Edith Woodford-Grimes
Edith Rose Woodford - Grimes ( born December 18, 1887 in Malton, North Yorkshire, † 1975 in Welwyn, Hertfordshire ) was a British Wiccan, which became widely known as the earliest follower of the Wiccan faith. She was a member of the New Forest Coven, during the late years of the 1930s and early 1940s had meetings. Thus she became a friend and working partner of Gerald Gardner, who founded the Gardnerische Wiccan tradition with their help. Commonly known by her nickname Dafo, their participation was long remained a mystery. Only in the late 1990s, their role in the history of Wicca was studied by historians and revealed her true identity.
The reason for their nickname Dafo is unknown; the researcher Philip Heselton suspects the witches not their name, but a nickname that was given to her by Gardner and perhaps based on its experience in Asia, because some Buddha statues were so called.
Career until 1938
Woodford - Grimes was born as Edith Rose Wray in a house in Malton, North Yorkshire, on 18 December 1887. Their father, William Henry Wray, was a toolmaker at the local port authority, her mother was Caroline Wray, nee Harrison. About her childhood and adolescence is not known. She became a teacher for English, drama and music, and was later employees of the London College of Music and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
On June 16, 1920, she married Samuel William Woodford Grimes, a 1880 born in Bangalore, India Englishman who worked at the time as a clerk in war pension office in Southampton. Then she took his surname Grimes discussion and decided his third name preceded with a dash ( Woodford - Grimes ). Researchers Philip Heselton later remarked: " This would have been pure snobbery or she may have felt that it is elegant and exclusive sounds. Soon after the marriage, the couple moved into a newly built house in Osborne Road 67 in Portswood, a suburb of Southampton in southern England. Then, on June 30, 1921 Rosanne, their first and only child into the world. In 1924 they again took a job as a tutor for English and Dramatic Literature at, which she continued until 1934. From 1924 she began to teach rhetoric and dramaturgy at evening classes of Southamptoner teaching authorities. Finally, the relationship between the couple had lived apart, they remained married ( at the time was a very difficult divorce ), but she moved in 1938 to Christchurch, Hampshire. Here they bought a newly built bungalow in Dennistoun Avenue, Somerford, and began working as a private teacher of rhetoric and dramaturgy. In Christchurch they came into contact with an esoteric group, the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship ( Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship ). She became increasingly interested in their philosophies and practice and decided to call her bungalow " Theano ", named after the wife of the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras. She had played the role of Theano in a play by Pythagoras, which was written by the leader of the group, George Alexander Sullivan.
Compounds with Wicca from 1939
Through their participation in the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship ( Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship ) got Edith Rose Woodford - Grimes contact with another local esoteric group, the New Forest Coven was called, one of the oldest Wiccan coven that still exist. These members are the preservation and continuation of a historical witch cult prescribed, the said they were " Old Religion "; an ancient religion which has been issued by the anthropologist Margaret Murray described in several books in the 1920s and the 1930s. Previous investigations and inquiries of historians could this give no proof; they suspect, therefore, that the New Forest coven is a group that had only been founded in the early 1930s.
Later moved Rosanne and her husband in the Bungalow of Woodford - Grimes, while Edith Woodford - Grimes himself once again moved to Avenue Cottage in Ford Walk, a village near Highcliffe, where Gardner and his wife Donna have lived. Gardner later said about the publication of his two books on witchcraft that he had received from the witches that he knew at that time, permission for publication. Therefore, it is generally believed that this was a veiled reference to Dafo, which was significantly media shy as Gardner himself in the late 1940s, Gerald Gardner founded the Bricket Wood Coven, which also Dafo joined. In 1952 she has but leave this Coven, fearing the growing publicity of Gardner to be revealed.
In the winter of 1952 Doreen Valiente Gardner invited to meet him and Dafo in Dafos house. They have then taken here on various occasions and in the high summer of 1953 inaugurated Gardner then Valiente in the witch craft a ( initiation). Then broke down the three to Stonehenge, where they attended a ritual of neo- Druids.
From 1954 lived Dafo along with her strict Christian niece, who disapproved of occultism and witchcraft. Dafo therefore held her witchcraft past marked by strictly secret from her family. 1958 took three separate groups of witches to contacted her and asked asked to certify the claims of Gardner. Dafo has not replied to two of them and the third group only told that they had only purely theoretical interest in witchcraft and had never been involved.
The historian Ronald Hutton wrote in 1999 in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, that he had never researched the past of Dafo because they have refused to do so, as most of their relatives were strict Christians.
Legacy
Woodford - Grimes left a lasting legacy in the Wiccan and the larger neopaganen community, which they recognize as one of the earliest known follower of their faith. Because they never became public knowledge during his lifetime and had denied all contact with witchcraft also to end of life, her true identity was not revealed until several decades after her death. Nonetheless, their membership in the New Forest coven under her pseudonym Dafo later became known; one of the earliest sources was the 1969 biography published by June Johns Alex Sanders, King of the Witches, in which her pen name was erroneously spelled incorrectly as " Daffo ".
Since then, her identity was revealed, it is well known in Wiccan circles, such as the Neopagan Bard Francis Cameron has written a prosaic interpretation of her life: " Dafo 's Tale " ("The story of Dafo " ), presented at the conference " The Charge of the Goddess conference 2010 "in the Conway Hall in London.