Really this is of no concern to us. Whoever left the premises in Godwin Street Bradford to rot and did not respectfully remove the iconic images if they were of no further use to them, is not in our opinion, respectful of the Divine to the level that they should be. Greer, Mary K. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1995.

Exposed to the Elements: A Strange 1920s Death on the

From time to time, we all find ourselves interested in spirits or fascinated with the things humanity has yet to understand. Everyone has a little bit of this curiosity within them, and it’s natural. But then again, as the saying goes, curiosity kills the cat.

As Usual, My Rationalist Account

In unraveling the disturbing mystery of Netta Fornario’s death, it is important to understand that her visit to Iona was no whimsical holiday. To the contrary, it was the result of considerable planning and had specific, if not unsettling , intentions. Exactly what those intentions were are still unclear, though she did leave us some intriguing clues. Why Iona? The Oban Times article reported that a number of letters of ‘strange character’ were also taken by the police, who passed them on to the Procurator-Fiscal for ‘consideration’. She departed for Iona in either August or September 1929 taking with her a large amount of luggage, which apparently included furniture enough for a small house. Upon arrival she took up lodgings with a Mrs MacRae in Traymore. Iona Mystery – London Woman Found Dead. Mysterious Circumstances.” Glasgow Herald (27th November 1929). Among weird stories now in circulation in island regarding Miss Fonario are mysterious remarks about blue lights having been seen near the body, and of a cloaked man.

Netta Fornario - A woman engrossed by the Curious Death of Netta Fornario - A woman engrossed by the

There are plenty more places where people have discussed Fornario’s death online: Reddit (of course), and Fortean Times (did you ever doubt it?). The newly commissioned script, using exciting imaging techniques to create a stunning visual landscape, marks the first collaboration between two Highland-based theatre-makers, the long-established Mull Theatre and one of Scotland’s most exciting new creative companies, Wildbird. These companies are brought together and the production funded by North by North-East, the Northern Scottish Touring Fund, and the tour within Argyll and Shetland is funded by Scotland’s Islands 2011. With a little digging around, I found that one of the branches of the Theosophical Society (at one time there were two branches in the area) had once held meetings in the Yorkshire Penny Bank Chambers at the end of North Parade and thought it was possible from what I was told that this was the same building where Aleister Crowley had also held his rituals. Her death remains a mystery to this day. Was she murdered by people offended by her unconventional views? Was her death supernatural or merely the inevitable conclusion of untreated paranoid schizophrenia? The Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario is a chilling account mixing fiction with the real events of a still controversial death, suitable for age 14+.In 2005, whilst living in Huddersfield, I had a rather strange phone call from a man who told me he lived in Great Horton, Bradford. This man went on to say how valuable the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram was and also mentioned a ritual involving a nine pointed star and the Rose Cross. The man then went on to talk about Aleister Crowley. He insisted that Aleister Crowley had indeed come to Bradford and that Mr Crowley himself had done ritual workings in a building on North Parade in Bradford. Miss Fonario, who arrived in Iona during the summer, disappeared on Sunday November 12. She was a woman of extraordinary character. Mrs Varney, her housekeeper at Kew, told a reporter yesterday that Miss Fonario, whose father is an Italian doctor, did not believe in doctors, and was “always curing people by telepathy.” The monks are still the strongest here… except over by Staonaig …there’s a path that no monk can go. There, in the old days, [the monks] burned a woman. She was not a woman but they thought she was. She was one of the Sorrows of the Sheen… It’s ill to any that brings harm to ‘them’ [i.e. the faeries] . That’s why the monks are not strong over by Staonaig way. It says the doctor examining her couldn't tell how she died but isn't that a job for the police or a coroner? I think the cross cut into the turf was part of a ritual she was performing when her mystery assailant discovered her.

Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario - Historic Mysteries

Dedemia Harding was, it has to be said, more than a tad miffed that her research into Fornario had (she believed) been co-opted by playwright Chris Lee and turned into a play – The Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario– that toured Scotland. “The Gothic tale of magic, madness, murder and mystery is a stylish production inspired by true events on the Isle of Iona.” There’s an interview with Chris Lee here. Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides which is about 2 kilometers (1 mile) from the coast of Mull. It is about 2 kilometers (1 mile) wide and 6 kilometers (4 miles) long, with a population of just under 200 people.

Death on Iona

According to fellow occultist Dion Fortune, the reason Netta was going to Iona was to conduct some deep healing and to study Green Ray Elementals (non-magic folk speak: Fairies). Dion Fortune was a renowned occultist at the time and knew Netta very well. Dion distanced herself from Netta, however, because she was getting too deep into things she could not understand or control. The scratches on her body, if they existed (they seem to have been a later addition, and some argue that only her feet were scratched up), are a bit more difficult to explain. It could be that she fell into some brambles, but the posthumous examination didn't contain any reports of thorns being found in her skin. Iona did not harbor large predators, such as foxes, that might have tried to scavenge the body, and no bite marks were found either. In The Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario, I have taken the scant facts around Netta's strange demise, that are available to even the most diligent researcher; including some of the wilder theories that surround the actual recorded events; and used them to create a Gothic story of my own. It shamelessly borrows from those classic stories that have gone before, to make a new play that is immersed in madness, murder, magic and decay, that has at its heart, a truly memorable character.” In 1926, a new edition of Mathers’s translation of the Kabbalah, The Kabbalah Unveiled, was published. Moina wrote the preface, in which she expressed “thanks to my occult masters, and the deepest gratitude to the memory of my husband, comrade and teacher, all of whom have shed much light upon my path.” In her final years, Moina was destitute and discouraged. She attempted to revive her art career by painting portaits but was only modestly successful. Her health declined. Near the end she refused to eat. She died on July 25, 1928. FURTHER READING:

Immortal Hour of Netta Fornario: Part Two – Jason Roberts The Immortal Hour of Netta Fornario: Part Two – Jason Roberts

Dead on a chilly Scottish moor in November, naked apart from a silver chain and a knife? Once she reached Iona, far from London’s hospitals, that would seem to me to be how her life would inevitably come to an end. Really: if you tell Fornario’s story like that, there doesn’t really seem to be any other route it could have taken. Netta Fornario In Art There is also Chapter 17 of Classic Scottish Murder Stories online, which brings together yet more strands. e.g. “ Richard Wilson quotes from the Glasgow Bulletin a report which describes the body as lying in a sleeping posture on the right side, the head resting on the right hand. A knife was found a few feet away. There were a few scratches on the feet […]. Otherwise, there were no marks on the body. When MacLean and MacNiven say she was between the loch and the " Machar", I'm going to proceed on the assumption that they used the Gaelic word machair, which means "... the dune grassland unique to Western Scotland and north-west Ireland. In Scotland, some Gaelic speakers use machair as a general term for the whole dune system, including the dune ridge, while others restrict its use to the extensive flat grasslands inland of the dune ridge." So, I'll interpret that to mean that Fornario was found somewhere between the beach/grass area to the south, and the loch to the north. Google Earth gives the distance between the southernmmost tip of the loch, and the sea edge of the south- and easternmost beach (just below and left of the word "Image"), as 970 yards. The Great Mull Air Mystery - The death of Peter Gibbs on the Isle of Mull in Scotland (Member only)At some point after her death, Netta Fornario was reproduced along with other members of the Golden Dawn by Coronzon, through the application of Tarot-based grimoires, as part of her anti- Crowley countermeasures. [2] [3] Chronology [ ] Coronzon Arc [ ] Main article: Coronzon Arc I knew instantly that I wanted to tell her story, or more accurately, a story with a version of Netta at the heart of it; and that the roots of this telling lay in the late 19th and early 20th century's fascination with all things Gothic. Stories such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, that fascinate, attract and repulse at the same time. All of these kinds of tale touch something universal in us, something subconscious that is tied up with our own fear of death, moral degradation, and loss of control; something that seems at the same time to be inextricably linked to our most dangerous desires. I think it is also safe to assume that given she was naked on an exposed mound in the middle of November, regardless of her mental state or perhaps because of it, that she succumbed to exposure/hypothermia. She was eventually found on the Tuesday, by what the locals described as a ‘faery mound’ to the South of Loch Staonaig." The nearest Met Office station - Tiree - didn't start recording anything other than monthly sunshine totals until 1931. They show that in November 1931, Tiree experienced a max temperature of 10.1°C and a minimum temp of 6.4°C; the monthly rainfall was 167.2mm and there were only 37.4 hours of sunshine in the month.)