Following the devastating death of our founder and chief carpenter John Belham-Payne in February 2016, the Doreen Valiente Foundation is humbly asking the community for donations. All funds will immediately go to help pay for the carpentry and joinery we now need to be able to display for the first time the magical tools and documents which Doreen passed to John at her death in 1999.
Two exhibitions are due to be mounted this year in conjunction with Brighton Royal Pavilion Museums - a smaller one opening on 2nd April (for which funding is secure) and a heart-stoppingly larger one in August.
This is the first step in John's dream of establishing a permanent home for one of the most important and historical collection of artefacts in the history of modern Witchcraft and Paganism.
We are committed to realising John's dream and opening up this significant collection to the general public as both an educational resource and an historical record, but we are a small Trust and we are 'all hands on deck', so we are asking for support.
Here's the story so far:
In 1999, poet, author and one of the founders of modern Witchcraft ('Wicca'), Doreen Valiente, passed away leaving her important collection of magical tools and documents to her final High Priest, John Belham-Payne, telling him she knew he would 'do the right thing' with them.
This he did by establishing a charitable trust, 'The Doreen Valiente Foundation', passing it ownership of the entire collection and then working to find it a permanent home.
The Foundation has worked to make the collection accessible to the public, publishing books, organising conferences and successfully campaigning for heritage blue plaques on the former homes of Doreen Valiente (on a council block in Brighton) and Gerald Gardner (in Highcliffe).
In 2015, Brighton Royal Pavilion Museums stepped up to offer an opportunity to mount two temporary exhibitions for the collection in 2016.
Devastatingly, John passed away in February this year, on the very day he was due to start building the exhibition displays.
Included in the collection are not only Doreen's own possessions, but some of the original magical tools used by Gerald Gardner who started the movement in the early 20th century. Joining these will now, sadly, be some of John's own tools.
We want this collection to exist for everyone and, eventually, to have a permanent home somewhere secure, where it can live on for everyone and provide a research centre for future generations of historians to learn and share more about this fascinating subject. Funds raised here will go towards mounting the first exhibitions in 2016 - and anything left over will go towards a touring exhibition (with some invitations already open) which will travel the UK until it finds its forever home.
If you've read this far then thank you - we hope to see you in Brighton this year whether or not you are able to donate at this point in time.
Merry meet,
The Doreen Valiente Foundation.
