Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations of additional sources.

The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry is a Scouting-like movement in England, founded in 1916 by Ernest Westlake. Like Scouting, it was inspired by Ernest Seton's "Seton Indians", and Seton was its honorary Grand Chieftain. The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry did not share the perceived militaristic overtones of Baden-Powell's movement, and was focused on kindness, fellowship, animal conservation and woodcraft. The Order was tiny compared to Scouts, having only 1,200 members by 1926.^[1]

Westlake was a naturalist, anthropologist and traveller of Quaker upbringing, however in 1909 he began to fault Quakerism and extol the "old gods" of paganism. He was inspired by authors such as Edward Carpenter, Nietzsche, Havelock Ellis, Jane Ellen Harrison, Tylor and Frazer, and saw the Order as saving people from "the cul de sac of intellectualized religion" and reviving the "greater Hellas" of modern civilisation. He saw women as incarnations of God, to be "worshipped in spirit and in truth"; he revered the Jack-in-the-Green, which he considered to be the English equivalent of Dionysus, and held that the "Trinity of Woodcraft" consisted of Pan, Artemis and Dionysus.^[2]

The first folkmoot ceremony of the Order was held on an estate at Sandy Balls on the northern edge of the New Forest, on Lammas 1921, with the sacred fire lit by four people dressed in colours of the elements of each quarter, bringing greetings from the elemental powers in succession from east round to north. Despite these pagan themes, Westlake did not consider they were departing from Christianity, and claimed that "one must be a good pagan before one can be a good Christian". He held that after his resurrection Jesus Christ had become dissolved into nature, and that by recognising the divinity inherent in nature people would come closer to Christ.^[3]

After Westlake's death in a motoring accident in 1922, the role of British Chief of the Order fell to Harry Byngham, who subsequently changed his name to Dion, short for Dionysus. Unlike Westlake, Dion Byngham found no attraction in Christianity, and zealously promoted paganism, naturalism and phallic worship as a veneration of the life force. He started publishing an Order periodical called The Pinecone, which contained many provocative items, including a nude Dionysus on the cover of one issue, a photograph of a nude Byngham and his semi-nude girlfriend in Grecian dress, and a verse play by Victor Neuburg, who also introduced Byngham to the ideas of the famous occultist Aleister Crowley. All this brought Byngham into strife with many of the Christian members of the Order, which was primarily aimed at children and had, by its pacifist stance, particularly appealed to Quaker families as an alternative to Scouting. In 1924 Byngham was replaced as editor and in 1925 he was suspended from the Council of Chiefs after posing nude with his girlfriend for press photographs to promote nudism.^[4]

Between 1922 and 1927 the rituals of the order continued to evolve along Masonic and quasi-Masonic lines, adopting elaborate titles and ritual equipment. In 1928 a compromise was accepted between the pagan- and the Christian-inclined members whereby the order would promote both the sanctity of nature and Christian ethics, while criticising the "repressive" aspects of Christianity. However membership fell. In 1929 the Society of Friends formally withdrew support for the Order, and by 1930 there were only 400 members remaining. in 1934 Aubrey Westlake, the son of Ernest, resigned as Chieftain, and in 1935 he left the order, depriving it of its meeting place at Sandy Balls.^[5]

The Order continues to survive with a stable but small membership.^[6]