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FH: I must say that you're not what I expected from your picture in "The Rebirth of Witchcraft". You looked older and a lot more decrepit, and you're actually very with it and lively and younger than I thought.

DV: Well, I was rather a lot more decrepit. I've got a good day at the moment, but I have been absolutely laid out with arthritis. The trouble is that when it gets you, there's not very much you can do about it. The doctors want to put you on all sorts of drugs which have a worse effect on you than the arthritis, and I'm very dubious of taking any of that stuff. The only thing that I find does any good is an herbal ointment. It does a great deal of good, but the trouble is it really stinks the place up.

FH: Sometimes the best medicine tastes very bad, like cod liver oil.

DV: They used to fill me up with that stuff when I was a kid. I don't believe it ever did me the slightest bit of good, and I'm sure it was very bad for the cold. Arthritis is very limiting. When you've got it, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. You just have to try and keep warm. And sometimes it gets into the joints of your hands and makes it painful to write. You don't know where you haven't got it when it really gets you. Actually, it's probably a combination of old age and cussedness.

FH: Maybe it's karma or the threefold return, and they're saying, "We'll give it to her one way or the other."

DV: I don't believe this stuff about the threefold return, you know. I've always been very skeptical about that, but I'm a lot more skeptical than I used to be. The older I get, the more skeptical I get. I don't believe in all sorts of things that I used to believe in.

FH: Where do you think the threefold idea came from?

DV: I think old Gerald cooked it up in one of his rituals, and people took it terribly literally. Personally, I've always been skeptical about it because it doesn't seem to me to make sense. I don't see why there has to be one special law of karma for Witches and a different one for everybody else. I don't buy that. But there's an awful lot of things I don't buy.

FH: What do you buy?

DV: Well, I'm really interested in reincarnation because I think it does explain a lot. I've got a lot of feeling of affinity with Egypt, you know, and I've got a feeling that I was around in that time. I remember reading a book about ancient Egypt which purported to talk a lot about the time of Akhenaton, and I found myself getting very angry about this book, almost wanting to sling it across the room and shout "It wasn't like that at all!" And then I thought to myself, "What are you getting so angry about? This is stuff that happened centuries ago." But I think reading that triggered off the feeling that I was around then. Otherwise I wouldn't have felt so strongly about it. Since then, I've managed to recapture a few more bits and pieces, but of course, there's no proof of any of these things.

I've also got a very strong feeling that Mrs. Thatcher... Have you ever noticed how much she resembles the first Queen Elizabeth? And there's a striking resemblance in the way that they ran the country, too. The spirit of Elizabeth's reign was there very much. It wasn't such a good reign for the common people. We'd better not stray into the realm of politics.

FH: There's politics in everything. Even in the Craft.

DV: I wish there wasn't. That's one thing that makes me wonder whether the old coven structure hasn't had its day. It served the purpose for which it was organized in the days when we were forced to be an underground group. I can well imagine that the coven structure was really what kept the Old Religion alive. But I think that's all changing. Today, we're becoming much more individualistic. For one thing, a lot of the real traditional covens were family affairs, and people lived in the same village and didn't move very much, possibly for centuries. They knew jolly well there who they could trust and who they couldn't. They would know that Uncle Harold was a devious old so-and-so, and that Cousin Herbert would sell his grandmother for fourpence. They knew who to trust and who not to trust because they knew these people. Likewise, you couldn't try to kid them that you were the Lord High Adept and Great Mucky Muck because they would say, "Come off it, we knew you when you were a twinkle in your father's eye." Those were the circumstances in which the old covens were founded. They were strong because they were founded on Witch blood and on people who knew who they could trust and who they couldn't trust. They were almost a product of the soil itself.

FH: If you think that covens have outlived their usefulness, what do you think is the next mode of teaching and practice?

DV: I think they will have to transform. Instead of politics entering into it, which is largely a matter of who's going to be top Witch, I think they'll be organized on a much more individualistic basis. People will practice on their own or with two or three kindred people. Instead of large covens like there used to be, there will be a lot more smaller groups, and they will do their own thing. I don't think that's a bad thing at all, within some sort of general framework. I'm not a believer that there's one sort of orthodoxy that everybody's got to conform to.

FH: We're not really concerned right now about the survival of the Craft. That's pretty much assured.

DV: Well, Gerald was concerned about that because he could see that most of the people in the Craft were old. He and Dafo were about the youngest ones there in the New Forest coven, so he told me, and he feared very much that once they were gone, who was going to carry on? People were afraid to initiate their children in those days, and they would wait until they were pretty grownup. Mind you, I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think children should be pushed into doing something just because their parents did it. But he was really worried that if they didn't get some younger people into it, the whole thing was going to fade out. And he didn't want to see that. Whether it would have done or not if it hadn't been for him is a good question. That was the purpose behind his publicity seeking.

FH: Did you ever expect, when you started working with Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, that Witchcraft would become the large scale movement that it has?

DV: No. Never for a moment did I think that it would become the large scale movement that it has. Sometimes I sit down and I can hardly believe it. It's amazing. I don't think that it's to the credit of me, Gerald Gardner or any individual. I think it is simply the fact that it was an idea whose time had come.

FH: What do you think Gerald thought would happen as a result of his writing? That there would be a few covens?

DV: I'm not sure he even expected a few covens. He just wanted to let people know that Witchcraft was still alive. It was only when people started writing to him, and I know he got sackfuls of letters. .. of course, the joke was that the more the Sunday newspapers denounced him, the more he got sackfuls of letters. And, poor old boy, he really didn't know what to do about it. He started trying to meet up with a few people who seemed a bit sensible and it went on from there. But not for one moment, I don't think, did he ever envision that it would be stretching literally from USA to Australia, and now the Soviet Union.

A fellow Witch came round to have a chat with me the other day and told me that he'd seen an article in "The Times" about the reemergence of Witch covens in Russia and in other countries formerly know as the Iron Curtain countries. The spark has still stayed there alive, the ember is bursting into flame again. Also, of course, it gives the lie to all the clever people who say that old Gerald invented it all, because he didn't, you know. He put it into a form which people could use. But I don't believe he invented the basic idea behind it.

I've had quite a lot of correspondence recently with my old friend, Aidan Kelly. What he said before, or what I thought he was saying, was that Gerald Gardner and I had entered into a conspiracy to deceive the public. Well, I wasn't wearing that one and got riled accordingly. I think he's accepted it now that I didn't enter into any conspiracy to deceive people. With regard to old Gerald, well, . . I won't claim for a moment that he was the incarnation of truthfulness, but I don't believe he invented the whole thing. I think there was an old New Forest coven, and I think he did contact it. The big question, of course, is how much of the Witchcraft ideas that we've got today were brought in by old Gerald and how much were really traditional from the old New Forest coven. That's the question I don't know whether we'll ever really find the answer to because, unfortunately, there is so much which is lost, and there is so much controversy about it. So much has to stay a matter of opinion upon which people must make up their own minds. If I was younger and had lots of money, I would make my basis down in the New Forest and try and do a bit of original research --- try to hunt up some remnants of what really went on there. Whether it will ever come out, I don't know.

In those days, people had to cover their tracks a lot more than they do now. Believe me, the Witch who told Gerald that Witchcraft doesn't pay for broken windows wasn't kidding. In those days, it really was extremely dangerous to have anything to do, not only with Witchcraft as such, but with the occult at all. It wasn't at all respectable like it is now. Far from it, in fact. People didn't have the same sort of rights as they do now. There are laws now that prevent you from being put into the street if your landlady doesn't like what you're studying, or dismissed from your job because your employer happens to be an evangelical Christian or something like that. They can't kick people around quite as much nowadays as they used to be able to. In the old days, people really were very much more vulnerable than they are now. They jolly well had to keep quiet, and they had to cover their tracks, and they had to be terribly respectable. Dion Fortune, for instance, certainly tried to have a mystical Christian side to her organization to counter-balance the active Pagan side of it. Unfortunately, eventually it didn't work. But it was only people who were either wealthy enough to thumb their noses at their neighbors or were able to keep very quiet about things who could pursue these things at all. You wouldn't walk into a public library in those days and find books like you'll find there today. They wouldn't be allowed.

FH: So when Gerald's books did come out, the people he was working with were not pleased?

DV: Well, no. Old Dorothy was an educated woman. She had her head screwed on pretty well when she advised Gerald against dashing into print. I'm afraid discretion was not Gerald's strong point, and he wanted to dash into print and reveal almost everything. She persuaded him instead to put it in the form of an historical novel. Well that's fiction. But I think a lot of ideas come out in fiction which convey more occult information than books which are ostensibly written as nonfiction. Dion Fortune's best books, in my opinion, are her fictional books. I must admit that I've never succeeded in reading "The Cosmic Doctrine." Like the famous book in H. P. Lovecraft stories, it does not permit itself to be read. But her fictional books I find full of information and interest.

FH: If the group that he was working with was doing rituals other than what he pieced together later, did he have a book of those rituals?

DV: Whether there's any truth in this or not I don't know, but his associate, Mr. Cecil Williamson, who actually first started the Witchcraft Museum, said that Gerald had an old book which was not a very big book. It was a manuscript book, and he used to keep this very carefully. Unfortunately, one day when he was showing visitors round his museum in the Isle of Man, this book was stolen and the going of it has never been solved. Now what book that was I don't know. It's not, I don't think, a book that I've ever seen. What the contents of that stolen book were, why it was stolen, and whether it will ever turn up again we don't know.

FH: In your opinion, what are the differences in how the Craft is practiced in Britain and America, and why do you think those differences exist?

DV: I think we're much less formalized over here. Of course, I haven't been to America so I can't speak from personal experience, but everything in America seems to be so much more organized, and in a way, that worries me because I think it's taking some of the fun out of it. It's all getting a bit heavy. I don't know whether Americans are a bit more inclined to organize things than British people. Of course, we're chronically disorganized over here, and we've got the great tradition of British eccentrics of every kind. I think we're a lot more informal over here. We don't hold big Merrymeets like you've got over there. It's probably simply because we don't have so much money. It must cost an awful lot of money to organize one of these. It must be great fun.

FH: It's a unique experience because you get together with people who have done lots of different things and their rituals --- you can see what other people do. It's very communal. It's interesting because there's such a variety in what people do in terms of witchcraft in the States.

DV: They do try over here to organize something like that at Halloween. Shan Jayran has been organizing a festival, usually somewhere in Battersea, and I hear it's been very successful, although I've never actually been up to them. But it's not an outdoor occasion like you have over there. Basically, USA is a very much bigger country. You've got a bit more elbow room out there, you see. But we do manage to have some outdoor meetings and quite a few people go to them. but you can't do it quite so openly here. You can't hire grounds without the local church kicking up a frightful row and all that sort of thing.

FH: It's never without problem in the US either, though. Sometimes it takes very careful explanation to the campground about exactly what you're going to do.

DV: One of the things which we have been getting over here are all these yarns about what they call satanic child abuse, which, of course, they equate with Witchcraft. All that started off in USA, and a lot of it has been exploded in the USA and shown to be nonsense. So now it's been imported over here --- a whole new market. It's been assiduously spread by certain of these extremist evangelical organizations.

The horrifying thing is --- and this is a really horrifying tale --- that in Rochdale, the local social services and social workers, after attending a seminar in which they were indoctrinated with all of this stuff and given a list of indications of how to spot satanism and satanic abuse of children, which apparently they swallowed whole, swooped on these people's houses at dawn and carted their children off. The awful thing is that they also managed, by legal means, to fix things so that not only were these people deprived of the custody of their children. but they were forbidden to say anything about it. That sounds incredible in a democratic society in Britain in 1990, but it is a fact. And it has only been recently that the national press has found out what is going on and has started to kick up a row about it that this has come to light. Some of the children have now been returned. Others are still, as they call it, "in care." The parents were denied legal aid at first, but they are now getting legal aid to sue for the return of their children. There is going to be a big High Court case about it and a government inquiry, but these things have only come about because the national press found out what was going on and said, "What the hell is going on here in Britain in 1990?" I'm not saying, of course, that the children were not being abused. We don't know whether they've been abused or not. Unfortunately, there is an awful lot of child abuse goes on. But that is a very different thing from saying that this is done as a ritual to Satan or as part of a Witchcraft ritual, and that is what these people are trying to make out.

Fortunately, also, the chief constable of Nottingham, where all these satanic allegations started, says that he is going to send a special memorandum to the Home Secretary telling him that there is no evidence whatsoever for satanism being involved in these cases in any way, and deploring this myth which he says, "is sweeping the country like Asian flu."

Also, the Chief Constable of Manchester has totally repudiated these stories of Witchcraft and satanism connected with child abuse, saying that his officers have thoroughly investigated it. They've found no bodies, no babies cooked in microwave ovens. That was one of the allegations, believe it or not. They've found no bones. They've found no secret meeting places, nothing. Not one of these stories that has been told over here has been backed up by any proof whatsoever.

There's one thing that puzzles me about these people who claim to have witnessed ritual murders and all this sort of thing. They'll tell of things. They'll tell it on television. They'll tell it in books. They'll tell it to the newspapers. But I've noticed there's one place that you can never seem to get them to go and tell it. Why the hell don't they go and tell it to the police? Very often we've had people making these claims here in Britain and the police have interviewed them and they've usually come out afterwards and made a statement saying that they could find no evidence of it whatever. But, these people say, "We couldn't go to the police because we were too frightened." Well, in that case, why are they speaking out now? Why aren't they frightened now? If they'd gone to the police, the police could give them protection, as they very often do in cases of serious crime, and you can't get much more serious than ritual murder. So why, if they were really concerned about this and they repented of it and they wanted to be out of it, why didn't they go to the police with their story? That. in my opinion, is what you used to call the $64,000 question, and we've never had a sensible answer to it. And I'd like to ask it of all of them.

These allegations of ritual murder were all over our papers at first, but I've noticed that they've been rather small lately, now that these investigations have been brought to a conclusion and the chief constables themselves have come out and said they have found no backing up for them whatsoever. In fact, some of the people who gave evidence to these social workers about satanic abuse now say that they were simply brainwashed into it by continuous questioning by these social workers. One girl said, "They just wouldn't take no for an answer. They wouldn't leave me alone." Well, this is rather like the medieval witchcraft investigations. The inquisitor wouldn't take no for an answer.

As I say there is going to be a government inquiry and a High Court Case for the return of these children to their parents. Under the British judicial system, if there is a court case pending about something, you can't have a lot of stuff in the newspapers about it while it is, as they say, subjudiciary. It's not allowed. Afterwards, they can say what they like, but they mustn't come out with a lot of stuff for and against until that case has been heard because that, they feel, is infringing on the privilege of the judge and the court. So we shall wait now with very great interest to see what happens when this High Court case comes out and the government inquiry comes out. It's scheduled, I believe, to last for about six weeks. And it is going to cost the poor wretched taxpayer a few million.

FH: There goes the poll tax.

DV: Yes, there goes Rochdale's poll tax. There is a certain element among the Christian churches of what I think they call the evangelical persuasion, which is very, very fanatical on the subject, not only of Witchcraft and satanism, but of everything whatsoever connected with the New Age, even vegetarianism. Anything which is connected with the New Age is under the influence of Satan.

FH: Any independent thinking.

DV: Yes, that's really what it's all about, any independent thinking. I heard a lovely tale awhile back about one of these chaps. They were having a public meeting in a shopping mall, and they were giving out tracts and buttonholing people. One of them came up to a woman who was a Witch and said to her, "The first thing we want you to know is that God loves you," to which the Witch, being very polite, promptly replied, "Yes, I know she does." And the gentleman got very upset and accused her of being blasphemous.

FH: What do you see as the interconnection between the Craft/Pagan movement and other movements such as the New Age and Women's Spirituality movements? It does seem, with the Green movement over here and with the 20 years for Earth Day and concern about the environment, that the Craft is coming together with those things in some places.

DV: Oh yes, I think it should. I think there's a vital interconnection there. Why the Craft came out into the open in the 1950s was not really due to the efforts of any one individual, but simply because it was an idea whose time had come, and these other things are ideas whose time has come. They are going to be a part of the Aquarian Age. This is the historic movement that's going on, and that's what I find so very interesting to watch. I'm too old now to do much more except watch. But I do watch with great interest, I can tell you.

We're beginning to see now how a lot of the persecution of Witches in historic records was really very much concerned with the persecution of women and putting them in their place, as they regarded it. Uppity women were regarded as being Witches and suspected of being Witches, and a lot of the women healers were degraded to being regarded as Witches simply because they were women. Only men could practice medicine. Nowadays, we're beginning to see how the connection between feminism and Witchcraft is not something that's new. It's something that's been there all along. In fact, it's something that's vital at the foundation of it.

FH: It's an interesting resurgence all at once.

DV: That's the point, you see. The resurgence all at once. Why should that be? Simply because there is, I think, some sort of historic movement --- what one of the old prime ministers called once "the winds of change blowing," which is a very appropriate expression for the Aquarian Age. Aquarius is an air sign and it's the winds of change that blow. There's no way that anybody could stop it. It's the wind of change that blew down the Berlin Wall.

FH: Some people say that the New Age is the old stuff repackaged.

DV: Yes, it is. That's exactly what it is. I don't know whether New Age people would accept this, but I think a lot of the New Age is really the old Witchcraft. And, of course, that is why the Christian fundamentalists are so much against it because they think the same thing. I think we should try and work with the New Age and Women's Spirituality movements and movements of that kind because all of these things really are converging into one goal. They're helping the evolution of humanity into the Aquarian Age, and if we're not interested in doing that, then we're not doing anything very useful. I think people should not think of Witchcraft as just something which is there to do selfish little rituals to get you something to make your life easier. It is there perhaps to make people's lives easier, and by all means there are times to use it in that way, but we should have a wider vision of it. We should be prepared to work with the New Age and Women's Spirituality movement and the Green movement and regard them as important.

FH: But anything can be a little too orthodox after awhile - even a Goddess religion.

DV: I think it would be rather unbalanced if you had a religion that only worshipped the Goddess, because it's ignoring half of humanity. It's repeating the same mistake in a different way. I don't want to see that happen. I would rather see people have a more balanced view to realize that you need the God and the Goddess, that. really, you can't have one without the other. I don't think so anyway, Personally, I've always been very fond of old Horny and want to see him still take a prominent part in the rituals.

FH: I think there's been, since the `50s, an attempt to maintain a balance. But was there a predominance of the Goddess in the `50s because there was such a subjugation of women, or was there always an attempt to make a balance?

DV: I think there was always an attempt to make a balance. When I first came into the Craft in the 1950s, we had both the Goddess and the God. There was never any question about that. Dear old Aidan Kelly keeps on saying, "You must have introduced the Goddess worship," even though I've told him a half a dozen times that I hadn't. But when I came into the Craft in the 1950s, we had both deities, and there was never any question about this or any idea that this had been newly introduced.

FH: I think one of the reasons --- and I can't really speak for Aidan or the way he thinks --- is that you wrote what's really the major liturgy or the major piece of poetry for the Goddess in the Charge.

DV: Oh yes. I wrote that, Gerald had a version of the Charge which had a lot of Aleister Crowley's writing in it. And mind you, Aleister Crowley, in my opinion, was a marvelous poet and he has always been undervalued in English literature simply because of the notoriety which he made for himself and reveled in. He loved being called the wickedest man in the world and all that sort of nonsense. The thing is --- as his latest biographer, John Symonds, says --- he couldn't have it both ways. If he wanted to get himself that lurid reputation, which he worked very hard at for many years, then he wasn't, at the same time, going to get a good reputation in English literature, in spite of the fact that a couple of his poems are in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. I think it's a pity that he's not had the recognition that he deserves, really, and perhaps later years will remedy that.

But Gerald had a version of the Charge, which I think was quoted in Stewart Farrar's book. And I told Gerald, "Look, so long as you've got all this stuff from Aleister Crowley in your liturgies, you're not going to get accepted as being anything connected with white magic, because his reputation is such" --- and unfortunately, most of it was quite well deserved --- "that people are just not going to accept this and take it seriously so long as they think you're an offshoot of Crowley's OTO." What he said, in effect, was, "If you think you can do any better, get on with it," and that's just what I tried to do. I did the best I could with what I had available, and no one has been more surprised than myself to see the influence that the Charge has had.

FH: It's just like Gerald didn't quite expect what would happen to the movement after writing a few books. And now we have people all over the world.

DV: The New Age, the Aquarian Age, is coming in and it will come in however much people try to prevent it. Of course, it may come in less easily and less peacefully because of people's prejudices against it, but it will come in eventually. You can't stop the tide.

FH: Do you think that Witchcraft and Paganism can and will grow to become a more mainstream religion in our western culture?

DV: I don't know. I feel rather intimidated at the idea of a mainstream religion. I think I would be happier if we were more what old Gerald used to call "the cult of the twilight divinities." I mean, on the edge of civilization, away from the mainstream religions. This is the idea that Colonel Seymour develops in his very fine article on the old Religion.

FH: In "The Forgotten Mage"?

DV: That's it. He has the idea of the mystery religions as not being in the mainstream but being the byway, "the road that wanders over the ferny brae," as the old ballad has it. I think that is where the magic of the old Religion comes into it --- that it's not a mainstream religion, it's not an orthodox religion. And when you see the results of the orthodox religions, I'm very glad it isn't. If you look at all the wars that are going on in the world today, it's hard to point to one of them that's not got orthodox religion and fundamentalism at its root somewhere. Heaven preserve us from religious fervor when it takes to blowing people to pieces.

But some people need organized religion. We tend to take from "The Key" and this sort of thing. Well I do, at any rate. Yet I have been one to say that I think organized religion is an unmitigated curse to the human race, and you've only got to pick up a newspaper today to see the evidence for that. At the same time, a lot people need an organized religion, and we mustn't lose sight of that fact. That. of course, is where poor old Akhenaton went wrong, you know. He took away the common people's simplistic beliefs and a lot of gods and goddesses, and what he gave them in return they couldn't understand. They couldn't understand his one god far away. They wanted their old gods who lived almost in their homes. And consequently, his great religious reform in ancient Egypt didn't survive his own death very long.

FH: It's interesting how people's religious beliefs really do affect how they see life, and death as well. There was a joke once about the Summerland. Somebody died and was talking to a friend in the afterlife near a high, walled enclosure. He said, "What's that in there?" and his friend replied, "Oh, those are all the Gardnerians in their Summerland. They think they're all alone in the afterlife, like they're the special ones."

DV: I think, you know, there could be quite a lot of truth behind that sort of idea because you often hear about different religions having their different afterlife. The Muslims have got a rather good afterlife, I think. They've got lots of beautiful houris waiting on them. I think it's very nice indeed and good luck to them. It beats playing harp hands down, I'd say. The Buddhists say, "Yes, we have all these beautiful things, but we realize it's all illusion." And the red Indians used to have their happy hunting ground. It wouldn't surprise me at all if --- at first --- people do find themselves in something which they have built up in their minds as their idea of heaven. I dare say there are quite a few people sitting up in the Christian heaven merrily twanging away on harps and thinking that this is it --- they've made it. And it's only after a while, I should imagine, that perhaps they begin to look around them and think, "I wonder if this is real." And perhaps they then realize that this isn't real. Also, I'm quite sure that quite a few people in very stern and devout Christian circles have probably got quite a good mock-up of hell as well. Do you know about that wonderful book by James Branch Cabell where the hero went to hell and he met a very upset, discontented little devil who said he was worked to death because all these people complained that the fire wasn't hot enough? He said," I run around and do my best to make the fire hotter." I think that people very possibly make for themselves, at first, the sort of afterlife which they've built up in their own minds. I'll settle for a Pagan afterlife any day.

FH: Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki wrote in one of her books about developing a place ahead of time where you would go when you died that would be familiar, and then afterwards, you would go off from there into whatever it is that you go off into. That way, if you were killed suddenly, you would realize that you were dead because you would go to that place automatically, rather than wandering around not really figuring out that you had died.

DV: I think that, very possibly, there are quite a lot of people like that, you know, as they say wandering around not being able to figure out what's happened to them. That might account for quite a lot of hauntings and poltergeist manifestations. I think there's a lot of truth in what spiritualists teach. They've certainly made more progress in learning about the afterlife and trying to get people to think a bit intelligently about it than all the orthodox churches. Of course, the orthodox churches make it a mystery. You can't know anything about it and you mustn't ask, which is nonsense. They don't want people to know anything about it because you can't have people setting up to be their own priests and their own priestesses. Otherwise a fellow's occupation is gone.

FH: You have to keep the priest class in there to gather the money. There's actually been a lot of controversy about money in the Craft in the States, about people getting paid for things like teaching a class. Accepting money is a big taboo in certain areas because people feel you shouldn't involve money in our religion.

DV: That's all very well if you can afford to do it. But people have got to pay their way, haven't they? And if someone is teaching a class, for instance, and not engaging in other paid work, they're giving their time. It's all very well to say we must not ever take money for anything like that, but how are people going to live? They've got to pay their mortgage or their rent. They've got to pay their taxes and they've got to buy food and clothes. How are they going to live if they don't have some means of income? If you're not going to allow ordinary people who have ordinary financial concerns to take part, then you're going to make it exclusively the playground of the rich who can afford to do this sort of thing. I think that people have got to be a bit practical about that. They've got to work out the practicalities of the thing.

FH: Some people feel that you shouldn't make a career of Witchcraft, shouldn't be doing it full-time in terms of priesthood and teaching, that it shouldn't be your job.

DV: Of course, people in all other religions make it their job, don't they? They get paid for it.

FH: I think that's their objection. They don't want it to be the same.

DV: It isn't Witch high priestesses that live in palaces. It's Christian bishops. That's what they call it today --- the Bishop's Palace. People in the church, whether it's the Anglican church or any other church, they have to have a salary or otherwise they can't devote their services full-time to it. I think that people have to work out a reasonable, practical compromise about that. Dion Fortune used to say, and I'm very fond of quoting her, "It's no good being so heavenly minded that you're no earthly use." I agree that it shouldn't be done for money exclusively, not making money the object of it, but at the same time, you've got to have that practicality which gets things done. Otherwise, it's just going to be a hobby for the rich, as occultism was before the present day revival.

FH: Certainly for people like Crowley. He had the money and the leisure time to indulge himself.

DV: He was actually the son of a wealthy brewer and was left a considerable legacy. He was sent by his father to Trinity College, Cambridge, and of course, he did all right until the legacy ran out. Then he had to subsist, as Gerald Hamilton, one of his friends, delicately put it, upon involuntary contributions from his friends, which made it rather a sordid story. The latest version of his biography is John Symonds' "King of the Shadow Realm".

FH: Many people who have been in the Craft for a long time feel that the tremendous growth in numbers has been bad for the Craft and the Craft has become more a fad than a religion, and that the magic is gone. Do you agree with this?

DV: No, I wouldn't agree with that, I don't think the Craft becomes a fad unless you let it become a fad. I don't think the magic can ever entirely go, although it can be marred by considerations such as bringing in monetary profit for it, and so on. I think if you start making a business of it, then the magic very soon evaporates. It just depends what sort of a business they make of it. If the sole end is to make money out of it, then the magic's gone already. The magic can never entirely go, because what the Craft is basically rooted in is nature, and nature is there --- the elements of life, trees, the wind, the fire, are all around us. This is the basic magic of the Craft, and that is part of life itself. It isn't that the magic is gone. It's just that we've lost touch with it. As for the growth in numbers, well I don't know. You can't say to people, "We don't you want you in here." It's rather like the old line: "We are the Lord's anointed. All others will be damned. We've got no room up here for you. We can't have heaven crammed." What right have we got to deny people the right to worship the old gods and the right to feel kinship with nature? There are some who inevitably are going to be the wrong sort of people. They come to it for selfish motives, but they'll very soon show themselves up. They, in the end, are the biggest losers because they've had their chance and blown it.

FH: There are people who think that some people have initiated masses of people into the Craft, and that's a mistake. They should be more selective.

DV: I certainly agree with that. I think that a lot of trouble has arisen from initiating the wrong sort of people without stopping to think a bit. You're not doing them any favor by initiating them into something that they're not capable of grasping the real meaning of, and you're certainly not doing yourself any favor by bringing in people who are unsuitable. I certainly think that people have initiated people for the wrong motives, sort of to make certain they've got a coven of a full thirteen. And really, you can do much better work with two or three people who really know what they're doing.

FH: In the American Craft/Pagan community, we talk about building a foundation and support structures around which Witchcraft and Paganism can evolve to fit he needs of its members. As someone who has been foremost in helping to create the shape of contemporary Witchcraft, do you have any insights on how this might happen?

DV: Building a foundation and support structures? I don't really understand what that is about.

FH: The idea is like building community. Just like Christians might have a senior citizens home.

DV: Oh, how marvelous! A senior citizens home for Witches. I can just picture it.

FH: And raising people's children, and support groups.

DV: This really. . . I mean, when I first started out as a Witch, you couldn't go into a shop and buy a wand like you do today. I don't know what would have happened. They couldn't run a shop like that. They'd have been closed down by the police. They wouldn't have been allowed. It would be quite amazing if any of us who came in the beginning of the 1950s are still around to see it. We just wouldn't believe it. You couldn't buy a pack of tarot cards in those days. Literally. I tried for ages before I was able to get a pack of tarot cards, and nowadays, you can buy any amount of packs of tarot cards.

FH: As with other religions, to have the social and Community support so that we can take care of our own and not have to depend on other people. Schools for children and affinity groups.

DV: I find it very. . . A senior citizens home! I can't get over that. I think that's super.

FH: We'll have the wings named after various people. The Doreen Valiente Memorial Temple.

DV: I'm quite horrified by some of the stuff that is getting out: "Oh, you pretty well founded the Craft in those days," and so on. I have awful visions of processions to the shrine of St. Doreen in the year 2070. The trouble is I can't think of any way of cashing in on this until after I'm dead. It is a great pity. But I tell you what, I think I'll do my dentist a favor because he's a very good chap. I'll put him wise to what's going on and tell him to get out an old molar or something, and after I'm gone, they can cook up something like the Temple of the Tooth that they've got in Kandy in Ceylon. It's supposed to be the tooth of Buddha and they parade it through the streets on the back of an elephant once a year. Everybody gets thoroughly into a state of religious ecstasy and a good time is had by all. So I think I'll put my dentist wise to this. I wouldn't mind seeing him profit out of it, and if he hasn't got a tooth of mine, he can substitute the tooth of somebody else. Actually, some spoil sport examined the sacred tooth in Kandy some years ago and said it was the tooth of an animal, probably a dog. But it didn't seem to put any damper on the proceedings.

FH: They did it to Elvis Presley. They have a piece of toast he took a bite out of, or a spoon he used once.

DV: They don't really!

FH: They really do things like that.

DV: Would you like to buy some old spoons as an investment?

FH: You have to be very careful who you leave them to. They'll have a big auction and they will be worth a fortune. But again, you won't get to benefit from it.

DV: That's the boring thing, isn't it. I think it's a rather horrifying thought. It's like the rhyme about old Crowley. "There met one eve in a sylvan glade, a horrible man and a beautiful maid. Where are you going, so meek and holy? I'm going to temple to worship Crowley. So Crowley is God then? How did you know? Well it's Captain Fuller that told us so. And how do you know that Fuller was right? I'm afraid you're a wicked man, good night. While this sort of thing is styled success, I shall not count failure bitterness." That was Crowley's little poem about it. The joke is, you know, that they do sell Crowley relics. I've seen some of them being offered at the most frightful prices. There's not a lot you could do about the relic industry. The trouble is I can't think of any way to benefit from it while I'm alive.

We were talking foundation and support structures in the community. How it might happen, I don't know. It will probably happen of itself. At the moment, we're in the very difficult situation of not being able to educate our children. It rather galls me that every other religion in the world can educate their children in their ideas except us. At the moment, owing to all this satanic child abuse scare, it really would be very difficult for people to bring up their children in the ideas of the Craft, and I don't see why we should suffer that discrimination. So the day will come, I think, when we will have to have something like the Witch equivalent of a Sunday school. I don't know if we'll have it. But why shouldn't we tell our children about what we believe? The Christian fundamentalists will raise a great hoohah about it, of course. We've been talking quite happily about how the old coven structure has served its purpose and all that sort of thing, but then, you see, we may be wrong on that point. We have to think of that because when you see the fanaticism of some of these people, it's quite frightening. But other religions can bring up their children in their ideas, and as you say, we could have support groups for people. There are many kinds of people who need support groups. Most of these support groups are now run by Christian religious communities, and some of them do some very good work. But we certainly ought to consider the possibility of doing that sort of thing ourselves.

FH: Some of it takes money. Building up that money from people who really don't have a lot is difficult.

DV: I feel most of the people in the Craft are not wealthy people, and most of the things are more or less done on a shoe string. Maybe that's not a bad thing. I think the day will come when we shall be doing that sort of thing --- support groups of these kinds for older people, younger people and people with problems. Yes, the developments and the way that it is moving are really quite amazing. These structures will come. I think they'll more or less form themselves.

FH: What are you writing now? Are you writing another book?

DV: Well, yes. I'm trying to cook up the ideas for writing a book especially directed at the lone practitioner of Witchcraft, whether by choice or where circumstances compel them to be, where the person has to work on their own or perhaps with just a partner or a couple of people. I think that's one of the chief ways in which the Craft is going to develop, that it's going to be much more on an individual basis. I'm going to try to make a book of spells, rituals, and that kind of thing which will be of help to people like that. I also collaborated on a book with an old friend of mine, Evan John Jones.

FH: Is that "Witchcraft, A Tradition Renewed"?

DV: That's right. He wrote what I thought was a very interesting book. and so I helped him get it published by editing it a bit. He wrote a lot of it from inspiration and he didn't really know how it was going to come out until he'd written it down. It is based on the ideas that he and I developed when we worked with Robert Cochrane. Some of those he has modified a bit to make them more suitable for the present day, to be more forward-looking rather than backward-looking. But this is quite a different sort of ritual from what I think most people do, although he has got some friends in USA that are practicing these rituals now, and he keeps in touch with them. Apparently they find them successful. Anyway, I hope people will be interested in it and not think that I'm trying to knock other forms of Witchcraft because I've helped him to get this out, but I think that we need different viewpoints, different traditions.

FH: The Craft seems optimally poised in this situation to integrate a lot of these things together, like the Green movement which is concerned with the Earth, and the feminist movement which is concerned with the role of women, and the New Age movement which is concerned about the spirituality of the individual. It seems as though the Craft integrates all of these, so that it could take a leadership role because it's a synthesis of these different movements.

DV: I think it's going to be part of the Aquarian Age which is coming in. That is how I visualize it. Of course, it's not easy for us to see just how that's going to develop. Sometimes you think we're all going to hell in a handcart and there's nothing you can do about it when you see some of the things on television. And then you hear of some other developments which suddenly makes you feel more hopeful, as if things are going to work out in spite of all the forces of darkness, that things are going to work out to a better age. I think the world is gradually reshaping itself. There is some force there --- call it Gaia or the force of evolution. Call it the inner planes. Call it what you will, but I think there is some force at work which has something to do with human evolution, and it is helping us on to the next step, whether we choose to try to go along with it or not. We can choose to try to go against it if we want to, but I don't think it will get us anywhere if we do. I mean, who would have believed that the Berlin Wall would be practically blown away by the wind of change. But it has happened. And this is not happening by force of arms. It is not happening by politicians' planning. It's happening by a sort of movement of the human spirit, if you can call it that. These things are happening. The world does change. It's like the famous Chinese curse. "May you live in interesting times." We do.

FH: What is your vision of the future of the Craft?

DV: It may, I hope, take that kind of part. That's what I would hope and like to see it do. I don't know whether I'll ever live that long, but I would love to see some of these big open-air meetings like you have in the States over here. I think they're wonderful, and I would like to see a lot of other people attending them, not only Craft people, but New Age people, feminists, and people concerned with the Green movement. I would like to see us working together. I think that's the future of the Craft. But we can't be exclusive anymore. There was a time when we had to be because it was literally a matter of life and death. We were rather like the resistance movement during the war. If we spoke out of turn, we stood the chance not only of destroying ourselves but our associates as well. You jolly well learned discretion the hard way in those days. I think that era is gone. There are forces at work among the fundamentalists of various religions which would like to see those days brought back. I don't think they're going to succeed, I think human evolution has gone too far for that. They might have some temporary successes. They may win some battles. but they're going to lose the war. I hope that we shall fulfill that role as a leader. I'm not saying the leader, because we don't need one leader and all the rest followers. We've had enough of that. But I think we will take a leading part in bringing in the New Age, and I want to see that. I don't know if I'll live that long. I hope so.

I love that story about Susan Anthony that Zsuzsanna Budapest tells in her book. Some journalist asked Susan Anthony, because she didn't believe in orthodox religion, I suppose, "Where do you think you're to go when you die?" She said, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay around and help the women's movement." So even if I don't live long enough to see these things, I'll be around to make a nuisance of myself.