Doreen Valiente - Natural Magic

Natural Magic

By the same author

An ABC of Witchcraft: Past and Present

Witchcraft for Tomorrow

The Rebirth of Witchcraft

Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (with Evan John Jones)

Natural Magic

DOREEN VALIENTE

ROBERT HALE

First published in 1975 by Robert Hale, an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

Paperback edition 2007

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

Doreen Valiente 1975

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 71982 692 4

The right of Doreen Valiente to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Moon Tree. The origin of this magical design is found in the art of ancient Assyria. This version symbolises the Moon in her monthly passage through the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. The words Magna Mater mean Great Mother.

Contents

Illustrations

CREDITS

Authors own drawings: 1, 2, 4, 8; from Observations on Popular Antiquities by John Brand (Chatto and Windus, London, 1877): 3, 9, 12, 13, 15; from Our Woodland Trees by Francis George Heath (Sampson Low & Co., London, 1878): 5 (artist L. Evans); from Le Satanisme et la Magie by Jules Bois (Leon Chailley, Paris, 1895): 6, 7, 10 (artist Henri de Malvost); from Etruscan Roman Remains by Charles Godfrey Leland (Fisher Unwin, London, 1892): 11, 14, 16; from The Book of Days (W. & R. Chambers, Edinburgh, 1869): 17; from The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins (London, 1647): 18.

Doreen Valiente was one of the founders of modern Wicca and was initiated into four different branches of the Old Religion in Great Britain. She studied the occult for more than thirty years and was one of witchcrafts most widely known figures. Over the years, Doreen Valiente made many television and radio appearances, discussing witchcraft and folklore and displaying items from her collection of witchcraft objects. She is the author of An ABC of Witchcraft: Past and Present, Witchcraft for Tomorrow, The Rebirth of Witchcraft and Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed (with Evan John Jones). Doreen Valiente died in 1999.

Foreword

To many people, the title of this book may seem to be a contradiction in terms. They think of magic as something essentially unnatural; indeed, against nature, because if it works at all then it must work by overthrowing natures laws.

However, the occult philosophers of olden time have never conceived of magic in this way. To them, magic works because of natures laws, not in spite of them. It is something built into the universe. Hence, there is nothing really supernatural or supernormal, in the strict sense of these words. All is part of nature; but much of the realm of nature is occult, that is, hidden.

The occultist, therefore, is one who ventures into these hidden realms in search of their secrets. He is not some wild-eyed crank who goes around dressed in eccentric clothes in order to attract attention to himself. Some people may behave like this, and no doubt get a lot of fun out of it. They are perhaps feeling the influence of Uranus, the planet of the eccentric and bizarre (among other things), which rules the new age of Aquarius upon which mankind is entering. However, in the past occultists have been more anxious to go about their business secretly than to call attention to themselves. When the penal laws against witchcraft were in force, becoming noticed as a practitioner of the occult could have dire results.

Today, it must be evident to all thinking people that we have entered upon a new era. Call it the Age of Aquarius, the Aeon of Horus (as Aleister Crowley did), or what you will. Not only has the physical world been revolutionized by new scientific discoveries; things like morality and basic social attitudes are undergoing change. One of the spheres in which this is happening is the public attitude to occultism.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that a revival of magic has taken place. It started around 1951, when the last of the moth-eaten old Witchcraft Acts was finally banished from the statute book of English law. Hitherto, this Act had been used to prosecute Spiritualist mediums and clairvoyants, and in theory it could be used to bring a prosecution irrespective of whether a medium was genuine or not. Its repeal and replacement by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, which in effect legally recognizes the possibility of genuine psychic gifts, was a turning-point in the history of occultism in Britain. Not only did it set Spiritualism free; it also, perhaps rather to the surprise of the legislators, enabled witchcraft itself to emerge from the shadows where it had lurked for so long, and to be proclaimed by its followers as the oldest religion in the world.

In the same fateful year, 1951, appeared the first edition (published by Riders of London) of The Great Beast, John Symonds now-famous biography of Aleister Crowley, a man of considerable stature as a poet who had devoted his whole amazing life to magic. This book caught the public imagination and from then on the occult revival has steadily gathered momentum.

The results of this have naturally been mixed. People who had become cynically atheist and materialist because of their disgust with orthodox religions, have been encouraged to think again and have sometimes been enabled to achieve a completely new outlook upon life. On the other hand, all kinds of charlatanry have been enabled to flourish; and, of course, the hustlers have moved in, determined to get their hands upon every possible pound or dollar available in this great new bonanza.

It is partly as a protest against this latter tendency that this book has been written. I wanted to show people that magic is for all, as nature is for all. Magic, indeed, is all around us, in stones, flowers, stars, the dawn wind and the sunset cloud; all we need is the ability to see and understand. We do not need to join high-sounding secret fraternities, swear frightful oaths and pay fees, in order to become magicians. Very few fraternities are genuinely old and still fewer have any real secrets to impart. Still less do we need to buy a load of expensive paraphernalia, such as ceremonial swords, wands and so on, which can be seen advertised tor sale today.

Moreover, I have tried in this book to be essentially practical, as magicians and witches have been throughout the ages, ever since the days of ancient Egypt and before. Magic is meant to help people, including yourself. The priggish notion that you mustnt use magic for yourself, only to help others is a piece of sanctimonious waffle that is entirely modern. If you study the history of magic and the lives of famous magicians, you will find that this is so. The highly spiritual religion of ancient Egypt was inextricably entwined with magic, as the great Egyptologist Wallis Budge has made clear in his book