Robert Graves, although believed that the religion was extinct. It was in autumn 1952 that she read an article by the reporter Allen Andrews in Illustrated magazine titled "Witchcraft in Britain". Discussing the recent opening of the Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft in Castletown on the Isle of Man, it mentioned the museum's director, Cecil Williamson, and its "resident witch", Gerald Gardner. Intrigued by the article, Valiente wrote a letter to Williamson in 1952, who in turn put her in contact with Gardner. Valiente and Gardner wrote several letters back-and-forth, with the latter eventually suggesting that she meet him at the home of his friend and fellow Wiccan Edith Woodford-Grimes ("Dafo"), who lived not far from Bournemouth, in the Christchurch area. Before she left the meeting, Gardner gave her a copy of his 1949 novel, High Magic's Aid, in which he describes a fictionalised account of Wiccan initiates in the Middle Ages; he allegedly did so in order to gauge her opinion on ritual nudity and scourging, both of which were present in his tradition of Gardnerian Wicca. Gardner invited Valiente again to Woodford-Grimes's house on Midsummer 1953, and it was here that he initiated her into Wicca in a ritual during which they stood before an altar and he read from his Book of Shadows. The three of them then set off to the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, where they witnessed the Druids performing a ritual there. Gardner had lent a ritual sword which he owned to the Druids, who placed it within the monument's Heel Stone during their rite. Valiente told her husband and mother about the visit to Stonehenge, but not about her initiation, of which, she feared, they would not have approved. Later in the year, Gardner invited Valiente to visit him at his flat in Shepherd's Bush, West London, and it was there that she met the eight to ten members of his Bricket Wood coven, which met near St. Albans, north of London. She soon rose to become the coven's High Priestess. The historian Ronald Hutton later commented that in doing so, she formed "the second great creative partnership of [Gardner's] life" after that with Woodford-Grimes. Valiente recognised how much of the material in Gardner's Book of Shadows was taken not from ancient sources as Gardner had initially claimed, but from the works of Crowley. She confronted Gardner with this; he