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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter VII: Wicca

Doreen Valiente: Life, Works and Influence on Modern Wicca

Doreen Valiente, the 'mother of modern witchcraft': her initiation by Gerald Gardner, the Charge of the Goddess, her books and her lasting legacy.

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Doreen Valiente (1922–1999) was an English witch, poet and writer who became one of the most influential figures in modern Wicca. Initiated by Gerald Gardner in 1953, she rewrote much of the early Gardnerian Book of Shadows, composed the best-known version of the Charge of the Goddess, and later wrote a series of books that shaped how witchcraft was practised and understood. She is often called the "mother of modern witchcraft".

Early Life and the Road to the Craft§

Doreen Edith Dominy was born on 4 January 1922 in Mitcham, Surrey, and spent part of her childhood in the West Country. By her own later account she had an early sense of the numinous in nature and an interest in magic from adolescence, reading widely in occult literature, including works by Aleister Crowley and the Theosophists. She left school young and worked in office and secretarial jobs.

Her early adult life was shaped by the Second World War. In 1941 she married a Greek merchant seaman, Joanis Vlachopoulos, who was lost at sea later that year. In 1944 she married Casimiro Valiente, a Spanish refugee who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, and took the surname by which she became known. The couple settled in Bournemouth, near the New Forest, the region where Gerald Gardner claimed to have found a surviving witch coven.

In 1952 Valiente read a magazine article about Cecil Williamson's new museum of witchcraft on the Isle of Man, which mentioned a working coven in the New Forest. She wrote to Williamson, who passed her letter to Gardner. Gardner met her at the house of Edith Woodford-Grimes, known in the Craft as "Dafo", in the Christchurch area.

Initiation by Gerald Gardner and the Bricket Wood Coven§

Gardner initiated Valiente at Midsummer 1953. She soon rose to become High Priestess of his coven, which met at the naturist club at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire. This was the period in which Wicca was emerging publicly. The last Witchcraft Act had been repealed in 1951, and Gardner published Witchcraft Today in 1954 with an introduction by Margaret Murray, presenting his coven as a remnant of the ancient religion described in the Murray thesis.

Valiente was well read in occultism, and she quickly recognised that much of Gardner's Book of Shadows was not ancient. Passages came from Crowley's writings, from Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia (1899), from the Key of Solomon and from Masonic ritual. When she raised this, Gardner told her that the material he had received from the coven was fragmentary and that he had filled the gaps from other sources. He accepted her offer to rewrite the rituals in a form less dependent on Crowley, whose reputation she believed would harm the Craft. The wider story of the movement is told in Wicca and Gerald Gardner.

Rewriting the Book of Shadows and the Charge of the Goddess§

Between about 1953 and 1957 Valiente revised much of the ritual material of what became Gardnerian Wicca. Her most celebrated work is the Charge of the Goddess, the speech in which the Goddess, speaking through the High Priestess, addresses her worshippers. Gardner's earlier version had been assembled largely from a passage in Leland's Aradia and phrases from Crowley. Valiente first produced a verse version and then a prose version, which drew on the same sources but recast them in her own lyrical style. The prose Charge became one of the central texts of Wicca and has been adapted by many other traditions.

She also wrote or co-wrote other pieces that became standard, including the chant known as the Witches' Rune, generally credited to her working with Gardner in the later 1950s, and verses used in seasonal rites. Her poetry gave Wicca much of its devotional voice, turning a ritual framework borrowed from ceremonial magic into a religion centred on the Goddess and the Horned God. She regarded these texts as her own compositions and was open about the fact that they were not ancient.

The Break with Gardner and the Work with Robert Cochrane§

Tensions grew in the mid-1950s. Valiente and other coven members objected to Gardner's appetite for press publicity, which they believed endangered members at a time of hostile newspaper coverage. In 1957 Gardner produced a set of "Laws of the Craft", which he presented as ancient and which included a provision that a High Priestess should step aside when she grew old. Valiente doubted their antiquity and suspected they had been written to curb her authority. She left the coven that year and, with Ned Grove, formed a separate group. She and Gardner were later reconciled on friendly terms before his death in 1964.

In 1964 Valiente joined the Clan of Tubal Cain led by Robert Cochrane (Roy Bowers), who claimed a hereditary family tradition and practised a robed, outdoor, mystical form of witchcraft very different from Gardner's. She valued his poetic and visionary approach, but grew uneasy with his hostility towards Gardnerians and his readiness to invent claims, and she withdrew. Many years later she collaborated with Cochrane's successor Evan John Jones on Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (1990). The current that grew from Cochrane's work is described in traditional witchcraft.

Author and Historian of the Craft§

From the 1960s onward Valiente became one of the best-known public writers on witchcraft. Her books include:

  • Where Witchcraft Lives (1962), her first book, on surviving witchcraft beliefs and folk magic in Sussex.
  • An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present (1973), an encyclopaedic reference that combines history, folklore and Craft practice.
  • Natural Magic (1975), on folk and natural magic using herbs, elements, weather and the land.
  • Witchcraft for Tomorrow (1978), which included her own Book of Shadows, the Liber Umbrarum, so that people without access to a coven could begin to practise.
  • The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989), a memoir and history of the modern revival, frank about Gardner's methods and her own role.

Valiente also helped Janet and Stewart Farrar publish the history and texts of the Gardnerian rituals in the 1980s, tracing which parts came from which sources. She herself checked one of Gardner's key claims. Many doubted that "Old Dorothy" Clutterbuck, the woman Gardner named as the leader of the New Forest coven, had existed at all. Valiente searched official records and established that Dorothy Clutterbuck was a real person who lived in the Christchurch area, though whether she was ever a witch remains unproven. This willingness to separate evidence from legend made Valiente a respected source for historians, including Ronald Hutton.

Legacy: The "Mother of Modern Witchcraft"§

Valiente lived for most of her later life in Brighton, continuing to write, correspond and speak at Pagan gatherings. She supported the Pagan Front, founded in 1971, which later became the Pagan Federation, and she encouraged solitary practice and folk magic alongside initiatory coven work. She died in Brighton on 1 September 1999. A posthumous collection of her poetry, The Charge of the Goddess, appeared in 2000.

Her ritual objects, papers and library passed to her friend John Belham-Payne, and the Doreen Valiente Foundation was later established to preserve them. In 2013 a blue plaque was unveiled at her former home in Brighton, widely reported as the first such plaque for a witch. Her influence is felt in almost every form of modern Wicca: in the words of the Charge spoken at esbats (see the Wiccan full moon esbat), in the poetry recited at the festivals of the Wheel of the Year, and in the shift from claims of unbroken antiquity towards an honest account of a modern religion with older roots.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Doreen Valiente?§

Doreen Valiente (1922–1999) was an English witch and writer initiated by Gerald Gardner in 1953. She rewrote much of Gardnerian ritual, wrote the best-known Charge of the Goddess and published influential books on witchcraft and folk magic.

Did Doreen Valiente write the Charge of the Goddess?§

She wrote the versions that became standard. Gardner's earlier Charge drew on Leland's Aradia and on Crowley; Valiente produced first a verse and then a prose Charge in her own words, keeping some phrases from those sources.

Why did Doreen Valiente leave Gerald Gardner's coven?§

In 1957 she and others objected to Gardner's courting of the press and to the "Laws of the Craft" he introduced, which she believed were recent inventions meant to limit the High Priestess's role. She left and formed her own group, though she and Gardner later made peace.

Which of Doreen Valiente's books should I read first?§

The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989) is the best introduction to her life and to the early history of Wicca. Witchcraft for Tomorrow (1978) shows her approach to practice, and An ABC of Witchcraft (1973) is a useful reference.

Sources and further reading§