Difference between revisions of "Frederick Santee"

'''Frederick LaMotte Santee''', FAAR (17 September 1906 - 11 April 1980) was a medical doctor, [[occultist]], and practicing [[warlock]] in rural Pennsylvania. He was the founder and leader of the [[Coven of the Catta]], a coven that practices [[Gardnerian Wicca]].

 

 

In 1999, English professor Hubert Horton McAlexander described Santee as "A strange man with a strange history ...  Brilliant and weird, he was in the view of many sinister."‏‎

Frederick was able to read English and German at age three and at the age of eight, wrote a translation of Caesar's ''Gallic War'' from the original Latin, which had had taught himself by studying his grandfather's old Latin books. As a youth, he excelled at baseball, with a classmate claiming he was a "budding 'Babe' Ruth, whose heavy hitting had won more than one game for his team." Santee later said he tried very hard to be good at sports in the hopes of attracting girls.

Immediately after receiving his BA, Santee was invited into Masters program at Oxford, but he declined, preferring instead to travel across Europe and then return to the United States to accept a teaching position at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. However, despite his decision not to enrol, Oxford University awarded him a Master of Arts degree anyhow in 1930 (some sources say 1929). This is due to Oxford's peculiar practice of awarding the "rank" of Master of Arts to students who have completed their BA and retained some academic association with the university afterward. Thus, his MA was on-par with an honorary degree and would have been annotated as "M.A. (Oxon.)."

Although he became popular with Kenyon students and ended up teaching numerous classes, his first class, a critical examination of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', only had two students.

On 18 April 1943, Santee was commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He served as a doctor in the Pacific theater and picked up a working knowledge of the Japanese language.

After his discharge, Santee was invited to join the staff of the Rockefeller Research Foundation, but he ultimately decided to become a tutor at St. John's College.

Santee worked as a doctor in Baltimore and several other cities in the United States from 1947 until 1963, when his father died. Upon his father's passing, Santee relocated to Wapwallopen and took over the family medical practice. His office was in the family mansion on River Street.

He maintained a staff of nurses and young girls who interned in his office.

It has been speculated that he sometimes dispensed medications without much discretion and would give prescriptions for highly addictive drugs to any patient who asked for them. His annual order for morphine was so high that it once triggered an investigation from the Food and Drug Administration.

[[File:Frederick Book Cover.jpg|350px|thumb|Dr. Frederick Santee in 1979]]

Santee was introduced to the [[occult]] by his english professor at Harvard, George. L. Kittredge, author of the book ''Witchcraft in Old New England''. During his time at Oxford, Santee became acquainted with [[W.B. Yeats]], who was a member of Alpha et Omega, while the "modern [[witchcraft]]" movement was enjoying immense popularity throughout England.

With the assistance of his philosophy professor, Dr. Brabbart, he became a member of the Theosophical Society of England.

Santee always considered himself a teacher, and in that respect, he instructed many people in the ways of Wicca. He did believe in [[Yahweh|God]], but was disenfranchised with organized religion, having declared in 1950, “In religion, I lean towards Anglo Catholicism, am a member of no church.”

Santee died peacefully in his home of bladder cancer in early April 1980. He left over $1,000 to various cat shelters. The bulk of his $200,000 estate was left to Edna Williams.

Immediately following his divorce from Edith, Santee married Betty Addis of Philadelphia in 1942. They remained married for 21 years until her death from a heart attack at the age of 57 in 1962.

Santee's only child, Ruth, was adopted in the early 1930s by Frederick and Edith while they were living in Nashville, Tennessee. There is some evidence that Ruth was brought over from Europe at the behest of Charles Santee and he forced his son Frederick, who did not want children, to adopt her.

Ruth married William Joseph McKnight in a private ceremony one month before her 18th birthday in 1948. They had met while in Neosho high school and were freshmen at the University of Missouri in Columbia together. William served in the coast guard as a radio operator after their wedding and was stationed in San Francisco on active duty. The had one daughter, Sheila Kathlyn in 1953, before divorcing because William had made it clear that he did not want children.

Ruth then married Juan V. Zaragoza in 1957. She was 27 and he was 31. Her marriage to Juan was extremely difficult due to his violent outbursts which were so extreme that the police became involved numerous times. Throughout this time, she drank heavily and had difficulty providing a stable environment for her children. They ultimately divorced in 1962.

Ruth then married her third and final husband, Alfred Jenanyan, in 1963. He was completely devoted to her and raised her two daughters as though they were his own.

Ruth died of a brain aneurysm in 1965 at the age of 35 or 36, although her obituary erroneously printed her age as 33. She had worked as a dance instructor and model. She is buried in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery (Section N, site 770).

Despite being a prolific writer throughout his lifetime, a play titled ''The Devil's Wager'' was the only one of Santee's books was ever published. It was 246 pages long and presumably less than 100 copies were ever printed. The book was released as in a hardcover edition printed by notorious New York vanity publisher Exposition Press. Santee presumably financed the printing and marketing of the book out of his own pocket and was unlikely to have recovered the costs associated with publishing prior to his death the following year.

* Translation of ''Goethe: Mignorij'' ''HIKA Literary Magazine'' (1947)

* ''Einsicht und Leidenschaft. Das Wesen des platonischen Denkens'' - The Classical Weekly, 34 (1940)

* ''La medicina in Plauto'' - The Classical Weekly, 32 (1939)