
          forms of mental disease; psychoanalysis has demonstrated that th
ese
          have no physiological cause, but it can seldom effect a cure."17

                 I see her as someone who shared a significant degree of p
hilosophical
          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 F
arrar,
          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 hav
ing
          received permission from the current leadership of the Society o
f the
          Inner Light to do so, they write:18

                 "In their letter of permission, the Society asked us to s
ay 'that Dion
          Fortune was not a Witch and did not have any connection with a c
oven,




  2217

          and that this Society is not in any way associated with the Craf
t of
          Witches.' We accede to their request; and when this book is publ
ished,
          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 respec
t) as
          they seem to imagine."

          Despite the Society of the Inner Light's disavowal, a good circu
msta-
          ntial case can be made that Fortune's works, particularly her no
vels,
          could have influenced Gerald Gardner and his initiates. This ins
ight
          was brought home to me while reading The Goat-Foot God, publishe
d two
          years before Gardner's initiation into the Craft. Its plot is ty
pical
          of Fortune: a person down on his or her luck and near psychologi
cal
          collapse is rescued by a powerful magician or priestess and re-i
nte-
          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 occult
ist
          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 Pa
ston'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 t
hings
          into a novel that they daren't put in sober prose, where you hav
e 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 Li
fe,
          The Cosmic Doctrine, Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage an
d what
          is often considered to be her masterpiece, The Mystical Qabalah.
          Robert Galbreath, writing a bibliographic survey of modern occul
tism,
          defined her message as "spiritual occultism."20

                 "Spiritual occultists state that it is possible to acquir
e personal,
          empirical knowledge of that which can only be taken on faith in
          religion or demonstrated through deductive reasoning in philosop
hy.
          Further, this knowledge, arrived at in full consciousness throug
h the
          use of spiritual disciplines, is said to reveal man's place in t
he
          spiritual plan of the universe and to reconcile the debilitating
          conflict between science and religion. The goal of occultism, th
e-
          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 me
ssage.
          They do it using a different vocabulary, a more consciously Paga
n
          vocabulary. While published statements of the Society of Inner L
ight
          proclaimed it "established on the enlightened and informed Chris
tian
          ethic and morality," its founder's novels say repeatedly that
          Christianity has had its day and a new Renaissance is dawning. A
fter
          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 agel
ess
          wisdom of the sages - a Renaissance came to the civilisation tha
t had
          sat in intellectual darkness since the days when the gods had wi
th-
          drawn before the assaults of the Galileans. What is going to hap
pen




  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 aw
akeni-
          ng? He wondered how far the realisation of an idea by one man, e
ven 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, Co
lonel
          Brangwyn the magician tells his new student, one of his former j
unior
          officers:22

                 "It [Christianity] had its place, Murchison, it had its p
lace. It
          sweetened life when paganism had become corrupt. We lack somethi
ng 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 Las
t
          Oracle" in praise of Paganism past - it was this aspect of Swinb
urne
          that G.K. Chesterton mockingly called "neo-Pagan" - making Murch
ison
          remember "that great pagan, Julian the Apostate, striving to mak
e head
          against the set of the tide," and Murchison thinks to himself:23

                 "And the trouble with Christianity was that it was so dar
ned lop-si-
          ded. Good, and jolly good, as far as it went, but you couldn't s
tretch
          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 aft
er th-
          ose two crusty old bachelors, Paul and Augustine, had finished w
ith
          it.

          And then came the heresy hunters and gave it a final curry-combi
ng,
          taking infinite pains to get rid of everything that it had inher
ited
          from older faiths. And they had been like the modern miller, who
          refines all the vitamins out of the bread and gives half the pop
ul-
          ation rickets. That was what was the matter with civilisation, i
t had
          spiritual rickets because its spiritual food was too refined. Ma
n
          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 unconscio
us of
          Western humanity appears over and over in Fortune's novels. It i
s not
          surprising that the writer who had two favourite maxims - "A rel
igion
          without a goddess is halfway to atheism" and "All the gods are o
ne god
          and all the goddesses are one goddess and there is one initiator
" -
          should repeatedly call for attention to be paid to the Great God
dess.
          In another of his soliloquies, Hugh Paston thinks, "Surely our o
f 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 ide
a that
          Christianity had had its day and furthermore was not always the
right
          path for Westerners was often heard. The major difference betwee
n
          their religion and that portrayed in the witch-trial documents M
ar-
          garet Murray studied, however, was the reintroduction of worship
 of
          the Great Goddess. She was seen both as Queen of Heaven and Eart
h/Sea
          Mother, depending on the context. The best evidence for Fortune'
s inf-




  2219

          luence here lies in the construction of the key "Gardnerian" rit
ual
          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 rit
ual c-
          ircle - and its elements and purpose are easily discernible in F
ort-
          une's novel The Sea Priestess, which she was forced by publisher
s'
          lack of interest to self-publish in 1938.26  Richardson, her bio
graphe-
          r, calls it and its sequel, Moon Magic, "the only novels on magi
c 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 cir
cle - a
          conscious creating and marking of sacred space, defined by the c
ardi-
          nal directions and purified with the four magical elements, fire
 and
          air (incense), water and earth (salt). While the priestess stand
s
          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, kne
es,
          womb, breast and lips. Then a shift occurs, both in language and
          action. He ceases to address her as a woman and begins to addres
s her
          as the Mother Goddess, beginning with the words,"I invoke thee a
nd
          call upon thee, Mighty Mother of us all..."28

                 When the invocation is completed, the priestess is consid
ered to be
          speaking as the Goddess, not as herself. She may go on to delive
r a
          passage (authored by Doreen Valiente, whose role I deal with bel
ow)
          that is based partly on material collected during the 1890s in I
taly
          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 Mot
her of
          all living, and my love is poured out upon the earth."

          She may, of course, speak spontaneously; Janet Farrar comments t
hat
          "'she never knows how it will come out.' Sometimes the wording i
tself
          is completely altered, with a spontaneous flow she listens to wi
th a
          detached part of her mind."30

                 Dion Fortune believed that a re-introduction of both ritu
al and ps-
          ychological approaches to the Great Goddess would even the psych
ic
          balance between men and women, a theme carried on today by a num
ber of
          feminist psychologists and writers, although with scant acknowle
d-
          gment. She wished every marriage to take on an aspect of the hie
ros
          gamos (divine marriage), and it is there that a parallel with Wi
tch-
          craft ritual lies, since many rituals turn on sexual polarity, b
oth
          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 t
he

          sacrament at her hands....When the body of a woman is made an al
tar




  2220

          for the worship of the Goddess who is all beauty and magnetic li
fe...
          then the Goddess enters the temple."

          This is not just Fortune's description of the magical side of ma
rri-
          age, but a virtual schematic of the Drawing Down the Moon ceremo
ny and
          its concluding Great Rite, as Gardner called ritual intercourse
at its
          conclusion (something more frequently performed symbolically). A
s the
          Farrars state, "The Great Rite specifically declares that the bo
dy 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, whic
h for-
          ms Chapter X of The Witches' Way, they were openly admitting a d
ebt 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 194
0s 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 1930
s, 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 t
he
          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 wr
ote in
          the 1920s. There may, however, be echoes of a Goddess religion i
n It-
          aly, based on Leland's research there in the mid-1800s. Leland p
r-
          ovided another literary source for the Drawing Down the Moon cer
emony.

          The person who re-wrote that ceremony and gave Gardnerian- tradi
tion
          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 o
ne of
          Gardner's original coveners still living (i.e., after he moved a
way
          from the coven that initiated him, most of whose members were el
derly
          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 k
now if
          they ever met, she told me in a 1985 letter. She did, however, s
ay
          that she is "very fond of Dion Fortune's books, especially her n
ovels
          The Sea Priestess, The Goat-Foot God, and Moon Magic. It is nota
ble
          that her [Fortune's] outlook became more pagan as she grew older
."
          Whether this is a tacit admission that she drew upon Fortune's w
orks,
          I cannot say. Witches are known for oblique statements, and Vali
ente
          walked a fine line between secrecy and disclosure.

          Given England's size, its relatively interwoven cliques of occul
tists,
          and the small number of novelists dealing with Pagan themes, it
is
          unlikely that Valiente and Gardner were not aware of Fortune's n
ovels
          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 t
hat F-
          ortune's novels began appearing, while the chapters of SaneOccul
tism
          were published serially in The Occult Review , and influential B
ritish
          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 d
ates,
          it is difficult not to see Dion Fortune as a previously unadmitt
ed but
          significant influence on the development of Gardnerian Witchcraf
t.

          Today the Goddess revival seems to have its "applied" and "theor
-
          etical" wings, with the Neo-Pagans in the first category and var
ious
          Jungians, writers on feminist spirituality and historians of rel
igion
          in the second. With her combined psychological and magical train
ing,
          Dion Fortune could be considered a foremother to each.

                                           NOTES
          1.   Alan Richardson, Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fort
une.
               (Wellingborough, Northants: The Aquarian Press, 1987), p.37
.

          2.   G. Rachel Levy, The Gate of Horn: A Study of Religions Conc
ep-
               tions of the Stone Age and Their Influence upon European Th
ought.
               (London: Faber and Faber, 1948).

          3.   Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A historical grammar of p
oetic
               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 successo
r to
               the Witchcraft Act of King James I, passed in 1604 and repe
aled
               in 1736.

          5.   J.L. Bracelin, Gerald Gardner: Witch. (London: Octagon Pres
s
               1960).

          6.   Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today. (London: Rider & Co.,
1954),
               p.18



          7.   Margaret Murray, My First Hundred Years. (London: William K
imber,
               1963), p.104. The title was no exaggeration; she was born i
n 18-
               63.

          8.   Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions:
 Essa-
               ys in Comparative Religions. (Chicago: University of Chicag
o Pre-
               ss, 1976), p.56

          9.   J. Gordon Melton, Magic, Witchcraft and Paganism in America
: A
               Bibliography. (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1982), p.1
05

          10.  Alan Richardson, Dancers to the Gods. (Wellingborough, Nort
hants:
               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 Fortun
e. (-
               Dallas, Texas: Star and Cross Publication, 1985).

          13.  Dion Fortune, The Goat-Foot God. (London: The Aquarian Pres
s,
               1971), p.89




  2222

          14.  James Hillman, "Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic."
               Appendix to David L. Miller, The New Polytheism. (Dallas, T
exas:
               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: T
he
               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 Bibli
o-
               graphic Survey." Journal of Popular Culture, V:3 (Winter 19
71),
               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 co
in-
               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 descri
ption
               in the Georgias of "the Thessalian witches who drawn down t
he
               moon from heaven."

          26.  Dion Fortune, The Sea Priestess. (London: Wynham Publicatio
ns Lt-
               d., 1976).

          27.  Janet and Stewart Farrar, Eight Sabbats for Witches: and Ri
tes
               for Birth, Marriage and Death. (London: Robert Hale, 1981),
 p.
               15.

          28.  The exact terminology may vary from coven to coven; the Far
rar's
               give Gardner's favourite.

          29.  Charles Godfrey Leland, Aradia: or the Gospel of the Witche
s. (L-
               ondon: David Nutt, 1899). Leland may indeed have found some
               fragments of a goddess religion. Gardner and Valiente expur
gated
               parts of it, such as the invocation of the Goddess as a poi
soner
               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.