Ed Fitch

Edward "Ed" Fitch (born April 29, 1937 in Roxboro, North Carolina) is an occult author and a High Priest of the Gardnerian Wicca tradition, and was a leading figure in the rise of contemporary Wicca and Neo-Paganism in America. He presently lives in Austin, Texas.

Fitch was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, and a United States Air Force commissioned officer, eventually retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He holds a master's degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. His military service took him to Japan, Viet Nam, Thailand, and several posts in the United States. After completing his three-year term of service, he returned to the US as a civilian, and took employment as a technical writer and electronics engineer in Washington D.C. He returned to the Air Force in 1966 and remained in the service, working in missile design and deep-space planning studies until retiring.

Fitch, who has also gone under the name "Ea", was initiated by Raymond Buckland in 1967, while stationed in Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. He is one of the creators (along with Joseph Bearwalker Wilson and Thomas Giles) of "The Pagan Way", an outer court Neo-Pagan tradition. He was one of the editors of The Waxing Moon, a magazine founded by Joseph B. Wilson in 1964, and the first magazine devoted to Witchcraft in America (later renamed The Crystal Well). In the mid 1970s, Fitch also helped to organize and chaired two Pagan Ecumenical Councils to establish the Covenant of the Goddess (COG) as an international umbrella organization representing Pagans. Through the 1980s Fitch continued to perform as a Gardnerian High Priest, but his researches also led him to initiation in a number of other traditions and orders, including: Faerie faith, Mohsian, the Order of Osiris, the Order of the Temple of Astarte, Norse, and Ceremonial magick.

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