THE INFLUENCE OF THE GOLDEN DAWN ON MODERN WITCHCRAFT

INTRODUCTION Today I am going to talk about one major influence on modern Wicca, that of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was only one of many influences, some of which will be mentioned as we go along, but not explored. Also, it should be said there are certainly areas of Wicca that show little or no influence of the Golden Dawn. Equally though, there are some areas that display clear and lasting influence. Some of these are not readily apparent, so I hope this talk will provide some new information and ideas. I want to make it clear, that I see the Golden Dawn as an indirect influence on Wicca - this is because I believe there are no direct influences apart from the Goddess. That is to say, that all the various components within Wicca that were borrowed from other traditions and resources are used within Wicca in a different manner, sometimes quite different, from their origins. Also, I want to be quite clear that I will be speaking about historical events, people and places, rather than mythic histories. Both are equally valuable but today we are looking at actual, verifiable history and reasonable assumptions based on this history. Because of time and conceptual limitations I will be focusing on the creation of the standard version of Gardnerian Wicca, up to roughly 1957. I will not be examining the influence on later variants of the Gardnerian mould, such as Alexandrian Wicca or the continued use of Golden Dawn techniques in covens today. The discussion below makes conscious use of Huttons outline of the elements of Wicca in the first part of his Triumph of the Moon. --GERALD GARDNER Gerald Gardner was without doubt the founder or at least foremost promoter of Wicca. The title of his excellent recent biography by Philip Heselton states the matter plainly: Witchfather. So it is to Gardner one first looks regarding the origins of Wicca. In Witchcraft Today, Gardner writes: "The people who certainly would have had the knowledge and ability to invent [the Wiccan rituals] were the people who formed the Order of the Golden Dawn about seventy years ago ...

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Now Gardner was in the habit of being coy when writing, often hiding the bone or twisting facts just a little to put people off the scent. Looking precisely at what he wrote, he is NOT saying the GD founders may have written the Wiccan rituals. He is saying they had the 'knowledge and ability' to do so. There is a difference - the former implies a direct influence, the latter an indirect influence, where the knowledge, ideas, methods and practices of the GD could have been used in the (re)creation of Wicca. I think this is exactly what happened and Gardner was both revealing and hiding the truth with this carefully worded statement. We will now explore just how this may have occurred. THE GOLDEN DAWN In his wonderful and groundbreaking work, Triumph of the Moon and other works, Professor Ronald Hutton describes Wicca's lineage as magical not religious. By this he means that Wicca, by drawing on magical and esoteric precedents is heir to an amazing and long lineage of magical practice and thought, but that most of this heritage was not religiously Pagan as we understand the term, much less Witchcraft-pagan. As we now know, Wicca, despite early foundational myths, was not a continuation of a medieval or ancient tradition, but was newly (re)formed during the early 20th century, drawing on contemporary magical ideas, themes, literature and unpublished texts. The magic that Wicca inherited was in many ways the magic of the Golden Dawn. Though there is no direct lineal descent from the GD to Wicca, the Golden Dawn was the most important, revolutionary and influential magical group of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It was also, crucially, a semi-public magical group allowing its methods, structures, and ways of magic to permeate throughout the entire esoteric and occult community of the British Isles and beyond. A good example of this is the influence the Order also had on the other main stream of Pagan revival at the time, the burgeoning Druid movement. But thats another lecture :) The roots of the Golden Dawn can be traced to the formation of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society of England) in London, in 1865. This society took its source documents from previous Rosicrucian groups and inspiration from the original myth of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, a 17th century group of Christian-Hermetic mystics, possessed of ancient wisdom and methods of healing, the holders of the esoteric or hidden spiritual wisdom in the West. The SIRA was and is largely a study based esoteric group. Even though practicing a series of beautiful and intense initiation ceremonies, the groups focus is largely theoretical. Three senior members of the SIRA, Samuel Mathers, Dr William Wynn Westcott and William Robert Woodford wanted more than to simply study magic and Qabalah. And so in 1888 a more practical orientated organisation was born, often called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

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Mathers and Westcott were keen to put into actual practice the universal and hermetic philosophies they had been studying within the various groups they belonged to. They were also both immensely influenced by the French writer, Eliphas Levi, who decades before had transformed the traditional conception of magic into a spiritual art. The pair were also supportive of the proto-feminist movement and despite being steeped in Masonic tradition, were determined that the Golden Dawn would be open equally to women as well as men. Now in 1888 this was unprecedented and revolutionary and shows how the founders of the Golden Dawn were being inspired by the changes in spiritual consciousness then forming in the west. Women were to play a major role in the Golden Dawn, as detailed in Mary K. Greers Women of the Golden Dawn which is aptly subtitled Rebels and Priestesses describing the roles these women undertook rebelling against the social structures and mores of the time to Priestess the Old Gods, now returning via the work of the broader GD tradition. So in summary, the Golden Dawn took the nascent occult revisionism of Eliphas Levi from the 19th century where he reframed occultism as a spiritual science, combined it with the Rosicrucian tradition, universalism and esoteric Freemasonry to create not only a new tradition, but a new way of framing and understanding magic. It is fair to say the Golden Dawn created the modern magical milieu that exists up unto today. WICCA While the complete history of Wicca may never be known, much can and has been discerned. The bare facts are that Gerald Gardner, a former colonial worker interested in magic, mysticism and the occult, retired back to England in 1936. Settling in Christchurch he became friendly with members of an esoteric based theatre company and intimate with a smaller sub-set of people within the company. This smaller group contained members of a family that appears to have had a two or three generation hereditary interest in western occultism as well as a few locals who may have been starting to identify themselves as 'white Witches'. In 1939 Gardner claims to have undergone initiation into what he termed at the time, 'the Witch cult' and learnt that it had been a secret cult of magical Pagans stretching back to antiquity. Ten years later and onwards, Gardner started writing about Wicca, which he did firstly in a novel and then in a small number of non-fiction works and an increasing amount of daily paper and magazine interviews. The Witchcraft history he wrote about was virtually identical to that of anthropologist Margaret Murray as published by her in two books, one in 1923 and one in 1933. Because of this and major flaws in Murray's own thesis, Gardner's account has never been accepted as historical by virtually all reliable historians. Obviously however, something was going on. Gardner always maintained that what he received from the Witches was 'sparse' and he filled in the gaps with other material and his own compositions. This 'filling in', which in percentile terms often amounts to a clear majority, is where we see the influence of the Golden Dawn.

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PAGANISM Throughout the 19th century the concept of what 'Paganism' was began to change. Rather than being a form of primitivism or remote collection of ancient but noble civilisations, Pagan religions began to be seen as admirable and intimately connected with the idealised countryside (as opposed to the expanding industrialised urban centres). Pagan religions were now seen as: joyous, liberationist, and life-affirming traditions, profoundly and valuably connected with both the natural world and with human spirit creativity. (Hutton). In 1892 the first English language journal devoted to Paganism was launched, The Pagan Review. Its editor was the poet and Golden Dawn adept William Sharp. The journals aims still resonate with us now in 2012: to herald a new age in which the long hostility between the sexes would end in the resumption of true partnership, and sexual union be recognized as the flower of human life. The reason why all this seems natural to us now is because weve had a century of these ideas as religious ideals, promulgated by generations of new Pagans, the first of which were often connected with or members of the Golden Dawn tradition. THE GODDESS During roughly the same period the concept of ancient Pagan goddesses was undergoing a revolution. A significant part of the change was the rise of a generalised Goddess often referred to as Mother Earth or Mother Nature, she who we know simply as The Goddess. By the 20th century this composite Goddess was seen by many writers as the primal Goddess of which all other Goddesses were aspects. Now this idea does have a few historical precedents, most notably within the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (the Golden Ass) from around 170 ce, but by and large ancient conceptions of deities were part of a hard polytheism and not universal or composite at all. Members of the Golden Dawn had a significant part to play in this return of the Goddess. In 1892 Golden Dawn leader, Samuel Mathers and his wife Moina were directed by the inner Guardians of the Order to move to Paris. Whilst there they were instructed to revive the worship of Isis in that city and the western world. They did this by founding an initiatory temple of the Isian mysteries as well as public performance rituals and plays in 1899. This, it should be noted was 50 years before Gerald Gardner published High Magics Aid and 80 years before public Goddess work became common in the west. During the first half of the 20th century the Mathers and other adepts of the GD, Crowley, Farr, Fortune, really broke the soil with respect to actually working with and worshipping Goddesses and pagan deities rather than approaching them intellectually or through literature, as had been done up to that point. In a very real sense these were the first modern Pagans. All of this has
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direct relevance to the return of the Goddess that was to come about largely through the emergence of Wicca in the second half of the 20th century. THE GOD Similar changes and adaptations were taking place in the view of Pagan gods, leading to the prominence of the composite God most associated with nature, the wild, sexuality and primal spirituality the modern Pan. This Gods importance in literature and art was also helped along by those connected with or members of the Golden Dawn. George Russell (AE), theosophist and close friend of W.B. Yeats, onetime leader of a GD Order, wrote poems and stories dedicated to the God. Algernon Blackwood, one of the earliest and most influential fantasy and horror writers, was rapturous in his praise of Pan in his A Touch of Pan. He was another member of the Golden Dawn. As was his friend Arthur Machen author of the highly influential and still in print, The Great God Pan. And like the Goddess, Golden Dawn members were at the front of moving Pan from the realm of literary adoration to actual religious worship, the most famous being Aleister Crowley. There was also of course the more stable and accomplished Dion Fortune and her Rites of Pan, only part of which is published in her novel The Goat-Foot God, the invocations of which are still favourites for many Wiccan covens worldwide.

WITCHCRAFT In 1828 a German scholar, Karl Ernst Jarcke suggested that early modern Witches were actually practicing a degenerate form of ancient Paganism. Suggestions of links between Witchcraft and Paganism had been made on occasion previously by Church authorities as part of their denouncement of supposed Satanic-Witchcraft, but none had any large influence on scholarly, and later public opinion. Over the next 40 years though Jackes ideas were taken up by the intelligentsia and spread widely. However, they were to receive an unexpected twist in 1862 by an important French socialist writer, Jules Michelet in his book La Sorcire. Michelet reversed the sympathies of Jarckes thesis and declared - based on virtually no evidence or research - that Witchcraft was actually the continuation of a healthy, life affirming Pagan religion which had kept the wisdom of the ancients intact during the long, dark centuries of medieval Christendom. The Witch was now reframed as the Priestess of the new concept of Paganism previously talked about, as well as a magician, healer and wise woman. Michelets work was to greatly influence one of Gerald Gardners main literary influences, Margaret Murray. Gardner also owned copies of Michelets books. This newly invigorated idea of Pagan White Witchcraft quickly found a home in English literature and thought. And again, Golden Dawn members such as J.W. Brodie Innes and Algernon Blackwood all wrote about and spread this idea of a Pagan and magical white Witchcraft. It became so much part of the thinking of the occult community at the time that

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one of Dion Fortunes students, Christine Campbell-Thompson, was having past life memories in the 1930s of a medieval religious-Witch life and never questioned the concept. Gardner at some point adopted this view - he did not always think this way. Gardner's first novel, A Goddess Arrives was probably published late 1939 or early 1940. The Witch in the story is not a very nice person at all, performing sacrifices of animals and humans to Hecate in circles drawn from blood. In short a classic example of the traditional view of the evil Witch, only modified in her allegiance to a Pagan Goddess rather than a Christian devil that is to say Gardner had rejected the traditional view of a Satanic Witchcraft by adopting Jarckes view of Witchcraft as a degenerate Pagan religion. Gardner had obviously not yet fully imbibed the new view of Witchcraft extant in the British occult community at that time. This was because for most of his adult life, up until 1936 he lived abroad and little contact with current occult and literary thought in England. This changed upon his return and more particularly during his enforced stay within the UK due to the war between 1939 and 1945. During this time he adopted the new view of Witchcraft, was initiated and wrote the drafts for his second novel, High Magic's Aid, which presents a Wiccan based Witchcraft. STRUCTURE It has long been obvious that Wiccas method of structure and form of liturgy is heavily influenced by the Masonic tradition. Hutton says of this fact, In an important sense, modern pagan witchcraft was to be the last (or at least the latest) outgrowth from the tradition which had begun with the Masons Word. In virtually every respect it was to embody and perpetuate the characteristics of the tradition; in one, that of gender, it was to overturn them completely. We see can see this influence directly by listing some of Wiccas phrases and concepts: The Three Degree initiatory system The Challenge as part of the initiation The Presentation of the Working Tools Wicca being call the The Craft The use of the phrase So Mote it Be The concept of being Properly Prepared

All these have Masonic origins. In this then the Golden Dawn and Wicca share a common source; that of the western Lodge tradition. Wicca was greatly influenced by Co-Masonic variants on this tradition which Gardner had access to via his Co-Masonic friends, or as yet unknown Co-Masonic initiations. There is no indication that Wiccan structures were influenced directly by the Golden Dawn version of Masonic lodge tradition, except perhaps in one area inner work. The Golden Dawn
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was the first lodge to consciously and clearly utilise magical acts as an overlay to ceremonial practice - the inclusion of visualisation, breath, energy movements, aura control etc. This was a great innovation, and is the subject of my book, By Names and Images. Wicca does the same. We cannot be sure of the source of these ideas within Wicca; perhaps they came in via Rosamunde Sabine who we mention later. They are mentioned briefly in some literary works of the day, notably by Golden Dawn members such as Dion Fortune. In any case, somehow the concept of inner work as part of ceremonial entered the Wiccan model of ritual practice; we do not simply perform the rituals on the outer levels, we engage with them on the inner levels also. SPIRITUAL MAGIC We have already mentioned the innovations of the Golden Dawn in creating what was essentially the first structured, coherent and inspired spiritual-magical group in the west. The significance of this cannot be understated. The Golden Dawn promoted the concept of personal and spiritual transformation through ritual magic, a concept embedded deep into Wicca. Now this seems obvious and natural to us now, but it was once quite new. To quote Hutton again: What [Eliphas] Levi and the occultists of the nineteenth century were trying to do was to develop or release the latent spiritual and mental abilities of humans by using the framework of traditional ritual magic. ... The rituals of the Golden Dawn trained initiates to invoke deities and angels, but with the object neither of presenting them with praise and pleas nor of making them do the will of the person invoking; with neither, in short, of the customary aims of religion and magic. They encouraged the practitioners to empower themselves with incantation, within a ceremonial setting, so that they came to feel themselves combining with the divine forces concerned and becoming part of them. This approach to magic was taken up by Wicca because it so permeated the English occult community in the first half of the 20th century. It was partly promulgated through the Occult Review, a journal Gardner read and partly through informal discussion, and above all through cross fertilisation of membership of groups. As Doreen Valiente says, everyone back then knew each other. We only need to look at the known activities and memberships of Gerald Gardner after his retirement to see this; Witch, possible Co-Mason, OTO Leader, Druid, Spiritualist and perhaps surprisingly, Christian priest. PRACTICAL OR LOW MAGIC In the system of Wicca (co)created by Gardner it is the methods of practical or so called 'low' magic that bear little or no influence from the Golden Dawn. Gardner lists these methods as the Eight Ways of Working Magic.

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The origins of some of these Eight Ways are still unknown, such as the Scourge, others we can be pretty sure about, such as the Great Rite. But none show much of the direct hand of the Golden Dawn. The reason for this is simple: practical magic was never taught within the Golden Dawn, even if some of its more notorious initiates used its methods for such aims. --To summarise so far, we've shown how Golden Dawn initiates, methods and practices were influential upon the sources of Wicca in terms of developing and promoting new ways of viewing Paganism, Witchcraft, the Pagan deities of the Goddess and the God, spiritual magic and ceremonial forms. All of these elements were combined by Gardner into the new religion of Wicca following his meeting with a small group of esoteric practitioners from Christchurch in 1939, some of whom seem to have identified themselves with the relatively new figure of the Pagan white Witch. Opinion is divided as to whether the group Gardner contacted in Christchurch was actually a Coven and whether he was actually initiated into Wicca. Aidan Kelly and Leo Ruickbie are convinced the Coven did not exist, and was a ploy used by Gardner later on to legitimise his movement. Ronald Hutton remains agnostic, particularly in light of the stunning research done by amateur historian Philip Heselton who gives some good circumstantial evidence that an esoteric group of some sort did exist. Of significance here is that the person he identifies as the leading light of that group, Rosamunde Sabine, was a senior member of the Golden Dawn. Sabine became a member in 1904 and was still writing about inner aspects of the GD in 1930 in the Occult Review,which shows she was a long term and committed member of this tradition. This means the group into which Gardner was initiated and from where he obtained the fragmentary scraps of Wiccan material, which we know he re-composed and added to, was also heavily influenced by the Golden Dawn. So aside from a helping to create the melting pot of ideas, structures, practices and rituals for Gardner to use to 'fill in the gaps', the Golden Dawn was there right at the very conception of Wicca. We will now look at some more direct examples of the Golden Dawn's influence on Wicca. The Wiccan method of casting the circle is based upon Golden Dawn techniques, particularly the water and fire consecrations and the use of the elemental Pentagrams. In a recent discussion on the Pagan Awareness Network, it was clear many modern Pagans and Wiccans simply do not know about these antecedents. In the early versions of the First Degree Initiation, the Qabalistic Cross invocation from the Golden Dawn is used. The concept of the elemental Watchtowers is also taken directly from the Golden Dawn. I would also argue that the way the elements and elemental beings were viewed in early Wicca was also influenced by the Golden Dawn approach. This changed considerably once Wicca spread during the 1960s and 70s.
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The Influence of the Golden Dawn on Wicca / P. Wildoak

Continuing this theme, the standard Gardnerian Wiccan elemental system, their quarter attributions, correspondences, colours etc are again directly from the Golden Dawn. The elemental tools and their attributions used in Wicca are a combination of those of the Golden Dawn or Golden Dawn influenced texts of Mathers - the Key of Solomon the King and works of GD adept, Aleister Crowley. While the Key of Solomon the King is not a GD text, more recent and accurate translations show the editing and translation offered by Mathers to be highly influenced by his personal and Golden Dawn sensitivities.

The heavy adoption of basic circle and elemental techniques and themes from the GD is interesting. I believe this may reflect the fact that these methods are the parts of the work of a junior Adept most easily Paganised; other areas rely heavily on Rosicrucian and Qabalistic motifs, which would not be as easily adopted into a Pagan religion. CROWLEY The influence of Aleister Crowley on Wicca cannot be overstated. Even after Doreen Valiente had done large re-visions of the Wiccan liturgy, the influence of Crowley remained. Hutton in a recently published essay writes, "Crowley was built into the Wiccan texts from the start". Crowley and Gardner met a few times before the formers death in 1947. Gardner purchased from Crowley and his agents a number of books, and became a member of Crowleys OTO group, which he tried unsuccessfully to lead after Crowleys death. Crowley of course was his own man, with his own magical currents and methods. But as pretty much every biographer and reviewer agree his magic and methods are also based firmly on the Golden Dawn. The magical processes of the Golden Dawn are steeped through his works, and sometimes the most significant changes offered are Crowleys replacement of the prose of the GD with his own pagan or idiosyncratic versions. It is clear that Gardner read and copied large swathes of Crowley and GD founder Mathers' works into his notebooks, including the proto-book of Shadows, 'Ye Bok of Ye Arte Magical'. Some 139 of the 250 completed pages of 'Ye Bok' contained material from Crowley, Mathers or both. Some of this remains but much has gone by the wayside. That which was jettisoned was largely concerned with classical Grimoric magic - designed to evoke evil or negative spirits, control them and force them to the do the bidding of the magician. This was not the form of magic that Gardner would ultimately instill into Wicca, which as we have seen, was the new spiritual magic first heavily explored in England by the Golden Dawn. Gardner then must have just been going through a phase during the mid late 1940s when he worked with this material, several years after his initiation into Wicca.

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DION FORTUNE One of the Golden Dawns greatest and most influential initiates was Dion Fortune. Her influence on Wicca is large and enduring in one way or another - whether she influenced the creation of Wicca or simply thousands of contemporary initiates or both. Her invocations and prose continue to be used by Wiccans the world over. Ronald Hutton argues that Dion Fortunes influence on the creation of Wicca is virtually nonexistent, while writers like Chas Clifton have a contrary opinion. Certainly, there are no direct quotations or copying from the published works of Fortune within Gardners works or Wiccan liturgy. However, as Melissa Seims, Witchcraft historian notes, there are quotations from Fortune in Gardners personal notebooks. Dions themes of sexual polarity being at the basis of magic, the pre-eminence of the feminine force in the macrocosm, the role of the Priestess in the microcosm and group reincarnation based on love and/or karma, are now essential parts of the Wiccan system. Dion Fortunes last two magical novels, The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic are particularly important for Wicca. Chas Clifton in his study of these novels writes: Drawing Down the Moon is a key part of every Gardnerian ritual circle - and its elements and purpose are easily discernible in Fortune's novel The Sea Priestess. Cliftons discussion about the hiero gamos, (the sacred marriage) within Fortunes novels and Wicca leads him to conclude there must be some connection. And so it seems. He continues his discussion: This is not just Fortune's description of the magical side of marriage, but a virtual schematic of the Drawing Down the Moon ceremony and its concluding Great Rite, as Gardner called ritual intercourse at its conclusion (something more frequently performed symbolically). Now none of these elements, sexual polarity, sacred marriage, the importance of the divine feminine and the Priestess, group reincarnation etc are found in the published Golden Dawn texts, or perhaps only in nascent forms. So it may be fair to conclude their origins lay with Dion herself or her non-Golden Dawn teacher, Theodore Moriatry, were it not for the fact that many of these themes exist within the unpublished Aura Papers of the Cromlech Temple, particularly the teachings on sexuality. Ive been able to publish a few of these papers on my blog, but most at this stage remain unpublished. Look at Aura Paper 23, Concerning Sex on the Aura to get a sense of what I mean. The Cromlech Temple or Sun Order, was a magical Order unofficially connected to several Golden Dawn temples. It may have, in some ways, functioned as a higher or third Order for the Golden Dawn, and many of its mysteries remain hidden even today. Its Chief officer and originator of most of its original material was J.W. Brodie Innes, Golden Dawn leader and writer of Witchcraft stories weve seen before. In addition and crucially, Innes was also a
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magical mentor and teacher of Dion Fortune during her early years of magical training. It seems then a possibility that some of her ideas on sacred sexuality and the feminine may have stemmed from this venerable Scottish leader of the Golden Dawn. How they moved into Wicca is another matter. As we said Seims is clear parts of Fortunes work were copied by Gardner into his books. So he had read her. Hutton maintains these ideas came into Wicca because they were within the spirit of the times. Clifton and myself also believe they did so through that remarkable, and for decades under-appreciated Priestess, Doreen Valiente, who owned, used and appreciated Dions works heavily. So it is to her we turn for our final bit of exploration. DOREEN VALIENTE If there is anyone involved in the (re)creation of Wicca who could be called divinely inspired, it would have to be Doreen Valiente. As well known now, following her initiation by Gardner she re-wrote and wrote much of the standard Craft liturgy including the Charge, the Witches Rune and the Wiccan Rede. Her influence was also crucial in bringing about a shift in focus from the God towards the Goddess. It was Valiente who I believe brought in much of the influence of Dion Fortune she had read Dions published novels before being initiated, and a few years later obtained the posthumously published Moon Magic. Also, as she writes in The Rebirth of Witchcraft: I had been a student of the Golden Dawn system of magic for years, long before I ever met Gerald Gardner." There is no evidence of Valiente ever being a member of any GD Order. The statement could refer to her studying the material published by Israel Regardie between 1937 and 1945. However, research by Melissa Seims revealed another story. As obliquely mentioned in Gardners biography Gerald Gardner: Witch, Valiente obtained a complete set of unpublished GD manuscripts a year or two before she met Gardner. This made her one of only few noninitiates of the Golden Dawn to own such a rarity. The story recounted by Gardner, and confirmed by the research of Seims, was that Valientes bank manager was wondering what to do with some strange material that had come into his hands following the death of one of his clients, Dr Henry Kelf. Kelfs widow was in mind to burn the material as it bore the markings of occultism. Valiente realised the potential value of such manuscripts, performed a spell to ensure they would not be destroyed and became their owner. The manuscripts were complete and some parts have only recently been published by Nick Farrell. Melissa Seims writes: Many of the [Golden Dawn] notebooks also bear Doreens handwriting. She appears to have gone through them and in pencil, has added her own thoughts and notes on the
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material. What is clear, is that the information in these notebooks influenced Doreens thinking, and the course that her own magical path took. Nor did this influence lessen once initiated by Gardner: Doreen also seems to have had a great respect for some of the ideas and essays that she read in these notebooks. So much so, she copied a large chunk of Flying Roll no. 5, Thoughts on Imagination by Dr Edmond Berridge, into her own, personal Book of Shadows, which she wrote shortly after being initiated by Gerald Gardner in 1953. So we have here the most crucial composer of Craft liturgy, someone whose work would make Wicca into what it is today, being directly influenced by the Golden Dawn. How this influence played out is debatable, but it is undoubtedly there. I believe we can see parts of it in the Charge of the Goddess. Now, I have no doubt Valiente was divinely inspired when she wrote this, as it is an invocation of incredible depth and profundity, containing and revealing so many mysteries within its words. However, these forms of inspiration always use the creative skills of the composer as well as the contents of their unconscious and conscious. Valiente was studying the GD material around the same time she wrote: Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth, for behold: all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you. Here the Goddess tells us to hold the four binaries listed, Beauty AND Strength etc - to go beyond apparent contradictions, towards that state of unity and reconciliation that is the higher consciousness. This is brilliant and wonderful. Compare these lines now to those from the Golden Dawn Zelator Ceremony concerning the seven double letters of the Hebrew Alphabet: "They are called Double, because each letter represents a contrary or permutation, thus: Life and Death; Peace and War; Wisdom and Folly; Riches and Poverty; Grace and Indignity; Fertility and Solitude; Power and Servitude." The same essential mystery is contained in each a holding of seemingly opposite powers within ourselves to move to a state beyond division, and towards unity. Valientes wording aligns with the centrality of the octad within Wicca, whereas the GD maintains the traditional septad and the hidden reference to the fourteen parts of the body of Osiris. I am sure further research will reveal more connections.

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CONCLUSION There were three distinct phases in the creation of Wicca: the original New Forest coven, if it existed; Gardner's own 'fleshing out' of the materials he recieved from that Coven; and Valiente's excellent revsion of this material to form the modern Gardnerian liturgy. The presence and influence of the Golden Dawn can be found in all three. Firstly, if there was an original coven into which Gardner was initiated in 1939, it was headed by a long term Adept of the Golden Dawn, Rosamunde Sabine. Secondly, the materials and ideas Gardner used to flesh out the rituals he recieved from this coven were heavily influenced by the Golden Dawn and its members. And thirdly, the final revision of the Wiccan material was performed by someone whose magical thinking was influenced by the GD system long before she came into contact with Wicca. One of the mystical sayings of the Rosicrucian tradition behind the Golden Dawn is Nequaquam vacuum - Nowhere a vacuum. Wicca arose within a particular environment and time, one where new ways of seeing the natural world, Paganism, religion, personal empowerment and sexuality were being developed. Much of this had been engendered or encouraged by the Golden Dawn and its members. Wicca took all this, and like the GD created a new tradition, furthering the manifestation of the divine. Wicca's gift, as the only religion England has given to the word, was to take the magic of the west - the magic of the Golden Dawn - and introduce several key elements. These were a self-reflexive religious Paganism, the powerful archetype of the Witch, and of course, the Goddess, thus collapsing once and for all the barrier between magic and religion. Thank you :)

REFERENCES Clifton, Chas (1998) A Goddess Arrives: the novels of Dion Fortune and the development of Gardnerian Witchcraft. (Online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos474.htm retrieved 22/9/12). Gardner, Gerald, Witchcraft Today, (Citadel, 2004). Heselton, Philip, Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft (Capall Bann Publishing, 2003). Heselton, Philip, Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival (Capall Bann Publishing, 2000) Heselton, Philip, Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner. Vol 1: Into the Witch Cult. (Loughborough, Leicestershire: Thoth Publications. 2012)

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Heselton, Philip, Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner. Vol 2: From Witch Cult to Wicca. (Loughborough, Leicestershire: Thoth Publications. 2012) Hutton, Ronald, Crowley and Wicca, (unpublished manuscript supplied by the author). Hutton, Ronald, Dion Fortune and Wicca (online: www.companyofavalon.net/documents/RonaldHuttonaddress.DF.doc retrieved 22/12/12). Hutton, Ronald, The Triumph of the Moon (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1999), Kelly, Aidan Crafting the Art of Magic: a history of modern Witchcraft, 1939-1964, (St. Paul, Minnesota, Llewellyn 1991) Phillips, Julia (2004) History of Wicca in England: 1939 to the Present Day (2004 revised edition). (Online: http://geraldgardner.com/History_of_Wicca_Revised.pdf retrieved 22/9/12). Regardie, Israel (ed.) The Golden Dawn (6th ed.) (St. Paul, Minnesota, Llewellyn 1989) Ruickbie, Leo, Witchcraft Out of the Shadows - A Complete History, (London, Robert Hale, 2004) Seims, Melissa (n.d.) Doreen Valiente and the Golden Dawn, (Online: http://www.blue-mooncoven.net/artikel/seims/valientegd.htm retrieved 22/9/12).

The Influence of the Golden Dawn on Wicca / P. Wildoak

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