Controverscial.Com
Welcome
|
Controverscial.Com
Welcome
|
|
Paddy Slade
Written
and compiled by George Knowles
Paddy Slade is a hereditary Witch or a village Wise Women
in the traditional Old English sense. She
is the author of: the Encyclopedia
of White Magic
(January 1990),
Natural Magic: A Seasonal Guide
(November 1990), Seasonal Magic: Diary of a Village Witch
(November 2001) and Tales
Round the Cauldron
(May 2004). Paddy was born Patricia Harlow near Canterbury in Kent on
the 29th September 1931. Her
father Robert Hadlow was a sailor in the Merchant Navy, and while away at sea
his wife Rose raised their family of seven children. Patricia as the youngest in the family and grew up with three
sisters and three brothers, she was nicknamed Paddy by her father.
Her mother Rose was of Scottish descent and practised the old ways of the
village witch or wise women. As a
child Paddy was naturally quick to learn the old ways from her mother and seemed
destined to carry on the family tradition as a practising witch herself. At the age of 9 during World War II, the German Luftwaffe subjected Canterbury to a sustained aerial bombing campaign; they called it the Baedecker Blitz. As the bombs rained down on innocent civilians, residents of the city were evacuated as it burned. An estimated 10,445 bombs in 135 separate raids were dropped on the city, during which some 731 homes and 296 other buildings were destroyed, among them the Simon Langton Grammar School, where 115 people were killed.
Before
and after
The most
damaging of the raids on Canterbury occurred on the 1st June 1942,
during which the old Church of St George’s
was gutted by fire. There has been
a church or chapel on this site since the early fifteenth century, and it
was here that “Christopher
Marlowe” the famous Elizabethan tragedian, dramatist and poet was baptised on
the 26th February 1564. Initially
a “Chapel of Ease” for naval officers and their crews, the church was
consecrated and dedicated to St George on the 19th June 1716. After the bombing in 1942, all that survived of the old church was the Tower.
The
tower of St George’s -
Christopher Marlowe
When warning of a raid was given, Paddy and her family
would move out and shelter in the woods on the outskirts of the city, there they
would camp and sleep in tents. On
one occasion Paddy had a visionary experience, which she later described: “I don’t know if it was a dream
or if it actually happened. It was
very clear then and it is very clear now. I
went out of the tent and started walking through the woods, which kept changing
character. I came to a place where
there was a stream. You don’t
normally get water on high chalk land, but here was a stream. All around were all the flowers that were never seen in the
woods from the early spring right through the year. There were lots of animals – weasels, badgers, foxes and all
sorts. I looked at them and all the
flowers, wondering why there were violets and briar roses at the same time. Then I became aware of a great
figure on the other side of the stream. It
seemed to me he was dressed in black leather.
He had magnificent antlers. I
looked up at him and said, “Are we going to die?”
He said, “No, you’ve got far too much to do and learn”.
He sat on the other side of the stream for a while, telling me what I
should know. Then he said, “I
want you to meet someone else”. He took me across the stream and put
me in front of him on his horse, and off we went, up into the sky, such a long
way. We came to a lovely place.
There was a beautiful women sitting on a stone.
She started telling me more about what I needed know and learn.
When she finished, I was put back on a horse and brought back to my
little bed in the tent. In the morning I told only my mother
about it. She said, “You’ve
been lucky – you have met the Horned God and the Goddess. But you are only nine. You
have got to go to school, you have got to live with other people.
Don’t forget about it, but keep it in the back of your mind.
You are a very lucky girl”. Paddy did not share the experience with others until much
later in life, when she told her husband about it he responded saying:
“I think you may have met your God”. For her education Paddy went on to study at Cambridge
University, from where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Medieval
History and English. After leaving
collage she joined the signals branch of the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF).
In 1955 while still serving in the air force, Paddy married her husband
Philip (Pete) Slade and a year later gave birth to their first son Robert, a
second son Peter followed in 1957. Most
of their time with the RAF was spent serving overseas, mainly in Singapore and
Fiji, and only returned to England after leaving the Force in the early
1960’s. Sadly just a short time
later in 1962, her husband Pete suffered a heart attack and died. After the death of her husband Paddy was naturally
devastated, and despite support and encouragement from her friends and
relatives, retreated to the isolation of the Dartmoor countryside.
She loved the remoteness of Dartmoor and continued to live there for the
next twenty years, occasionally moving from one location to another.
The local area around Dartmoor (now a National Park established in 1951)
held a particular fascination for Paddy, for the whole area is steeped in
folklore and littered with the remains of ancient sites.
One such is the “Grey Wethers”, two ancient stone circles thought to
be remnants of a Druidic temple. The
Grey Wethers is located below Sittaford
Tor, and was once a small moorland farm renowned for keeping sheep (“wether”
is an Old English word meaning sheep).
The
“Grey Wethers” two ancient stone circles
A story about
the stones tells of how a farmer who recently moved to Dartmoor was foolish
enough to criticise the sale of some sheep at nearby Tavistock Market.
After the sale he stopped for a drink at the Warren House Inn, were after
several pints of cider the locals persuaded him there was another flock of sheep
nearby he would be wise to buy. When
they went to view them, and as they approached through the mist, the farmer saw
what looked to be a fine flock of sheep. Not
bothering with a closer inspection they returned to the Inn, were the farmer immediately
agreed to the sale. The next morning when the farmer returned, it was too late,
for what he had taken to be sheep was actually the stones of the Grey Wethers. Other ancient sites nearby include a late Bronze Age village consistng of 24 stone circle huts surrounded by a low stonewall at Grimspound, and a number of dolmans (megalithic burial chambers) at Drewsteignton. It was while living in such an area of Dartmoor that Paddy had a second and more profound vision. When out on the moor one night she found herself in the middle of a stone circle when the mist came down, and for safety’s sake decided to stay were she was throughout the night. During the course of the evening she had a number of visionary encounters with the Horned God and Goddess, other spirits, and Puck, who later became her dominant spirit guide.
Stone
circle at Grimspound -
Dolman at Drewsteignton
This experience had a significant effect on Paddy, and so she dedicated herself to preserving the knowledge of the Old Ways. She later discovered she had gained the ability to attune to animals and trees, and had a greater appreciation and understanding for the powers of nature (in folklore, the gift of attuning with animals is bestowed by Puck, but only on those people he takes a liking too). This was most noticeable to her when she was out on the moors among the famous wild ponies.
Dartmoor
Ponies
After her experiences on Dartmoor and during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, with all the growing interest in witchcraft inspired by the likes of Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Robert Cochrane and Alex Sanders, Paddy quietly continued to practise the old ways of the witch. She utilised and developed much of what she had been taught by her mother, and wasn’t shy to learn what she could from others. Among the more notable of her teachers was Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki co-founder of the Servants of the Light (SOL) a school of occult studies in 1971. She still maintained however that her greatest teacher was nature itself.
Dolores
Ashcroft-Nowicki
As time passed Paddy became known for her knowledge of
herbal and magical remedies, and soon had a steady stream of students waiting to
join her teaching courses, what she called “the Old Wild Magic.
In them she would stress the need for individuals to experience the
powers of nature and the elements for themselves, and before even trying to
employ the use of spells or magic. With
the sudden growth and interest in modern witchcraft as practiced as a religion
and inspired by those above, Paddy felt that much of the basics of real magic
was being lost. While many entering the Craft of today start out with good
intentions, they soon become bogged down with coven politics, procedures,
hierarchies and the use of working tools, none of which are essential to the
practise of real witchcraft. People
today are in such a rush to play with spells and work with magic, that they soon
become disheartened when they fail. Paddy
maintains that it takes time to become familiar with nature and the elements
(hence the year and a day associated with initiation), and only when you’re
attuned to nature’s rhythms will the old ways of traditional witchcraft begin
to work for you. In 1982 Paddy left the remoteness of Dartmoor and settled
in a small village near Bath in Somerset. Since
then she has reduced her teaching to just a few, and in efforts to share her
knowledge with a wider audience, started writing.
Her books are filled with the wisdom of a genuine
old country witch, sharing her knowledge
about animal, herb-lore, spells, chants, folk-remedies, recipes and natural magic. She
writes from the heart and without
pretence, but she also writes with a sense of humour (there’s even a
“Rite of Chocolate” included among her festival activities). If your looking for an “Occult book of Ritual and
Magic”, then her books are not for you, but if you want a down-to-earth real book of Kitchen Witchery, her books are
easy, fun and compulsive reading. I might mention however, that while her earlier book
“Natural Magic”
is beautifully illustrated, her later book “Seasonal Magic” is
a re-write and basically the same, it has a few bits of added material and of
course contains her now famous “Rite of Chocolate”. End.
Books:
Encyclopedia
of White Magic
- by Paddy Slade January 1990 - Hardcover, Octopus Publishing Group, ISBN 0792454286 (0-7924-5428-6) Natural
Magic: A Seasonal Guide - by Paddy Slade November 1990 - Hardcover, Octopus Publishing Group, ISBN 0600570649 (0-600-57064-9) Seasonal
Magic: Diary of a Village Witch - by Paddy Slade November 2001 - Softcover, Capall Bann Publishing, ISBN 1861630190 (1-86163-019-0) Tales
Round the Cauldron
- by Paddy Slade
Sources:
The
Encyclopedia of Witches &Witchcraft -
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley Microsoft ®
Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. Copyright © 1994-2003 Written and
compiled on the 30th August 2008
© George Knowles
Best wishes and Blessed Be
|
