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Sunday, March 11, 2018

My Lent Book has Found Me

I just knew that publishing my last post would put the message out to the universe and a suitable Lent book would appear. And it is the autobiography of Patricia Crowther, the famous Gardnerian High Priestess of Sheffield.
Personally I'm finding that books about magic are well nigh impossible to read nowadays. I get less and less interested in hearing what other witches have to say about their magic - regular readers will be aware of my philosophy that my magic is my own and yours is yours and once a person develops their own magic there is a limit to what they can learn from other people. I don't, however, have a problem with reading about the practitioners of other 'denominations' of witchcraft.
And many of them seem to be Wiccan. I read Lois Bourne's autobiography forever ago. I've read Gardner's books about Wicca as well as some of Philip Heselton's books about Gardner. You may remember that last summer an attempt to read Doreen Valiente Witch sitting on the canal bank had to be aborted because she had the most peculiar effect of making men walk up and show me their erections. Nor have I neglected the Alexandrians: I was very impressed in Maxine Sanders's book to read about how when she was living in a little village in Ireland she used to come downstairs in the morning to discover a rabbit hanging off the doorknob and a note beginning 'Dear Madam witch...' wanting some magic.
Perhaps this reading books is the modern equivalent of magical people meeting to stop each other going off the rails. It is certainly the equivalent for those who don't have a real community to interact with. I have a real community I could be interacting with but obviously I've taken a dislike to them so don't.
I have only read one chapter and already like Crowther enormously - but then her theatrical background was always going to be a hit with me. One anecdote I particularly like is that Arnold her husband was going home from Gerald Gardner's on the underground one evening. He had an armful of old swords which Gerald had given him, and which weren't wrapped up very well. An old man stopped him and asked him (this was in the 1950s) if he'd just been demobbed from the Boer War!

2 comments:

  1. This is kind of off-topic, but the preview of this post in my sideboard makes it look like Madonna is the subject of the photo. Therefore, I was a bit off kilter when I actually came here and read the post.
    Anyway, glad you've found your Lent Book and still dislike people. Do you ever read fiction about witches (not counting Sir Pterry's Discworld witches, of course)?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I was confused by your sideboard!
      No, not really, and I'm finding I can't read fiction at all now so probably never will!

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