ALTHOUGH he lived the life of an exile, settling for periods in Ceylon, Borneo, Singapore and Malaya (where he worked in a rubber plantation), Gardner did make visits to the UK.
In 1916, he had hoped to enlist in the Army for service on the Western Front, but was rejected because of his poor health, though he did work for a while as a hospital orderly in Liverpool. A recurrence of malaria persuaded him to return to Malaya.
But in 1927, Gardner was back in England, studying Welsh folklore at the British Museum. There was a total eclipse of the sun on June 29, the only one in England during his lifetime, and the line of totality passed over his home in Blundellsands.
During this stay, he met Donna Rosedale, a nursing sister in a London hospital. They married and sailed to Singapore that Christmas Eve. From then, until her death in 1960, they would always be together, though there were rumours that Gardner could be tempted by the flesh, a generous spread of which he saw as a naturist and witch.
His life was one of discovery. He was certainly influenced by a cult which toiled under the name of The Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellow-ship and the Rite of Egyptian Mysteries. This was founded and led by George Alexander Sullivan, a Liverpudlian, who lived for a time in Tynemouth Street, Everton.
Rosicrucianism, founded in Germany in 1615, is based on pamphlets attributed to Christian Rosencreutz, who claimed occult and alchemical powers found in the East.
By 1936, Gardner and Donna were back in England, living in London. Shortly after the outbreak of war in September, 1939, he was initiated into the Craft, sometimes called Wicca after the old English for witch. By then he was living near the New Forest.
There is a temptation to think of Gardner as a crank and nothing more. He was, though, an acknowledged expert on weapons and a writer of talent and imagination, who never learned to spell properly because of his informal education.
His published novels were A Goddess Arrives (1939) and High Magic's Aid (1949). His non-fiction books include: Keris and Other Malay Weapons (1936), Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).
Witchcraft Today was the book which gained him a high reputation and is today regarded as the Wiccan "bible".
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