Invoking Hecate at the Women’s Peace Camp: The Presence of Goddess Spirituality and Dianic Witchcraft at Greenham Common in the 1980s

Abstract

This article examines the presence and importance of Goddess Spirituality and Dianic Witchcraft at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp during the first decade or so of its existence. The influence of radical and cultural feminisms on the women who lived at the peace camp and assembled there for large scale anti-nuke demonstrations has been explored by many researchers in the past, but the issue of spirituality – and particularly Goddess Spirituality and feminist/Dianic Witchcraft – at the camp has yet to receive adequate scholarly attention. This article uses archival records, memoires and oral histories in order to shed some light on this under-studied phenomenon, and in addition attempts to contextualize the camp as an arena for exchanges of views and knowledge between non-feminist British Wiccans and American-influenced radical feminists and Goddess women.