Featured Book Review
'Doreen Valiente: Charge of the Goddess' edited by John Belham-Payne (Hexagon Hoopix 2000) paperback 96 pages, ISBN 0 9539204 0 2
'Charge of the Goddess' is a beautiful book serving a triple purpose. It honours the editor's promise to his personal friend, Doreen Valiente, to ensure that her poems were published; it raises funds for the Centre of Pagan Studies; but it also acts as a stunning memorial to the 'Mother of Modern Witchcraft'.
Within the glossy book are reproductions of Valiente's poems, in her own handwriting or typeset, complete with amendments. Beside each verse are explanatory notes, anecdotes or commemorations penned by such Wiccan/Pagan luminaries as Patricia Crowther, Marion Green, Lois Bourne, Janet Farrar and others. It is illustrated throughout with photographs depicting Valiente's working tools and world.
Together these create a gentle, but no less awe-inspiring, sense of what Valiente was like, as a friend, a teacher, a writer, a researcher and the High Priestess of High Priestesses. It reinforces just how great was her contribution to modern witchcraft and how large is the void left by her passing into the Summerlands, on September 1st, 1999.
Reviewer: Jo Harrington
If you would like to join in on a discussion about this book, please go to the forum here: Charge of the Goddess