Biographical information
- Civil name: Lois Bourne (also Hemmings and Pearson)
- Craft name: Tanith; Tanit in her own memoir
- Born: 10 April 1928
- Gardnerian initiation: Candlemas, probably 1958, by Gerald Gardner
- Further initiation: Samhain, after 1964, in Margo and Bertram’s coven
- Died: 22 December 2017
Early life and meeting Gardner
Lois Bourne was born on 10 April 1928 and was known at different points in her life by the surnames Hemmings, Pearson and Bourne. Long before joining Gardnerian Wicca, she was interested in folklore, magic and spiritual experiences. In her memoirs she describes experiences she regarded as psychic from childhood onwards. She worked as a nurse and, when she met Gerald Gardner, was married with two young sons. As Lois Hemmings, she had published a historical pamphlet on witchcraft in Manningtree, a region associated with Matthew Hopkins and traditions of folk magic.
Reading Witchcraft Today prompted Lois to write to Gardner, who received her at his London flat. They discussed the experiences that had attracted her to the Craft. According to Dancing with Witches, Gardner suggested that she might possess a particular aptitude for magic and gave her High Magic’s Aid, whose fictional descriptions of initiation would also help test her willingness to continue. Soon afterwards she was introduced to members of the Bricket Wood coven in Hertfordshire, including Jack Bracelin and a high priestess identified in the memoir under the pseudonym Annis (Dancing with Witches, pp. 16–20).
Initiation and the early Bricket Wood years
Lois attended meetings and interviews for several months before being accepted. She remembers being initiated by Gardner himself on Candlemas Eve in the Witches’ Cottage on the grounds of the Five Acres club. Published biographies date her Gardnerian initiation to 1958, although her autobiographical account specifies the festival rather than an unambiguous year. Gardner was recovering from surgery but was able to attend and conduct the ceremony. Lois remembered the event as the beginning of a profound change in her spiritual life (pp. 20–23).
Elsewhere in the book, Lois explains that Gardner gave her the name of the Carthaginian goddess Tanit during her initiation (p. 93). The spelling Tanith, widely used for her Craft name in published biographical accounts, therefore exists alongside the form she used herself. At first she served as the coven’s maiden, assisting its high priestess.
When the priestess she called Annis left the group to marry and emigrate to North America, Lois gradually assumed her duties alongside Jack Bracelin. Biographical accounts associate this departure with that of Thelma Capel (Dayonis) in 1959. Lois acknowledged that she initially felt insufficiently experienced to lead, but grew in confidence through continuing priestly work (Dancing with Witches, pp. 25 and 46).
Coven life and friendship with Gardner
Lois’s recollections provide an unusually close view of life at Bricket Wood. Members gathered before rituals, talked, shared meals and then walked to the Witches’ Cottage. Jack maintained the grounds and managed the club. Lois remembered the atmosphere fondly, describing magical work, personal relationships and the different characters of her companions. She also officiated at a witch marriage ceremony for Frederic and Gillian Lamond following their civil marriage, with Gardner in attendance (pp. 23–26 and 37).
Her relationship with Gardner developed beyond initiatory instruction. Lois visited him repeatedly on the Isle of Man, spent time in the museum and discussed magic, symbolism and the religions of the world. Following Donna Gardner’s death on 30 January 1960, she flew to the island at Jack Bracelin’s request. She remained for about ten days, helping the grieving Gardner and arranging for a housekeeper. During that visit she read letters from Edith Woodford-Grimes, known as Dafo, criticizing Gardner’s publicity around witchcraft (pp. 56–60).
Although deeply affectionate towards Gardner, Lois also recognized contradictions in his character. Dancing with Witches describes tensions between Gardner and Jack over prospective initiates and public exposure. Her memoir is thus a personal account of early Gardnerian community life, best read alongside letters and other contemporary sources rather than treating every retrospective judgment as an established fact.
Leaving Bricket Wood
After Gardner died in February 1964, Lois observed changes in the atmosphere and direction of the Bricket Wood coven. She later wrote that his death led her to reconsider her obligations to the group and the possibility of extending her magical education. She eventually left the coven, while retaining deep gratitude for her training and enduring affection for its members. Leaving the leadership of Bricket Wood did not, in itself, erase her Gardnerian initiatory history (Dancing with Witches, pp. 94–97).
One of Lois’s friends within Bricket Wood was a woman she calls Margo, a pseudonym used in her memoir. Gardner had introduced Margo to the group. Margo told Lois that she belonged to another coven in East Anglia, led by herself and a priest named Bertram. She claimed this group possessed an uninterrupted tradition of approximately two centuries, with its own initiatory structure. This is a claim recorded in Lois’s autobiography, not an independently established historical genealogy (pp. 48–55).
A second initiation and Margo’s teaching
After leaving Bricket Wood, Lois visited other groups but ultimately chose further training with Margo and Bertram. She underwent a second initiation at Samhain, on a date not specified in the memoir. She deliberately chose a different festival so that Candlemas would remain the special anniversary of her first initiation. Margo conducted the rite with Bertram’s assistance, while a couple whom the group called the Lord and Lady also took part. Lois describes a relatively silent ceremony, quite different from the more exuberant worship she knew at Bricket Wood (Dancing with Witches, pp. 97–100).
As Lois describes it, the East Anglian coven placed particular emphasis on the agricultural year, the God, meditation and silent ritual. Margo criticized aspects of Gardnerian practice, including ritual nudity within buildings. Lois did not adopt these objections as a repudiation of everything she had learned from Gardner. She continued to value her earlier formation, while regarding the new training as an expansion of her magical practice.
Margo remained an important teacher for years. She offered guidance about caution, discretion, responsibility when agreeing to work for others and avoiding ostentatious claims of spiritual authority. Lois especially recalled her emphasis on humility and participating fully in everyday life. This second coven was a central influence on her mature religious outlook (pp. 100–103).
Magical practice and encounters with other traditions
During the following decades, Lois continued to advise correspondents and engage in practical magic. She received requests connected with personal and professional difficulties, described healing work and dream interpretation, and explored states of trance. She also recalled participating in experiments involving trance and consciousness with psychiatrist William Sargant. These accounts come primarily from her own memoirs and should be described as experiences and interpretations, without treating supernatural effects as independently established facts (Dancing with Witches, pp. 46–48 and 107–126).
Her interest extended to forms of folk magic encountered while travelling. In Spain she described meeting women who worked spells within family traditions, without the coven organization or ritual structure she had known in England (pp. 127–135). In Jamaica she sought out a practitioner she calls Mother Tomas and recalled a ceremony during which she interpreted her trance as the presence of Erzulie (pp. 145–166). In New Orleans she explored local forms of Voodoo and their ceremonies (pp. 203–212).
Visits to ancient monuments and sacred sites, particularly in Greece, Portugal and Spain, also informed her reflections on religion, mythology and landscape. These passages require historical care: Lois sometimes uses terms such as Obeah and Voodoo broadly, following terminology common in her period, while contemporary scholarship distinguishes these Afro-Caribbean and African American traditions more carefully.
Author and historical witness
Lois published Witch Amongst Us: The Autobiography of a Witch (1979), Conversations with a Witch (1989), Dancing with Witches (1998) and Spells to Change Your Life (2003). Her writing combines personal history, religious reflection, practical magic and encounters with different forms of witchcraft. In the 1990s she and her husband also operated Magistra, associated with magical supplies.
Writing Dancing with Witches several decades after her initiation, Lois acknowledged that her recollections were necessarily subjective and incomplete. Even so, the book is a major autobiographical source for understanding a Bricket Wood priestess who, after withdrawing from leadership there, pursued a different initiatory training and developed her own religious career. Lois died in Watford on 22 December 2017.
References and documentary sources
- BOURNE, Lois. Dancing with Witches. London: Robert Hale, 1998. Autobiographical source consulted directly, especially pp. 16–26, 37, 46–60, 93–103, 107–135, 145–166 and 203–212.
- HESELTON, Philip. Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner. Vol. 2. Loughborough: Thoth Publications, 2012, especially pp. 600–606 and 651–653.
- HUTTON, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, especially chapter 13.
- BOURNE, Lois. Witch Amongst Us: The Autobiography of a Witch (1979); Conversations with a Witch (1989); Spells to Change Your Life (2003).
- British Traditional Wicca — Lois Bourne.
- The Wica — Elders of The Wica.