Pre-Order: The Society of Diana: Witch-flight and the Mysteries of the Night Queen

The Society of Diana
Witch-flight and the Mysteries of the Night Queen

by Caroline Tully

Across the history of European witchcraft, fragmentary accounts speak of nocturnal companies travelling beyond the ordinary world under the leadership of a mysterious female power: Diana, Herodias, Holda, Perchta, Abundia, and other sovereign figures of the night.

In The Society of Diana: Witch-flight and the Mysteries of the Night Queen, Caroline Tully, PhD, follows this shadowed current from the ancient cult of Diana and the sacred landscape of Nemi through medieval folklore, ecclesiastical prohibitions, witch-trial testimony, the mysteries of Aradia, and the re-emergence of magical witchcraft in the modern world.

Rather than explaining away the strange and supernatural dimensions of these traditions, Tully places them at the centre of her enquiry. Witch-flight, dream travel, spirit encounter, shape-shifting, blessing, healing, cursing, divination, feasting, and passage between worlds emerge as signs of an ecstatic and experiential witchcraft existing at the unstable boundary between Pagan memory, folklore, visionary experience, and the Christian imagination.

Diana stands at the heart of this labyrinth: lunar and chthonic, huntress and protectress, goddess of wilderness, crossroads, birth, death, liberation, and sorcery. Around her gather the Night Queen’s many masks and companions, from Herodias and Aradia to Hecate and the spectral societies said to roam by night, entering houses, bestowing prosperity, punishing neglect, and carrying their followers into the Otherworld.

A Practical System of Witch-flight

Central to the book are forty-five pathworkings, forming a practical initiatory journey through Spirit, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Through Diana, Aradia, Herodias, the Rex Nemorensis, the Golden Bough, Egeria, Holda, Perchta, the Benandanti, Venusberg, the Watchers, and numerous other figures and mysteries, the practitioner is invited to cultivate visionary perception, magical agency, and direct encounter with the powers of the Night Queen.

These workings are not presented as exercises in passive symbolism, but as methods of approach: ways of entering liminal terrain through imagination, trance, dream, ritual, and disciplined attention, allowing the practitioner to discover what waits beyond inherited forms and received authority.

Three substantial appendices extend the practical work further: “Moon Rituals”, exploring Drawing Down the Moon and ritual structure; “Underworld Journey”, a visionary descent through the crossroads into the underworldly dimension of the Night Queen tradition; and “Rituals to Hecate Chthonia”, approaching Hecate in her ancient chthonic and liminal character.

Scholarly in foundation yet resolutely practical in purpose, The Society of Diana opens a path into a witchcraft of sacred groves and crossroads, nocturnal flight and Otherworldly encounter, liberation and danger, blessing and curse. It invites the reader not merely to study the company of the Night Queen, but to approach its mysteries directly—and discover where the night road leads.

“Erudite yet accessible, this ‘technical guide-book’ allows the student to build their own creative relationship with the Night Queen Herself. Instruction is skilfully woven through pathworkings that offer a pattern for orientating within liminal and Otherworldly spaces and realities.”

— Shani Oates, Matriarch of the Clan of Tubal Cain

The Society of Diana: Witch-flight and the Mysteries of the Night Queen is published in two limited editions.

Bibliographic Details  

• 160 pages, measuring 165 x 235 mm.
• Printed on 115 gsm wood-free creme white high quality Lessebo paper.
• Features metallic blue Peyer Surbalin endpapers, headbands and a ribbon marker.

Fine Hardcover Edition (Pre-Order) – 72,- EUR
+ shipping (incl. VAT if applicable)

• Bound in black Peyer Duchesse fine linen cloth, manufactured in Germany.
• Features a silver embossing on the cover, and silver lettering on rounded spine.
• Comes in a custom dust jacket depicting a detail from Sean Jefferson’s original painting The Necromancer.
• Limited to 530 copies only.
• This is a pre-order. The books are expected to ship October 8, 2026.

Auric Edition (Pre-order) – 348,- EUR
+ shipping (incl. VAT if applicable)

• Fully hand-bound in premium blue leather, manufactured in Germany.
• Rounded spine, silver embossing on front and spine.
• Each copy features a tipped-in frontispiece of the Artemis/Diana of Ephesus, printed on quality photo paper.

• Presented in a custom slipcase.
• Limited to 43 hand-numbered copies only.
• Ships about one month after the Fine Hardcover Edition.

Disclaimer: Images of pages and books are mock-ups and may differ slightly in color or spacing.