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Fiona Horne

Written and compiled by George Knowles 

Fiona Horne is an author, model, journalist, radio and television celebrity, singer/song writer, actor and a Witch.  She has been practicing Wicca since the early 1980’s and now has 1o books on witchcraft to her credit. 

Fiona was born in 1966 under the sun sign of Cancer (June 22 - July 22) in Sydney, Australia.  At an early age she was given up by her biological mother, adopted and raised in a strict Roman Catholic family.  She received her early education at a school for girls run by nuns.  Her earliest ambition was to become a nun herself, but after studying the bible, she concluded it was full of inconsistencies.  The more she studied, the more she felt that many of the myths and stories it contained had been borrowed from elsewhere, and many portrayed women as the subservient inferiors of men, there simply to be used and cast off as chattel, and so she turned her attention to alternative religions. 

After a brief rebellious period in her teens exploring Satanism, she found it not at all to her liking, and turned her attention to various other forms of metaphysics, eventually she came upon Wicca and Witchcraft.  Fiona is now a self-taught, self-initiated witch who practises a solitary eclectic tradition with leanings towards Alexandrian teachings.  In an interview about Wicca she says:  “that she felt very attracted to the fact that Wicca acknowledges many different Gods and Goddesses, but most importantly recognises that they can exist within the individual, not just in the sky out of reach”. 

In a later interview she says she was inspired on her path as a witch by the Australian Rosaleen Norton (1917 – 1979) “The Witch of Kings Cross”, stating that:  “she had never been afraid to follow an unconventional spiritual path and expressed that in her art.  She had carved a unique and potent niche for herself in a world when women were afforded far less opportunities than they are today.  Her braveness and defiance of social norms and expectations inspires me to trust my own voice and vision of the world”. 

From 1990 through to 1997 Fiona was the lead singer of a popular Australian techno rock band called Def FX.  During her time with the band they released three albums, toured Australia and visited America, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand.  In the US, Def FX achieved a Top 20 American Billboard Dance chart listing with their hit single “Space Time Disco”.  Fiona wrote most of the bands songs herself, and in the lyrics expressed some of her pagan beliefs and feeling.  Since 1997 when the band broke up, she has continued her singing career as a solo artist, and in 2007 released a solo album called “Witch Web”, an album of witchcraft related music. 

Initially Fiona kept quiet about witchcraft, but when she left Def FX in 1997 “she came out of the broom closet” in an article written for the Australian Rolling Stones magazine, which kick started her career as a writer.  In March 1998 she published her first book “Witch – A personal Journey” (Random House Australia).  The book was an immediate success and sold-out it’s first print-run in just six weeks, it is now in its third reprint.  Since then Fiona has worked as a journalist, writing for Australian, UK and USA magazines, including:  Marie Claire, Rolling Stone, HQ, New Woman, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, ‘B’ Magazine, Complete Woman, the Australian Women’s Forum, Sugar and Smash Hits magazines.  She has also written for daily broadsheet newspapers such as Melbourne’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, among others. 

In her modelling career Fiona has posed for nude and erotic photo layouts in the Black + White magazine (October 1994), Ralph magazine (September 1998), FHM magazine (1998), as well as the Australian Playboy magazine (November 1998).  Later after moving to Los Angeles in 2001, she posed again for the US edition of Playboy (October 2005).  In the November 1998 Australian Playboy shoot, she was pictured fully nude with a 12 foot python slithering and crawling all over her naked body. 

After her successes as a singer, model and writer, the next natural step in her career progression was Radio and Television.  She started in 1999 by hosting two popular National Radio shows “Home Grown” and “Planet Rock” for the Triple M Network, and for two years from 2000 – 2002 hosted her own top rated “Spell-casting Show” on MIX FM.  The show entailed her answering calls from people requesting magical advice for their personal dilemmas. 

On television she hosted a prime-time 13-part series called Party! that was shown on Australia’s number one commercial network Channel 9 in 2000.  Also in 2000 she appeared as a guest presenter on the Russell Gilbert Live show, before presenting her own music show Ground Zero, during which she interviewed Britney Spears, Melissa Etheridge and Tom Jones.  In 2002 she did a UK television show called Sexy Spells for Granada/Sky Broadcasting, this proved to be popular when people from all over the UK wrote to her asking for magical help with their love and sex lives. 

For two years she made regular appearances on Australia’s top rated daytime talk shows Beauty and the Beast, and Good Morning Australia, and in 2004 starred in the Sci Fi Channel’s (USA) original reality show “Mad Mad House” as part of the regular cast.  Her role highlighted her life as a Witch, and had her living in a house with four other people practising alternative lifestyles, while 10 guest/contestants competed for a grand prize.  In 2006 back in Australia she starred in the popular Celebrity Survivor show for Seven Network Australia.  Also in 2006 back in the US, she was invited to talk about Witchcraft and Paganism as a guest speaker at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

As an actor, in Melbourne during August 2001, Fiona starred in the sell-out opening season of the hit theatre production The Vagina Monologues.  Back in the US she appeared in the 2005 film Unbeatable Harold by independent US film, in it she played a good time girl called Cherry, the film also starred Dylan McDermont and Henry Winkler.  In January 2006 she finished filming Cult, in which she plays the role of Professor Diane Estabrook, the film also starred Rachel Miner and Taryn Manning.  Cult was released internationally in March 2007. 

With so much happening for her in the United States, Fiona made a permanent move to Los Angeles in 2002, although she travels frequently to the United Kingdom and back home to Australia for work commitments.  Recent opportunities has seen Fiona featured on prime-time USA television, including:  the Los Angeles KTLA5 Morning News, Good Day New York, Chicago’s WGN Morning News and The Other Half (NBC national).  On radio she has appeared in The Mark and Brian Show (national), L.A.’s Star 89.9 with Ryan Seacrest/Lisa Foxx and The Valentine Show on L.A.’s KIIS FM/ national. 

Fiona’s personal interests include Herpetology - she is a licensed snake handler, Skydiving – she is a licensed skydiver with over 100 solo jumps to her credit, and Scuba diving - she is an expert scuba diver and works regularly for the scuba accreditation organization PADI, hosting, demonstrating and doing voice over for their instructional videos, television and radio commercials, including voicing the National Geographic/PADI Underwater Explorer DVD series.  Her favourite charity is Project Aware – an international ocean conservation effort. 

Bibliography:

Witch: A Personal Journey (Random House Australia, ISBN 0-09-183387-6, 27 February 1998)

Witch: A Magickal Year (Random House Australia, ISBN 0-09-184000-7, 1 October 1999)

Life's A Witch: A Handbook for Teen Witches (Random House Australia, ISBN 1-74051-022-4, November 2000)

Witch: A Magickal Journey: A Hip Guide to Modern Witchcraft (Thorsons, hardback ISBN 0-00-710399-9, 1 January 2001; paperback new edition ISBN 0-00-712132-6, April 2002) (Northern Hemisphere edition of Witch: A Personal Journey and Witch: A Magickal Year)

7 Days to a Magickal New You (Thorsons, hardback ISBN 0-00-712346-9, October 2001)

Magickal Sex: A Witches' Guide to Beds, Knobs, and Broomsticks (Thorsons, ISBN 0-00-714133-5, September 2002)

Witchin': A Handbook for Teen Witches (Thorsons, paperback ISBN 0-00-713695-1, school/library binding ISBN 0-613-89284-4, February 2003) (Northern Hemisphere edition of Life's A Witch)

Pop! Goes The Witch: The Disinformation Guide to 21st Century Witchcraft (Disinformation, paperback ISBN 0-9729529-5-0, 15 July 2004), featuring contributions by Raymond Buckland, Phyliss Curott, Janet Farrer and many others.

Bewitch a Man: How to Find Him and Keep Him Under Your Spell (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, hardback ISBN 1416914749, 26 September 2006)

L.A. Witch: Fiona Horne's Guide to Coven Magick (Llewellyn Publications, paperback ISBN 0738710342, 1 April 2007)

End.

Sources:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s660531.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/default.htm

http://www.bitememagazine.com/fiona-horne.html

http://www.greengalactic.com/witchinbio.html

http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/2004/fhorne2.26.html

http://mag.girl.com.au/fiona-horne-witch-web.htm

http://www.femail.com.au/

The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-paganism - By Shelley Rabinovitch

The Witch Book - The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism - By Raymond Buckland

Written and compiled on the 13^th October 2007 © George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be