{"id":588,"date":"2006-01-02T15:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-02T15:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=588"},"modified":"2006-01-02T15:49:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-02T15:49:00","slug":"588","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing of a Priestess<\/strong><\/p>\n

Madge Worthington<\/a>, one of the pillars of Gardnerian Wicca in England, died in November just before her 91st birthday.<\/p>\n

Prudence Jones<\/a> of the Pagan Federation<\/a> wrote of her in a 90th-birthday tribute:<\/p>\n

Madge had come into contact with the Craft in the early 1960s, when she was in her 40s. Here at last was a natural, life-affirming religion, not burdened down with sin and guilt in the way that Christianity seemed to be. Beauty and pleasure were seen as sacred, and Witches were encouraged to be at one with the tides of nature–rather literally in Madge\u2019s case. Brought up in various parts of the old Empire, she had sailed a dinghy from an early age. When she married and settled by the Thames she mortified the male yachtsmen in her area by taking part in their annual race and beating them all by a huge stretch of clear water.<\/em><\/p>\n

The late Maureen Brown wrote of her as part of the same tribute article:<\/p>\n

The most notable thing about her is her love and respect for nature, the Earth and the animals; she has been active in the Green Movement and has over the years donated a small fortune to animal charities.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1971 she hosted the first meeting of what became the Pagan Front, forerunner of today’s UK Pagan Federation. An online shrine was constructed in her memory here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tags: Wicca,<\/a> Pagan Federation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passing of a Priestess Madge Worthington, one of the pillars of Gardnerian Wicca in England, died in November just before her 91st birthday. Prudence Jones of the Pagan Federation wrote of her in a 90th-birthday tribute: Madge had come into contact with the Craft in the early 1960s, when she was in her 40s. Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-588","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":487,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=487","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":0},"title":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo, artist, writer, and a key figure in Goddess spirituality, died Monday. With Barbara Mor, she coauthored The Great Cosmic Mother: Discovering the Religion of the Earth (Harper San Francisco: 1987). She also wrote Return of the Dark\/Light Mother and other works.In an email circulated this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=986","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":1},"title":"After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.He was older, charming,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0919345174","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":398,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=398","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":2},"title":"Felicitas Goodman","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Word comes of the passing of Felicitas Goodman on 31 March. She was in her early nineties.Born to ethnic German parents in Hungary, she attended the University of Heidelburg. She came to the United States after World War II and worked as a scientific translator before entering graduate school as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2900,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2900","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":3},"title":"Quick Review: Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Karen Palmer, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps, is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might\u00a0 better read \"Inside Ghana's Witch Camps,\" but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Africa\"","block_context":{"text":"Africa","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=africa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3509,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3509","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":4},"title":"\u00c6gypt in Northern California: Isis Oasis","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1957, a young artist named Lora Vign\u00e9 and her husband moved from Southern California to San Francisco. \"It was 1957, the beginning of the Beatnik era, and we fitted the description,\" she writes in her memoir, The Goddess Bade Me Do It! No poser bohemian, she was already producing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Loreon2_sm-246x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7171,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7171","url_meta":{"origin":588,"position":5},"title":"The Slut, the Priestess, and\/or the Poet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article in The New Yorker, \"How Gay was Sappho?\" re-examines two questions about the famous poet of antiquity: 1. Was her poetry really \"personal,\" as opposed to something like the Iliad, which clearly was created for public performance? 2. Although she lived on the island of Lesbos, was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"sappho painting","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/sappho-painting.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}