She was initiated into
Alexandrian Wicca by the tradition's founders,
Alex and
Maxine Sanders. She met the Sanders in 1970 through a friend who had become interested in exploring Wicca. Janet accompanied her friend to keep the friend "out of this weird cult", but she instead joined the Sanders
coven, and would go on to become, in the words of Knowles, one of "England's most eminent and respected modern day witches." In the coven she met
Stewart Farrar, her future husband and co-author. Janet and Stewart Farrar were both elevated to the second degree "in an unoccupied house in
Sydenham" by the Sanders on 17 October 1970, and they received the third, and final, degree of initiation in their flat on 24 April 1971. Both events are well-recorded by Stewart Farrar down to the smallest detail in his diaries. The Farrars began running their own coven in 1971, before their third degree initiation ceremony. They were
handfasted in 1972 and legally married in 1975. Farrar also posed for many of the photographs in their 1981
Eight Sabbats for Witches, which included material the authors claimed to be from the Alexandrian tradition's
Book of Shadows. The Farrars, with the support of
Doreen Valiente, argued in the book that even though the publishing of this material broke their oath of secrecy, it was justified by the need to correct misinformation. They were joined by
Gavin Bone in 1993, with whom they entered into a "
polyfidelitous relationship". The three of them would co-author two more books,
The Healing Craft and
The Pagan Path, an investigation into the many varieties of Neopaganism. Stewart Farrar died in February 2000 after a brief illness. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone married in a handfasting in May 2001, and then legally married in Northern Ireland (part of Ulster) in March 2014. After Stewart Farrar's death, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone continued to author books, and have given a number of lectures on Wicca in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy and in Britain. The title of their 2004 book,
Progressive Witchcraft, is the description that the couple prefers for their current religious practice. This was re-released in 2013 as a new edition called
Inner Mysteries. Their current area of work is in trance-prophesy, trance-possession and ecstatic ritual and they are currently working on a major book on the subject which they hope to release with Acorn Guild Publishing in 2014. They are also founders of The
Alliance of Progressive Covens, which includes linked groups and covens in the United States, Ireland and Italy. ==Bibliography==