Faces of the Goddess Magazine SGC 21

Phoenicians adored Astarte; the Scythians,
Apia; and the Scandinavians, Frigga, the
consort of Odin. Wherever female deities have
obtained a place in the religion of a people, it
is a sign that women are of some consequence;
for we find in those modern nations where the
women are held in the most despicable light,
that even their deities are all of the masculine
gender.
In other words, to achieve a healthy society
- something more is needed than “Votes for
women“, “Equal pay” and so on. For achieving
a healthy society there is only one adequate
answer; and that answer is: a return to the Cult
of the Goddess.”
Back in Ireland, Derry and his wife created
a local welfare group, joined by Olivia, to
help the poor in their area. This may possibly
have been influenced by Derry’s exposure
to Tractarian thought at Wells, as one of the
tenets of the movement was helping the poor
in slums. The three founders had witnessed
terrible poverty and living conditions of the
local people. When Ireland introduced
a better form of welfare in the 1960s, the
Robertson’s were able to turn their attention
to their mystical interests. They formed The
Huntington Castle Centre for Meditation and
Study. Religious personalities from various
religions and also from the occult world and
the new spiritualities, were invited to come
from around the world to seminars at their
country estate. As the Goddess called to them
increasingly, they founded the Fellowship.
Lawrence produced several books to bring
knowledge to the individual goddesses to
the world, including ‘The Goddesses of
India, Tibet, China and Japan’, and ‘God the
Mother: The Creatress and Giver of Life’,
and ‘Juno Covella, a Perpetual Calendar
of Goddess Festivals’ which was inspired
by Ovid’s Fasti. While the scholarship
may have been superseded in the last 35
years or so, as it should be, these books are
a mine of information on the individual
goddesses, appearing at a time when little
such information was easily available, and his
books are much loved and treasured.
Derry died on August 4th 1994.
Poppy
"Every flower was a word, a thought. The
grass was speech; the trees were speech; the
waters were speech; the winds were speech...
and I listened with my whole being."
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“I asked Valentine to tell me about her
conversations, and what trees and plants were
like in character. Was she certain she was not
in actuality conversing with nature spirits
tending the plants? She said she could only
communicate with plant spirits occasionally,
but she could converse directly with flowers
and plants.” (Olivia Robertson speaking of her
sister-in-law)
Pamela, known as Poppy, was born in 1923
to a Quaker family related to the Barclay’s
Bank family. She was, according to Olivia, a
direct descendent of Elizabeth Fry, the prison
reformer. She was also descended from the
famous Robert Barclay who wrote “An Apology