Famous Witches – Gavin Bone (1964 – )
Gavin Bone is an author and lecturer in the fields of magic, witchcraft, Wicca and Neopaganism, and an organizer in the Neopagan community. He has made important contributions to the evolution and development of the modern day witchcraft movement, mainly in concert with Stewart Farrar and Janet Farrar, with whom he entered into a kind of group marriage in 1993.
Bone was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1964. He trained as a registered nurse and studied complimentary healing methods such as reflexology. He is also a practising spiritual healer.
He was initiated into Ray Buckland’s Seax-Wica tradition of Wicca in 1986. He first met Stewart Farrar and Janet Farrar in 1989 at a Pagan Conference in Leicester, and they immediately struck up a friendship. He accompanied the Farrars on a lecture tour of the United States in 1992 and then, when they returned to Ireland in 1993, Bone joined them as their business partner, as well as in a polyfidelitous (or polyamory) relationship or group marriage.
When Stewart Farrar suffered a stroke in 1995, Bone’s training as a nurse and healer proved most valuable, and he was instrumental in helping to nurse him back to good health. Bone co-authored two books with the Farrars “The Pagan Path” (1995) and “The Healing Craft” (1999), and has also acted as the production manager of the Farrars’ latest moves into video. He was largely responsible for setting up the “Pagan Information Network”, a contact network for Pagans across the Republic and Northern Ireland, for which Bone and the Farrars have been the primary coordinators.
After Stewart Farrar died in February 2000, Bone married Janet Farrar a year later on 5 May 2001. The couple have continued to author books and to give lectures on Wicca, both in the United States and in Britain. The title of their 2004 book, “Progressive Witchcraft”, is their preferred description for their current religious practice. Their Teampall Na Callaighe consists of the Coven Na Callaighe (a Progressive Wiccan coven which uses shamanism, psychism and spirituality as it basis of practice rather than the Alexandrian or Gardnerian traditions) and an Outer Circle (an open Neopagan worship group). They are also active members in the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Ireland, and have links with several covens in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
