Stewart Farrar
Encyclopedia
Frank Stewart Farrar who always went by the name of Stewart Farrar, was an English
screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan
religion of Wicca
, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar
, and then his friend Gavin Bone
as well. A devout communist
in early life, he worked as a reporter for such newspapers as the Soviet Weekly and the Daily Worker
, and also served in the British army during the Second World War. He was responsible for writing episodes for such television series as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Armchair Theatre
and Crossroads, and for his work in writing radio scripts won a Writer's Guild Award. He also published a string of novels, written in such disparate genres as crime, romance and fantasy.
After being initiated into Alexandrian Wicca
by Maxine Sanders
in 1970, he subsequently published one of the earliest books to describe this newly burgeoning religion, What Witches Do (1971). Within only a few months of being initiated, he had risen to the position of High Priest and founded his own coven
in south London, with Janet Farrar, whom he would later handfast
and then legally marry, as his High Priestess. In 1976 the couple moved to Ireland
, where they went about founding new covens and initiating new people into Wicca - according to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wicca
ns both in the Republic
and North of Ireland
can trace their roots back to the Farrar's [sic]". With Janet, he also set about writing books about the subject, most notably Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981) and The Witches' Way (1984).
Because of his work in propagating the Craft, the historian Ronald Hutton
compared him to Gerald Gardner
and Alex Sanders
as "the third and last of the great male figures who have formed Wicca".
in the midst of the First World War, and as such his father was away serving in the British army, stationed in Salonika in Greece
. His family were middle class
and well educated, and were also Christian Scientists, a denomination of Christianity
that notably emphasised a belief in spiritual healing over conventional medicine, and which had been founded in 1886. The Farrar family had already been somewhat successful, with a number of them becoming somewhat culturally significant: the first words that had been broadcast by radio across the Atlantic, Guglielmo Marconi
's "can you hear me, Picken?", for instance referred to Stewart's maternal uncle, whilst Stewart's first cousin was the notable poet James Farrar
.
His father, after being demobbed from the army, took up employment at the London office of the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank, whilst his mother ran a private school
in Wallington
, Surrey
, before later teaching at the Christian Science primary Claremont School in Esher
, Surrey, where the Farrar family took up residence in a house on the school’s grounds. His sister, Jean, was born in 1920, and he subsequently doted on her, but at the same time was known as somewhat of a bully towards other children at primary school.
From 1930 to 1935, Stewart attended the privately run City of London school, meaning that he had to commute into the city on a daily basis from his rural home. It was here that he joined the Officer Training Corps, where he learned much about military strategy, but at the same time disapproved of militarism
and began to sympathise with left wing politics that were at odds with his conservative upbringing. Aged seventeen, he became a socialist
, before later taking a further leftist stance by declaring himself a communist
and rejecting Christianity, instead defining himself as an "interested agnostic
". In 1935 he began attending University College London
, where he studied journalism, and where he served both as president of the London University Journalism Union and editor of the London Union Magazine. After he ended his university education in 1937, he spent three months as an exchange student in Dresden
, Germany
, where he learnt to become fluent in German
and also developed an even greater hatred of right wing Nazism
than that which he had already held.
, and gaining employed working for the communist tabloid, the Daily Worker
. In 1939, he then married Jean Clarke, a fellow communist with whom he had fallen in love.
When war broke out against Nazi Germany in 1939, he immediately volunteered for the British army
, feeling that he could put his military training to good use to fight against fascism
. Instead of being sent abroad to fight, he was stationed in Britain, where he was set to work in training new recruits in various combat techniques, and as such was stationed at a variety of different barracks. In 1940 he was stationed at Whitstable
, though soon moved to Ashford
, and then, the following year, his first son, Tony, was born. He was subsequently moved to Pembrokeshire
in Wales
, where he began having a sexual affair with his secretary, and soon after this he divorced his wife, who like him had also begun having an affair. Meanwhile, his war work largely involved him working as an instructor in Anti-aircraft gunnery during World War II, and he also wrote an instruction manual for a Bofors
gun.
In 1945, he remarried, this time to a woman named Jean Mackinlay who was a lance-corporal in the Auxiliary Territorial Service
. She would later provide him with his second child, Andy, just after Farrar himself was demobbed from the army in 1946, following the defeat of Germany. He was subsequently stationed in Berlin
, where he worked as a civilian officer for the Allied Control Commission for Germany, and where, being separated from his second wife, he began to have an affair with his personal assistant, Hilke Carstens, a woman who would be described by Farrar's biographer Elizabeth Guerra as "the love of his life and the woman who was to haunt his memories for years to come." Despite his love for Hilke, who would die of food poisoning only a few years later, Farrar returned to England, where with his wife and son, he moved to Bedford
, where she would bear him a second child, a daughter named Lindsay, in 1948.
Setting himself up as a journalist once more, he briefly worked for the international news company Reuters
, before becoming the English language edition editor for the Soviet Weekly, a newspaper published by the Soviet Embassy. It was through this appointment that he became a great friend to the prominent communist Petrovich Baikov, who was First Secretary of the Embassy. Meanwhile, he began to have an affair with Rachael 'Rae' Kaplin, a Jewish teacher who worked as a youth organiser for the Communist Party, and eventually decided to leave his wife and children to move in and live with her. The divorce from his wife would only come through in 1950, and he subsequently decided to marry Kaplin, making her his third wife; in 1951 she would bear him his fourth and final child, Judith.
The Communist Party later appointed him to be the secretary of the British-Polish Friendship Society, and he would take a delegation of British trade union
ists to visit Poland, visiting both the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz and some of the Polish coal mines. However, upon his return to Britain, he began to split from the communist Soviet Union and its policies, particularly after he was shocked at the way that they violently dealt with the Hungarian Uprising in 1957. Whilst remaining a leftist, he disassociated himself with the Communist Party of Great Britain and ceased working for the Daily Worker.
In 1958, Farrar published his first novel, The Snake on 99, a whodunit
crime story involving a Welsh detective known as Elwyn Morgan. In 1961 this was followed with Zero in the Gate, a whodunit set around a newspaper company, something for which he drew on his prior experiences. Two years later, his third novel, Death in the Wrong Bed, was published, which was then followed by a romance novel, Delphine, Be a Darling, which was published under the female pseudonym of Laurie Stewart at the advice of his publisher.
In 1961, Farrar was sent by Pathe to Saudi Arabia, where the company was producing a documentary, and during this trip he visited the deserts of both Saudi Arabia and its neighbouring Jordan. At the end of the following year, he was employed by ABC Television
's Advanced Religious Training Course to teach priests and clergyman in television techniques, a job he held for two years, and would later reminisce about getting drunk with two archbishops on one occasion. In 1973 he was then given the chance to write a script for a film, and the result, It's All Over Town, was produced featured the actor Frankie Vaughan
. Another of Farrar's most significant works was a documentary series that he scripted entitled Journey of a Lifetime, in which he travelled to the Holy Land
in the Middle East to research, and later experienced what he described as an almost spiritual experience whilst visiting the Mediaeval city of Petra
.
In 1964, he began writing freelance for various British television series, starting with an episode of Dr. Finlay's Casebook, and in later years would write episodes for Armchair Theatre
and the soap opera Crossroads. Farrar would also co-write a 90 minute screenplay entitled Pity About the Abbey
with his friend, Sir John Betjeman, who would later be made Poet Laureate
. Pity About the Abbey was a story in which Westminster Abbey
was destroyed to make way for a by-pass, and satirised what Farrar saw as the current trend to demolish significant or beautiful structures. It was filmed and broadcast by the BBC
in July 1965.
In 1967, Stewart's wife fell in love with one of his best friends, Norman, and so he granted her a divorce, but remained both her and Norman's friend, carrying no resentment towards them. Feeling alone, he turned to his second wife, Jean Mackinlay, who herself had just recently divorced her second husband, and although she refused his offer of reigniting their relationship, they did once more become friends. In 1968 he would re-united with another former lover, Beth Donovan, and married her, but he would leave her in June 1969 when he met a new woman, Isabel Sutherland, and subsequently moved in with her and her daughter. Meanwhile, in 1968 he won a Writer’s Guild Award for his six-part radio serial Watch the Wall my Darling, which was based upon the poem A Smuggler's Song by one of his favourite poets, Rudyard Kipling
. Following this, in February of the following year, he once more returned to journalism, taking up employment with the popular weekly magazine Reveille.
and Maxine Sanders
, the founders of Alexandrian Wicca, who had served as advisors during the film's creation. According to his biography at mystica.com, Farrar was "skeptical about Witchcraft but was interested in Sanders upon meeting him". The paper requested that Farrar interview Sanders and published the interview as a two-part story. Sanders, "impressed" with the interview, invited Farrar to attend an Alexandrian Wiccan initiation
ritual, and prompted Farrar to write an entire book on Wicca. According to mystica.com, Farrar "found the ceremony both dignified and moving". Farrar began work on his first non-fiction book, What Witches Do
, and began taking classes on witchcraft from the Sanders'. Maxine Sanders remembers Farrar as "a charming man, a sincere student with an active flexible mind". Maxine Sanders also notes that it was in response to Farrar's questions about how to describe their practice in his book that the Alexandrian tradition was named.
On 21 February 1970 Farrar was initiated into Alexandrian Wicca and joined the Sanders' coven
. Farrar met his future wife, then Janet Owen (thirty-four years his junior), in the coven. Janet Farrar
asserts that the couple were both elevated to the second degree "in an unoccupied house in Sydenham
" by the Sanders on 17 October 1970, and that they received the third, and final, degree of initiation in their flat 24 April 1971. Two of Janet and Stewart's coven - 'Don and Barbara' were present, as were the Sanders coven. Janet Farrar remembers the initiation well, as Maxine invoked Sekhmet to banish one of her coven members. She broke her flail during this banishing. Recently their 3rd Degree initiation has been disputed by some Alexandrian "revisionists", unaware that Stewart Farrar kept an archive of all his correspondences with the Sanders and possessed copies of both his own and the Sanders' coven records that unequivocally prove that the initiation took place. What Witches Do was published in 1971. The book has been called "controversial" because of Farrar's assertion that Sanders should be "ranked above Gerald B.Gardner
and alongside of Aleister Crowley
and Eliphas Levi
in terms of magical achievement". Farrar later backed away from the assessment, although he did later state that he believed that Sanders 'was both a charlatan and a genuine magician'. The relationship between Alex Sanders and Stewart Farrar became one of mutual respect after letters began to be exchanged between them in 1977. To quote Sanders (8 March 1997):
“Your letters give off good vibrations of work and happiness. I feel that all our growing pains concerning publicity and personalities of the Wicca, are beginning to bear fruit. A few of us in the midst of many are beginning to establish the foundation (I mean the building itself) on the raw materials, to get the foundation stone in place”.
They remained in dialogue until Alex Sanders' death in the late 1980s.
Farrar and Owen had begun running their own coven in 1971, before their third degree initiation ceremony, and were handfasted
in 1972 and legally married in 1975. The ceremony was attended by Farrar's two daughters and two sons from three previous marriages - his marriage to Owen was his sixth. The late 1970s saw the publication of several more novels by Farrar, all of which were occult-themed fantasy novels or science fiction
. Farrar left Reveille to pursue a full-time freelance writing career in 1974. In 1976 the Farrars moved to Ireland
to get away from the busy life of London. They lived in County Mayo
and County Wicklow
, finally settling in "Herne Cottage" in Kells, County Meath
. Both husband and wife went on to publish a number of "classic" and "influential" books on the Wiccan religion and on coven practises. Their 1981 Eight Sabbats for Witches included material the authors claimed to be from the Alexandrian tradition's Book of Shadows
. The Farrars, with the support of Doreen Valiente
, argued in the book that even though the publishing of this material broke their oath of secrecy, it was justified by the need to correct misinformation. Janet Farrar indicates that some of the rituals contained in the couple's books were actually written by them, this includes the Oak King/Holy King cycle which they researched from Robert Grave's White Goddess. This was the first use of this cycle in any Wiccan Book of Shadows, and has been adopted into many traditions since. Although they never officially left the Alexandrian tradition, after the book's research was complete they stopped using the term to describe themselves. The couple co-authored four more books on Wicca.
They were joined by Gavin Bone
, with whom they entered into a "polyfidelitous relationship". The three of them would co-author two more books; The Healing Craft and The Pagan Path (an investigation into the many varieties of Neopaganism). In 1999 the Farrars received the Aquarian Tabernacle Church
charter for Ireland, and were ordained as third level clergy. Farrar died 7 February 2000 after a brief illness.
A biography on Stewart Farrar entitled Writer on a Broomstick by Elizabeth Guerra was published in February 2008 by R J Stewart books.
----
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan
Neopaganism
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
religion of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar
Janet Farrar
Janet Farrar is a British teacher and author of books on Wicca and Neopaganism. Along with her two husbands, Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone, Farrar has published "some of the most influential books on modern Witchcraft to date." According to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wiccans...
, and then his friend Gavin Bone
Gavin Bone
Gavin Bone is an author and lecturer in the fields of magic, witchcraft, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, and an organizer in the Neo-Pagan community. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire in England, in 1964.-Wicca and Neopaganism:...
as well. A devout communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in early life, he worked as a reporter for such newspapers as the Soviet Weekly and the Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
, and also served in the British army during the Second World War. He was responsible for writing episodes for such television series as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....
and Crossroads, and for his work in writing radio scripts won a Writer's Guild Award. He also published a string of novels, written in such disparate genres as crime, romance and fantasy.
After being initiated into Alexandrian Wicca
Alexandrian Wicca
Alexandrian Wicca is a tradition of the Neopagan religion of Wicca, founded by Alex Sanders who, with his wife Maxine Sanders, established the tradition in the United Kingdom in the 1960s...
by Maxine Sanders
Maxine Sanders
Maxine Sanders is a prominent member of the Wiccan faith and a co-founder with her late husband, Alex Sanders, of Alexandrian Wicca....
in 1970, he subsequently published one of the earliest books to describe this newly burgeoning religion, What Witches Do (1971). Within only a few months of being initiated, he had risen to the position of High Priest and founded his own coven
Coven
A coven or covan is a name used to describe a gathering of witches or in some cases vampires. Due to the word's association with witches, a gathering of Wiccans, followers of the witchcraft-based neopagan religion of Wicca, is also described as a coven....
in south London, with Janet Farrar, whom he would later handfast
Handfasting
Handfasting is a traditional European ceremony of betrothal or wedding. It usually involved the tying or binding of the right hands of the bride and groom with a cord or ribbon for the duration of the wedding ceremony.-Etymology:...
and then legally marry, as his High Priestess. In 1976 the couple moved to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, where they went about founding new covens and initiating new people into Wicca - according to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
ns both in the Republic
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
and North of Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
can trace their roots back to the Farrar's [sic]". With Janet, he also set about writing books about the subject, most notably Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981) and The Witches' Way (1984).
Because of his work in propagating the Craft, the historian Ronald Hutton
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A reader in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio...
compared him to Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
and Alex Sanders
Alex Sanders (Wiccan)
Alex Sanders , born Orrell Alexander Carter, was an English occultist and High Priest in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca during the 1960s. He was a figure who often appeared in tabloid newspapers...
as "the third and last of the great male figures who have formed Wicca".
Early Life: 1916-1937
Stewart Farrar was born at his family home of 239 Winchester Road, Highams Park, EssexEssex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
in the midst of the First World War, and as such his father was away serving in the British army, stationed in Salonika in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
. His family were middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
and well educated, and were also Christian Scientists, a denomination of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
that notably emphasised a belief in spiritual healing over conventional medicine, and which had been founded in 1886. The Farrar family had already been somewhat successful, with a number of them becoming somewhat culturally significant: the first words that had been broadcast by radio across the Atlantic, Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...
's "can you hear me, Picken?", for instance referred to Stewart's maternal uncle, whilst Stewart's first cousin was the notable poet James Farrar
James Farrar
-Biography:Farrar was born on 5 October 1923 in London, the second son of Donald Frederic Farrar , a former Royal Flying Corps supply pilot, and Mabel Margaret Farrar, née Hadgraft . He lived in Carshalton, a small village in Surrey, England. He attended the local grammar school, Sutton Grammar...
.
His father, after being demobbed from the army, took up employment at the London office of the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank, whilst his mother ran a private school
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
in Wallington
Wallington, London
Wallington is a town in the London Borough of Sutton situated south south-west of Charing Cross. Prior to the merger of the Municipal Borough of Beddington and Wallington into the London Borough of Sutton, it was part of the county of Surrey.- History :...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, before later teaching at the Christian Science primary Claremont School in Esher
Esher
Esher is a town in the Surrey borough of Elmbridge in South East England near the River Mole. It is a very prosperous part of the Greater London Urban Area, largely suburban in character, and is situated 14.1 miles south west of Charing Cross....
, Surrey, where the Farrar family took up residence in a house on the school’s grounds. His sister, Jean, was born in 1920, and he subsequently doted on her, but at the same time was known as somewhat of a bully towards other children at primary school.
From 1930 to 1935, Stewart attended the privately run City of London school, meaning that he had to commute into the city on a daily basis from his rural home. It was here that he joined the Officer Training Corps, where he learned much about military strategy, but at the same time disapproved of militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
and began to sympathise with left wing politics that were at odds with his conservative upbringing. Aged seventeen, he became a socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, before later taking a further leftist stance by declaring himself a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and rejecting Christianity, instead defining himself as an "interested agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
". In 1935 he began attending University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, where he studied journalism, and where he served both as president of the London University Journalism Union and editor of the London Union Magazine. After he ended his university education in 1937, he spent three months as an exchange student in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where he learnt to become fluent in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and also developed an even greater hatred of right wing Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
than that which he had already held.
Communism, the Army and Journalism: 1937-1957
Returning to Britain, Farrar immersed himself in propagating communism, joining the Communist Party of Great BritainCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
, and gaining employed working for the communist tabloid, the Daily Worker
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
. In 1939, he then married Jean Clarke, a fellow communist with whom he had fallen in love.
When war broke out against Nazi Germany in 1939, he immediately volunteered for the British army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, feeling that he could put his military training to good use to fight against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. Instead of being sent abroad to fight, he was stationed in Britain, where he was set to work in training new recruits in various combat techniques, and as such was stationed at a variety of different barracks. In 1940 he was stationed at Whitstable
Whitstable
Whitstable is a seaside town in Northeast Kent, Southeast England. It is approximately north of the city of Canterbury and approximately west of the seaside town of Herne Bay. It is part of the City of Canterbury district and has a population of about 30,000.Whitstable is famous for its oysters,...
, though soon moved to Ashford
Ashford, Kent
Ashford is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. In 2005 it was voted the fourth best place to live in the United Kingdom. It lies on the Great Stour river, the M20 motorway, and the South Eastern Main Line and High Speed 1 railways. Its agricultural market is one of the most...
, and then, the following year, his first son, Tony, was born. He was subsequently moved to Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....
in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, where he began having a sexual affair with his secretary, and soon after this he divorced his wife, who like him had also begun having an affair. Meanwhile, his war work largely involved him working as an instructor in Anti-aircraft gunnery during World War II, and he also wrote an instruction manual for a Bofors
Bofors
The name Bofors has been associated with the iron industry for more than 350 years.Located in Karlskoga, Sweden, the company originates from the hammer mill "Boofors" founded 1646. The modern corporate structure was created in 1873 with the foundation of Aktiebolaget Bofors-Gullspång...
gun.
In 1945, he remarried, this time to a woman named Jean Mackinlay who was a lance-corporal in the Auxiliary Territorial Service
Auxiliary Territorial Service
The Auxiliary Territorial Service was the women's branch of the British Army during the Second World War...
. She would later provide him with his second child, Andy, just after Farrar himself was demobbed from the army in 1946, following the defeat of Germany. He was subsequently stationed in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where he worked as a civilian officer for the Allied Control Commission for Germany, and where, being separated from his second wife, he began to have an affair with his personal assistant, Hilke Carstens, a woman who would be described by Farrar's biographer Elizabeth Guerra as "the love of his life and the woman who was to haunt his memories for years to come." Despite his love for Hilke, who would die of food poisoning only a few years later, Farrar returned to England, where with his wife and son, he moved to Bedford
Bedford
Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...
, where she would bear him a second child, a daughter named Lindsay, in 1948.
Setting himself up as a journalist once more, he briefly worked for the international news company Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, before becoming the English language edition editor for the Soviet Weekly, a newspaper published by the Soviet Embassy. It was through this appointment that he became a great friend to the prominent communist Petrovich Baikov, who was First Secretary of the Embassy. Meanwhile, he began to have an affair with Rachael 'Rae' Kaplin, a Jewish teacher who worked as a youth organiser for the Communist Party, and eventually decided to leave his wife and children to move in and live with her. The divorce from his wife would only come through in 1950, and he subsequently decided to marry Kaplin, making her his third wife; in 1951 she would bear him his fourth and final child, Judith.
The Communist Party later appointed him to be the secretary of the British-Polish Friendship Society, and he would take a delegation of British trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ists to visit Poland, visiting both the former Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz and some of the Polish coal mines. However, upon his return to Britain, he began to split from the communist Soviet Union and its policies, particularly after he was shocked at the way that they violently dealt with the Hungarian Uprising in 1957. Whilst remaining a leftist, he disassociated himself with the Communist Party of Great Britain and ceased working for the Daily Worker.
Scriptwriting: 1957-1969
Disillusioned with the route that the communist powers were taking, and wanting nothing more to do with the Soviet Union and its allies in Britain, he took up a job working first for R.H. Radford, a public relations firm and then Associated British-Pathé where he eventually rose to the position of documentary writer. Meanwhile, his continued infidelity led to him and Kaplin separating in 1953, although it would only be in 1963 that he finally gained a divorce from her. During this time, he had entered into a new relationship with a woman named Beth Donovan, and she encouraged him to continue seeing his children from previous relationships, whom in later life he always regretted having neglected; in 1958 however, they too split up. In 1959, he began yet another relationship, this time with a geography teacher named Barbara Williams, and they moved in together after only eleven days of first meeting. They would get divorced in 1967, before remarrying in 1968, and then subsequently breaking up again the following year.In 1958, Farrar published his first novel, The Snake on 99, a whodunit
Whodunit
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...
crime story involving a Welsh detective known as Elwyn Morgan. In 1961 this was followed with Zero in the Gate, a whodunit set around a newspaper company, something for which he drew on his prior experiences. Two years later, his third novel, Death in the Wrong Bed, was published, which was then followed by a romance novel, Delphine, Be a Darling, which was published under the female pseudonym of Laurie Stewart at the advice of his publisher.
In 1961, Farrar was sent by Pathe to Saudi Arabia, where the company was producing a documentary, and during this trip he visited the deserts of both Saudi Arabia and its neighbouring Jordan. At the end of the following year, he was employed by ABC Television
ABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
's Advanced Religious Training Course to teach priests and clergyman in television techniques, a job he held for two years, and would later reminisce about getting drunk with two archbishops on one occasion. In 1973 he was then given the chance to write a script for a film, and the result, It's All Over Town, was produced featured the actor Frankie Vaughan
Frankie Vaughan
Frankie Vaughan, CBE, DL was an English singer of traditional pop music, who issued more than 80 recordings in his lifetime. He was known as "Mr. Moonlight" after one of his early hits.-Life and career:...
. Another of Farrar's most significant works was a documentary series that he scripted entitled Journey of a Lifetime, in which he travelled to the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
in the Middle East to research, and later experienced what he described as an almost spiritual experience whilst visiting the Mediaeval city of Petra
Petra
Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited...
.
In 1964, he began writing freelance for various British television series, starting with an episode of Dr. Finlay's Casebook, and in later years would write episodes for Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series, which ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television after 1968....
and the soap opera Crossroads. Farrar would also co-write a 90 minute screenplay entitled Pity About the Abbey
Pity About the Abbey
Pity About the Abbey was a 1965 BBC television drama written by Stewart Farrar and Sir John Betjeman, and directed by Ian Curteis. Pity About the Abbey was a 90 minute play written for a strand of programmes titled Londoners. The play imagined that Westminster Abbey, one of the most significant...
with his friend, Sir John Betjeman, who would later be made Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
. Pity About the Abbey was a story in which Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
was destroyed to make way for a by-pass, and satirised what Farrar saw as the current trend to demolish significant or beautiful structures. It was filmed and broadcast by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in July 1965.
In 1967, Stewart's wife fell in love with one of his best friends, Norman, and so he granted her a divorce, but remained both her and Norman's friend, carrying no resentment towards them. Feeling alone, he turned to his second wife, Jean Mackinlay, who herself had just recently divorced her second husband, and although she refused his offer of reigniting their relationship, they did once more become friends. In 1968 he would re-united with another former lover, Beth Donovan, and married her, but he would leave her in June 1969 when he met a new woman, Isabel Sutherland, and subsequently moved in with her and her daughter. Meanwhile, in 1968 he won a Writer’s Guild Award for his six-part radio serial Watch the Wall my Darling, which was based upon the poem A Smuggler's Song by one of his favourite poets, Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
. Following this, in February of the following year, he once more returned to journalism, taking up employment with the popular weekly magazine Reveille.
Involvement with Wicca: 1969-2000
Farrar was sent by Reveille to a press screening of the film Legend of the Witches. The screening was also attended by Alex SandersAlex Sanders (Wiccan)
Alex Sanders , born Orrell Alexander Carter, was an English occultist and High Priest in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca during the 1960s. He was a figure who often appeared in tabloid newspapers...
and Maxine Sanders
Maxine Sanders
Maxine Sanders is a prominent member of the Wiccan faith and a co-founder with her late husband, Alex Sanders, of Alexandrian Wicca....
, the founders of Alexandrian Wicca, who had served as advisors during the film's creation. According to his biography at mystica.com, Farrar was "skeptical about Witchcraft but was interested in Sanders upon meeting him". The paper requested that Farrar interview Sanders and published the interview as a two-part story. Sanders, "impressed" with the interview, invited Farrar to attend an Alexandrian Wiccan initiation
Initiation
Initiation is a rite of passage ceremony marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components...
ritual, and prompted Farrar to write an entire book on Wicca. According to mystica.com, Farrar "found the ceremony both dignified and moving". Farrar began work on his first non-fiction book, What Witches Do
What Witches Do
What Witches Do is a book by Stewart Farrar, and is an eye-witness account of Wiccan practices, namely that of the Alexandrian coven run by Alex Sanders and his wife Maxine Sanders.-Description:Farrar was a practicing witch and a member of an active coven...
, and began taking classes on witchcraft from the Sanders'. Maxine Sanders remembers Farrar as "a charming man, a sincere student with an active flexible mind". Maxine Sanders also notes that it was in response to Farrar's questions about how to describe their practice in his book that the Alexandrian tradition was named.
On 21 February 1970 Farrar was initiated into Alexandrian Wicca and joined the Sanders' coven
Coven
A coven or covan is a name used to describe a gathering of witches or in some cases vampires. Due to the word's association with witches, a gathering of Wiccans, followers of the witchcraft-based neopagan religion of Wicca, is also described as a coven....
. Farrar met his future wife, then Janet Owen (thirty-four years his junior), in the coven. Janet Farrar
Janet Farrar
Janet Farrar is a British teacher and author of books on Wicca and Neopaganism. Along with her two husbands, Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone, Farrar has published "some of the most influential books on modern Witchcraft to date." According to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wiccans...
asserts that the couple were both elevated to the second degree "in an unoccupied house in Sydenham
Sydenham
Sydenham is an area and electoral ward in the London Borough of Lewisham; although some streets towards Crystal Palace Park, Forest Hill and Penge are outside the ward and in the London Borough of Bromley, and some streets off Sydenham Hill are in the London Borough of Southwark. Sydenham was in...
" by the Sanders on 17 October 1970, and that they received the third, and final, degree of initiation in their flat 24 April 1971. Two of Janet and Stewart's coven - 'Don and Barbara' were present, as were the Sanders coven. Janet Farrar remembers the initiation well, as Maxine invoked Sekhmet to banish one of her coven members. She broke her flail during this banishing. Recently their 3rd Degree initiation has been disputed by some Alexandrian "revisionists", unaware that Stewart Farrar kept an archive of all his correspondences with the Sanders and possessed copies of both his own and the Sanders' coven records that unequivocally prove that the initiation took place. What Witches Do was published in 1971. The book has been called "controversial" because of Farrar's assertion that Sanders should be "ranked above Gerald B.Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
and alongside of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and Eliphas Levi
Eliphas Levi
Eliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant , was a French occult author and purported magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew although he was not Jewish.His second wife was...
in terms of magical achievement". Farrar later backed away from the assessment, although he did later state that he believed that Sanders 'was both a charlatan and a genuine magician'. The relationship between Alex Sanders and Stewart Farrar became one of mutual respect after letters began to be exchanged between them in 1977. To quote Sanders (8 March 1997):
“Your letters give off good vibrations of work and happiness. I feel that all our growing pains concerning publicity and personalities of the Wicca, are beginning to bear fruit. A few of us in the midst of many are beginning to establish the foundation (I mean the building itself) on the raw materials, to get the foundation stone in place”.
Farrar and Owen had begun running their own coven in 1971, before their third degree initiation ceremony, and were handfasted
Handfasting
Handfasting is a traditional European ceremony of betrothal or wedding. It usually involved the tying or binding of the right hands of the bride and groom with a cord or ribbon for the duration of the wedding ceremony.-Etymology:...
in 1972 and legally married in 1975. The ceremony was attended by Farrar's two daughters and two sons from three previous marriages - his marriage to Owen was his sixth. The late 1970s saw the publication of several more novels by Farrar, all of which were occult-themed fantasy novels or science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. Farrar left Reveille to pursue a full-time freelance writing career in 1974. In 1976 the Farrars moved to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
to get away from the busy life of London. They lived in County Mayo
County Mayo
County Mayo is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the village of Mayo, which is now generally known as Mayo Abbey. Mayo County Council is the local authority for the county. The population of the county is 130,552...
and County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
, finally settling in "Herne Cottage" in Kells, County Meath
Kells, County Meath
Kells is a town in County Meath, Ireland. The town lies off the M3 motorway, from Navan and from Dublin. In recent years Kells has grown greatly with many Dublin commuters moving to the town....
. Both husband and wife went on to publish a number of "classic" and "influential" books on the Wiccan religion and on coven practises. Their 1981 Eight Sabbats for Witches included material the authors claimed to be from the Alexandrian tradition's Book of Shadows
Book of Shadows
A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious texts and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Originating within the Gardnerian tradition of the Craft, the first Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s...
. The Farrars, with the support of Doreen Valiente
Doreen Valiente
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente , who also went under the craft name Ameth, was an influential English Wiccan who was involved in a number of different early traditions, including Gardnerianism, Cochrane's Craft and the Coven of Atho...
, argued in the book that even though the publishing of this material broke their oath of secrecy, it was justified by the need to correct misinformation. Janet Farrar indicates that some of the rituals contained in the couple's books were actually written by them, this includes the Oak King/Holy King cycle which they researched from Robert Grave's White Goddess. This was the first use of this cycle in any Wiccan Book of Shadows, and has been adopted into many traditions since. Although they never officially left the Alexandrian tradition, after the book's research was complete they stopped using the term to describe themselves. The couple co-authored four more books on Wicca.
They were joined by Gavin Bone
Gavin Bone
Gavin Bone is an author and lecturer in the fields of magic, witchcraft, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, and an organizer in the Neo-Pagan community. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire in England, in 1964.-Wicca and Neopaganism:...
, with whom they entered into a "polyfidelitous relationship". The three of them would co-author two more books; The Healing Craft and The Pagan Path (an investigation into the many varieties of Neopaganism). In 1999 the Farrars received the Aquarian Tabernacle Church
Aquarian Tabernacle Church
The Aquarian Tabernacle Church, abbreviated as ATC, is a Wiccan church located in Index, Washington and is considered the first Wiccan church with full legal status and recognition by major governments, the United States, Canada and Australia. It was founded as a church by Pete "Pathfinder" Davis,...
charter for Ireland, and were ordained as third level clergy. Farrar died 7 February 2000 after a brief illness.
A biography on Stewart Farrar entitled Writer on a Broomstick by Elizabeth Guerra was published in February 2008 by R J Stewart books.
With Janet Farrar
The following are non-fiction books.- A Witches' Bible: The Complete Witches' Handbook (1981 re-issue of The Witches' Way and Eight Sabbats for Witches)Robert Hale, London ISBN 0919345921
- Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981) Robert Hale, London (Hardcover) ISBN 0-7091-8579-0
- The Witches' Way Robert Hale, London (1984) ISBN 0-7090-1293-4
- The Witches' Goddess: The Feminine Principle of Divinity (1987) Robert Hale, London ISBN 0919345913
- The Life and Times of a Modern Witch (1987) Piatkus Books, London
- The Witches' God: Lord of the Dance (1989) Robert Hale, London ISBN 0919345476
- Spells and How They Work (1990) Robert Hale, London ISBN 0-7090-3842-9
With Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone
- Pagan Path: The Wiccan Way of Life (1995) Phoenix Publishing ISBN 0-919345-40-9
- The Healing Craft: Healing Practices for Witches and Pagans (1999) Phoenix Publications Inc., Custer, WA ISBN 0-7090-6563-9
- The Complete Dictionary of European Gods and Goddesses (2000) Capall Bann Publishers ISBN 1-86163-122-7
- Progressive Witchcraft (2004) New Pages Books ISBN 1-56414-719-3
External links
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