Tony Kelly and the Pagan Movement
Text of an article which first appeared in The Cauldron magazine Spring 2012
*
The Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland was formed in 1970 when Joseph Wilson, then living in Britain, got together with Tony Kelly, to form a movement with the declared aim of “creating a society wherein everyone will be free to worship the Goddesses and Gods of Nature” . As Joe Wilson pointed out in the first editorial of the New Series of The Waxing Moon, several other people then active in the current Wiccan scene were involved at the planning stages but “the editor of The Wiccan did not agree with the others on the organization and also did not agree when we felt that the Quabalah was not pagan and should be treated only as comparative religion within the movement. Since he was unable to reconcile himself to these views, or to accept the fact that other people might feel that way and still exist in the same organization ...... he formed another organization which is known as The Pagan Front. So Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland has given birth to a daughter organization, before we have reached our own maturity!”
This is an interesting footnote to the history of paganism in Britain in that The Pagan Front - under different leadership - subsequently morphed into The Pagan Federation. So something like the original vision was perpetuated. Meanwhile Joe Wilson and Tony Kelly began to realise the aim of their new Movement and planned to offer meetings for worship and develop rites for use at these meetings. Tony also wrote a foundation myth - The Story of the Old Ones - giving the names of the gods to provide a focus for the rites. When Joe left Britain, Tony became the Movement’s key mover, though officially it had a democratic structure and several others were involved in its development over the years. The main task of what became the Movement’s ‘Ethos Group’ was to develop the structures and the rites that were held on Tony’s land in a remote valley in Carmarthenshire, Wales. An essential part of this was developing an ethos of devotion to the gods and an appropriate practice to promote that ethos.
There was a decrease in the public activity of the Movement from the mid 1970‘s following a major divisive issue that also led to a decrease in the membership. The core remaining members of the Ethos Group, when not diverted by the continuing conflicts arising from what became known as ‘The Broken Promise’, moved under Tony’s increasingly intense influence towards the formation of what in some ways was closer to a mystery religion than most wiccan practice at the time. The lore of the Ethos Group became increasingly arcane, though never completely hidden. It was often phrased in a language that was both highly poetic and symbolic as well as occasionally scientific. Paradox was a common mode of exploration.
I will try now to say a little about what was explored and about the diverse paths followed. Tony gave this account of what first drew him to paganism:
"For as long as I can remember, and before ever I knew its meaning, the word ‘pagan’ has evoked feelings of longing, beauty, and half-memories in my soul, and before I knew where to find expression of my pagan longing or even the form of it, my heart ached for its strange elusive fascination - as formless as the scents of Midsummer, but as bewitching and alluring, and drawing always on and deeper. The same is true of the word ‘witch’, a woman who brews in her cauldron such a brew as I later discovered was prepared for Afagddu, in her hope, her love and her sorrow, by Ceridwen, but it was the image that called to my soul because I knew, though not with my mind, that the image was only a little distorted, and the real was deep, dark, and old. "
The approach to working was based on nurturing the religious impulses of those who felt this call rather than any quest for magical power. This followed from the original argument about the Quabalah and I think was responsible for many of the misunderstandings and conflicts that beset the Movement. Tony was primarily in quest of fulfilling a deep desire to know the gods, and to find companionship in that quest, and felt that those motivated mainly by a desire for occult knowledge were a distraction from the fulfilment of this desire which meant walking the faerie paths where the gods might be found.
Faery was central to Tony’s approach. As he put it: “It isn't the enquirer, however earnest, that I want to attract, but rather, the pagan who already knows the call of Faery but needs help and companionship in tracing it to its source.” He told a story of someone trapped in a faerie dance, going round and round, and not being able to leave because he could only count in whole steps while the ability to move between the faerie realm and this world requires a way of thinking and moving in half-steps. There may be an analogy here with Crooked Path working. But Tony’s approach was more expressive, on the one hand, of the open book of traditional faerie lore, hidden as the meanings might be beneath a sheen of glamour, and on the other hand by a desire to apply a scientific approach to his cosmology. So in addition to a study of the lore of Faery he developed the concept of 4-value or faerie logic. This accounted for the half-step needed to move in and out of the faerie dance. To be able to move beyond the whole steps represented by ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or by ‘true’ and ‘false’ to points between these two absolutes.
Here is an extract from his argument:
I introduced the word ‘nim’ and tried to hint at the meaning of it by using it
repeatedly, and we saw that in this way, we got four different statements which repeated themselves endlessly, like this:
The truth is in the dance.
The truth is nim in the dance.
The truth is not in the dance.
The truth is not nim in the dance.
Let's think about the Realm of Faery, a faerie ring, and enchantment. Does Faery exist? Should we answer "Yes!" or "No!" or "Nim!" or "Not nim!"? The answer "yes" is neither respectable nowadays nor correct. To answer
"no" is respectable, but it isn't correct.
The Circle played a central role both in the working practices and the symbology of the Movement’s cosmology. Typically a circle would be drawn with a wand appropriate to the purpose. Sometimes this was for ritual but most frequently for discussions and preparations for the rituals that were held outside in the stone circle that had been created in the field where the Movement’s open rites were held. Once drawn, what took place within the circle was considered sacrosanct, for those within it were bound together with each other and with the gods,
walking the faerie paths, having stepped sideways from the everyday lives that are led outside it. The aim was to maintain a serious relationship with the gods and develop a meaningful worshipping community where the gods are upheld as part of that community. The binding quality of a drawn circle was an element in creating a structure in which all were bound in common bonds of trust and allegiance to create a sacred space for the gods.
So the circle was the place where the gods were evoked, where pledges were made, and where the rites of the gods were enacted. It was also a significant aspect of the symbolic schema representing the link between the worshipper and the gods. Here it is necessary to be circumspect, not because there are any secrets that cannot be revealed, but because of the way it was necessary to approach the gods for that approach to be meaningful. We are here back to the faerie half-step again, but there was also an element of finding the way to true initiation involved here too. These things are not simply to be told as a lesson to be learnt. Or an instruction on what to believe or to believe in. It is a matter of encouraging personal experience which, in the end, is the only way for belief to be founded and rooted in firm ground. But the circle provided a symbolic structure through which, alongside its other working applications, the neophyte might see, or come to a realisation of, his or her own place in relation to the gods.
So to take the traditional form of the circle as a flat plane with each of the cardinal points representing an aspect of deity, with North (Earth Mother),
East (Moon Goddess),West (Horned God ), South (Sun God).
What does stepping into such a circle entail? Doing so with the sort of vision enabled by the half-step does something significant. The circle is no longer a flat plane. It has another dimension and to see through the plane on an axis through its centre is to walk the path of the shaman. What is beyond? The Wraith on the path awaits you. And who are you that walks this path? You can only be ‘I’.
That is as far as that path goes within the confines of this article, but you might want to walk it further, or it might be a way that is not yet for you to take. But the arrival at ‘I’ brings us to the final strand of the cosmology to be discussed here: Reincarnation. Tony actually produced an equation to establish mathematical proof that ‘I’ have always existed, but he insisted that it was only
valid for ‘I’, never for ‘you’ or ‘him’ or ‘her’. This was one of the more enigmatic of Tony’s ideas, but at its heart is the conviction that the Universe it eternal, and each of us can say ‘I have always been here’. In spite of this he was skeptical about those who claimed to remember past lives. The Wraith on the path is ‘not I’ and no memory survives her embrace.
And so to the epilogue. The Movement nominally continued into the 1980s before dissipating into a few disparate groups and individuals. Tony died in 1997 of Motor Neurone Disease. He contacted me following a break in communication of several years telling me of the initial diagnosis. He asked for help in a project he had set himself of putting together material from the Movement’s records that could be put into the public domain. We did this, by post and occasional meetings at his home and later at the nursing home he moved to when the disease started to restrict his mobility. Much of the material is now available on this site.
As his spirit waned he chose to end his life with the same sense of purpose with which he had lived it. He stopped eating, but continued to take water. This meant he slipped away gradually. The last time I saw him he spoke clearly, though he was already visibly weakening. He asked me to put on a tape he had of some scottish laments played on the bagpipes on his small cassette player. These were the soundtrack of his last days. According to his wishes, we employed a piper to play his favourite laments at the funeral rite at which his ashes were given to the Cailleach out in the field where the rites had been held. A sapling oak was planted alongside other trees that had previously been planted there to make a sacred grove. The shroud of the Cailleach had been borne before in that field at rites for the season of Samhain. Now it was borne in the Summer as the bent figure with an elder wand pointed to the hole where the ashes were poured. And where the Earth Mother, in her gown of green, then emerged directing the tree to be planted so that he abides with her still.
*
The Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland was formed in 1970 when Joseph Wilson, then living in Britain, got together with Tony Kelly, to form a movement with the declared aim of “creating a society wherein everyone will be free to worship the Goddesses and Gods of Nature” . As Joe Wilson pointed out in the first editorial of the New Series of The Waxing Moon, several other people then active in the current Wiccan scene were involved at the planning stages but “the editor of The Wiccan did not agree with the others on the organization and also did not agree when we felt that the Quabalah was not pagan and should be treated only as comparative religion within the movement. Since he was unable to reconcile himself to these views, or to accept the fact that other people might feel that way and still exist in the same organization ...... he formed another organization which is known as The Pagan Front. So Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland has given birth to a daughter organization, before we have reached our own maturity!”
This is an interesting footnote to the history of paganism in Britain in that The Pagan Front - under different leadership - subsequently morphed into The Pagan Federation. So something like the original vision was perpetuated. Meanwhile Joe Wilson and Tony Kelly began to realise the aim of their new Movement and planned to offer meetings for worship and develop rites for use at these meetings. Tony also wrote a foundation myth - The Story of the Old Ones - giving the names of the gods to provide a focus for the rites. When Joe left Britain, Tony became the Movement’s key mover, though officially it had a democratic structure and several others were involved in its development over the years. The main task of what became the Movement’s ‘Ethos Group’ was to develop the structures and the rites that were held on Tony’s land in a remote valley in Carmarthenshire, Wales. An essential part of this was developing an ethos of devotion to the gods and an appropriate practice to promote that ethos.
There was a decrease in the public activity of the Movement from the mid 1970‘s following a major divisive issue that also led to a decrease in the membership. The core remaining members of the Ethos Group, when not diverted by the continuing conflicts arising from what became known as ‘The Broken Promise’, moved under Tony’s increasingly intense influence towards the formation of what in some ways was closer to a mystery religion than most wiccan practice at the time. The lore of the Ethos Group became increasingly arcane, though never completely hidden. It was often phrased in a language that was both highly poetic and symbolic as well as occasionally scientific. Paradox was a common mode of exploration.
I will try now to say a little about what was explored and about the diverse paths followed. Tony gave this account of what first drew him to paganism:
"For as long as I can remember, and before ever I knew its meaning, the word ‘pagan’ has evoked feelings of longing, beauty, and half-memories in my soul, and before I knew where to find expression of my pagan longing or even the form of it, my heart ached for its strange elusive fascination - as formless as the scents of Midsummer, but as bewitching and alluring, and drawing always on and deeper. The same is true of the word ‘witch’, a woman who brews in her cauldron such a brew as I later discovered was prepared for Afagddu, in her hope, her love and her sorrow, by Ceridwen, but it was the image that called to my soul because I knew, though not with my mind, that the image was only a little distorted, and the real was deep, dark, and old. "
The approach to working was based on nurturing the religious impulses of those who felt this call rather than any quest for magical power. This followed from the original argument about the Quabalah and I think was responsible for many of the misunderstandings and conflicts that beset the Movement. Tony was primarily in quest of fulfilling a deep desire to know the gods, and to find companionship in that quest, and felt that those motivated mainly by a desire for occult knowledge were a distraction from the fulfilment of this desire which meant walking the faerie paths where the gods might be found.
Faery was central to Tony’s approach. As he put it: “It isn't the enquirer, however earnest, that I want to attract, but rather, the pagan who already knows the call of Faery but needs help and companionship in tracing it to its source.” He told a story of someone trapped in a faerie dance, going round and round, and not being able to leave because he could only count in whole steps while the ability to move between the faerie realm and this world requires a way of thinking and moving in half-steps. There may be an analogy here with Crooked Path working. But Tony’s approach was more expressive, on the one hand, of the open book of traditional faerie lore, hidden as the meanings might be beneath a sheen of glamour, and on the other hand by a desire to apply a scientific approach to his cosmology. So in addition to a study of the lore of Faery he developed the concept of 4-value or faerie logic. This accounted for the half-step needed to move in and out of the faerie dance. To be able to move beyond the whole steps represented by ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or by ‘true’ and ‘false’ to points between these two absolutes.
Here is an extract from his argument:
I introduced the word ‘nim’ and tried to hint at the meaning of it by using it
repeatedly, and we saw that in this way, we got four different statements which repeated themselves endlessly, like this:
The truth is in the dance.
The truth is nim in the dance.
The truth is not in the dance.
The truth is not nim in the dance.
Let's think about the Realm of Faery, a faerie ring, and enchantment. Does Faery exist? Should we answer "Yes!" or "No!" or "Nim!" or "Not nim!"? The answer "yes" is neither respectable nowadays nor correct. To answer
"no" is respectable, but it isn't correct.
The Circle played a central role both in the working practices and the symbology of the Movement’s cosmology. Typically a circle would be drawn with a wand appropriate to the purpose. Sometimes this was for ritual but most frequently for discussions and preparations for the rituals that were held outside in the stone circle that had been created in the field where the Movement’s open rites were held. Once drawn, what took place within the circle was considered sacrosanct, for those within it were bound together with each other and with the gods,
walking the faerie paths, having stepped sideways from the everyday lives that are led outside it. The aim was to maintain a serious relationship with the gods and develop a meaningful worshipping community where the gods are upheld as part of that community. The binding quality of a drawn circle was an element in creating a structure in which all were bound in common bonds of trust and allegiance to create a sacred space for the gods.
So the circle was the place where the gods were evoked, where pledges were made, and where the rites of the gods were enacted. It was also a significant aspect of the symbolic schema representing the link between the worshipper and the gods. Here it is necessary to be circumspect, not because there are any secrets that cannot be revealed, but because of the way it was necessary to approach the gods for that approach to be meaningful. We are here back to the faerie half-step again, but there was also an element of finding the way to true initiation involved here too. These things are not simply to be told as a lesson to be learnt. Or an instruction on what to believe or to believe in. It is a matter of encouraging personal experience which, in the end, is the only way for belief to be founded and rooted in firm ground. But the circle provided a symbolic structure through which, alongside its other working applications, the neophyte might see, or come to a realisation of, his or her own place in relation to the gods.
So to take the traditional form of the circle as a flat plane with each of the cardinal points representing an aspect of deity, with North (Earth Mother),
East (Moon Goddess),West (Horned God ), South (Sun God).
What does stepping into such a circle entail? Doing so with the sort of vision enabled by the half-step does something significant. The circle is no longer a flat plane. It has another dimension and to see through the plane on an axis through its centre is to walk the path of the shaman. What is beyond? The Wraith on the path awaits you. And who are you that walks this path? You can only be ‘I’.
That is as far as that path goes within the confines of this article, but you might want to walk it further, or it might be a way that is not yet for you to take. But the arrival at ‘I’ brings us to the final strand of the cosmology to be discussed here: Reincarnation. Tony actually produced an equation to establish mathematical proof that ‘I’ have always existed, but he insisted that it was only
valid for ‘I’, never for ‘you’ or ‘him’ or ‘her’. This was one of the more enigmatic of Tony’s ideas, but at its heart is the conviction that the Universe it eternal, and each of us can say ‘I have always been here’. In spite of this he was skeptical about those who claimed to remember past lives. The Wraith on the path is ‘not I’ and no memory survives her embrace.
And so to the epilogue. The Movement nominally continued into the 1980s before dissipating into a few disparate groups and individuals. Tony died in 1997 of Motor Neurone Disease. He contacted me following a break in communication of several years telling me of the initial diagnosis. He asked for help in a project he had set himself of putting together material from the Movement’s records that could be put into the public domain. We did this, by post and occasional meetings at his home and later at the nursing home he moved to when the disease started to restrict his mobility. Much of the material is now available on this site.
As his spirit waned he chose to end his life with the same sense of purpose with which he had lived it. He stopped eating, but continued to take water. This meant he slipped away gradually. The last time I saw him he spoke clearly, though he was already visibly weakening. He asked me to put on a tape he had of some scottish laments played on the bagpipes on his small cassette player. These were the soundtrack of his last days. According to his wishes, we employed a piper to play his favourite laments at the funeral rite at which his ashes were given to the Cailleach out in the field where the rites had been held. A sapling oak was planted alongside other trees that had previously been planted there to make a sacred grove. The shroud of the Cailleach had been borne before in that field at rites for the season of Samhain. Now it was borne in the Summer as the bent figure with an elder wand pointed to the hole where the ashes were poured. And where the Earth Mother, in her gown of green, then emerged directing the tree to be planted so that he abides with her still.