Illustration © Kaitlynn Copithorne
In October 1964, around fifty witches gathered at a dinner held by the newly-formed Witchcraft Research Association. Although its life span would prove short, the Association aimed to serve as a unifying force in the increasingly fractious and factional world of Wicca. The organisation’s president at this time—Doreen Valiente—hoped that the Association might eventually become the “United Nations of the Craft”:
‘What we need now, more than anything, is for people of spiritual vision to combine together... if only people in the occult world devoted as much time and energy to positive constructive work as they do to denouncing and denigrating each other, their spiritual contribution to the world would be enormous!’
This speech, in all of its rousing clarity, summarised so much of Valiente’s approach to witchcraft and magic. Often lauded as the “mother of modern witchcraft”, Valiente’s attitude was one of inclusivity, but also discernment. As a writer of books, poetry and Wiccan liturgy, she ensured her words and offerings were accessible to all. Yet behind her warm tone of guidance, there was a sharp, shrewd researcher and fierce believer in authenticity, integrity, and social justice.
Born in Surrey, 1922, to parents who were, in her own words, “brought up Chapel”, Valiente would later laugh off claims that she was in fact the illegitimate child of the Great Beast, occultist Aleister Crowley. Whilst the reality—being the daughter of a land surveyor and architect—might seem less interesting, young Valiente’s experiences were far from ordinary. As an adult, she reminisced about her mystical experiences and encounters with the uncanny as a child, and according to her biographer Philip Heselton, she was making poppets and had grown into an accomplished herbalist by her teens.
Valiente’s work during the Second World War is thought to have been of a sensitive nature, as she was most likely based at Bletchley Park—the code-breaking centre of the Allied Forces. After a brief marriage which ended in her husband’s loss at sea, she moved to Bournemouth with her second husband, Casimiro Valiente. It is on that stretch of England’s southern coast that her interest in the occult spiralled. Trawling local public libraries for esoteric texts, Doreen Valiente began her studies in earnest; from Spiritualism to Theosophy, she gobbled up everything she could lay her hands on. Never one to forego the practical aspects of learning, Valiente attended a Spiritualist church (at which she read aloud a Crowley text she had discovered), as well as joining a local parlour group that discussed esoteric matters. Around this time she also began practising ceremonial magic with an artist friend who went by the magical name “Zerki”, and together they would work rituals in his flat which were influenced by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Valiente chose her own, John Dee-inspired magical name at this time too—she would go by “Ameth”.
After years of intensive magical study and research, Valiente entered into a correspondence that would lay the foundations for her later renown as a witch. A keen collector of newspaper articles about occult matters of all sorts, in 1952 she came across a piece in Illustrated magazine titled Witchcraft in Britain, which mentioned a coven of British witches who had performed a ritual in the New Forest during 1940, attempting to prevent Hitler from invading Britain. In 1951 the last vestiges of the Witchcraft Act, outlawing such occult actions, had been repealed, and Gerald Gardner—the “resident witch” of a museum of magic on the Isle of Man—had started courting media coverage, including via the article discovered by Valiente. In her book The Rebirth of Witchcraft, she recalls feeling incredibly excited by Gardner’s references to witchcraft as being “fun”, which seemed a very novel idea at the time. Writing to the museum’s founder, Cecil Williamson, Valiente’s letter was answered by Gardner, and their correspondence began. Gardner had been initiated into the New Forest coven by a witch known as “Dafo”, and it was at Dafo’s house that Valiente met with him for the first time. She describes this significant event in one of her books:
“We seemed to take an immediate liking to each other...One felt that he had seen for horizons and encountered strange things; and yet there was a sense of humour about him, and a youthfulness, in spite of his silver hair.”
Valiente as initiated into Gardner’’s Bricket Wood coven a year later at Stonehenge (without the knowledge of her husband, who remained a lifelong sceptic). Notably, hinting at the import she gave to magical provenance, Valiente recognised that many of Gardner’s words and actions at her initiation bore a resemblance to those of Crowley and the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland. Over time, Valiente grew increasingly sceptical with regards to Gardner’s “ancient” sources, criticising his overuse of Crowley’s texts. Eventually, according to Valiente, Gardner’s response to her criticisms was along the lines of “if you think you can do better, get on with it!” Never one to shy away from a challenge, she did, and went on to rewrite many of Gardner’s rituals to great effect. Indeed, Professor Ronald Hutton notes that Valiente’s words for the White Moon Charge “gave Wicca a theology as well as its finest piece of liturgy”.
Gardner’s hunger for publicity grew, and with increasing press coverage came more coven members, but also greater media sensationalism and public ire. Valiente, by now the coven’s High Priestess, disapproved—preferring Wicca to make itself known through its books rather than being filtered through the lenses of journalists keen for a throwaway headline. Valiente broke with Gerald’s coven, founding a new one with her allies which would practice Gardnerian Wicca without being beholden to its namesake. She believed there was work to be done in finding the real “Old Ways”; the pre-Christian pagan rites that promised to be more authentic than Gardner’s patchwork versions.
During her lifetime, along with publishing numerous books, Valiente was initiated into four covens in total. There was a pattern to her dances with covens—that of becoming involved, doubting provenance and patriarchal coven leadership, doing research to confirm any suspicions, then moving on. Her political alliances followed a similar structure, including a brief foray into right-wing politics during the early 1970s. Heselton suggests that during her 18-month stint with the National Front she might have in fact been undercover, spying for the state. She herself claimed disillusionment as the reason for her separation from the Front; a firm believer in women’s rights, gay rights, and civil liberties, we might wonder why she joined such an organisation at all.
In her book The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989), Valiente was more explicit about her feminism and distaste for so many covens, stating that “we were allowed to call ourselves High Priestesses, Witch Queens and similar fancy titles; but we were still in the position of having men running things”. Valiente valued collaboration over domination, and held out hopes for a “constructive” spirituality that emphasised the environment, civil liberties and social justice rather than petty squabbles and battles over authority. More than this, she wanted to promote a witchcraft that was open to all.
In 1971, Valiente appeared in a BBC documentary about Wicca alongside Alex Sanders, founder of Alexandrian Wicca. Despite her increasing celebrity, however, she remained incredibly down to earth. An enthusiastic football fan, Valiente enjoyed betting on horses and throughout her life worked in a surprising array of jobs—including stints in factories, for a furniture company, and in the Brighton branch of Boots pharmacy. Following the death of Casimiro, she never remarried but spent her remaining 20 years with the “love of her life”, Ron Cooke, who she initiated into the Craft, with him becoming her High Priest. And so, the pair’s life came to revolve around holidays in Glastonbury, football matches on the TV, Valiente’s writing and public engagements, and the practice and study of magic.
Valiente died in 1999, two years after Ron had passed away, and her ashes were scattered around the roots of her favourite oak tree near the South Downs in East Sussex. Two of those present picked an acorn from the tree, cast it in silver, and gifted acorn pendants to those at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall. This museum, founded by Cecil Williamson, was the successor to Williamson’s earlier iteration on the Isle of Man which Valiente had read about in 1952, and which had played such a vital role in her early life as a Wiccan. A perfectly full circle narrative for an avidly full circle witch.