the rite. Coven members According to Gardner, his first contact with the witches was through an inner group within the Crotona Fellowship, a Rosicrucian society that operated a theatre in Christchurch. They were a reserved group, who remained somewhat separate from other members of the order and the theatre. Historian Philip Heselton has identified some of the members of this group as Edith Woodford-Grimes, Ernie Mason, and his sisters Susie Mason and Rosetta Fudge. It is possible that by the late 1930s some members of the Crotona Fellowship, inspired by the work of Margaret Murray, were performing rituals based on Co-Masonry and incorporating elements of folklore, and that these were the rituals that Gardner encountered. The Mason family The Mason family, researched by Heselton, lived in Southampton for a period of over 150 years. One of Heselton's informants described Ernie in particular and the family in general, as 'witches', adding that Ernie, who he had known for several years, had had to give up because he found the rituals too strenuous. Rosetta was a keen follower of Anthroposophy; Susie was a Co-Freemason and Theosophist, and Ernie, who claimed to have been fully aware from the moment of his birth, was an enthusiastic esotericist and taught mental exercises in the Crotona Fellowship. Their father George Miles Mason, an optician and astronomer, had built a meeting hall in Southampton which seems to have been used for the meetings of various esoteric groups, including Co-Freemasonry. Heselton points to a reference to nearby Toothill as a "witch centre" in a book by Justine Glass, who does not name her informant. In the 1881 census nearly a quarter of the inhabitants of that hamlet (three families) had the surname Mason (an otherwise uncommon name in that part of England); based on this and other circumstantial evidence he proposes that the Mason family could have been the custodians of a hereditary witchcraft tradition. Edith Woodford-Grimes The priestess who initiated Gardner into witchcraft was referred to as "Dafo" or "Daffo". She taught music and elocution, and her daughter married a dentist; these and other details identify her as Edith Rose Woodford-Grimes. She lived in the same street as the Mason family between 1922 and 1937, when they were heavily involved in esoteric activities. By 1938 she was living in Christchurch near the Rosicrucian theatre, and was an active member. In August 1940, at her daughter's wedding, the