I'm not quite sure why Yeats was brought up in this context, but then the
threads come to me all jumbled up, so maybe I missed something.  I just want
to add that the basic work on Yeats's Castle of Heroes project is done in a
doctoral Dissertation by Lucy Kalogera in the 1970's.  I do not have the
reference here with me, but it should be easy to spot through University
Microfilms.  The diss. was done at the University of Florida under George
Mills Harper (of Yeats's Golden Dawn, Yeats's Vision Papers, Yeats and the
Occult and other books).  Kalogera works from, and publishes, original
papers that I assume Mills Harper had access to at the time.         

Susan Johnston Graf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Penn State Mont Alto,
Mont Alto, PA 17237 


-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Khem Caigan
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 3:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Robert Heinlein's 2nd Wife Is Driving Me
Crazy...

Pitch doth schreibble :
>
<SNIPS>
> And here's the continuing passage that's driving me C R A Z Y:
>
> "She even practice witchcraft--'white witchcraft,' in the old pagan
> tradition of northern Europe, though she didn't (so far as
> Robert knew) belong to an actual coven." [page 222]
>
> So far as I know, British Neo-Pagan Witchcraft did not arrive
> in California until after WWII. Any American witchcraft traditions
> active during the 30s were closely held to small groups that
> required strict secrecy, and probably did not characterize themselves
> as "white" or claim strong links to Northern European traditions.
>
> So what's going on with this passage?

First, I would like to suggest that homebrew American
witchcraft traditions were a lot thicker on the ground
than is currently recognized.

There is an example of something like this in
*Religion of the American Enlightenment*, where Koch
mentions a Celtic Mystery cult active here in the
States during the 1780s-1790s - and this group was
also a 'fringe Masonic' group, similar to the Golden
Dawn.

And with regard to Leslyn:

During the 1890s William Butler Yeats was noodling
about with the idea of creating a Golden Dawn-style
Irish Mystery cult called the *Castle of Heroes*,
based on the Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danann
from the 'Invasions of Ireland' texts.

These Four Treasures - also referred to as 'Jewels'
- see ~

*Four Treasures of Erin*
http://tinyurl.com/3dmuzz

~ were assigned to the four elements and their
respective Golden Dawn tools; and the four Danaan
cities, originally located in the North of the world
or perhaps in the sky, were then distributed among
the four directions in a manner consistent with the
Golden Dawn system.

I have read through much of Yeats' writing, as
well as the material written about him and his
work, and although I have seen some evidence in
the form of '777'-type attributions for the Gods
of Ireland upon the Golden Dawn's Tree of Life
in his handwriting, as well as some diagrams and
notes for a Gaelic form of divinatory chess similar
to the Golden Dawn's "Enochian Chess", nowhere in
Yeats' or anyone else's writings had I come upon
a claim to the effect that Lessons and Liturgy
had ever been assembled and/or completed for Yeats'
*Castle of Heroes* project, until a few years back
when I read an essay by Mara Freeman, which
prompted me to do some more research.

Ella Young, author of *Celtic Wonder Tales* -
http://tinyurl.com/3bw5f6 - was part of the Yeats'
circle, along with George Russell and Maud Gonne
< who illustrated the book just mentioned >, and
later emigrated to the California, where she
lectured in Celtic Mythology at Berkeley.

If you refer to this Wiki article ~
http://tinyurl.com/3chd8j
~ you will see that she lived for some while at
the Halcyon artists' colony near Pismo Beach.

This was Katherine Tingley's offshoot of the
Theosophical Society, and it was actively pro-
Spiritualist as well as pro-Pagan; see, for
example:

*Was Mrs. Tingley Ever a Spiritualist?*
http://tinyurl.com/yvk4fy

See also :

" To understand how Cowell's artistic cosmology
reconciled the intellectually and the spiritually
speculative in music, it may be helpful to examine
briefly the remarkable interpenetration of science
and mysticism in the air at the Theosophical community
in Halcyon, California, where Cowell spent much time.

Describing this unique environment, Michael Hicks
identifies a confluence of "Asian religions, pagan
philosophy, and Western science." [ Michael Hicks,
*Henry Cowell, Bohemian* (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2002), p. 82].

Cowell made his affiliation with Halcyon official
following his mother's death in 1916. "

~ from :

*The Spiritual Construction of Tuning
in American Experimental Music*
by Colin Holter ( .PDF )
http://tinyurl.com/2b43scq

Susan Johnston Graf ~ 'Heterodox Religions in Ireland:
Theosophy, the Hermetic Society, and the Castle of Heroes',
*Irish Studies Review*, Volume 11, Number 1, April 2003,
pages 51-59.

Peter Cawley ~ 'The Castle of Heroes: W. B. Yeats' Celtic
Mystical Order', *in Alexandria 2: The Journal of Western
Cosmological Traditions*, Edited by David Fideler, Phanes
Press, 1994, ISBN 0933999976.

*Women, Magic and Power - 1800-1960*
by Robert Mathiesen
http://tinyurl.com/2wwedb

There /was/ an interview with Mara, available here:

*Mara Freeman*
http://tinyurl.com/22esvr

And now it is gone.

I tried retrieving it by way of Archive.org's "Wayback
Machine", but druidnetwork.org is a blocked site.

There is also mention made of Ella's work with the Shasta
Fellowship, as an offshoot of the Fellowship of the Four
Jewels, on this page:

*Ella Young - Elfland's Ambassadress*
@Writing While Under the Influence of Faeries
http://tinyurl.com/28bmhrv

I second Kathryn's suggestion that you try visiting
Halcyon for some on-site research, particularly since
it was Ella's home in her later years; and I hope that,
should you go, you will let us all know what comes of
it.

Cors in Manu Domine,


~ Khem Caigan
<[log in to unmask]>

"Heat and Moisture are Active to Generation;
Cold and Dryness are Passive, in and to each Thing;
Fire and Air, Active by Elementation;
Water and Earth, Passive to Generation."

*Of the Division of Chaos*
-Dr. Simon Forman