You make some very good points, thank you for that.
No problem. And I should apologize for coming on to strongly and critically. It just so happens that this particular question was true research project I began and research paper I wrote (outside of school), before college, before grad school, and I think before I had received my high school diploma (I received it late, as I dropped out of high school but later took college courses for high school credit), which hopefully excuses its deficiencies:
Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: Problems with Terminology.
Most of what I wrote there I would agree with in essence, even though I'd re-write the entire thing if I had the time and inclination (I actually did address ancient witchcraft at least once as an undergrad, but only tangentially and only as the term is used negatively
not to refer to the witchcraft of modern traditions- Wiccan or no:
Proto-Feminist or Misogynist? Medea as a case study of gendered discourse in Euripidean drama
then the Gardenian branch of Wicca was not the first.
The above "study" goes into the development & history of Gardnerian wicca a bit (pp. 16-19).
It is highly likely that several different types of pagans that where witches worked together to hide from the inquisition.
I cover witch-trials in pp. 5-9, but as with the rest of the paper I could now say so much more, especially of the persecution of witches in ancient Greece, the Hellenistic world, and the Roman world. The basic elements though, haven't changed despite the vast amount of research I hadn't yet read or which hadn't yet been carried out. The core to this historical account stands or falls virtually entirely with the works of Margaret Murray, an Egyptologist who was somewhat "forced" into that field thanks to rampant sexism in academia. Alas for Murray her historical account never gained acceptance and subsequent research utterly demolished it. Interestingly, this was not true of a more radical theory championed primarily by Gimbutas concerning matriarchal prehistory. Her theory was commonly accepted until Ucko's 1968 monograph
Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete with Comparative Material from the Prehistoric Near East and Mainland Greece and Fleming's 1969 paper "The myth of the mother‐goddess". These two critiques opened the flood gates, but even among scholars it took some time to come to a consensus. Meanwhile, various neopagans were producing and consuming a great deal of semi-scholarly material on the nature of the Goddess from a historical viewpoint (I use that term "neopagan" here loosely to include Wicca, Witchcraft outside of Wicca, modern Druidry, Hedge witches, and all those who worshipped the Goddess or incorporated her into their practice/spirituality/tradition).
Despite even feminist criticisms (see esp. Dr. Cynthia Eller's
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future), and unlike the acceptance of the kind of historical witchcraft inherent in early Wiccan traditions, here we find a trend towards the irrelevance of history to the Mother-Goddess archetype. Many if not most modern Witches and Wiccans have dropped the once universal connection of their tradition with an actual, historical religion or The Craft, and instead looked to the (true) connections of their practices with a number of occult traditions, societies, and ceremonial magic (itself rooted in certain religious/cultic practices from antiquity). By contrast, the worship of the Mother-Goddess as an ancient and universal archetype representing (among other things) the Divine Feminine continues, even though often with the recognition that there was no conception of a singular entity in antiquity nor evidence for matriarchy in prehistory. A concise expression of this attitude may be found in Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether's
Godesses and the Divine Feminine: "This book restates my own ongoing reflection on this history over a fifty-year period. It expresses a critique of theories of ancient matriarchy, while at the same time affirming the movements that seek to reinterpret those roots today for a feminist-ecological spirituality. My hope is to further an alliance among the many forms of religious feminism, while recognizing that we are all reinterpreting ancient traditions and imagery that are ambivalent and whose ancient meaning is lost to us. I believe that we share mostly common values, and I also believe that we are all being beaten with the same stick by fundamentalists, for whom 'lesbian feminist witch' is the common label for us all."
Over time they developed a religion based on a mixture of their own experiences and these distinct pagan religions in order to make the Neo-Pagan religion Wicca.
So far as I know, Ronald Hutton's
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft remains the most thorough and most credible analysis of the emergence of modern Wicca and witchcraft. He has the advantage of being a professional historian and of being raised (neo)pagan. It is not intended for the layperson, which is kind of ironic given its popularity. In fact, so many neopagans have expressed both great interest in that book and his earlier
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy, yet also much dismay at their relatively dense, academic/scholarly nature that he responded by publishing two versions of his book on druids: one for fellow historians/scholars, and the other for the neopagan communities. If you are interested on the history of Wicca, I'd start with his book.
Saying that I could be wrong in this, however just because Gardner stressed that a practitioner of Wicca is a witch, does not mean that he believed that Voodoo, Shamanism, Satanism, and Druidism could not be a witch.
True. However, at that time there was very much a desire to lay claim to an authentic, direct link to a coven with an ancient legacy and quickly much competition as others emerged whose authority rested upon their connection with the uninterrupted practice of a particular witchcraft religion or "Old Religion".
A decent and concise account by insiders of the origins both of various Wiccan and Witchcraft traditions as well as neopaganism/pagan revivals in general can be found in the introduction to
Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan Traditions
I link to it primarily because it is online and free, but it is also somewhat dated. Also, the author relies perhaps more than he should on Dr. Aiden Kelley (a founder of two large Witchcraft societies/organizations). Dr. Kelley wrote the first more or less "academic" account of the origins of Wicca (
Crafting the Art of Magic) but the invaluable information he provided is offset by the monographs vicious polemic aimed particularly at Gardner and the legitimacy of Gardnerian Wicca. However, he also relies on other inside sources like Valiente as well as scholars like Ronald Hutton and Cynthia Eller.
That said, the author covers a lot of history and a the development, nature, and origins of a great many neopagan traditions in a relatively short chapter (the intro).
Just because as a Wiccan I practice witchcraft and am therefore a witch does not mean that anyone else who practices a different type of witchcraft is not a witch.
I couldn't agree more. You're absolutely right.
