Frost, Yvonne (1931-)

Yvonne Frost, cofounder of the Church and School of Wicca, was born Yvonne Wilson in Los Angeles, California. Raised a Baptist, she rejected her childhood faith as a teenager and became a spiritual seeker. She read books on comparative religion, but put her quest somewhat on hold in 1950 when she married. She divorced in 1960 and returned to school. She earned an associate's degree from Fullerton Junior College in Fullerton, California, in 1962. Following her graduation she took a job with an aerospace company in Anaheim, where she met her future husband, Gavin Frost. By this time she had become involved in Spiritualism, and she and Gavin began to participate in psychic development classes at a local Spiritualist center.

A short time later they moved to St. Louis to take new jobs and while there, in the late 1960s, were initiated into Witchcraft. They began to write and prepared the text of a book. Unable to find a publisher, they hit upon the idea of editing the material as a set of lessons that could be offered to people through a correspondence course. Ads were placed in occult periodicals. Within a short time they organized the School of Wicca and then the Church of Wicca. In 1970 Yvonne married Gavin and assumed the role of bishop in the church.

In 1974 the Frosts moved to New Bern, North Carolina, where the church and school headquarters was relocated. The book that she and Gavin had written was eventually published in 1975 as The Witch's Bible. It met a storm of controversy generated by witches who disagreed with much of it, especially its downplaying of the centrality of the Goddess, considered by many witches as the central affirmation of their religion.

Over the next two decades Frost provided leadership for the church and school and coauthored a number of books on witchcraft and magic with her husband. In the 1990s she moved into retirement.

Sources:

Frost, Gavin, and Yvonne Frost. The Magic Power of Witchcraft. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Publishing, 1976.

——. Meta-Psychometry: Key to Power and Abundance. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Publishing, 1978.

——. Power Secrets from a Sorcerer's Private Magnum Arcanum. West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Publishing, 1980.

——. Who Speaks for the Witch. New Bern, N.C.: Godolphin House, 1991.

——. The Witch's Bible. New York: Berkley Books, 1975.

——. A Witch's Guide to Life. Cottonwood, Ariz.: Esoteric Publishing, 1978.