Photo from JLIMAGES/ALMANY
Yesterday I was at The Wild Hunt's "Unleash the Hounds" weekly post where they give links and a synopsis of stores they were not able to cover in full in the past week. There I found a travel post by Kristin Henderson at the The Washington Post blog entitled "Spring Travel Issue: Stories of witches haunt England’s enchanted New Forest"
OK I'm finally posting something original here instead of just reblogging stuff.
Lady Alsace and Shawnus back in the day circa 1985
I started my initiations into the Coven of the Catta in 1981. I took a hiatus for various reasons between my second and third degrees, mostly because I got into Thelema and thought Witchcraft was an "Old Aeonic" system.
I was recently contacted by a man named Jude Carino who has graciously shared with me and our Coven his Master of Arts Thesis written in 1981 entitled “Coven of the Moon – an Anthropological Study”. He used pseudonyms for the name of the coven, the town and the witches involved, but was writing about our Coven of the Catta.
He was in the area of the Covenstead first in 1978 on an archeological dig of a Delaware Indian burial ground for his bachelor degree. At that time he met and was befriended by Lady Phoebe and Lord Merlin, aka Dr Frederick LaMotte Santee, our late elders and founders.
He later returned in 1980 to continue his friendships and learning, even having limited access to some of the rituals and teachings of the coven, and to write this 135 page thesis, which the High Priestess and High Priest approved of. He was there by Dr Santee’s bedside as he took his last breath on 11 April 1980.
His anthropological but also personal insights into the working of this early coven and its group dynamics are priceless. I will not publish the entire 65MB PDF I made from scanning these old hand typed pages, but he has allowed me to post here a few pages which include the face page of the thesis and a chapter entitled “The Wicca Coven – Structure and Process” which I think any witch with an interest in Witchcraft’s early history in this country will find fascinating. Perhaps more can be published later. The quality of these jpegs is poor but readable due to their age and recopying, even after some graphics editing, so you may have to download them to blow them up to read them, but then please delete them thank you.
Please note that these jpegs of these pages from this thesis are © 1981 Jude A. Carino. And our coven cannot thank him enough for sharing this and many other documents with us after over 30 years. I am glad he keeps everything!
“The Witch’s Kettle” Newspaper Column 1970-1972
by Lady Phoebe Athene Nimue
(aka “Patience” in the column)
High Priestess of the Coven of the Catta
A local newspaper, then called the Berwick Enterprise, now the Press Enterprise, published a weekly column called The Witch’s Kettle from 1970 through 1972. These were written by the High Priestess of the Coven of the Catta, Lady Phoebe Athene Nimue, in Wapwallopen PA. She wrote this column under the pen name of “Patience”.
These newspaper clippings were saved by a “JC”. who was friends with her and Dr. Frederick LaMotte Santee during his college studies and the writing of his Master’s thesis, and who has graciously shared them with me and the Coven.
There are a total of 122 articles written and I have saved these to a PDF file which is just for coven members, but I am posting here some of the more interesting ones. The original newspaper articles were cut out, photocopied, scanned and then manipulated to look as clear as possible, so you may have to download them to view them better.
I have permission to publish these from the Press Enterprise as long as I add the disclaimer: “Reproduced by permission of Press Enterprise, Inc. No endorsement implied”. And like I said in a previous post, how amazing is it that back in the early 1970s that a local newspaper could publish something about witchcraft written by a witch without the business being burned down by fundies like it probably would be nowadays.
Enjoy and Blessed Be.
Shawnus Merlin Belarion 3rd* High Priest of the Coven of the Catta
As promised in the previous post i filled out the official Request to Reprint form for the Press Enterprise newspaper near Berwick, PA and received back permission to reproduce these old newspaper scans. As per their policy these can only be reproduced once so they are not able to be downloaded and saved by anyone. But if you need to download them to blow the articles up to read them then please delete them afterwards. Thank you. And I need to post this disclaimer: “Reproduced by permission of Press Enterprise, Inc. No endorsement implied”
This second set of scans are pictures taken and articles about a ritual at the Coven of the Catta in 1971. It seems that back in the day a local newspaper could run articles like this and there would not be lines of fundamentalist Christian protesters complaining how “politically incorrect” this news was. Dr Santee and Lady Phoebe made no secret about the coven and their activities, so they were very open for pictures and interviews to explain the truth about witchcraft to allay the misunderstandings that word entails.
Blessed Be, Shawnus
