Also known as “Old Dorothy” in Gerald Gardner’s writings.
Who was she and why was she important. So Gerald Gardner was an initiate of the OTO and having reached the third degree, the degree of master he was permitted to initiate, but bound in secrecy.
He began to initiate people in a magical tradition, claiming he was passing on an old line in which he had been initiated by a Dorothy Clutterbuck and the witches of the New Forest, he did not claim the OTO as his heritage. Much of what he taught matched the teachings of Aleister Crowley and his Book 4 Liber ABA which was popular at the time he was initiated in the OTO. It was suggested in 1980 book “A History of Witchcraft” that Dorothy Clutterbuck and the witches of the New Forest probably never existed.
Doreen Valiente would not have this so sought out the birth certificate of a Dorothy Clutterbuck and returned with it and with a doubtful scouge (a ritual implement mentioned in book 4) supposedly used by Dorothy Clutterbuck.
All written record suggests that Ms. Clutterbuck was nothing but Christian. Some turn to rare bits of poetry in her diaries which has references to fairies to try and claim her as pagan.
It is possible that the New Forest Coven did indeed exist, but its supposed members were trying to resurrect a previously non-existent witch-cult and their magical knowledge came from groups that came out of masonry like Rosicrucian Order of the Crotona Fellowship, not from a witch-cult which had left no written evidence of its existence. It is entirely possible that Dorothy Clutterbuck had not even been part of the New Forest Coven, but instead Edith Woodford-Grimes was. She was present at Doreen Valiente’s initiation.
It is recorded that at the end of a “pagan” ritual, Doreen Valiente once confronted Gerald Gardner that part of his ritual was taken from Aleister Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. He claimed that the pagan rites were handed to him in fragments and he had needed to fill in the gaps. He gave Doreen Valiente his book of shadows and she was able to strip out some of the masonic heritage and replace it with her own poetry. What remains is something that still shows signs of Crowley, Charles Leland and Robert Graves and the few times that do not convey these sources definitely have Doreen Valiente’s handwriting in their use of meter and words.