Olivia Robertson: Priestess of Isis

Abstract

Ronald Hutton has described Wicca as “the only religion which England has ever given the world” (Hutton in The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York,1999) . The Fellowship of Isis , another form of Goddess spirituality , could be Ireland’s equivalent. One of the larger Goddess-oriented organisations to emerge out of the new religious movements of the 1970s, its members number tens of thousands and the Fellowship has international and multicultural appeal (Crowley in Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA, 1107–1108, 2010). As a daughter of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy in the years following Irish independence, Olivia Robertson might have settled for life as a successful writer and spinster “daughter of the Big House” (O’Byrne in Irish Protestant Identities. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 51–68, 2008). Instead, at the age of 29, she began to experience visions of goddesses, but it was to be another thirty years until with her brother and sister-in-law she founded the Fellowship of Isis .Venerated by many members of the Fellowship as “Lady Olivia ”, and with the glamour of her aristocratic background and the evocative location of the Fellowship headquarters in a seventeenth-century Irish castle, the Fellowship’s success depended much on Olivia Robertson’s charisma. She did not fit, however, a typical pattern of charismatic leadership . Exercising a benign laissez-faire , she created a movement with no membership fees, free resources, and latitude of spiritual practice that enabled it to position itself as a multi-faith movement worshipping the Divine feminine in all her forms. This chapter examines the life, role and contribution of Olivia Robertson as a leader of a contemporary Goddess movement.