A Teacher
Doreen Valiente
Poetic liturgy as the vessel of ritual power
The transmission
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente (1922-1999) was an English witch, poet, and author widely revered as “the mother of modern witchcraft.” Initiated into Gerald Gardner’s tradition in 1953, she swiftly became High Priestess of his Bricket Wood coven.
Recognising that Gardner’s early ritual texts were a patchwork heavily borrowed from Aleister Crowley and other sources, she undertook, with his permission, to rewrite much of the Wiccan “Book of Shadows” - trimming the conspicuous Crowley material she feared would taint the young religion’s reputation, and recasting the liturgy in her own clearer, more lyrical English.
Her best-known achievement is her rewriting of the Charge of the Goddess, which the historian Ronald Hutton called her single greatest contribution to Wicca; her version became the central devotional text of the tradition.
She also composed The Witches’ Rune and other liturgical pieces still in everyday ritual use. Later somewhat distanced from Gardner, she explored other strands of the Craft and published five influential books, including Where Witchcraft Lives (1962), An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present (1973), and Witchcraft for Tomorrow (1978).
For the mind-power database she is the figure who turned raw ritual into resonant, repeatable poetry: she understood that the language of a rite - its rhythm, imagery, and emotional charge - is what carries imagination and feeling into focused magical intention.
What they gave
Rewrote the Wiccan liturgy: Recast the Book of Shadows in clear, evocative English, giving the tradition its working ritual voice.
- The Charge of the Goddess: Authored the definitive poetic version that became Wicca’s central devotional and self-initiatory text.
- Liturgy as charged language: Demonstrated that rhythmic, image-rich speech is the vehicle that focuses imagination and feeling in ritual.
- Made the Craft accessible: Her books and self-initiation framework let practitioners work outside established covens.
In their words
Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth, for behold: all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you.
For I am the Soul of Nature, who giveth life to the universe; from me all things proceed, and unto me must all things return; and before my face, beloved of gods and mortals, thine inmost divine self shall be unfolded in the rapture of infinite joy.
For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know that thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee nothing, unless thou knowest the mystery; that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Gerald Gardner; Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia; the English poetic tradition (including Kipling); folk magic and ceremonial-magic sources.
- Taught / Influenced: Gardnerian Wicca and its offshoots; the global witchcraft and Goddess-spirituality movement; the standard body of contemporary Pagan liturgy.
Provenance note: Valiente’s own honesty about the borrowed, recently-assembled nature of Gardner’s texts is itself evidence that modern Wicca is a 20th-century synthesis rather than a literal ancient survival.
Revelations they taught
Orders & Societies
Essential Works
- An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present1973
- Witchcraft for Tomorrow1978
- The Rebirth of Witchcraft1989