Doreen Valiente and the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn

by Melissa Seims (2006)

[NB: This article was heavily revised and updated in 2024 and is awaiting publication . As such, some information below is inaccurate and incomplete. ]

 

Doreen Valiente is a name that I am sure every reader will have heard of. This inquisitive, intelligent, writer and Witch was born in 1922, in Mitcham, Surrey, but lived for most of her life on the south coast of Britain. She had a keen interest in folklore, the Occult and Witchcraft and wrote several books on the latter subject. Always keen to expand her knowledge, she was involved with various different Witchcraft groups throughout her life, and worked solo magic too.

 

In 1952, The Illustrated[1] printed an article about Witchcraft, based on an interview with Cecil Williamson, then-owner of the Witchcraft Museum on the Isle of Man. Upon reading it, Doreen wrote to Cecil who then referred her to Gerald Gardner who was at that time, the ‘resident Witch’ of the museum. Her subsequent initiation and involvement in the re-working and writing of pieces for the ‘Gardnerian’ Book of Shadows is well-known and something she talks about in her book The Rebirth Of Witchcraft.

 

In the same book, we also find Doreen stating ‘I had been a student of the Golden Dawn system of magic for years, long before I ever met Gerald Gardner.’[2] Intrigued by this statement, I enlisted the help of Golden Dawn Magician and writer, Nick Farrell, and set out to try and find out more about Doreen Valiente and her connection to that premier Magical Order, The Golden Dawn.

 

The Golden Dawn

 

The Golden Dawn has arguably been the most influential Magical Order ever to have existed. It was formed in 1887 by three Freemasons, Dr. William Wynn Westcott, Dr. William Robert Woodman and, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (who was the more magically-inclined of the three). Other well-known members included, ‘the Great Beast’ Aleister Crowley, the mystical A.E. Waite, the creative W.B. Yeats, the magical Israel Regardie and the gifted Dion Fortune.

 

The Golden Dawn’s grade system is based on Qabalistic structure and consists of an Outer Order composed of five grades; it is this part of the Order that was originally referred to as the ‘Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’. There is then an intermediary portal grade you have to pass through before moving on to the second, or Inner Order, called the Ordo Roseae Rubeae et Aurae Crucis (R.R. et A.C.) which translates to ‘Order of the Red Rose and Golden Cross.’ It is in this Second Order where the real magical work of the Golden Dawn system starts. The First Order, Portal Grade and Second Order could loosely be likened to the three degrees found in Witchcraft with each being analogous to purification, consecration and amalgamation into the whole; although the hermetic nature of the Golden Dawn, tends to make it more cerebral than the Craft. There is a final, theoretical, Third Order that corresponds with the supernal triangle on the Tree of Life and it is said that no living person can enter this Order.

 

After making some enquiries, I have been unable to find anything to suggest that Doreen was a member of any Golden Dawn temple, or any of the related offshoot groups, that existed in England in the 1940s and 1950s. However, in a letter Doreen wrote to Rev. T. Allen Greenfield[3] in 1986, she mentions that she owned some Golden Dawn notebooks that belonged to Frater Nisi Dominus Frustra. Evidence would seem to suggest that it was these original notebooks, (along with Regardie’s published Golden Dawn works), that she considered herself ‘a student of’. But how did Doreen obtain them?

 

Doreen’s Acquisition

 

It was the Craft Historian, Philip Heselton, who drew my attention to a story in Gerald Gardner’s biography, Gerald Gardner Witch (Octagon Press 1960), attributed to Jack Bracelin but actually written by Sufi writer Idries Shah. This book was written whilst Gardner was still alive and so in a way, could be considered almost autobiographical.

 

Within its pages, we find a strange account[4] of how some Golden Dawn notebooks were acquired by a lady who was a Witch. Reportedly, this Witch was talking to her bank manager and he happened to mention that he was currently valuing for probate some magical belongings that were owned by a recently deceased doctor. The man’s widow was frightened of the items and was thinking of burning them. From some snippets of information that the bank manager gave her, the Witch manages to deduce where the doctor lived, and gets on a bus in order to investigate things further. After taking a pebble from the deceased doctor’s garden, the Witch uses it to ‘create a link’ and works some magic to ensure the safety of the notebooks. Her desire becomes manifest and the doctor’s widow duly contacts the bank manager and, surprisingly, tells him that she knows he has a lady friend who is interested in the books and the other magical equipment, and that she can have them. The passage continues; ‘There were twenty-eight magical books, two magical swords, two pentacles, and some other things. The manuscripts were those given to initiates into the Golden Dawn - a society started by the magicians MacGregor Mathers and Wynn-Westcott. They should have been learnt by heart and returned to the organisation.  One bore the name of Count MacGregor de Glenstrae, a name used by Mathers. She [the Witch] kept the swords, but gave the MSS. to Gardner, who placed them in his Museum.’[5]

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I believe that the ‘Witch’ is none other than Doreen Valiente and that this story, typical of Gardner’s ‘conceal-reveal’ fashion, does actually bear some truth about how these Golden Dawn notebooks ended up firstly in Doreen’s possession and secondly, in Gardner’s Museum of Witchcraft. Further evidence to support this can be found in the words that Doreen wrote in a letter to Gerald Yorke[6] , a collector of magical items and Crowley’s archivist. She writes: ‘My friend Gerald Gardner tells me that you would like to hear from me, and has passed on to me a couple of letters he received from you, about some G. D. manuscripts in my possession. … The story which Gerald tells - rather indiscreetly - of how the manuscripts were obtained is in the main true, though he does not know some of the details.’ It seems to me, that the ‘story’ Doreen is referring to, is quite probably the same one mentioned above and written about in Gerald Gardner Witch.

 

As suggested by the story, the notebooks were indeed loaned to Gardner by Doreen and placed in his Museum of Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, in the ‘Golden Dawn Room’. As an interesting aside, this room was largely designed in 1951, by Steffi and Kenneth Grant with assistance from Gerald Yorke. This was about three years before Gardner had purchased the museum from Cecil Williamson.

 

In the Museum’s original pamphlet and guide we can find a small description of the books: ‘Case No. 7. A complete collection of the secret manuscripts of the Order of the Golden Dawn, a famous magical fraternity to which Aleister Crowley, W. B. Yeats, and many other well-known people at one time belonged. It was founded by the late Dr Wynn Westcott and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, and claimed descent from the original Rosicrucians. Aleister Crowley quarrelled with the Order and broke away to found his own fraternity. The magical working of the Order of the Golden Dawn is founded upon the Hebrew Cabala, and its Cabalistic knowledge was kept very secret, though some of it has now found its way into print; but most of the contents of this case have never before been available to the public.’

 

Following Gerald’s death, Doreen’s notebooks seem to have been inadvertently bequeathed along with the rest of the museum’s contents, to Monique Marie Mauricette Wilson (nee Arnoux). Monique and her husband, Campbell, ran the museum for several years but fell on hard times and in 1973 decided to sell much of it to Ripley’s in the USA. A lot of the collection was subsequently purchased in 1987, by Richard and Tamarra James of the Wiccan Church of Canada, and this is where Doreen’s notebooks can be found today. There are not twenty-eight books in the James’ collection, as stated in Gardner’s biography, although I suspect that the number ‘twenty-eight’ may be an example of Gardner’s tendency to exaggerate matters or perhaps the collection was divided up. However, as suggested by Gardner’s story, one of them does bear the name ‘Comte MacGregor de Glenstrae’ and Doreen did indeed own some Golden Dawn magical tools, now owned by her magical beneficiary, John Belham-Payne.

 

The Magical MSS of the Hermetic Order of the Alpha et Omega

 

The notebooks consist of a series of small pocket-sized jotters with dates on them that range from 1902 to 1908. Several of them have ‘official’ printed stickers on the front and are labelled as belonging to the ‘Hermetic Order of the A.O.’ (Alpha Et Omega). The earliest one, from 1902, is labelled slightly differently, with an earlier ‘official’ sticker which reads ‘Hermetic Order of the G.D.’ with the ‘G.D.’ crossed out and ‘A.O.’ handwritten over the top. This would make sense as in 1900 the original Golden Dawn group started to splinter and the people loyal to Mathers carried on under the slightly revised name of the Hermetic Order of the Alpha Et Omega.