Cora Anderson 1915 - 2008 Cora Anderson, a co-founder with Victor Anderson of what is now known of as the Feri Tradition, passed on this morning at the age of 93. Cora Anderson was known as a Grand Master of the Feri Faith, a prolific writer, and was a key influence in the lives of several prominent Pagans and Witches. Cora Anderson is the author of Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition and Childhood Memories, and coauthor, with Victor H. Anderson, of Etheric Anatomy: The Three Selves and Astral Travel. She was a contributing author to Potpourri of Cookery. Her articles have been featured in Witch Eye and Circle magazines, and her recipes have been published in Women’s Circle and T. Babes Recipe Service. She also writes a feature column, “Letters from a Hill Witch,” at Lilith’s Lantern.

Cora was the Grand Master and, with her husband, Victor, the foremost teacher of the Feri/Faery Tradition. She helped train some of the most influential voices in neo-Paganism. A natural kitchen Witch, Cora worked as a hospital cook for many years, and often charged the food with healing energy for the patients. Her straightforward approach to the Craft earned her the respect and admiration of many around the world.

Raised in rural Alabama, in the southern Appalachians, Cora came from a family tradition of folk magic and healing. She received a two-year diploma in children’s education from Jacksonville State Teacher’s College in Alabama. She also held a certificate in autobiographical writing from Chabot College in Hayward, California. She held a ministerial certificate from the Covenant of the Goddess, and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her body will lie in state for 3 days, the Feri community asks that mourners and well-wishers burn a candle during this transition time for her. My blessings go out the Feri community and Cora’s spirit. May she be reunited with Victor and be embraced by her gods.

The Faerie (Feri) Tradition

The Feri Tradition (sometimes spelled Faery, Faerie, or referred to as Anderson Feri) is an oral, initiatory tradition of modern Witchcraft. It is an ecstatic, rather than a fertility, tradition stemming from the teachings of Victor Anderson and his wife Cora. Strong emphasis is placed on sensual experience and awareness, including sexual mysticism, which is not limited to heterosexual expression.

Among the distinguishing features of the Feri tradition is the use of a specific Feri power or energetic current which characterizes the lineage. Feri witches often see themselves as “fey”: outside social definitions, on the road to Faeryland. They believe that much of reality is unseen, or at least has uncertain boundaries. Within the tradition there is a deep respect for the wisdom of nature, a love of beauty, and an appreciation of bardic and mantic creativity.

Core teachings acknowledged by many branches of the tradition include the concepts of the Three Souls and the Black Heart of Innocence, the tools of Iron and Pearl Pentacle, as well as an awareness of “energy ecology”, which admonishes practitioners to never give away or waste their personal power, and emphasizing techniques to transmute “negative” energy into a pure, more useful form to be reclaimed and stored. Trance experiences and personal connection to the Divine are at the heart of this path, leading to a wide variety of practices throughout the larger body of the tradition. Much of the practices and lore are considered secret and are transmitted only to students and initiates; however, more material has become publicly available over the last several years, on the Internet and elsewhere.

It should be noted that most of its practitioners do not consider the Feri Tradition a tradition of Wicca.

There are Wiccan groups and traditions sometimes calling themselves “Fairy” (Faerie, Faery, etc.), but these are distinct from the Feri Tradition. [wiki]

Gwydion Penwerdden

Gwydion was born in a family of a long-term California residents. Gwydion met the blind seer and poet Victor Anderson, known in many Pagan circles as a high priest of the Feri Tradition, ancient teaching that span the globe, and found in aboriginal people everywhere teacher of the Feri tradition of Witchcraft. Gwydion had met him through his son (from the same birth date, 22 may) of the same age at school. From the early age of 13 Victor became also his primer teacher and mentor. Until his twenties he studied with him. [biography] Thomas deLong (born Berkeley, California, 21 May 1946 - died 1982), better known as Gwydion Pendderwen, was an American musician, writer, poet, conservationist and witch. Pendderwen became a student and “craft-son” to Victor Anderson and Cora Anderson, learned the Feri tradition of witchcraft from them, and helped popularize it in the Neopagan community. In addition to being credited with naming the tradition (originally spelled “Faerie”), he wrote many poems and liturgical materials for the tradition, as well as initiating many others into the tradition. His “descendants” have come to be known as the Watchmaker line of Feri. [wiki]

By the early ’70’s, neo-Paganism was beginning to grow spurth of its current renaissance. One of the landmarks of artistic merit in this rebirth was Gwydion’s first recording, Songs for the Old Religion. This album has songs for each Sabbath as well as songs of the seasonal round and love songs to the Goddess and the God, and brought Gwydion a measure of fame and standing in the Pagan community.

Gwydion actually felt himself to be a druid, and was one of the members of the New and Reformed Order of the Golden Down, a latter-day Druidic sect. More information about that can be found in the book Margot Adler : Drowning Down the Moon. Gwydion actually went to Wales one time in 1976. The trip had a profound influence on him. He not only met his Welsh correspondent, Deri ap Arthur, but also many other active figures in the Wicca movement, among them Alex Saunders and Stuart Farrar. He made a pilgrimage to the Eistedffodd in Wales, the ancient Welsh Druid Poetry contest. He was amongst those called to the stage on the last days of the ceremonies, when foreigners of Welsh descent are honoured, an event which proved profoundly moving to him. He felt he had regained his path, and it was not that of hubris and fame. In visiting Ireland he had a terrifying vision of the Morrigan upon Tara Hill, which called to his mind his identification with the archetype of “the Sacred King”.

In the season of Samhain 1982, Gwydion was killed in an auto accident in which he was thrown from his car as it overturned. He seemed to know the time of his death was near : he had spent the previous days visiting family and friends all over the Bay Area. “Filled with joy we weep for the love known and missed”. Gwydion died at the age of 36.

He only made two albums: Songs for the Old Religion and The Faery Shaman. I have a great fondness and nostaligia for Songs, which came out in the late seventies and was one of my first introductions to Celtic Mythology. Recently, Serpentine Music have released a re-mastered version of his two albums: The Music of Gwydion. You can find an excellent review of these albums here on The Wild Hunt.

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