death_date death_place children birth_place birth_date spouse image article_title name occupation
7 february 2000 ireland tony , andy , lindsay , judith highams park , essex , england 28 june 1916 jean williams janet farrar clarke jean mackinlay rachael kaplin beth donovan barbara stewart farrar.jpg stewart farrar
 stewart farrar journalist ; wiccan priest
stewart farrar

frank stewart farrar -lrb- 28 june 1916 -- 7 february 2000 -rrb- , who always went by the name of stewart farrar , was an english screenwriter , novelist and prominent figure in the neopagan religion of wicca , which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife , janet farrar , and then his friend gavin bone as well .
a devout communist in early life , he worked as a reporter for such newspapers as the `` soviet weekly '' and the `` daily worker '' , and also served in the british army during the second world war .
he was responsible for writing episodes for such television series as `` dr. finlay 's casebook '' , `` armchair theatre '' and `` crossroads '' , and for his work in writing radio scripts won a writer 's guild award .
he also published a string of novels , written in such disparate genres as crime , romance and fantasy .
after being initiated into alexandrian wicca by maxine sanders in 1970 , he subsequently published one of the earliest books to describe this newly burgeoning religion , `` what witches do '' -lrb- 1971 -rrb- .
within only a few months of being initiated , he had risen to the position of high priest and founded his own coven in south london , with janet farrar , whom he would later handfast and then legally marry , as his high priestess .
in 1976 the couple moved to ireland , where they went about founding new covens and initiating new people into wicca - according to george knowles , `` some seventy five percent of wiccans both in the republic and north of ireland can trace their roots back to the farrar 's '' .
with janet , he also set about writing books about the subject , most notably `` eight sabbats for witches '' -lrb- 1981 -rrb- and `` the witches ' way '' -lrb- 1984 -rrb- .
because of his work in propagating the craft , the historian ronald hutton compared him to gerald gardner and alex sanders as `` the third and last of the great male figures who have formed wicca '' .
