Wicca
She was initiated into Alexandrian Wicca by the tradition's founders, Alex and Maxine Sanders. She met the Sanders in 1970 through a friend who had become interested in exploring Wicca. Janet accompanied her friend to keep the friend "out of this weird cult", but she instead joined the Sanders coven, and would go on to become, in the words of Knowles, one of "England's most eminent and respected modern day witches." [4] In the coven she met Stewart Farrar, her future husband and co-author.
Janet and Stewart Farrar were both elevated to the second degree "in an unoccupied house in Sydenham" by the Sanders on 17 October 1970, and they received the third, and final, degree of initiation in their flat on 24 April 1971. Both events are well-recorded by Stewart Farrar down to the smallest detail in his diaries. [5]
The Farrars began running their own coven in 1971, before their third degree initiation ceremony. They were handfasted in 1972 and legally married in 1975. [5] Janet Farrar left the coven in 1972 to explore Kabbala with a ceremonial magic lodge, but returned the same year. [5] In 1976 the Farrars moved to Ireland to get away from the busy life of London. [2] They lived in County Mayo and County Wexford, finally settling in "Herne Cottage" in Kells, County Meath. Both husband and wife went on to publish a number of books on the Wiccan religion and on coven practices. Farrar continued to model and appeared in the illustrations to multiple early books about Wicca, including the cover of the paperback version of Margot Adler's 1979 Drawing Down the Moon . [6]
Farrar also posed for many of the photographs in their 1981 Eight Sabbats for Witches , which included material the authors claimed to be from the Alexandrian tradition's Book of Shadows. [7] The Farrars, with the support of Doreen Valiente, argued in the book that even though the publishing of this material broke their oath of secrecy, it was justified by the need to correct misinformation. [7]
Janet Farrar indicates that some of the rituals contained in the couple's books were actually written by them, and that they left the Alexandrian tradition after the book's research was complete. [5] The couple co-authored four more books on Wicca. Janet Farrar's post-Alexandrian practice has been referred to as "Reformed Alexandrian". [8]
They were joined by Gavin Bone in 1993, with whom they entered into a "polyfidelitous relationship". [9] The three of them would co-author two more books, The Healing Craft and The Pagan Path, an investigation into the many varieties of Neopaganism. [10] Stewart Farrar died in February 2000 after a brief illness. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone married in a handfasting in May 2001, and then legally married in Northern Ireland (part of Ulster) in March 2014.
After Stewart Farrar's death, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone continued to author books, and have given a number of lectures on Wicca in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy and in Britain. The title of their 2004 book, Progressive Witchcraft, is the description that the couple prefers for their current religious practice. This was re-released in 2013 as a new edition called Inner Mysteries. Their current area of work is in trance-prophesy, trance-possession and ecstatic ritual and they are currently working on a major book on the subject which they hope to release with Acorn Guild Publishing in 2014. They are also founders of The Alliance of Progressive Covens, which includes linked groups and covens in the United States, Ireland and Italy. [11]
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian witchcraft, is a tradition in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner (1884–1964), a British civil servant and amateur scholar of magic. The term "Gardnerian" was probably coined by the founder of Cochranian Witchcraft, Robert Cochrane in the 1950s or 60s, who himself left that tradition to found his own.
Wicca, also known as The Craft, is a modern neo-pagan syncretic religion. Scholars of religion categorize it as both a new religious movement and as part of occultist Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.
Aradia is one of the principal figures in the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland's 1899 work Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which he believed to be a genuine religious text used by a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, a claim that has subsequently been disputed by other folklorists and historians. In Leland's Gospel, Aradia is portrayed as a messiah who was sent to Earth in order to teach the oppressed peasants how to perform witchcraft to use against the Roman Catholic Church and the upper classes.
An athame or athamé is a ceremonial blade, generally with a black handle. It is the main ritual implement or magical tool among several used in ceremonial magic traditions, and by other neopagans, witchcraft, as well as satanic traditions. A black-handled knife called an arthame appears in certain versions of the Key of Solomon, a grimoire dating to the Renaissance.
A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious text and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Since its conception in the 1970s, it has made its way into many pagan practices and paths. The most famous Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and which he utilised first in his Bricket Wood coven and then in other covens which he founded in following decades. The Book of Shadows is also used by other Wiccan traditions, such as Alexandrian Wicca and Mohsianism, and with the rise of books teaching people how to begin following non-initiatory Wicca in the 1970s onward, the idea of the Book of Shadows was then further propagated amongst solitary practitioners unconnected to earlier, initiatory traditions.
Alexandrian Wicca or Alexandrian Witchcraft is a tradition of the Neopagan religion of Wicca, founded by Alex Sanders who, with his wife Maxine Sanders, established the tradition in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. Alexandrian Wicca is similar in many ways to Gardnerian Wicca, and receives regular mention in books on Wicca as one of the religion's most widely recognized traditions.
Odyssean Wicca is a Wiccan tradition created in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the late 1970s. Its principal founders were Tamarra and Richard James. Most of its practitioners today live in Ontario, but it also has members in Eastern Canada and the United States. The tradition differs from other initiatory Wiccan traditions in its emphasis on preparation of its members for public priesthood.
Frank Stewart Farrar was an English screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar, and then his friend Gavin Bone as well. A devout communist in early life, he worked as a reporter for such newspapers as the Soviet Weekly and the Daily Worker, and also served in the British army during the Second World War. He was responsible for writing episodes for such television series as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Armchair Theatre and Crossroads, and for his work in writing radio scripts won a Writer's Guild Award. He also published a string of novels, written in such disparate genres as crime, romance and fantasy.
Alex Sanders, born Orrell Alexander Carter, who went under the craft name Verbius, was an English occultist and High Priest in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding, and later developing with Maxine Sanders, the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca, also called Alexandrian Witchcraft, during the 1960s.
Maxine Sanders is a key figure in the development of modern pagan witchcraft and Wicca and, along with her late husband, Alex Sanders, the co-founder of Alexandrian Wicca.
Gavin Bone is an English author and lecturer in the fields of magic, Neopagan witchcraft, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, and an organizer in the Neo-Pagan community. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire in England, in 1964.
What Witches Do is a book by Stewart Farrar, and is an eye-witness account of Wiccan practices, namely that of the Alexandrian coven run by Alex Sanders and his wife Maxine Sanders.
The history of Wicca documents the rise of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based Neopagan religions. Wicca originated in the early 20th century, when it developed amongst secretive covens in England who were basing their religious beliefs and practices upon what they read of the historical witch-cult in the works of such writers as Margaret Murray. It also is based on the beliefs from the magic that Gerald Gardner saw when he was in India. It was subsequently founded in the 1950s by Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated into the Craft – as Wicca is often known – by the New Forest coven in 1939. Gardner's form of Wicca, the Gardnerian tradition, was spread by both him and his followers like the High Priestesses Doreen Valiente, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone into other parts of the British Isles, and also into other, predominantly English-speaking, countries across the world. In the 1960s, new figures arose in Britain who popularized their own forms of the religion, including Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek and Alex Sanders, and organizations began to be formed to propagate it, such as the Witchcraft Research Association. It was during this decade that the faith was transported to the United States, where it was further adapted into new traditions such as Feri, 1734 and Dianic Wicca in the ensuing decades, and where organizations such as the Covenant of the Goddess were formed.
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess.
In the neopagan religion of Wicca a range of magical tools are used in ritual practice. Each of these tools has different uses and associations and are commonly used at an altar, inside a magic circle.
Contemporary paganism, including Wicca in various forms, Reclaiming (Neopaganism), and witchcraft, is a growing minority religious group in Australia. As in forms on Neopaganism elsewhere, some pagans work as solitary practitioners and others form groups such as covens. Covens may or not be hierarchical, depending on the tradition. Gardnerian and Alexandrian covens tend to be hierarchical, with coven led by a Priest and High Priestess. Reclaiming covens and working groups practise non-hierarchical modes of group dynamics, with group members co-creating rituals and events, although there may be 'facilitators' and other roles allotted at a given gathering.
Georgian Wicca is a tradition, or denomination, in the neopagan religion of Wicca. In its organisation, it is very similar to British Traditional Wicca groups such as Gardnerian Wicca, however, it does not trace its initiatory line to one of the old English covens.
Many Neo-pagan religions such as Wicca, Druidry and Celtic Polytheism have active followings in Ireland, although the number of declared adherents is likely quite small.
In Modern English, the term Wicca refers to Wicca, the religion of contemporary Pagan witchcraft. It is used within the Pagan community under competing definitions. One refers to the entirety of the Pagan Witchcraft movement, while the other refers explicitly to traditions included in what is now called British Traditional Wicca.
