How old is Wicca?

[NeedingGnosisNow]

My Wiccan girlfriend says that Wicca existed before Gerald Gardner brought it out to the public. Is there a chance that he may have actually found an old Book of Shadows that was hidden somewhere?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

My Wiccan girlfriend says that Wicca existed before Gerald Gardner brought it out to the public. Is there a chance that he may have actually found an old Book of Shadows that was hidden somewhere?

Gerald Gardner claimed he was initiated into a coven which dated back at least to the period of the European witch trials, not that he found a Book of Shadows. It is highly unlikely that he was initiated into an already existing coven, and unlikely to the point of impossible that there were covens dating back decades, let alone centuries, before Gardner.

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

Do you think he was following Crowleys teachings and just took an idea and ran with it?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Do you think he was following Crowleys teachings and just took an idea and ran with it?

It's much more complex than that. The history Gardner likely created himself concerning the origins of Wicca depended largely on the now completely discredited (in the academic community) histories of the European witch trials by Margaret Murray. However, her works provided little in the way of ceremony, practices, and beliefs (at least, not enough for Gardner to work with). Gardner also had experience with ceremonial magic and he was working with others who helped developed Gardnerian Wicca. The extent to which Crowley (or Crowley's works) were of direct influence is debated. The most complete, comprehensive, accurate, and erudite book on the history of Wicca is Professor Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon, although he has also written on the subject elsewhere, beginning with his history of paganism (The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles) and including his contribution to the last volume of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe as well as other papers. However, as a historian, he discusses little in the way of Wiccan practice. For an academic work on Wiccan practice during the time when specific traditions (e.g., Gardnerian vs. Alexandrian) were much more common compared to today (where individual practice, covens following their own traditions, and numerous people who borrow in some way from wicca but do not identify themselves as wiccans, are the norm), see Tanya Luhrmann's Persuasions of the Witch's Craft. She spent some time among Wiccan covens engaging in practices, although her work was controversial for some time in the Wiccan community because she chose not to reveal her purposes.

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

What kind of ceremonial magic was Gardner familiar with? Masonic? Rosicrucian?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What kind of ceremonial magic was Gardner familiar with? Masonic? Rosicrucian?

His initial contact was probably his experience in Malay (he even wrote a book on Malay weapons which concentrated largely on their ceremonial/religious/magical aspects). However, he also read extensively on the subject of magic and became a part of the (largely british) community of practitioners of ceremonial magic. He did know Crowley, and it seems as if Crowley (before he died) allowed, encouraged, or perhaps even asked Gardner to revive the O.T.O in Britian, where it had pretty much died out. Gardner was also heavily involved with the folklore community, where things like traditions of magical remedies or practices (supposedly or actually passed on through the years) were often discussed and written about. In other words, Gardner was aware of many different traditions of ceremonial magic as well as folklore traditions concerning the arts of the "wise ones".

 

[Quintessence]

Legion's pretty much got it. Wicca - labeled as such - is a contemporary (neo) Pagan religion that didn't exist prior to the 20th century. It's inspirational roots can be traced to earlier periods of history and roughly similar practices (e.g., folk magic) have been found throughout the world since recorded history, but Wicca itself is a modern religion.

 

[PMderry]

My Wiccan girlfriend says that Wicca existed before Gerald Gardner brought it out to the public. Is there a chance that he may have actually found an old Book of Shadows that was hidden somewhere?

I'd say no. Wicca as a religion was founded by Gardner. However, Gardner used philosophy and many different theological inspirations that are thousands of years old. Wicca, as we know it today, is very young. Its inspiration is ancient.

 

[shivadas]

Wicca is a modern movement that has existed for about 80 years, however it is built ontop of the ancient pagan foundations of the ancestors.

 

[Antiochian]

I'd guess Wicca as we know it today is young. Paganism, however, is as old as humankind.

 

[MysticTraveler]

In a sense, you could say Wicca predates Gardner in that Wicca is an eclectic mixture of elements from various places that Gardner brought together into a new religion of older traditions. He certainly borrowed heavily from different sources he had read about. The structure of Wicca as setup by Gardner is clearly very influenced by Freemasonry, although I suspect that has far less to do with any connection to Freemasonry and more to do with the fact that the Masonic ritual template was used as the basis for pretty much all of the esoteric orders in the West from at least the 19th century onward. Crowley was also clearly an influence on Gardner to a certain extent.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

I'd guess Wicca as we know it today is young. Paganism, however, is as old as humankind.

Indeed, but also consider that Wicca takes from other Pagan religions that were about as old as humankind.

 

[EyeofOdin]

This depends on what you define as "Wicca"

"Wicca" the religion that uses the contemporary names God, Goddess, Four/Five Elements and Spirit is about a century old.

The belief that everything is connected, everything is divine and that everything has a cyclical life, from seasons to organisms.

Wicca, as we know it in our modern world, draws on many Proto-Indo-European roots, including Vedic, Germanic, Celtic and Hellenic. Practices in magick and ritual mostly come from Northern and Western Europe. Philosophical elemental beliefs come from Ancient Greece and concepts of Universal Deity come from Vedic-Indian Cosmology. In this sense, Wicca is a hybrid religion of many ancient Proto-Indo-European beliefs.

I suppose it's all about how you look at it.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

You could say Wicca was the first reconstructionist paganism — but Gardner was trying to reconstruct a religion that hadn't actually existed! But the number of Wiccans today shows that he fulfilled a need. He was a well-educated man, a magician, an anthropologist, a druid: just the person for the job.

 

[FreedomIsNatural]

My Wiccan girlfriend says that Wicca existed before Gerald Gardner brought it out to the public. Is there a chance that he may have actually found an old Book of Shadows that was hidden somewhere?

It is possible that Wicca existed before Gardner and I beilive that it did in a way. I think that the old relgion of witchcraft existed and then he combined it with modern western occultism and eastern spirituality and gave it a name (that was used for a short while to describe witches) in order to create a syncretic relgion. The core concepts of Wicca are very old but much of the magic casting techniques commonly used in Wicca is of mixed origins.

 

[Cassandra]

My view: I think it is not so important as that it may look on the surface. Religious movements often try to revive earlier traditions, and that always leads to a modern interpretation. That is inevitable and for Pagan religion quite natural. If Pagan religions had been allowed to develop, they would have undergone considerable changes as well as Pagan religions not relied on unchanging books. Customs change, traditions change, stories change, etc. What stays the same at the heart of a tradition is its spiritual essence and a peoples character. It is like a tree. Even if all trees die, if there is still a seed left, it can again come to life and continue the tradition.

As long as the spiritual essence of a religion can still be recognized it can still be revived. That does not need an unbroken tradition. Once is revives it will start to develop again, just like a seed will become a tree once again. Also Pagan religions are Nature Religions and those are very similar in the core, as they base on their connection with Nature and on observing Nature. If one studies enough Nature religions and subtracts the common core and adds the unique cultural essence of one's own people, and adapts it to modern times, one can recreate a Pagan religion.

The measure of success is the measure in which it can appeal to people deeper spiritual needs. The measure is not how much it looks like the original religion in outward display. The goal must be revive a living tradition, not fossilize a dead one. Someone had to take a lead and Gerald Gardner did a decent Job. In religions such people are considered founding fathers of a new traditions. There is no reason why a founding father has to live in the past. As I see it, it is high time we started to create new more ethical religions as the bronze age warrior ideologies do not fit well in the modern times and humanity can no longer permit to fight their endless conflicts and their exploitive character spells disaster for humanity. Historical accuracy in details is not important, otherwise it just becomes a costume drama. Part of the pleasure is in the rediscovery. Practising the new religion and incorporating it in our life will allow us to rediscover knowledge lost and learn to improve on it.

What I like about Wicca is that it is a completely decentralized religion. That makes it less vulnerable for corruption and hostile takeovers, makes it more authentic, more flexible, and frankly that is the way it used to be.

 

[Callisto]

My Wiccan girlfriend says that Wicca existed before Gerald Gardner brought it out to the public. Is there a chance that he may have actually found an old Book of Shadows that was hidden somewhere?

There was never a witchcraft called Wicca prior to Gardner’s Craft. In fact, Gardner himself did not call it Wicca. “Wicca” is an older form of the word "witch". It meant "male witch”, the feminine form is "wicce" and a group (men and/or women) are "wicca" or sometimes "wiccan". Gardner stated the witches who initiated him referred to themselves as The Wicca (or as he spelled it originally, The Wica). By the late 1950s/early 1960s, the religion itself had come to be referred to publicly as Wicca and its initiates as Wiccans (plus the neologism, Gardnerian).

Gardner stated what he received initiation into was a local form of British (not Celtic, btw) witchcraft in the 1930s and developed for it what he felt was a more sustainable ritual framework in order to preserve and perpetuate its teachings. He founded his first coven in the 1940s and went public in the 1950s after Britain's anti-witchcraft laws were repealed in 1951.

 

[Callisto]

Gerald Gardner claimed he was initiated into a coven which dated back at least to the period of the European witch trials, not that he found a Book of Shadows. It is highly unlikely that he was initiated into an already existing coven, and unlikely to the point of impossible that there were covens dating back decades, let alone centuries, before Gardner.

Gardner stated the witchcraft he was initiated into was fragmented and seem unsustainable beyond the original coven. At the time, the witch cult hypothesis was widely accepted and he pursued the research of the day as to the practice’s origins. He states this in "The Meaning of Witchcraft,” and noted that there was some dissension among scholars regarding the hypothesis, though they were a minority. It's important to note too that the hypothesis was widely accepted within both academia and society and was not disproved in Gardner’s lifetime but instead continued to gain greater acceptance in both sectors throughout the 1950s and into the '60s. It was not disproved until the 1970s, some 10 years after Gardner’s death.

The hypothesis has no bearing whatsoever on the coven’s existence. There has been enough research done (e.g., Hutton, Heselton, Howard, Valiente) to ascertain that the New Forest coven existed. In regards to history and lineage, Wiccan initiates do not claim a lineage beyond the known origins in New Forest via Gardner.

 

[Callisto]

It is possible that Wicca existed before Gardner and I beilive that it did in a way. I think that the old relgion of witchcraft existed and then he combined it with modern western occultism and eastern spirituality and gave it a name (that was used for a short while to describe witches) in order to create a syncretic relgion. The core concepts of Wicca are very old but much of the magic casting techniques commonly used in Wicca is of mixed origins.

One would be hard pressed to find much that came about in the 20th century that wasn't some kind of by-product of the Western esotericism of prior centuries.

Though there is a difference between techniques and what they convey. Gardner believed the practice in danger of being lost. In order to salvage knowledge it conveyed, he built a framework for it that would keep that knowledge intact and make it more feasible to perpetuate. E.g., purposes differ for a circle casting in ceremonial magic vs. Wicca.