FROM STAGECRAFT TO WITCHCRAFT
Born Patricia Dawson in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where she lived all of her life. Her parents ran a tobacco and confectioners’ business.
They lived next door to a palmist called Madame Melba. When Patricia was just a couple of days old, the fortune-teller said the baby had inherited magical powers and would become a clairvoyant – just like her great-grandmother had been.
Aged just four, Patricia started dance lessons at the Constance Grant Dance School, which she loved, it becoming her main hobby. She also loved dressing up.
After leaving school, Patricia became a performer on piers and in theatres, acting in pantomimes during the winter. She entertained troops during the war, singing and playing accordion. Her group were transported from place-to-place in secrecy. “They weren’t allowed to know where they were going, and the windows were blacked out.”
Patricia once appeared on the BBC radio quiz show, ‘Have a Go’.
Patricia was such an accomplished actress that she toured throughout the whole of the UK. She was the leading lady in a play called, ‘The Legend of the Moon Goddess’. It was this that sparked her interest in the supernatural.
One day, whilst playing a show in Birmingham, Patricia visited a hypnotist. Whilst under her spell, Patricia had a past-life regression. She was told that in a previous life, in 1670, she had been a witch called Polly, who lived alone with her cat.
Immediately, Patricia (still in a hypnotic trance), started reciting ancient spells. When she was awakened, Patricia claimed to have no knowledge of any witchcraft.
However, this ignited her interest in spiritualism.
In 1954, Patricia visited a fortune teller who told her she would meet her future husband, a man named Arnold, “over water.”
Two years later, she was flying from Hampshire to the Isle of Wight to perform in a show. She found herself sitting next to Arnold Crowther, a stage magician, ventriloquist and puppeteer. They fell in love!
Arthur had performed for the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, at Buckingham Palace.
Arthur also claimed to have stopped Adolf Hitler from invading England. He had been involved in a ceremony named ‘Operation Cone of Power’. With a group of mystics, they had held hands and danced in a circle in the New Forest, chanting and singing, in order to persuade Adolf Hitler to invade Russia and not England. They sang repeatedly, “You cannot cross the sea – Not able to come!”
Arthur claimed it was white magic – and always tried to claim credit for diverting the Nazis.
Patricia and Arthur Crowther became engaged.
Arthur introduced her to a friend called Gerald Gardner, whom he had known since 1939. He was a white witch who had revived an ancient earth-centered pagan religion called Wicca.
Arthur knew Patricia had an interest in spiritualism and asked if she wanted to meet Gardner. “I might do,” she replied. And she did.
Gardner converted Patricia, who was initiated as a white witch in June 1960.
The ceremony was in Gardner’s private chapel in the loft of his barn at Castletown on the Isle of Man.
During her initiation, Patricia had a vision of herself being reborn as a priestess of the Moon Goddess.
Patricia became one of the four ‘Early Mothers of Modern Wicca’, along with Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne and Eleanor Bone.
Patricia was known as the ‘High Priestess of the Moon Goddess’, (although locally she became known by the less prosaic title ‘The High Priestess of Sheffield.’
She took the craft name of ‘Thelema’.
Very soon, Patricia persuaded her fiancée, Arnold, to convert as well. He admitted to her that years before he had met her, Gardner had told him that he would meet a blonde-haired woman who would eventually initiate him into ‘the craft’.
The couple ‘handfasted’ (an unofficial wedding) in a ceremony in 1960, presided over by Gerald Gardner. It was Patricia’s birthday. The union was solemnised by a handshake. Everybody was naked as they believed clothes inhibited them. The tabloid press loved this.
The following day they had a legal civil ceremony in Sheffield. Patricia wore a black velvet dress – and again the press lapped it up.
The couple founded the Sheffield Coven the year afterwards. Newspaper headlines shouted, ‘Witch seeks recruits for Coven’.
Patricia and Arnold were picky about who they let in. She said, “Plenty asked, few were accepted.” Anybody who tried to join for laughs or sexual kicks were immediately rejected.
Patricia said about Wicca (the white witch movement), “It has nothing to do with satanism, black magic or voodoo.” She emphasised it was a force for good, dedicated to helping people. “No orgies, no sacrifices.”
“Our religion is ageless and timeless; a positive religion with strong moral standards.”
Patricia said that witches had been the pioneers of women’s liberation, referring to the Wise Women of the Middle Ages, who had tended to the poverty-stricken population. “They were the NHS of their day.”
She also claimed that Robin Hood had been a white witch.
Gerald Gardner died in 1964. Patricia said, “He wanted Wicca to be accessible to people who were looking for something different, a different spiritual calling, a different religion.”
The Crowthers wrote articles for occult magazines and Patricia was often interviewed in newspapers and on radio and television, promoting witchcraft. She also wrote eleven books, including one novel about the burning of witches in the Seventeenth Century.
One of her books is entitled ‘Lid Off the Cauldron’.
This led to Patricia and Arthur being given their own show on Radio Sheffield in 1971. It was called ‘A Spell of Witchcraft’. It is believed it was the first programme of its kind in the world. Each episode was twenty minutes long and included a slot where people phoned in with their problems.
Patricia promoted Wicca as a religion, the folklore of witchcraft and the activities of local covens.
She stated on the programme, “Witchcraft simply means the craft of the wise people – nothing sensational or horrific in that.”
Also in 1971, Patricia was scheduled to give a meeting in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. The mayor of the town protested, saying she was promoting black magic, and tried, unsuccessfully, to get it cancelled.
The publicity his protest engendered meant that double the number of tickets were sold. As she started speaking, the mayor stood up and shouted, “Antichrist.”
There was a stony silence, and he sheepishly sat down again. Patricia just kept talking – and got a standing ovation at the end.
The radio programme finished abruptly in 1974, as Arthur died on the first of May.
A few years later, Patricia was guest speaker at a Vegetarian Society dinner. A man called Ian Lilleyman was in the audience. They fell in love and became partners for the next forty years.
Still living in Sheffield, she and Ian had an exotic holiday cottage – in Whitby.
Patricia continued with her witchcraft activities, increasingly incorporating dance into her rituals. She also designed a new set of tarot cards.
In 1988, Patricia was invited to appear on the James Whale radio show, alongside two born-again Christian preachers. They were so abusive to her that Whale tried to shut the interview down.
Patricia defended herself. She pointed out that the Christian church had a problem with child abuse. She said Wicca had never encountered this evil as you had to be twenty-five years old before you could join.
She ended the vociferous disagreement by saying, “I don’t see any difference between flying on a broomstick or walking on water.”
She was full of energy and could not keep still, having a lifelong love of learning. She said, “You’ve got to read to learn, you don’t know everything – you might think you do, but you don’t.”
She was also noted for her great sense of humour – very self-deprecating.
From 1997, Patricia called herself the ‘Grandmother of the Craft of the Wise’.
She also wrote an autobiography, entitled ‘From Stagecraft to Witchcraft’.
Patricia never lost her love of the theatre. Ian said, “She loved it. That was the best part of her life – she just loved it.”
For the last five years of her life, Patricia suffered from dementia. She also lost her eyesight and was confined to a wheelchair.
When she died, the Pagan News website, ‘Wild Hunt’, called her a blessing.
“Patricia Crowther has been a central figure in Wicca for nearly seven decades and was a pioneer in the early development of modern witchcraft.”
They added, “Her spirit continues to live on in the covens and communities she inspired.”
It was believed Patricia was the oldest living white witch in the UK.
RIP – Radio’s Innovative Pagan
