In recent decades, the study of new religious movements evolved to become an important aspect within the study of religion .1 This is all the more true when we add gender to the mix. Indeed, as argued by Ursula King, “without the incisive, critical application of the category of gender it is no longer possible to accurately describe, analyze or explain any religion”.2 Building on this thought-provoking argument, this book sets out to explore how changes in views on gender and the place of women in society during the latter half of the twentieth century affected women’s participation and position within British Paganism, c. 1945–c. 1990. More specifically, it examines how British Wiccans and Wiccan-derived Pagans reacted to the rise of ‘second wave ’ feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in the UK—with a special emphasis on the reception of feminist theory hailing from the United States—as well as to the development of feminist branches of Witchcraft and Goddess Spirituality during the 1970s–1980s. I will show that the influence of writings produced by prominent American promoters of feminist forms of Wicca during this period—especially Starhawk and Z Budapest—was felt in Britain almost immediately and provoked a range of reactions across the local Wiccan and Pagan milieus.
Occultism During the Victorian Through Interwar Periods
In order to better understand these processes, we must first lay the groundwork by surveying early Wicca and its attitudes on the matter of women and gender issues set against the background of British Occultism during the Victorian, Edwardian, and interwar periods.3 Indeed, one of the important transformations ushered by Victorian occultism occurred in relation to the attitude toward women and their place within occult organizations. The consideration of gender as an aspect of occult discourse and practice is gaining recognition in recent years as “an essential, if complex” part of the study of both Victorian and contemporary occultism, but as noted by Kennet Granholm, it is still insufficient .4
For the purposes of this volume, a good place to start would be 1888, which proved to be a momentous year in the history of British occultism in general, and for women-occultists in particular. It was during this year that Madam Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) published the book which proved to be her magnum opus—The Secret Doctrine.5 A truly international figure, the Russian-born Blavatsky encountered Spiritualism in Paris during 1858, and in 1875 she co-founded the Theosophical Society, an organization dedicated to a synthesis of knowledge on the supernatural and on the divine, with an emphasis on the esoteric teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism.6 In contrast with Victorian Spiritualists, who never intended to radically challenge contemporary notions of womanhood and femininity7 and were considered as mere vessels for the channeling of spirits, Blavatsky was viewed as an intellectual and spiritual leader in her own right .
Many women (as well as men) gravitated toward her Theosophical Society,8 but not all members felt content with what they considered to be an over-emphasis on eastern esoteric traditions. One of these individuals was Anna Kingsford (1846–1888), a renowned occultist, women’s rights campaigner and one of Britain’s first female medical Doctors.9 In 1884, Kingsford co-founded her own Hermetic Society, dedicated to promoting the comparative study of the philosophical and religious systems of the east and the west, with special reference to the Greek Mysteries, the Hermetic Gnosis, and the Cabala. In 1888, however, she died prematurely due to her poor health.
Just one week after Kingsford’s untimely demise, a new magical order was created: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (GD). Two of the Order’s founding trio, William Wynn Westcott (1848–1925), and Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918), were members of Kingsford’s Hermetic Society.10 Westcott, MacGregor, and the third founder of the GD, Dr. William Robert Woodman (1828–1891), were involved in Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism as well. Their Order has been described by researchers as “perhaps the single most influential of all British nineteenth-century occultism initiatory societies”, one that “has done more than any other Order to influence the development of modern magic in Britain, Europe and the United States during the course of the twentieth century”.11
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn emerged at a time when late-Victorian society became enthralled by ‘The Woman Question’ and ‘first-wave ’12 feminists’ quest for suffrage. This was a period that gave rise to concepts such as ‘The New Woman’, and in which the theory of matriarchal prehistory was adopted with zeal by certain suffragists.13 The GD was the first of its kind to open its ranks to women. Several of them—such as Mina Bergson (1865–1928), Florence Farr (1860–1917), and Annie Horniman (1860–1937)—rose to prominent positions within the organization and wrote some of its teaching papers, or so-called Flying Rolls.14
One of the Order’s most famous—and, arguably, notorious—members was Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), who was initiated into its ranks on November 18, 1898 and would contribute to its prolonged process of dissolution during the first decade of the twentieth century.15 In 1904, Crowley was in Cairo, practicing ceremonial magical invocations with his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly (1874–1932). According to Crowley, Rose entered a trance state and began to convey messages from an entity named ‘Aiwass’, whom Crowley believed to be a messenger of Egyptian god Horus. Crowley stated that this ‘Aiwass’ dictated to him a text titled The Book of the Law. According to this revelation, the past age or aeon of Osiris, manifested as patriarchal religion and society and itself preceded by a matriarchal age of Isis, “was to be replaced by the coming age of Horus, the divine child, an eidolon of individual freedom”.16 Crowley himself was to assume the role of prophet of the religion of this new age of Horus—Thelema. In order to further these aims Crowley founded a new magical order in 1907. Known as the A∴A∴, the order was structured as a teacher-student chain of authority and combined the ceremonial magic of the GD with Crowley’s take on eastern practices such as tantra .17
Sometime between 1910 and 1912, Crowley met a German by the name of Theodor Reuss (1855–1923), who headed a newly founded occult society devoted to the practice of ‘sexual magic’ called the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO).18 Ruess initiated Crowley into the OTO and appointed him as head of the British section of the Order. Following Ruess’ death in 1923, Crowley assumed his Office as Outer Head of the OTO and revised and expanded the Order’s hierarchy of initiatory degrees. These centered on acts of sexual magic, in which the practitioner was to concentrate his will on a particular desired goal and to create and focus on the “mental images that would stimulate the ecstatic nature of the ritual”, particularly at the moment of climax. At this very moment, the energy raised during the ritual would be directed to the chosen goal by the practitioner’s magical will.19 Crowley introduced The Book of the Law and the tenets of Thelema into the OTO lodges he supervised as British head, and after Reuss’s death in 1923 other lodges followed suit (with the exception of a few in Germany who disaffiliated from the organization).20
In the aftermath of World War I, women over the age of 30 were granted the right of suffrage, and by 1928 The Representation of the People Act in Britain extended the voting franchise to all women over the age of 21. This period was also accompanied by a renewed interest in the European witch trials of the fifteen to seventeen centuries as a result of the publications of the Egyptologist and folklorist Margaret Murray (1863–1963). Building on the work of a number of e...