Do you remember Miss Price, the trainee witch played by Angela Lansbury in Bedknobs and Broomsticks? Her magic was inspired by a patriotic desire to prevent a German invasion of England. Her fictional efforts reflect the factual magical workings of The New Forest Witches led by Gerard Gardner.[1]
There is a long tradition of witches utilising their magic as a form of political resistance.
The North Berwick Witches raised a storm to wreck a ship of Scottish forces, while British counterparts in 1588 to help fight off the Spanish Armada and in 1805 to end Napoleon’s threat to England. In 2017 the Magic Resistance Movement worked monthly spells to defeat Donald Trump’s re-election bid.
On the Island of Ireland, several mystical methods were used as methods of resistance. Islanders on Tory had a cursing stone used in 1884 to wreck HMS gunboat Wasp, which was coming to displace the impoverished villagers. The ship sunk with 50 perishing.[2]
A poet, mystic and revolutionary Ella Young[3], created a group The Fine in Ireland, which conducted rituals to end British colonial rule of Ireland.
Renowned as a poet, folklorist, Poems, was published in 1906, and her first work of Irish folklore, The Coming of Lugh, was published in 1909. Her close friend, Maud Gonne illustrated both Lugh and Young’s first story collection, Celtic Wonder-Tales (1910). The poet Padric Colum said of her work – “When she retells something from myth of folklore, she is not merely relating an interesting legend: she is telling part of a sacred history” (Murphy,6,2008)
This collaborative relationship with Maud Gonne extended beyond the literary, to spiritual and revolutionary circles. Yeats was so; jealous of the relationship between the two women- he referred to Ella as his bête noir or black beast.
Ella was referred to by her American circle of friends as an “Irish Mystic,” “Druid” or “White Witch. She was described as epitomising a Druidess, pale, ethereal, in flowing garments like an ancient priestess. Maud said of her that she was an extraordinary woman, frail in appearance but with an iron will. In the 1911 Irish Census, she listed her religion as pagan.
During her student years in London, she became a member of the Theosophical Society, during the tenure of Madame Blavatsky. Meeting Macgregor Mathers and wife Moina, and on one memorable occasion she listened to the unearthly voice of Æ (George Russell) who was to have had a profound influence on her mysticism and literary art.
Back in Dublin, Æ is believed to have initiated her into his Hermetic Order with Maud, and Yeats in attendance. Her membership in the society brought her in contact with intellectuals’, rebels and artists who were also interested in spiritualism. Her acquaintance with Æ resulted in becoming one of his select group of protégés known as the “singing birds”.
The origin of the name The Fine, biographers: McDowell associates with the word fingers; while Murphy with the Fianna. A further theory is that it referred to The Fellowship of the Four Jewels– the four sacred treasures of the Tuatha de Dannan: the Sword of Light of Nuada, Lugh’s spear, Cauldron of the Dagda, and Stone of destiny- representing the powers of the land if Ireland. However, it is more likely that Fine may refer to Find, the ancient Irish personification of wisdom and knowledge.
Maud Gonne states its origins came around 1900, after a long meditation by Ella, on the ancient Greek symbol the swastika, long before it was associated with the rise of fascism. To Ella it was like a rising of a hand in an old form of Gaelic salutation. Ironically the form of salutation between members was the raising of one hand which Ella felt was an old Gaelic tradition. Later echoed in elements of the straight-arm Roman salute utilised by European fascism and by Eoin Duffy’s Irish Blueshirts.
She formed the group after leaving Æ’s Hermetic Society which she felt had little symbolic relationship with Ireland. While Æ was a student of sacred books of the east, Ella was of the Irish gods and legends.
Maud stated that the objective of The Fine was to draw together in the freeing of Ireland, the wills of the living and of the dead in association with the earth and elements all seen as living entities by Ella
The group would go to various sacred sites; a favourite was Irelands Eye, an Islandoff of the coast of Dublin. Ella saw it as representing earth and they often travelled to it, with Ella sailing them over by boat. She would conduct the ritual , lighting a ceremonial fire and burning herbs she had gathered from across Ireland. Invocations were made to the Irish gods to unite all of Ireland and asking specifically for them to bring back Lia Fail –the stone of destiny, which had been taken by the English and is now housed in the Crown Room, Edinburgh Castle and brought out recently for Charles Coronation.
Maud relates that she could feel the spiritual forces around them, some hostile; some blind to human needs or wants, more interested in their own existence. The fire also held a utilitarian purpose to boil their kettle for tea. They ensured that they left no mark upon the site, and this was something very important to Ella to leave no trace.
Ella went often where her visions bade her to go. One pilgrimage was to Slieve Guillion, in Armagh, which Ella saw as sacred and linked to Manannan Mac Lir. Ella became a devotee of the god, referring to him as a shape shifting god of pranks and hilarity. On one occasion a member of The Fine attempted to invoke the mountain in her bed which caused a whirlwind possession of her mind and body. Maud noted that sacred mountains are too strong for mortals; it’s like inviting a lion to play with you.
Members of The Fine were women, and included Maude Gonne, Helena Moloney ( actress, trade unionist and member of the Irish Citizen Army),Moirin Fox, Susan Varian and Countess Markieviecz.
Many members of The Fine were also her comrades in Cumann na mBan and Inghinidhe Na hEireann.
Ella joined more radical members of Inghinidhe to create Bean Na hEireann –women of Ireland- a radical journal. She was amongst women such as the Countess, Maude and Helena. It featured writings of Pearse, Griffith, Katharine Tynan ,Roger Casement, Æ, and Madeline ffrench-Mullen.
Ella and Maud were instrumental in getting support for Inghinidhe’s plays from Yeats, and Æ. One of their Maude and Ella’s joint projects included a stage production of the four Irish Sabbats.
Ella became a member of Sinn Fein in 1912 and a founding member of Cumann na mBan in 1914. Like most members of Cumann na mBan she was involved in gun running, hiding of arms and supporting Volunteers and as saw this as in complete harmony with her study of spirits, Irish mythology, and folklore.
She was certainly on the radar of British authorities and had to go on the run prior to the 1916 Uprising- her letters were all opened by censors, and her homes in Dublin and Wicklow were often raided. On one occasion a veritable arsenal was hidden beneath her floorboards. In a false back to a cupboard were important papers and ammunition was hidden around the flat, which the army did not find.
She seems to have realised that physical force was needed to rid the country of British rule and in a 1905 letter she noted that they were fighting hard for independence.
She was involved in one of the most infamous landing of arms to support The Uprising by Erskine Chiders,in 1914 on his yacht The Asgard. Ella was appointed Quarter Master with an allotment of these weapons hidden in a cellar in her Wicklow farmhouse. It was her job to ensure that they were distributed to the intended Volunteers. Recipients were issued arms by the uttering of secret password in Irish, accompanied with a list of items by notes passed under the door instructing her what to allocate. The caller would deliver the rifles into the hands of the Volunteers.
Ella seemed aware of the plans for Easter week stating “on that day there will be a sound of marching fee, Men everywhere will strike for Ireland’s freedom”. She had prophetic visions of the destruction of Dublin prior to the Uprising on a number of occasions.
After a Truce went into effect in July of 1920, Childers sent Ella to Kerry to meet with representatives of the IRA to deliver details of the Truce and to gauge their reaction. Their attitude was, at best, ambivalent as was the reaction of other IRA units throughout the country.
Like the majority of the members of Cumann na mBan, Ella sided with the anti-Treaty Republicans during the Civil War and continued hiding arms and ammunition. In her memoirs she recalled how a Thompson sub machine gun was hidden under the floorboards when the house was raided by Free State troops.
Like most of the women active in the Irish Celtic Twilight, and the struggle for Irish Independence and mystical movements, Ella’s contributions have been overshadowed by others. After the Civil War she left for speaking tours of the United States and subsequent relocation to California and mystical and arts circles there.
Her service to Cumann na mBan has been negated, biographer McDowell stating she has no record in the military archives. But this is in keeping with the difficulty most women active had in having their contributions recognised through a military pension and with Ella living in the States it may have not been a primary concern of hers. Her poetry and her mystical life were.
After the Rising and the execution of its leaders, Ella left Dublin to avoid possible arrest as her rebel activities had attracted the attention of British intelligence. She laid low in Waterford and in Achill Island of the Mayo coast. When her friend Countess Markievicz’s was released from prison in June of 1917 she joined Cumann na mBan. She returned to Dublin in 1919 and resumed her rebel activities, hiding arms and ammunition and smuggling weapons and, on occasions, helped escaped prisoners and on-the-run Volunteers get out of Dublin safely during the War of Independence.
In 1923, She published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry On a Grey Thread.
Poet Elsa Gidlow described her friend Ella in her work I Come With My Songs:
“Ella Young’s whole appearance was of a high spirituality, something bright and translucent shone outward from her. As Colum said, she had the air of an initiate. But there was also earthiness and a quiet strength. No puritanism. She appreciated good wine, well-prepared simple food, the enhancements of life by art and artistry. She not only wrote poetry, poetry singing also through her prose, she lived poetry. It was her conviction that there must be leisure not alone for great thought, noble deeds, but for the aesthetics of daily living—no unnecessary luxury, but a living close to the heart of things. She was not for a moment unaware of our dependence upon all life, the aliveness even of stones, of a pervasive consciousness.”
[1] https://www.military.com/history/coven-of-witches-fought-nazis-during-world-war-ii.html
The Coven of Witches That Fought the Nazis During World War II
Military.com | By Blake StilwellThe lore of the New Forest Coven included a ritual that had been used twice to defend the British Isles from the threat of an invasion. By creating a “Cone of Power,” he and his coven could affect real-world events from the security of the New Forest.
[2] Inishtrull off of Malin Head also had a cursing stone with a marigold pattern that was on exhibit in a local pub.
[3] Ironically Ella learned the art of cursing from her time in the West of Ireland- whether she utilised tis in her one mystical practice is not known but her biographer Rose Murphy suggests she saw in the act of cursing a vehicle whereby the ‘downtrodden’ indigents could use against the coloniser.