Faces of the Goddess Magazine SGC 21

The Founders of the Fellowship of Isis
Caroline Wise
The Fellowship of Isis was founded at the
vernal equinox of 1976 by Lawrence Durdin-
Robertson, his wife Pamela, and his sister
Olivia. It is open to anyone interested in the
Goddesses and the divine feminine current
manifested in all religions. It was created
not as an organisation but as a network,
with membership based on acceptance of its
Manifesto, which states, among other things,
that all members having equal privileges
within it, that it respects the freedom of
conscience of each member, with no vows
required or commitments to secrecy. And that
membership is free.
The Manifesto tells us that the Fellowship
reveres all manifestations of Life. The Gods
are also honoured, and Fellowship ceremonies
exclude any form of sacrifice, whether actual
or symbolic, and that nature is revered and
conserved.
The Manifesto states that the Fellowship
believes in the promotion of Love, Beauty and
Abundance. No encouragement is given to
asceticism. The Fellowship seeks to develop
friendliness, psychic gifts, happiness, and
compassion for all life, and it accepts religious
toleration, and is not exclusivist. Members are
free to maintain other religious allegiances,
and is open to all of every religion, tradition
and race. It also said that the Fellowship was
non-hierarchical. It is open to all who come in
good faith and love the goddess.
The Fellowship was an instant success, with
an eager response to a classified advertisement
placed in the British esoteric magazine
Prediction. The first members came mainly
from those already engaged with paganism,
so witches, Wiccans and druids joined, and
also many outside of these and from other
religions. Solo practitioners or devotees
joined, and gay women said they felt at home
in the Fellowship; in those days they had felt
unwelcome elsewhere in the pagan-sphere.
Soon after women were asking how they may
become priestesses of the Goddess, and so an
ordination ceremony was created.
The Priesthood of Isis, and the Druid Clan
of Dana
Before the FOI, the founders encountered
many esoteric influences, from the visitors
to the spiritual and esoteric seminars they
hosted, and engagement with Theosophy
and spiritualism. While living much of the
year in London through the 1960s, Olivia had
taken part in druid ceremonies on London’s
sacred hills. She said she was not keen on
the ceremonies as they were in those days,
observing that women attendees seemed to
be secondary to the men, walking behind
them. The women were expected to make the
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