Would the Real Herne the Hunter Please Stand Up

It is with great pleasure that I can reproduce this excellent article from the archives of ASH Magazine. Taken from issue no. 9, Spring 1991 and submitted by best selling author Andrew Collins. Since this article first appeared, Andrew has gone on to write many books, including The Seventh Sword, From the Ashes of Angels and Twenty-First Century Grail. His most recent work The Cygnus Mystery, is an international best seller. He also organises the annual QuestCon event which has featured many famous authors working in the alternative history, psychic questing and earth mysteries genres.

Would the Real Herne the Hunter Please Stand Up

by Andrew Collins

For those who, like me, were avid watchers of the HTV television series Robin of Sherwood you will accept that the primary old English lord of the forest was Herne the Hunter. He was the one in the huge stag's head and horns dressed in a shabby, often cowled brown robe. Robin Hood, the viewers were told, had been the earthly incarnation of this woodland deity who was even referred to as Herne's son.

Herne's obvious ancestry is easy to recognise. In Romano-British mythology he was Cernunnos, the Lord of the animals who led a ghostly wild hunt and, as a fertility deity, he symbolised the male impregnation and rejuvenation of the feminine land of the great mother.

Cernunnos' name is Latin for the Horned One, the embodiment of which was to be found presiding over witches' Sabbaths in ancient times. Under this guise he also became the medieval church corbels and capitals, and the source behind many Green Man public houses scattered across the country. Some might even say that he was the prototype for the Robin figure, the hooded man who guards and preserves the spirit of the forest and was the rebel pagan within the English race.

All of this we should already know and agree upon. Yet what about the figure of Herne himself. What was his real origin? Was Herne merely a transition of the word Cerne, meaning horn in Latin? Was it a name adopted to describe the sounds made by red deer at dawn and sunset, as has been claimed? I feel that we need to find out as Herne the Hunter has now gone on to become the most popular name used for the Celtic forest deity, not just in Britain, but across the world. Recently I heard of an 'ancient Celtic church' merrily channeling him through out in sunny California. So who is this Herne the Hunter we have deified?

To my knowledge the one main reference to Herne the Hunter stems from the pages of Shakespeare's work The Merry Wives of Windsor which was first performed on St George's Day, 23rd April 1597, at the Garter feast of Windsor. St George's chapel at Windsor Castle is the home to the monarch headed Order of the Garter which, itself, is riddled with pagan and mystical overtones. Herne is mentioned in lines quoted by the character Mistress Page who says: There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter-time, still at midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns,
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain,
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

The play was inspired by local people, local places and local traditions, so it is safe to assume that such a legend once surrounded this mighty oak which was once situated in the Windsor great forest and formed part of the royal estate. All deers themselves being the property of the crown and linked with the archaic Oak King ceremonies of folkish tradition.

In 1792 a gentleman named Samuel Ireland wrote of Herne's Oak in his Picturesque View on the River Thames. He drew his source from The Merry Wives of Windsor and spoke of Herne as a real keeper in the forest during Elizabethan times who was said to have haunted the tree after his death. In 1790 the original tree had died and six years later its trunk was accidentally pulled down during a general clearance of the Great Park by order of King George III. No wonder he went mad!

By the nineteenth century the oral legend of Herne had taken on dramatic features. The story went that Herne or Horne in some accounts(the English for the Latin 'Cerne') had been the king's huntsman in the great park. He had also been a man skilled in the art of woodcraft. One day he was out haunting with the king when a stag tried to gore the king. Brave Herne stood before his monarch and the stag mortally wounded him and killed itself in the process. From out of a nearby Beech tree came a wizard named Phillip Urwick who prescribed a means of reviving the wounded Herne back to health. He told the king to fix the dead stag's horns upon the huntsman's head, which he did, binding Herne to an Oak for support. He survived and became the favourite huntsman of the king.

Urwick tended Herne back to full strength in his hut. Two other huntsmen became jealous of Herne's role to the king and decided to frame him. Herne ended his life by hanging himself from his oak, yet his spirit was restless. Urwick impelled the two rival huntsmen to ride with Herne forever and thereafter sounds of this wild hunt have been heard throughout the Slough and Windsor areas. These have included sites at Cookham and at Huntercombe Manor which may well have taken it's name from Herne's epithet.

A new Herne's Oak replaced the old one at the beginning of the twentieth century, and on several occasions it is claimed that Herne the Hunter has been seen by observers, usually in association with the birth, death or fall of a Monarch. This once again ties him to the death and rebirth cycle of the Oak King, Green King or Green man traditions. Interesting then to consider that the English dragon-slaying saint St George was dedicated to sites once revered as places of Mayday fertility practices. His actual feast day is, of course, 23rd April which has come to be associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane, Bel in Biblical legend being another traditional slayer of a dragon.

One of Herne's last recorded appearances took place in 1962. A group of youths are said to have found a huge hunting horn in the great park one night and, inevitably, blew upon it. Their call was immediately answered by a similar call, as well as the sounds of hounds baying nearby. Herne himself then appeared riding a jet-black horse and wearing enormous ragged antlers. Terrified, the youths threw down the horn and ran for their lives (that would be a nice artefact to lay your hands on, eh!).

On other occasions his horn has been heard, as have the eerie sound of spectral horses' hooves and dogs baying. All these accounts whether accurate or not, clearly show Herne in his role as leader of thew Wild Hunt, a role often assumed by other folk heroes such as King Arthur, Gwyn up Nudd and the Norse sky-god Woden, or Odin. Indeed the curious figure of Urwick, Herne's saviour, seems to be a form of Woden, in his role as Grim, the disguised old man who walks the forests at night.

All this is straight forward western mystery tradition material, and although we need not believe that Herne was a mere discarnate spirit who got tangled up with some pretty heavy archetypal mythology, his legends and appearances in Windsor Great Park hardly qualify him as a god in his own right.

Nowhere else to my knowledge preserves similar Herne traditions, suggesting quite clearly that Herne is purely a misrendering of Cerne, and is therefore the Romano-British god Cernunnos, pure and simple.

Is it that easy? Or did the figure of Herne, as Lord of the forest, leader of the Wild Hunt and Lord of the Animals have roots elsewhere? There are links to Woden, yes, embodied in his Herne's Oak legend, but is there more?

A quick glance across a detailed map of Kent and Surrey quickly brings to light at least three Herne place names. We can see Herne Bay and Herne on the Thames estuary, and Herne Hill on the outskirts of London. Upon consulting a book on the etymology of place-names we find that the root 'herne' is considered to derive from the word 'heron', as in the large bird of this name. The conclusion on the part of the etymologists is that these locations quite obviously once housed Heronries; a logical conclusion, one might assume.

Realising this made me recall place-names in Essex with the prefix heron, as in Herongate and Herons Hall, near the town of Brentwood. They too, as I soon discovered, were once considered to have contained now vanished heronries. One must therefore sit back for a moment and ponder upon the locations of these water-based heronries, since the nearest expanse of water, the River Thames, is several miles to the south of Brentwood.

On the other hand, there is an alternative to the heron explanation, and one which will catapult us along our path in search of Herne the Hunter.

During 1980 a psychic girl I knew well, named Alison, accompanied me on a walk through some local woods, near to my parents home in Wickford, in Essex. On my suggestion she carried out a spontaneous, inspired invocation which ended with her squatting in a meditational state within a crude circle of sticks and stones. Afterwards she came up to me - for I was not allowed to take part or observe what was happening, due to her shyness towards magic - and told me that a man by the name of Heron had spoken to her. Upon asking her for his description, all she could say was that he was handsome.

Curious as to the identity of this woodland spirit, I took time to find any references too him in texts relating to European folklore. I was rewarded graciously. In the Balkans, particularly in the region of Thrace, a great number of stone monuments have been found on which is carved the bas-relief of a horseman known as the Thracian Rider. They have been discovered in Roman sanctuaries mostly, and the seated figure is generally shown wearing a trailing cape, as if indicating speed of movement. He is seen wielding either a club or a double axe, and some Roman scholars have suggested that he may represent the classical sun god, Phoebus. However, many of the monuments bear the names Heros and Heron. Additionally he is sometimes shown with other riders chasing a boar. Through this imagery and the possible root of the names Heros and Heron, it is considered that the Thracian Rider may well have been a Roman hero god, similar with the Roman Mars and the Greek Hercules, as well as being a hunter god.

Altars to Heron have been found in western Europe as the Roman cavalries adopted him as a patron deity, and therefore transmitting his cult across the continent. Some of the Heron imagery brings us dangerously near to accounts of the wild hunt. Chances are that Heron would have reached this country with the Roman legions and thereafter was absorbed within localised deities such as Cernunnos and, later Woden/Odin. Alison,s encounter with Heron (and I will assume it is the same one), along with the local Heron place names do indicate that this was so. In particular that heron was revered in the south-east counties such as Essex, Kent and Surrey. Herongate is only seven or eight miles from Wickford.

We must also not forget the Herne place names in Kent which were originally recorded as Heron. Did Heron, the original east European Thracian Rider become the Herne in later Old English pagan traditions? The image of Heron as a rider wielding a club, along with the speculation that he was a hero god, such as Hercules, and more importantly, Mars may also be of relevance. For although Mars is accepted to have been a god of war and warriors, he was originally a god of vegetation, forests and fertility. He is often shown as a rider with a club and was sometimes given the epithet 'Olloudius', meaning 'great tree'. Another of his titles was 'Rigismus' meaning, 'greatest king' and he is sometimes depicted wearing horns as the symbol of virility and manliness, yet he wields a club which suggests fertilisation with the feminine land under forced will. The place name Cerne is almost certainly a rendition of the Latin word for horn and may be a direct allusion to Cernunnos as well.

Back now to Mars. By far his most important epithet in association with his links to Heron is 'Rigonemetis' - which means of the Sacred Grove. Is this a reference to his forgotten role as Lord of the Forest? Lastly there is Mars Toutatis, a god that combines Mars with a Gallish god Toutatis, who is also equated with the Roman Mercury, and who has been seen psychically as an archer holding a bow and arrow. The arrow is another male symbol of strength and potency, like the lance or spear, which is used to pierce by flight the white hart, a representation of Elen, the goddess of the land, who in some traditions leads the wild hunt into her sacred grove. The archer may therefore be associated with the leader of the wild hunt and must surely be linked to the Robin Hood archetype as the spirit of the forest.

In consequence there might well be a direct link between Robin Hood and Herne through Toutatis, which will please Richard Carpenter, the writer of the Robin of Sherwood television series. At the end of the day it would appear that the Herne the Hunter who haunts Windsor Great Park is a fusion between the old Romano-Celtic god Cernunnos, the Norse god Woden/Odin and Heron, the forgotten hero god of the hunt, known as the Tracian Rider.

As a little postscript to this article I will now come to the events which drew my interest to Herne in the first place. Back in June 1990 an unexpected psychic message to a friend of mine named Debbie indicated that we should visit a place being referred to as 'the gate of Heron, the Forest King.' She was unaware of Heron's identity and, what was more, the information came as we stood beneath the tower of All Saints' church, Rettendon, in Essex, only a few miles from the location where, exactly ten years before, Alison had first introduced me to the name Heron.

I promptly recognised the location concerned as Herongate, which added weight to my personal belief that the area derived its name from Heron the deity, not the bird. An immediate visit to the locale produced some promising confirmations. Within the tiny village we located at least two ancient Herne place-names, one as a lane name and the other as a housing estate. To our amazement we also saw that the village is centred around a public house called The Green Man, which is the most obvious face of the King of the Forest!

So why was Herongate the place refered to as the Gate of Heron? Well, it just so happens that the other side of Herongate is the village of Horndon-on-the-Hill. Etymologically speaking, Horndon translates as 'the hill of the horn.' In the past this area was deep withion the desne forests that stretched from Epping Forest right across to the edge of south-east Essex, so it is possible that both Herongate and Horndon were once ancient cult centres to the worship of the Horned One.

So the next time that someone mentions Herne the Hunter as if they are on first name terms with him, be sure to correct them. It should be Heron, not Herne!

Bibliography.
Strange Berkshire. Edited by Amanda Cowley, Chris Cowley and Alan Cleaver. Strange Publications, 1986. ISBN 095105810

Illustrations.
Herne from the HTV series Robin of Sherwood.
Herne's Oak .
Heron by Yuri Leitch, taken from the cover of ASH Magazine, no. 12.

The Medieval Church our Pagan Heritage

Here is another superb article from the ASH Magazine archive. Published in ASH Magazine no. 6 Winter 1989. Written by leading writer and researcher on ancient mysteries and folklore Bob Trubshaw. Bob's Heart of Albion Press has published many excellent books on alternative thought over the years. Check out their website for details. www.hoap.co.uk. The illustration of the winter Celtic cross by Jim Kirkwood was originally printed with this article in ASH, and is reproduced here for completion. The sketches of the Thorpe Arnold carvings were drawn by Dave Hunt. The photographed green man is from Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire. The last two illustrations were not part of the original article, but have been added for reference.

The Medieval Church, our Pagan Heritage
by Bob Trubshaw.

Written history is always from the pen of the victors and never more so than when the conflict is over faith and dogma. But the evidence of historical objects can sometimes clash badly with what history books try to tell us. Many churches have traces of Saxon or Norman carving. The relevant church guide books will proudly boast that the Christian faith has been followed on that site for eight hundred, nine hundred or even a thousand years. But there are also a greater number of churches with carvings of the medieval period which display motifs which have nothing to do with Christian teachings and everything to do with the old nature gods.

Many of these can be tentatively dated to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although similar carvings are clearly the efforts of Victorian restorers to 'restore' or copy these features. Although the older carvings are often among the best features of the church, the guide books rarely draw attention to them. This is so consistent one begins to suspect a 'conspiracy of silence' among church recorders and historians. Whether deliberate or not, any historian working only from written sources would entirely miss these impressive and widespread features.

What sort of carvings are so neglected by the churches' historians? Not the splendid Norman tympana and fonts which depict a soldier-cum-saint figure dispatching one or more dragonian beasts. These fit in neatly with the idea of St Michael, or another of the host of canonised dragon-slayers, putting paid to the forces of evil. It is beyond the scope of this article to argue why the carvers of such scenes would know by heart the Norse tale of Odin slaying the Midgard serpent, or those tales of Celtic heroes such as Beowulf and Llud dispatching local dragons, as have come down to us in the Welsh Mabinogian and Irish Celtic lore.

It is the term 'grotesque' which obliquely alludes to the figures which history disfavours. Grimacing gargoyles around the roof of the tower are, according to more than one parish guide, an illustration of how the forces of evil have been banished to the outside of the church. But why do so many naves and even chancel arches display corbel heads with similar features?

The most easily recognised pagan influence is where a man's head is not only surrounded by foliage but has branches sprouting from the mouth or nose. These are invariably recognised for what they are - Green Men, the Old God of fertility and rebirth.

Another for of these old gods was the Horned One, often known as Herne the Hunter. So far I have not discovered any stag-antlered heads but there are several with short cow-like horns. Many more look similar at first glance, but turn out to be faces with long ears. It may be that the ears are the result of later modifications to an over-provocative figure. Among the most hideous faces are those which are, literally pulling faces - with both hands, or occasionally only one, stretching the mouth. In the north of England until comparatively recently, face-pulling or 'girning' competitions were held. 'Girning' gargoyles - human and bestial - frequently repose around the roofs of our churches. There are also several excellent examples on the corbels within the naves of other churches. One church guide describes such a figure as 'a man with toothache'. But a less fanciful interpretation is that these faces appear to be a polite version of the Shiela-na-gig carvings, otherwise known as female exhibitionists, who evoke images of their fecundity by using their hands in a similar way to prominently display other parts of their anatomy.

It would be too much to expect the survival in a church of any carving whose masculinity was too obvious. But, just as the girning faces may be a polite version of female exhibitionists, so tongue-poking faces can be seen as the counterpart for the male. One of the four faces on the Norman font at Greetham in Leicestershire has a descending tongue whose length is as great as the face. The many medieval examples of tongue-pokers have less extreme anatomical distortions.

My superficial interest in such carvings was brought into focus a year or two ago when I read Guy Raglan Phillip's The Unpolluted God. Pert of this deals with a survey of ninety-nine churches throughout Britain and discusses the importance of carvings such as Green Men, face-pullers, ram's horns and about the pre-Christian origins of stone altar slabs, north doors and much else.

Phillips was most surprised that, not only were such carvings mad at least as late as the fourteenth century, but so many have survived various restorations and deliberate and literal ecclesiastical iconoclasm. It raises the question - when did England become Christian? Many of these pagan-inspired carvings appear to date from the 13th to 14th centuries, which is well after the time the royal court, and therefore the higher nobility, had accepted Christianity. But how deep did this acceptance go? As late as the fifteenth century the Divine Right of Kings, a distinctly pre-Christian concept, was still being invoked. If the nobility of the land still believed in a combination of old and new faiths, we can be sure that the common folk held onto beliefs and lore which had, at best, a superficially Christian appearance.

There is evidence to suggest that from the seventh century there was an attempt to forbid worship at sites other than churches. This was a simple law to circumvent the followers of the Old Faiths simply built images of their gods into the churches. The pre-reformation churches abound with images of gods - old and new together, and probably more of the former until the cult of the crucifixion slowly emerged in later Medieval times to dominate all the old rood screens, built to divide the chancel from the nave.

It was only in the sixteenth century that the church began to attack the beliefs of the common people. Witch trials have been a subject of fascination to many people. The trial records cited by Murray make it clear that quite often the leader of the witches' celebrations was the local priest, which suggests that the clergy of the sixteenth century were willing to support the spiritual requirements of their parishioners in a more enlightened manner than the dogma of the One True Way should allow. This indication of the rift between the senior, witch hunting clergy, and the 'grassroots' priests more than allows an explanation for at least the survival, if not the creation, of images of the old gods in churches.

Slim though the evidence is it seems that veneration for these old gods had remained more or less close to the surface of Church worship. Consciously or otherwise the incumbent allowed the old beliefs of his congregation to e more or less explicitly sustained.

In spite of all the efforts during and after the Reformation to rid the church of its all-too-visible pre-Christin roots, the current Anglican liturgy is still a rich source of survivals of the old faiths. Perhaps the clearest instance is the rite of baptism - petitionary prayers that but for a word or three would be spells supported by the sacred names of the old gods, with the timeless use of water and a candle that owes nothing to Biblical precedent and everything to what the self same Vicar might slander as 'Devil worship'.

History as the Church would want us to know it, is that the missionaries came and entirely novel religion took root and rapidly flourished with the prompt demise of any old faiths. History, as read between the lines, and by what physically survives, is that the missionaries came and adapted the sites, the festivals and the rite of the old faiths as little as possible. the new god's annual resurrection was a familiar concept. That He died to redeem everyone from sin and evil were a bit too intellectual compared to the more direct and tangible roles of Saxon deities.

The recent pagan revivalists may feel, with some justification, to be cast in a them versus us battle with the Church, but that should not blind us to what the Church's buildings tell about their history. Throughout Britain there are many reminders that followers of the old faiths were deliberately made to feel welcome. To what extent the medieval clergy practised a tangled web of old and new religions is now impossible to unravel, but I at least suspect that the reality owes little to what most history books try to sell us.

The illustrations to this article (right) are of the carvings in St Mary's church at Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire (OS sheet 129: 770201). This hill-top church, surrounded on two sides by earth works of unknown age looks out over Melton Mowbray and the Wreak valley which has one of the highest concentrations of Viking place-names in Britain.

There is a Norman font depicting a sword-wielding man fighting five dragons (or are there two multi-cephalic beasts?). Nearby is a capital with a sun-burst face and a tongue poking face (not illustrated). Most interestingly there are eight superb corbels supporting the nave roof. These were probably carved in the thirteenth century. These include two girning faces (one human, one bestial), a green man, a horned cow and an intriguing figure with his upside down face appearing between his legs; an ambiguous feature on this carving could allow him to be interpreted as a well-endowed male exhibitionist.

Most of these motifs can be seen elsewhere in Leicestershire but Thorpe Arnold provides for the pagan church carving enthusiast the best example in the county for 'one stop shopping'.

References.
C.E. Lart 'Paganism in the churches' in the Hibbert Journal, vol. XXVI, No. 3 1928.
M.A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Oxford, 1921; revised edition 1962.
G.R. Phillips, The Unpolluted God, 1987 Northern Lights.
R. Sheridan and A. Ross, Grotesques and gargoyles, David and Charles, 1975
R.N. Trubshaw, 'Ancient and modern myths of dragon-slaying saints' in Hidden History vol. 2 numbers 3 and 4. 1989.

Lady Olivia Robertson interview, 1993

As part of our ongoing project to re-publish some of the back catalogue of articles from ASH Magazine and The Lighthouse, it is my pleasure to reproduce an interview I did for The Lighthouse magazine, issue number 2, autumn equinox 1993, where I had the great honour of exclusively interviewing Lady Olivia Robertson. It is with great pleasure that I can now report that this interview has now been officially archived for the Fellowship of Isis by The Circle of Isis Advisory Board. Click here to view this interview on the Fellowship of Isis website.

Founder of the internationally renowned Fellowship of Isis, and long standing elder of the world wide Goddess community, Lady Olivia was born on Friday April 13^th 1917, in London. Of Irish descent Olivia studied at the Grovesnor School of Modern Art in London before embarking on a very creative career as a novelist and artist before deciding to found the Fellowship of Isis in 1976. Now in her 90th year, she still tours all over the world and attends the Glastonbury Goddess conference each year. Lady Olivia Robertson has inspired countless millions of people to get in touch with their own personal goddess-centred spirituality.

Please bear in mind that the interview was held 15 years ago in 1992, so some questions and answers may seem a little out of context now. Enjoy!

Lady Olivia Robertson

On April 29^th 1993 I found myself sitting in the offices of Psychic News in central London. I was there to interview Olivia Robertson, co founder of the Fellowship of Isis. She had flown into London for the re-launch of her book The Call of Isis, which had been re-published by Neptune Press. I took the opportunity to speak with her before the party began.

Alex: Your book The Call of Isis has been described as a psychic autobiography. When did you first hear this call?

Olivia: I would say ever since I was born. You might say that going to the pantomime to see Cinderella, and seeing the fairy godmother throw off her black cloak and revealing herself was my first call, but it is always a secret call, you don't realise it is there. I really didn't think I would be doing all of this. I was a perfectly respectable Anglo-Irish writer. People used to ask if I was writing any more books, and I used to reply, yes I'm doing the Fellowship of Isis, and they used to reply, no, your books! They wouldn't accept it. When I first saw the goddess, or rather, when I use the word Goddess I mean there is a whole hierarchy of beings more evolved than we are, She was made of pure white light. I think in some ways they are connected to ancient chariots that go across the sky. People don't seem to like this idea, but why not? Then I saw the gold lady. She is the one you see when you go to sleep. She had long gold hair and a turquoise blue robe. I believe in the god as well, and i have seen male beings. I just feel that humanity at the moment needs the female aspect.

Alex: The FOI states that anyone can join no matter what ones other religion, creed or background, and more importantly, that they can retain their other allegiances and be a full and active member of the fellowship. How compatible is, lets say mainstream Christianity to the FOI?

Olivia: Well we do have a lot of mainstream Christians as members. We have Tony Grist, the clergyman who writes for the guardian and we have two Roman Catholic monks, one who works in the Vatican, he's a Jesuit, and a Benedictine monk, who actually got us into the Parliament of World Religions. We are the first goddess based religion that has been acknowledged. They have been all men up to now, nothing but long beards, bald heads and dog collars could be seen. We are going to give them a bit of a surprise I think!

Alex: (Laughing) What made you decide to initially set up th FOI?

Olivia: Looking back I am the most unorganized person. I am an author and a painter. I love solitary meditation. I love parties too, but I do like being on my own. I was guided by the goddess to do it, along with my (late) brother Lawrence who is an ordained clergy man and his late wife Pamela.

Alex: The FOI manifesto states that you have no rules. There are no vows of secrecy or regulations. In fact the FOI is probably the worlds only open occult society. Why did you decide to have this policy?

Olivia: Well we were and still are living in Ireland where Catholics and Protestants are still shooting at each other. This made us feel that we should have an organisation where people could find their own spirituality, there own path. You see people who join seem to have all there own ideas and backgrounds; a Jesuit is going to have all his own ideas, rules and regulations just as a member of an occult order has theirs. Therefore we couldn't have any rules because everyone else has there own! For instance the Nigerian members each have many wives. I got a bit puzzled when I got a letter saying Mr. this and Mrs. that and then a whole lot more Mrs!

(At this point the Tea arrives, and we take a welcome slurp or two...)

Alex: So why do you think the FOI has so many members in Nigeria?

Olivia: Well I think that perhaps Nigeria is more untouched than some other African countries, for instance there are less white settlers, therefore less missionaries to stamp out native traditions. I have no idea where they heard about us, word of mouth I suppose.

Alex: Why did you set up a priesthood in an organisation which appears to be non-hierarchical?

Olivia: We were asked by a lady who wanted to be a priestess. Nearly everything we do is because someone asks us to do it. The FOI is non-hierarchical because we are modern. I mean all this prostrating and bowing and occult orders bossing people around. We just don't like that.

Alex: The Druid Clan of Dana is one of the more recent formations of the fellowship. Why another Druid order when there are so many already?

Olivia: Because the poor Irish druids who are among the oldest seemed to be totally ignored. So we thought we could do something about this. We felt that although there are druids in Ireland anyway, we could enable something to manifest. My brother and I were initiated by an aged hermit called Mr. Fox. He actually saw the ancient race of Ireland in vision. He introduced me to the Sidhe. I was given an initiation by this holy man who lived by the river Slaney at an ancient site. It was totally overgrown and people wouldn't go there because they were afraid.

Alex: When was this?

Olivia: When I was a child of about 10, during the 1930s. Later on I began to see a white lady who told me that her name was Dana. At the time I didn't want to give her a name but she told me three times, so I had to accept it! She is queen of the whole earth. I am very against the racism of the Celts. I have a theory that the white race is going downhill rapidly, and feels it's being submerged. People actually pay Americans to adopt Irish children because they are not black. They actually try to bribe Irish mothers because there children are regarded as white Celts. Neo-Nazis no longer call themselves Arian or Nordic, instead they decide to be Celtic! Therefore Celtic racism can be a sort of gentile way, (rather like talking about the bog, instead you refer to the loo or the comfort station). The only sort of people who can be used as a subterfuge for racism is the Celt! Therefore we particularly want to say that Dana is queen of the whole earth, and we have no racism in the FOI. Anyone can join and use the holy spirits of their own lands. Do you know I have had people say to me that you cannot practice Druidry unless you are Celtic, and you cannot enter the Isles of the Blessed unless you are born of our sacred race. This is serious, just look at Bosnia.

Alex: Yes exactly! Racism has no place at all, ever in any religion or indeed anywhere! People need to become more tolerant and inclusive. On a lighter note my last question is this: what would you say a typical day at Clonegal Castle would be?

Clonegal Castle, foundation centre for the Fellowship of Isis

Olivia: Well I get up at 5.30 am every day and at 6.30 I go into the Temple of Isis and anoint my brow. Here I meditate until 8.30. Then in the evenings, again from 6.30 until 8.30 we have mediation in the temple. I feel these attunement times are important. Many people attune with us from all over the world at these times.

Alex: Thank you Olivia, it has been a joy to meet you.

Special thanks to Ronnie Hudson, Priestess of Isis, for encouraging me to re-publish this long out of print interview.

Photographs taken from authors private collection, donated by Rt. Rev. Olivia Robertson in 1994.For further information on the FOI click here: Fellowship of Isis

Chesca Potter interview, 1992

It is with great pleasure that I can now re-publish an interview that ASH Magazine co-editor Dave Hunt produced for the Summer 1992 edition of the magazine. The interview is now 15 years old, so please bear this in mind when reading it! Chesca's Green Wood Tarot is now unfortunately out of print but an online guide is available here: Green Wood tarot

This, the second in our occasional series of interviews with personalities within the esoteric scene takes us to meet one of the countries foremost "Magical Artists". Dave Hunt is the man with the questions.

Dave: When and how did you become involved in the esoteric?

Chesca: I was always mystically minded, but a deeper interest started about 10 years ago. Three specific occasions come to mind.

1. When I moved to Kings Cross and started having visions of a huge green and gold Goddess called Elen, standing over St Pancras old church. I spent years trying to understand what or who I had seen, whilst researching the lost mythology of London, some of which is written up in the book I edited "Legendary London" and in my booklet "Mysterious Kings Cross".

2. Whilst I was still living in Lancaster, I took a book out of the Library called "The Silbury Treasure" by Michael Dames. I can honestly say that book changed my life, not only did I rush down to Avebury and Silbury but it changed my way of looking at nature. I seemed to be able to tap into a sort of memory at some ancient places and interact with them, now in the present. Sometimes I see places with a sort of x-ray history, seeing who or what had been "worshipped" there in prehistoric times and how succeeding cultures changes and adapted their "worship" depending on their cultural belief system.

3. The third early influence for me was hearing about the Green Stone saga from Andrew Collins. I learned a lot from him, about the interaction between the physical world and the psychic.

Dave: What are your personal beliefs?

Chesca: I don't really know how to answer this. I am not a fundamentalist, meaning I don't have a rigid belief system. Having explored many aspects of the mysteries, I believe part of my purpose is to rediscover and make public the very ancient "green" mythologies, updating their relevance, so new people can meditate and contact ancient spirits of the land in order to empower woodland and nature.

Dave: From where do you derive inspiration for your art?

Chesca: The inspiration for my artwork comes from sacred places and my psychic or imaginative contact with the spirits of the land.

Dave: Did you have any formal training?

Chesca: I trained at Edinburgh in art history and print making.

Dave: Who are your favourite artists?

Chesca: My favourite artists are the so-called British Mystical landscape tradition, William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Turner. I also like 18th century prints of ancient sites and hand coloured natural history prints.

Dave: What are your artistic aspirations?

Chesca: I can only think of a couple of years at a time. At the moment I am working on the Green Wood Tarot with Mark Ryan. Redesigning and restructuring the tarot system to be based on the wheel of the year. My dream is to be a "site guardian" of a small woodland and spring, and to be caretaker on all levels, of the natural history and ecology, and to make sure the spirits of the place are strong and happy.

Dave: What are your views on the future of the British Pagan movement?

Chesca: I really don't know where the British pagan movement will go in the future. I would like to see less emphasis placed on individual experience, personal development and satisfaction. The land is in crisis and I feel that Pagans should take far more magical responsibility for the effects of their rites on the land. I think that some pagans are destroying ancient sites because they presume that any pagan rituals are good for them, but actually if the beings they call on do not belong to the place, or know the place, it can unbalance the energies. I think people are draining sacred places of their power by not feeding that power back to them!

Black and white artwork was submitted for the original interview by Chesca. The Lady of the Ways artwork, from the Celtic Shaman's Pack was not part of the original feature, but is included here as it is simply stunning! All artwork is copyright of Chesca Potter. Questions by Dave Hunt.

Legends of Canewdon

It is with great pleasure, to mark the Autumnal Equinox 2007, that I hereby re-publish this interesting article from the archives of ASH Magazine. Mike Howard sent us this article for inclusion in issue number 4, Summer 1989 edition of the magazine. Although lots of subsequent research about the Witches of Canewdon has been published, often debunking the Pickingill lineage as fiction, I really think that this article holds merit; and is worthy of a wider readership - having been written by one of the countries leading experts in folk magic and witchcraft. Mike is still editor of the long standing and respected occult magazine The Cauldron. As always comments most welcome. Enjoy!

Legends of Canewdon by Mike Howard

Few villages in England posses such a long standing reputation for witchcraft as Canewdon, near Southend on sea. In old historical records the name of the place is variously spelt as Canevdun, Canudon and Canevdon. Legend has it that the name is associated with the Danish King Canute or Cnut, and means "Canute's Hill".

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Canewdon became associated with the Craft. In 1847, according to local historian Phillip Benton, the remains of a huge statue described as "a heathen deity" were unearthed near the village. Buried with it were a number of bones which crumbled to dust when exposed to the air. This stone idol, which may have dated from pre-Christrian times judging from the condition of the bones, was smashed up and used to repair the local road.

The first recorded instance of witchcraft in Canewdon dates from the 16th century when a local spinster, Rose Pye, was accused of bewitching a child to death. At the assizes in July 1580 she was acquitted of the charge. By the early 19th century the village had acquired a reputation for strange happenings and was firmly established in Essex folklore as the haunt of ghosts demons and witches. It was claimed that there would be six or seven witches living in the village as long as the church tower stood. Every time a stone fell from the tower a witch died and another took her place in the coven. Other legends linked the church, dedicated to St Nicholas, with magic, witchcraft and the devil. Anyone who walked around the tower at midnight was forced to dance with the coven, children danced around the churchyard as a protection against bewitchment and the devil was said to live under one of the tombstones. There were reports, even in recent years, of the ghost of an old witch materialising out of a grey mist by the church gate.

Why this odd connection with a Christian place of worship with the Craft? Firstly, churches were often built on pagan sites. Secondly, the church tower was built to celebrate the English victory at Agincourt. Tradition has it that the Canewdon coven was founded in the 15th century buy a local landowner who fought in France and had been initiated into the French craft. This is the real reason why the church was significant to local witches.

According to popular belief, during the last century the Canewdon witches terrorised the neighbourhood. They allegedly inflicted plagues of lice on their enemies, "owl blinked" or overlooked wagons so their wheels would not turn and inflicted minor illnesses on the local population. Predictably most of these alleged witches were old women who lived alone who kept white mice as pets. These were regarded as imps or familiar spirits in animal form and had to be passed on when the witch made her final journey to the spirit world, although sometimes they were buried with their mistresses.

Whether these local beldames were real witches or just innocent victims of village gossip is difficult to prove. In rural communities isolated from the outside world witches were seldom regarded as benign. Whatever the truth of the matter folk tradition condemned them as servants of the powers of darkness who had soled their souls to the devil in exchange for magical powers. Belief in witches was prevalent in Canewdon for several generations and they were said to be under control of a male wizard (wise man)who was known as the master of the witches. This sounds genuine for a coven of female witches led by a male representative of the devil (the pagan horned god) was a common pattern in the traditional witch cult of the middle ages.

In the late nineteenth century the holder of the title Master of the Witches was a farm labourer George Pickingill or Pickingale (the family name was spelt both ways) who lived in an old cottage near the anchor public house a few hundred yards form the church. Pickingill was known as a cunning man who could charm warts and locate lost property by divining. He was the resident village character and when the first motor car came to Canewdon it was old George who was photographed alongside it. He had a sinister side to his image as the local eccentric for people said said he could stop farm machinery by staring at it with his intense blue eyes and curse those who offended him with his blackthorn walking stick.

St Nicholas church, Canewdon, Essex.

Craft tradition claims Pickingill was descended from a long line of East Anglian witches and that male members of the family had been priests of the Horned God since Saxon times. The first recorded member of the family was Julia Pickingill, the famous witch of Brandon who helped the \Normans hunt down Hereward the Wake and his rebels in the Norfolk fens. She was burned to death when the wooden tower she occupied was set alight by the Saxons.

Pickingill had gypsy blood ans was raised with the travelling people. His Romany kin venerated the black faced Mother Goddess of their ancestors and the young Pickinghill was encouraged to participate in there ceremonies involving ritual nudity and moon worship. This led Pickingill to become a devotee of the goddess and in later life he founded nine covens in southern England practising a heady mixture of East Anglian and French Craft, Romany folk magic and Scandinavian paganism. Each coven was led by a priestess of had to prove she had "witch blood" or had been inducted into an existing hereditary Craft tradition. Pickingill's use of priestesses, his veneration of the goddess and his contact with ceremonial magicians and occultists led many witches to condemn him as a renegade.

Pickingill passed into the spirit world in 1909 and was buried in an old (unconsecrated?) part of the churchyard. His powers, if local folklore can be believed, did not diminish with his death. On the day of his funeral as the hearse drew up at the church gate the horse trotted out of the shafts and cantered off up the lane. It was said that his imps haunted his empty cottage for many years until it was demolished and passers-by reported seeing their red eyes glowing in the darkness. Shortly before his death it is claimed Pickingill disbanded the Canewdon coven. Certainly little is heard of Craft activities in the village after the old magister died and his son, also called George, does not seem to have carried on the family tradition. Persistent rumours however suggest the Pickingill craft is still flourishing underground in the area and that remnants of the Nine Covens are still active elsewhere. Although the village has changed considerably in the last few years, with a modern housing estate replacing many of the old cottages, Canewdon still has an eerie atmosphere especially at dusk on a winter's evening.

After Halloween 1975 a pin studded doll was found next to a black candle in a wood near Canewdon which revived folk tales of the old witches. However this is more likely to have been the work of a practitioner of black magic than any modern witch. Legends persist though, and in 1977 a local resident pointed out to me the house of an old man in the village who was said to posses the power of the evil eye. In 1973 an Essex councillor claimed Canewdon was one of the last placed in England where witchcraft was still being practised. He said a coven meeting in the village was planning to cast a spell to prevent Maplin Sands being used as the site of the third London Airport.

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