The founder of Wicca is Gerald Gardner, who is often referred to as the "Father of Wicca." Gardner was born in 1884 in England and was initially involved in various forms of esoteric spirituality and occult practices. It was in the 1930s that he claimed to have been initiated into a coven of witches in England, through which he gained knowledge and experience in witchcraft. Gardner went on to develop and formalize what is now known as Wicca, drawing inspiration from various sources such as ceremonial magic, folklore, and pagan beliefs. He eventually published a book called "Witchcraft Today" in 1954, which popularized the idea of Wicca and helped it gain recognition as a legitimate spiritual practice. Gardner's contributions to the modern witchcraft movement are significant, as he not only established the framework for Wicca but also played a crucial role in its dissemination and acceptance.
Although its birth was quite recent, Wicca is nowadays a particularly dynamic religious movement. In Wicca. History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Ethan Doyle White, archaeologist and researcher in Pagan studies at University College London, offers a general portrait of this tradition by summarizing writings of both practitioners and academic scholars. After an introduction that concentrates mainly on terminology (the etymology of the word “Wicca” itself and the notion of “Witchcraft” to designate it) and the way in which Wicca is conceptualized (as a “Pagan,” “nature-based,” and “occult” movement), the book is divided into three parts. The first part, “Wiccan History,” focuses on the development of the Wiccan movement, from its creation in Great Britain during the late 1940s to its transnationalization in the rest of the world in the 1960s. Wicca was founded by Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884-1964), a former colonial official, after his return to England (chapters 2 and 3). Passionate about esotericism, Gardner shaped his own “magico-religious” system (5) by combining several pseudo-historic, cosmological, and ritual elements, including the theory of a Palaeolithic fertility cult that had remained clandestine throughout history; Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial magic; and Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and the teachings of the Theosophical Society. While growing locally during Gardner’s lifetime, Wicca was also spreading internationally, due to two factors: the migration of British practitioners to other countries, mainly in the United States and Australia, and the publication of the first guides to the tradition, allowing individuals to self-initiate (chapters 4 and 5). Under the massive influx of feminist, gay, and ecological activists, Wicca took on its current form in the 1970s and 1980s (chapter 6). It is now a magical religiosity that focuses on nature and is divided into different branches, according to their origins (such as “Gardnerian Wicca,” which claims a direct lineage to Gardner), membership (with certain groups restricted to only women or gay men), and theological orientations (such as “Reclaiming Witchcraft,” a form of feminist “ecospirituality”). From the 1990s on, Wicca gained in popularity, particularly among teenagers, through the success of movies and TV shows about Witchcraft, the release of additional self-initiation guides, and the increasing use of the Internet to share information about Witchcraft (chapter 7). The second part of the book, “Belief and Praxes,” presents central elements of the cosmological and ritual Wiccan system. As a magical religion, Wicca is based on two principles: the use of magic, which allows practitioners to manipulate natural energies for various purposes by using ritual techniques and morality ethics (chapters 8 and 11), and the veneration of a divine couple, the “Great” or “Horned God” and the “Great Goddess” (chapter 9). Wicca relies on two types of organizational modalities: those who practice in groups (called “covens”) under the direction of a “High Priest” and/or a “High Priestess”; and solitary practitioners (chapter 10). Wiccan ritual practices are very diverse: magic rituals focused on various intentions; seasonal celebrations that follow the Wiccan liturgical calendar (the “Wheel of the Year”); and rites of passage that highlight births, unions, deaths, or any other important events (chapters 12, 13 and 14). The third part of the book, “Wiccan Life,” discusses the major sociocultural characteristics of Wiccan community, now well established all over the globe. Through a review of scholarly literature, the process of “how” and “why” people convert to Wicca is detailed (chapter 15). Even if their spiritual trajectories are always singular, it seems that practitioners turn to this tradition for similar reasons: the worship of a female divinity, harmony with Nature, and the power of liberation and personal growth underpinning the use of magic. Other aspects of Wiccan community are also discussed: the number of Wiccan people and their socio-demographic profiles; the presence of Wicca online; its different legal status according to national contexts; and various manifestations of Wiccan culture, such as music, humor, or festivals (chapters 16 and 17). The book concludes with an overview of the study of Wicca that looks back at the first research on the Wiccan movement to its more recent development (chapter 18). Structured around a solid framework and synthetic chapters, Doyle White’s book is an excellent introduction to Wicca that focuses on all of its essential aspects. Written in very clear language, accessible to neophytes and non-native English-speaking readers, it is marvelously well-referenced, with the position of their authors (practitioners or scholars) clearly stated. At the beginning of the book, Doyle White indicates that he would like to offer students, researchers, and curious readers an academic guide to Wicca: he completely won his bet by making this book a must-have resource for anyone interested in Wicca. Nicolas Pierre Boissière is a doctoral candidate and lecturer in religious studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. Nicolas Pierre Boissière
Even if their spiritual trajectories are always singular, it seems that practitioners turn to this tradition for similar reasons the worship of a female divinity, harmony with Nature, and the power of liberation and personal growth underpinning the use of magic. That someone was Gerald Brosseau Gardner 1884-1964 , a retired tea plantation manager who, in 1951, announced to the British press that the witch-cult described by Murray still existed, and that he had been initiated into it.
Gardner's contributions to the modern witchcraft movement are significant, as he not only established the framework for Wicca but also played a crucial role in its dissemination and acceptance. Today, Wicca has evolved into a diverse and multifaceted religious tradition, with various branches and offshoots, but its origins can be traced back to Gerald Gardner and his pioneering efforts..
The Woman Who Inspired Wicca
J ust under a century ago, in 1921, one of the strangest books ever to be published by Oxford University Press appeared in print: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Alice Murray. By today’s academic standards—in fact, even by the standards of the 1920s—Murray’s book was filled with transparent flaws in methodology and research. Furthermore, the book’s author (a leading Egyptologist) was not qualified to write it. The few scholars then working on the history of European witchcraft dismissed Murray’s contribution. Yet in spite of this, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe became an instant hit and captured the imaginations of readers. Within three decades, the book had not only profoundly influenced cultural understandings of witchcraft, but also directly led to the rise of neopaganism and the foundation of a new religion, Wicca, that today has millions of adherents throughout the world.
Margaret Alice Murray (1863–1963) was born and brought up in British India—an upbringing that, as with so many Anglo-Indians of the nineteenth century, may have opened her mind to interests beyond Victorian culture. Determined to pursue a career of her own at a time when opportunities for women were limited, Murray tried out both nursing and social work before entering the progressive University College London in 1894, where she studied Egyptology under W. Flinders Petrie. Murray rapidly rose through the academic ranks, and by 1914, she was effectively running the Egyptology department. Her impressive achievements in advancing knowledge of ancient Egypt and higher education for women have, however, been largely overshadowed by her decision to take a detour into writing about European witchcraft.
In The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Murray seized on some unusual testimonies in 16th-century Scottish witch trials to elaborate a radical theory: She claimed that what medieval and early modern people called witchcraft was, in fact, the last traces of a pagan fertility cult that originated in the Neolithic period. The witch trials of the 15th–17th centuries represented Christianity’s last attempt to stamp out this cult, which was practiced in secret covens (groups of thirteen people) who worshipped a horned god (who was mistaken for the devil). Knowledge of this cult was passed through families or, occasionally, to new initiates, but kept secret from the outside world.
Murray’s use of a single set of problematic sources from one country (Scotland) to argue that a previously unnoticed religion had existed since prehistory failed to meet basic historiographical and anthropological standards of research. She was given to making huge conceptual leaps on the basis of contentious interpretations of meager evidence. Using a small range of hostile trial records designed to discredit women accused of witchcraft (along with testimonies extracted under torture), Murray reconstructed what she believed were real religious practices lurking behind the demonological construct of the Witches’ Sabbath. In so doing, she brought together traditions of interpretation honed by the anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), the author of The Golden Bough, and the French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874). Murray followed Michelet in arguing that those accused of witchcraft were not the innocent victims of trumped-up charges, but were in fact adherents of a subversive cult; and she followed Frazer in her belief that prehistoric religious beliefs, associated with fertility, had survived into recent times.
Murray’s engaging prose style, her marshalling of apparent evidence, and her impressive academic credentials overawed her non-specialist readers and drowned out the skeptical voices of scholars far better versed in the history of witchcraft than she. Murray was lauded by the Folklore Society (she became its president in the 1950s) and, crucially, authored the Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on “Witchcraft.” In an age when the Encyclopedia Britannica was considered a definitive reference work, Murray managed to imprint her highly eccentric view of witchcraft as a secret fertility religion on the popular imagination.
Although Murray herself never asserted that the witch-cult still existed, she never set a clear limit to its survival, either—and it was a small leap for someone to assert that the witch-cult still existed in 20th-century England. That someone was Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964), a retired tea plantation manager who, in 1951, announced to the British press that the witch-cult described by Murray still existed, and that he had been initiated into it. The religion of Wicca, whose adherents join covens and worship a goddess and a horned god, was born. Murray herself—by then a veteran scholar in her nineties—did not take issue with Gardner’s claims; her own publications had become progressively more eccentric, culminating with The Divine King in England (1954), in which she argued that every major political assassination in English history had been a ritual sacrifice orchestrated by covens of witches. In her correspondence Murray even mentioned practicing witchcraft herself, although it is unclear how seriously she took such experiments.
While Margaret Murray was by no means a founder or adherent of Wicca, the religion to which her writings gave birth, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe inspired the now global phenomenon of neopaganism. There can be no doubt that Murray had a brilliant scholarly imagination—too brilliant, perhaps, for the serious flaws in her reasoning to be seen by many. While few Wiccans and neopagans now believe literally that their religion has existed since prehistory, Murray’s legacy persists in the strange idea that witchcraft was a religion, an idea long since debunked by historians of witchcraft. It is ironic that this idea, devised by a feminist historian, often eclipses the reality that the accusation of witchcraft was a misogynistic construct weaponized against innocent women. Murray’s unsubstantiated claim that these women practiced a secret pagan religion was, ultimately, a calumny against the victims of a dark era of misogynistic violence.
Francis Young is a British historian and folklorist.
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Date Of Review:
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Reviews for "Charting the Course: The Story of WICVA's Founder"
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