Jacintha Laura May Buddicom

Born: 10 May 1901 in Plymouth, Devon.

Died:   4 November 1993.

Poet and astrologer, Jacintha Buddicom was born in Plymouth, Devon, her family later moving to Shiplake in Oxfordshire; educated at Oxford High School, she never achieved her dream of going to Oxford University. At that time she became the teenage girlfriend of Eric Blair (1903-1950), who would go on to write hugely popular and influential novels, essays and reportage under the nom de plume George Orwell. They had parted many years before he found literary fame. Buddicom later gave birth to a baby daughter—the girl was adopted by a childless aunt—and had a long-term affair with a married Labour peer.  She never married. Buddicom only realized that Orwell was the same person as her childhood friend a short time before his death—they exchanged some letters and telephone calls, but failed to meet. In a postscript to a reprint of her autobiography the editor commented: 'She explored the darker side of mysticism and briefly became an acolyte of "The Beast" Aleister Crowley, simply to discover what it was all about. Her basic sense of GOOD being better than EVIL quickly lifted her out of that snakepit...'

Crowley considered her a promising pupil. On Sunday, 29 September 1946,nine months after the completion of the manuscript for Magick Without Tears, Jacintha came to lunch at Netherwood; she may also have been there on the previous day when Crowley complained in his diary about her 'astrological raving.' Two more visits followed that year, over the weekend of 2 and 3 November and on Saturday, 14 December. On Sunday, 3 November she left bearing a copy of the work whose title had become Magick without Tears. She had agreed the previous week to edit the book and in the course of discussions about its content she suggested that he write a 'letter' on geomancy to add to the collection; it was written by the following weekend.