Gerald Gardner Quotes

[Algernon] Swinburne’s influence upon modern paganism can hardly be overestimated; he was much admired, and quoted by (to name but three figures who will feature prominently in its story) Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and Gerald Gardner.

O Moon that rid'st the night to wake Before the dawn is pale, The hamadryad in the brake, The Satyr in the vale, Caught in thy net of shadows What dreams hast thou to show? Who treads the silent meadows To worship thee below? The patter of the rain is hushed, The wind's wild dance is done, Cloud-mountains ruby-red were flushed About the setting sun: And now beneath thy argent beam The wildwood standeth still, Some spirit of an ancient dream Breathes from the silent hill. Witch-Goddess Moon, thy spell invokes The Ancient Ones of night, Once more the old stone altar smokes, The fire is glimmering bright. Scattered and few thy children be, Yet gather we unknown To dance the old round merrily About the time-worn stone. We ask no Heaven, we fear no Hell, Nor mourn our outcast lot, Treading the mazes of a spell By priests and men forgot.

(About drinking wine during the rites) [...] In the old days, they tell me, ale or mead might be used instead of wine, any drink in fact that had "a kick" in it, because this represented "life".

Doreen Valiente wrote the Charge Of The Goddess…Gerald Gardner's books of rites show the Charge developing in the 1940s and early 1950s from a pastiche of Crowley's writing to one of Charles Godfrey Leland and Crowley. What Doreen did was to keep the Leland, which she thought more authentic, put in a new framework, and write the “White Moon Charge”, which is wholly original in its words, although its basic form, of a universal nature goddess identified with the moon and addressing her devotees, is based on Apuleius's "Metamorphoses", from ancient Rome.

The Witches’ Circle, on the other hand, is to keep in the power which they believe they can raise from their own bodies and to prevent it from being dissipated before they can mould it to their own will. They can and do step in and out if they wish to, but this involves some loss of power, so they avoid doing so as much as possible.

Le Streghe non conoscono le origini del loro culto.

What is true of physics at its best may pertain as well to papers about physics. It is only on the surface, suggests Gerald Holton, that Einstein's papers of 1905 appear disparate. Three epochal papers, written but eight weeks apart, seem to occupy entirely different fields of physics: an interpretation of light as composed of quanta of energy; an explanation of Brownian motion that supports the notion of the atomic nature of matter; and the introduction of the "principle of relativity," which reconfigured our understanding of physical space and time. However, Holton idicates that all three papers arise from the same general problem-fluctuations in the pressure of radiation. Holton also notes a striking parallel in the style of the papers. Einstein begins each with a statement of a formal asymmetry, eliminates redundancy, and leads to one or more empirical predictions.

I hate a bitchy chick. —Gerald Stano

Fred Adams, founder of Feraferia, was particularly influenced by Graves’s utopian novel Seven Days (Adler 239). Adams went so far as to meet Graves personally in 1959. Gerald Gardner also visited Graves at Majorca in January 1961 (M. Seymour 398). By this time however, Wicca’s popularity had spread and Gardner no longer monopolized its content.

Women sometimes had fairy husbands, but they usually had to keep it a secret, or sometimes it was just the fact that he was a fairy that was kept secret, which also tends to show his size.

Ironically, Robert Graves was also in correspondence with Gerald Gardner, who was expounding a very different kind of ‘Craft’ to that of Robert Cochrane during the 1960s. And although there is a plethora of material assumed to have been penned by Gerald Gardner, we have very few surviving letters or articles of Robert Cochrane’s from which we may draw resourcefully or reliably upon. So the discovery of two additional letters expands our understanding of the man considerably (but not his work). Graves’ book influenced both men considerably, but in entirely different ways. While Gardner used the material as an historical basis for his nature based religion: ‘Wicca,’ Cochrane exploited the resources both allegorically and analogically, allowing him to develop his teaching praxes substantially. Most especially he became very adept at setting riddles based on material from the book to test students upon their intuitive faculties and lateral cogniscence.

…for witches are consummate leg-pullers…

In August of 1954, Gerald Gardner sent one of his high priestesses, Doreen Valiente, to inquire about Spare’s magical services as a talismanic artist. A letter Spare wrote after his visit with Valiente sheds light on the disparities between his vision of the Sabbath and Gardner’s. In the letter, and typical of Spare’s latent misogyny, he described Valiente, who had used the false name of Diana Walden, as a “myopic stalky nymph.” He went on to dismissively point out that “she believed the ‘Witches’ Sabbath was a sort of Folk dance of pretty young things.” 65 Spare was formally introduced to Gerald Gardner a month later, and it was noted that the two did not get along.

I suppose these books were sold to the type of people who believe nowadays in sixpenny fortune-telling pamphlets…

Some recommended reads include: “The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft” by Ronald Hutton “Witchcraft Today” by Gerald Gardner “The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess” by Starhawk “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner” by Scott Cunningham Join a Community: Connecting with other practitioners can provide support, guidance, and a sense of belonging.

Modern Satanism was pragmatically defined in “The Satanic Bible” by Anton LaVey in the 1960’s and 70’s a Western concept embodying an organized, rational Satanic Philosophy. The Church of Satan was centered on carnal indulgence and fierce independence. Satan has always represented a model of Self-Liberation and crossing boundaries created by dogmatic religion. The Church of Satan provided this platform and over the years the Left-Hand Path tradition has expanded and evolved continuing with Michael Aquino and the Temple of Set. Other controversial and extreme paths centered in Satanic Magick as a road to self-transformation, evolving beyond physical and mental limits and experiencing aspects of Satanic Philosophy and Ceremonial Magick as found in the anarchist and chaos-bringing Sinister Tradition known as the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) in the 1980’s. From the 1960’s and into the late 70’s a self-identified “Sethanic” and “Satanic” Witch named Charles Pace (Hamar’at), living in London, introduced and defined the modern outline of what he called then, “Luciferian” and “Sethanic” initiatory teachings. In the time of Gerald Gardner’s Wiccan movement and the Neo-Pagan RHP explosion, Charles Pace was soon forlorn and a maverick whose authentic Egyptian teachings and rites created a slight aura of fear and the forbidden around him.