Magical
Lives~Doreen Valiente
By Elisa Roland
As a small child in the 1920’s, Doreen Dominy found herself riding a broomstick through her hometown of New Forest, England. That may not seem strange for a little girl living in New Forest, a town with a reputation for sorcery and magic, but broomstick riding was not a family pastime for the Dominy family. Religious Christians, Doreen’s parents were opposed to ideas of witchcraft. They even sent Doreen to a convent school which she walked out of at 15 years of age, refusing to ever return. Doreen’s independent nature was emerging, but it would be another fifteen years before “the mother of modern witchcraft" found her calling.
Unaware of her future, Doreen married young only for her husband to perish in World War II. A few years later she found love again, marrying a Spanish man, Casimo Valiente, who would support her life’s work. However, it wasn’t until a meeting with Gerald Gardner in 1952 that Doreen would discover her passion for the craft.
An author and a member of the Bricket Wood Coven, Gerald became Doreen’s mentor. Together they began to work to modernize witchcraft and revive it for a whole new generation. Although the Fifties (1950-1959) was a secretive time, Gerald yearned for publicity for himself and the Craft while Doreen continued to hide her broomstick from her parents. Then Gerald created a number of new Wiccan laws that Doreen did not agree with. They parted ways in 1957 with Doreen continuing to express her passion for Wicca through her painting and poetry.
Doreen’s parents' death in the early sixties finally freed her to express herself to the public. In 1962 a reporter for the San Francisco News visited her basement flat in Brighton, England for an interview, noting Doreen had, “the largest amount of witchcraft bric-a-brac in all of Britain.” Other interviews soon followed and her popularity grew.
In 1972 with the death of her beloved husband Casimo, Doreen began to write her own books bringing her talents to the forefront of the Wiccan community. The debut of her book An ABC of Witchcraft established her as a leading expert on magic and Wicca. She expressed to the Brighton Evening Argis in March of 1972, “Witchcraft is a philosophy and a way of life. It brings about a better enjoyment of living, a greater awareness of the beauties of the world.” Her second book Natural Magic and the books and poetry that followed further cemented her status as the “mother” of the contemporary pagan movement.
Although Doreen died in 1999, her words carry on her legacy: Where Witchcraft Lives, The Rebirth of Witchcraft, Witchcraft for Tomorrow, An ABC of Witchcraft, Natural Magic, Witchcraft A Tradition Renewed (with Evan John Jones), Charge of the Goddess. Doreen's poetry was published after her death~Merry Part, and Merry Meet Again!