The source that brought this article to my attention was content to dismiss it as ridiculous, since the origin of the Charge is so well documented. And, indeed, the specific phrases of the Gardnerian Charge are mainly traceable to preexisting documents--there was a wonderful piece by Ceiswyr Serith in Enchante a few years back that did a good job with source analysis. I certainly understood why my source was dismissive of the Villanelle/Yeats theory.

But that is a needlessly simplistic and disrespectful approach to a much more complicated subject: the derivation of variations and liturgy in oral traditions generally. It's definately worth taking a much closer look at the material Clay presents.

To me, the most striking thing about the passage Clay began analyzing is that it is an amost word for word an echo of the earliest publication of a fragment of Gardner's own Charge, published in Witchcraft Today in 1954. Remember, when this book came out, there were very few other sources on Witchcraft that would appeal to a Witch--and for many years, Gardner's books were the only ones available to non-Gardnerians. Many modern Witches, accustomed to being able to find virtually any Gardnerian liturgy published in a book somewhere, don't realize that this earliest publication of the Gardnerian version of the Charge was only an excerpt: and that it was to be almost 20 years before a more complete version was in wide circulation.

Looking at the text of the Villanelle Charge itself, it does seem that most of the differences between it and the Witchcraft Today charge are the kind of small distortions of phrasing I'd think typical of oral transmission.

The original text that becomes "The Villanelle" reads: "Once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, meet me in some secret place and adore the Spirit of Me who am the Queen of all Witcheries For [sic] I am a gracious goddess. I give joy on earth, certainty not faith, while in life and upon death peace unutterable. Rest.[sic] The ecstasy of the Goddess. [sic] Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice, for I am a gracious goddess. Love and mirth are my rituals. For I am the beginning and the end of the circle of rebirth. From from me all things flow and to me all things must go."

The 1954 Garderian published version begins with "Listen to the Words of the Great Mother, who of old was called by all names of power... ...At mine altars the youth of Lacedaemon made due sacrifice." It then proceeds from there directly to the relevant passage, which I will quote in entirety, with no omissions:

"Once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, meet in some secret place and adore me, who am queen of all the magics... For I am a gracious goddess, I give joy on earth, certainty, not faith, while in life; and upon death, peace unutterable, rest and the ecstasy of the goddess. Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice..."

Note that the paralell is almost exact, if we omit the preamble ("Listen to the words of the Great Mother... made due sacrifice.") Variations from the Gardnerian are very minor, unti we get to the Villanelle's conclusion, "Love and mirth are my rituals. For I am the beginning and the end of the circle of rebirth. From from me all things flow and to me all things must go."

I offer two possible related explanations for the final phrases that conclude the Villanelle, and distinguish it from Gerald Gardner's 1954 excerpt:

1. During the early years of the Witchcraft revival on this continent, many cross-tradition contacts took place. It is thoroughly plausible that sometime in the early 1960s, the progenitors of this oral tradition were at a ritual in which the full Gardnerian Charge was used. Notice that the phrases that are novel in the Villanelle are familiar concepts to the full Gardnerian Charge, and indeed, the novel passages are essentially paraphrases of the passages in the Gardnerian version. Could it be that, overhearing the Gardnerian Charge in post-1954 ritual, the progenitors of the Villanelle oral tradition "corrected" their incomplete version from memory after the ritual concluded? It's hard for us today to realize the extent to which Gardnerian liturgy was once considered authoritative, but this seems not improbable to me.

2. The novel passage may actually be an artifact of the author's attempt to get a "complete" version for her poem interpretation. Clay writes, "Fascinated and excited, I naturally tried to trace the piece back through those who had memorized it to find if there was someone who knew the rest of it . I could not trace it back very far. The farthest I could get was a man who had memorized it and then when he wanted to teach it to a woman, he could not remember all of it. He was hypnotized, more being extracted from him in that way."

As a professional psychotherapist, specializing in the treatment of trauma and child abuse survivors, I have had occasion to learn about hypnosis, memory, and what the track record on hypnotically refreshed memories is like. Psychologists mostly understand that information obtained under hypnosis is _not_ more likely to be accurate than information obtained without it, and if careless methods of questioning are used, it's possible to introduce new ideas into hypnotically refreshed recall.

That _does_ increase with hypnosis is compliance with a hypnotist's or a researcher's requests or interpretations, and confidence in whatever content of memory is produced. That's only good if the memory is accurate to begin with--hypnosis itself cannot create accuracy!

It seems to me very possible that, knowing Clay believed the passage to be incomplete, and, indeed, unless the informant had lived under a rock for the last umpteen years, knowing that other versions of the Charge were longer, the informant probably tried very hard to produce the "missing" passages. And, indeed, it's almost impossible that he hasn't, in the years since this Charge was first used, heard fuller Gardnerian versions in use. To produce, under hypnosis, some additional lines to paraphrase the kind of material that, by now, we all expect to hear in a Charge, is actually more likely than not.

(As an aside, as a member of an oral tradition with a somewhat similar Charge, I take care NOT to listen to recitations of the Gardnerian Charge, nor even to read it aloud myself, for fear of impressing it on my own memory enough to make it difficult to recall our Tradition's version of the Charge. It can be somewhat difficult to keep similar versions of a similar piece of liturgy straight!)

This is not to disrespect the oral tradition's version of the Charge. For one thing, it sets a fairly reliable timeline for this tradition's existence: after 1971, and the publication of Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows, no one would add Gardner's fragment to their version of Witchcraft: the full text was available (albeit with some minor variations of its own). So we can be confident this tradition predates 1971.

We cannot be as sure it post-dates 1954. Again, when Gardnerian Craft first showed up on these shores, it was really taken as the gold standard, and any preexisting Witch traditions would likely have borrowed from Gardnerian sources when they could--to increase their "authenticity"--or even just because they liked the material. Charge of the Goddess--what's not to like, right? It's good stuff!

This situation, as you might have guessed, is a very close parallel to that of my own orally transmitted tradition. (We are not supposed to keep a BOS at all, so there's a lot of change introduced with each generation, inevitably!) When I attempted to "reverse engineer" our own version of the Trad, I followed a similar process to what I've laid out here, and reached similar conclusions. What's more, I've recently come across evidence that supports the origin myth of our tradition, placing our origins back well before the publication of Witchcraft Today.

I still think that this kind of analysis is worth doing carefully and respectfully. While I think that my own origin theory of this version of the Charge, presented above, is far more plausible than that Clay presents, I applaud her for taking a fragmentary bit of liturgy seriously. Yes, it looks to be Gardnerian derived: but the path that derivation followed is still important evidence, and it supports any claims this tradition may make that they have an origin earlier than 1971. (How much earlier cannot be acertained from this document alone. We can't even date the tradition from 1954, as we have no way of knowing how long any form of Charge was used in this tradition. Absence of proof is not proof of absence!)

I also think the members of the tradition Clay worked with deserve commendation, for helping advance the study of Witch origins another inch or two along the path. Information on family and oral traditions is among the toughest to get. Certainly, I know contributing what I could to this effort (within the scope of my oaths) was my motivation in publishing what I could of my own Trad's history on the web. (For those who are interested, check out, "Right. Sure You're a Fam Trad" at http://www.famtrad.html For information on my own coven, and some further information on our tradition itself, visit http://www.stepchildcoven.org.)

I hope I haven't bored you stiff! If you've read this far, you, too, must be a Witch history buff. Thanks for your patience-- and thanks again for thinking and writing about another Witch tradition.

Blessings, Cat Chapin-Bishop

Rebuttle

In regards to the Enchante article, Serith wrote of the three main sources of Gardner’s Charge which I discuss in my pages: Crowley, Leland, and the Golden Dawn. It amazes me that Crowley would be considered as the absolute author of passages of the Charge when it is documented by law records that he was trained by Mathers in Golden Dawn secrets and that those secrets appeared in Crowley’s public publications (Sutton, 2000). Crowley was a man of the worst possible character, and yet this is the very person people wish to believe came up with sentiments like “keep pure your highest ideal” and recieved in a trance all on his own lines that later crop up in Gardener’s Charge of the Goddess. There is a perversity in human nature that Gogol noted in his novel Dead Souls: “They certanly were well aware that Nozdrev was an arrant liar, that nothing he said, not even of the most insignificant thing, could be taken as ture, and yet, despite this all this, it was precisely he whom they selected as a source of information” (Gogol, 1961, p. 232). In regards to Crowley, I think it much more likely that when he “received” The Book of the Law in trance he was simply dredging up from his subconcious what he had been previously taught by Mathers.

Regarding Chapin’s observation that The Villanelle Charge is so very close to the Charge of the Goddess which appears in Gardner’s 1954 book, this does not confound my theory, only supports it. The theater group Gardener joined--among whose members he claimed were the witches of ancient line--was a Rosicruscian theater group. The sources then again return to the Rosicrucianns as most of the founders of the Golden Dawn had been Rosicrusians. Chapin mentions on her web pages that the Charge of the Goddess handed down in her Tradition is very similar to Gardener’s. Her research into her own Tradition points to Rosicrucian and Freemason origins at the web site she gives in her letter.

Further evidence that the Charge of the Goddess originated from the Freemasons and Rosicrucians through the Golden Dawn is the writing of Dion Fortune. In her book Phychic Self Denfense (1930) is a passage which occurs in the Gardnarian Book of Shadows. Also in Phychic Self Defense Fortune writes: “There is an operation in magic known as ‘assuming the godform,’ in which the operator identifies himself in imagination with the god and so becomes a channel for its power” (Fortune, 1930, p. 131). As this form of magic is known to Fortune, member of the Golden Dawn, by 1930 it is logical to conclude that there existed prior to 1930 a passage used for this purpose by the Golden Dawn. As the Golden Dawn was formed prior to the publication of The Gospel of Aradia and as the Golden Dawn was created by members of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, the source for the Charge of the Goddess would be by every accountable thread (Gardner, Crowley, the Golden Dawn) Roscrucian and Freemason. The Charge of the Goddess could have been handed down by the Rosicrucians and Freemasons in the form Gardner gave, or it could have been even more mutilated by time, in which case who in the Golden Dawn would be most likely to set it into a piece usuable for ritual? The best and most famous poet among them would be the answer--William Butler Yeats.