Witchcraft Today is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner. Published in 1954, Witchcraft Today recounts Gardner's thoughts on the history and practices of the theoretical witch-cult, and his claim to have met practising witches in 1930s England. It is based on the rejected theory that persecuted witches had actually been followers of a surviving pagan religion. It also deals with his theory that the Knights Templar had practised the religion,[1] and that the belief in faeries in ancient, mediaeval and early modern Europe is due to a secretive pygmy race that lived alongside humans.[2]Witchcraft Today is one of the foundational texts for the religion of Wicca, along with Gardner's second book on the subject, 1959's The Meaning of Witchcraft.
Gerald Gardner in the foreword to Witchcraft Today:
I have been told by witches in England: "Write and tell people we are not perverts. We are decent people, we only want to be left alone, but there are certain secrets that you mustn't give away." So after some arguments as to exactly what I must not reveal, I am permitted to tell much that has never before been made public concerning their beliefs, their rituals and their reasons for what they do; also to emphasize that neither their present beliefs, rituals nor practices are harmful.
Whilst by the time of writing, Gardner had been initiated into the religion, and had formed his own coven, he did not state this in the book. Instead he "posed as a disinterested anthropologist".[3] The introduction to the book was written by Margaret Murray, the main proponent of the discredited witch-cult hypothesis in the 1920s and 1930s. In her introduction, she stated:
Dr Gardner has shown in his book how much of the so-called "witchcraft" is descended from ancient rituals, and has nothing to do with spell-casting and other evil practices, but is the sincere expression of that feeling towards God which is expressed, perhaps more decorously though not more sincerely, by modern Christianity in church services."[4]
In the book Gardner also repeats the claim, which had originated with Matilda Joslyn Gage, that 9 million victims were killed in the European witch-hunts."[5] Current scholarly estimates of the number of people executed for witchcraft during this time period vary between about 40,000 and 100,000.
The book contains seven photographs; one depicting the author, another a magician's circle at the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft, a memorial to those killed in the witch hunts, two further images of rooms in the museum, a statue of a horned god, and a painting of a male witch."[6]
Publication history
The book was initially published in hardback in November 1954 by Rider and Company, and sold at the price of 15 shillings. It was reprinted in August 1956.
Analysis
In his biography of Gardner, the researcher Philip Heselton noted that the contents of Witchcraft Today were essentially a summation of what Gardner had read about witchcraft and other related subjects over a number of years. He remarked that Gardner had probably intended to provide a history of the 'witch-cult' from the Stone Age to the present which made reference to related religious movements, such as those of the druids, Knights Templar and ancient Egyptians. Summing the book up, he described it as "a record of Gardner's phases of enthusiasm".[7]
Notes and references
↑ Gardner, Gerald (1954). Witchcraft Today. Rider and Company. ISBN0-8065-2593-2. In Chapter VI, "How the Little People became Witches, and Concerning the Knights Templar"
↑ Gardner, Gerald (1954). Witchcraft Today. Rider and Company. ISBN0-8065-2593-2., Chapter V, "The Little People" and Chapter VI, "How the Little People Became Witches, and Concerning the Knights Templar"
↑ Hutton, Ronald (1999). Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-500-27242-5. page 206
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian witchcraft, is a tradition in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner (1884–1964), a British civil servant and amateur scholar of magic. The term "Gardnerian" was probably coined by the founder of Cochranian Witchcraft, Robert Cochrane in the 1950s or 60s, who himself left that tradition to found his own.
Gerald Brosseau Gardner, also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist. He was instrumental in bringing the Contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca to public attention, writing some of its definitive religious texts and founding the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism. The term Horned God itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partly based on historical horned deities.
Margaret Alice Murray was a British Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist who was born in India. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career.
Wicca is a modern neo-pagan syncretic religion. Scholars of religion categorize it as both a new religious movement and as part of occultist Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.
An athame or athamé is a ceremonial blade, generally with a black handle. It is the main ritual implement or magical tool among several used in ceremonial magic traditions, and by other neopagans, witchcraft, as well as satanic traditions. A black-handled knife called an arthame appears in certain versions of the Key of Solomon, a grimoire dating to the Renaissance.
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente was an English Wiccan who was responsible for writing much of the early religious liturgy within the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca. An author and poet, she also published five books dealing with Wicca and related esoteric subjects.
Patricia Crowther who also goes by the craft name Thelema, is a British occultist considered influential in the early promotion of the Wiccan religion and she is the mother of the witch or wiccan runes.
Edith Rose Woodford-Grimes (1887–1975) was an English Wiccan who achieved recognition as one of the faith's earliest known adherents. She had been a member of the New Forest coven which met during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and through this became a friend and working partner of Gerald Gardner, who would go on to found the Gardnerian tradition with her help. Widely known under the nickname of Dafo, Woodford-Grimes' involvement in the Craft had largely been kept a secret until it was revealed in the late 1990s, and her role in the history of Wicca was subsequently investigated by historians.
The New Forest coven were an alleged group of pagan witches who met around the area of the New Forest in southern England during the early 20th century. According to his own claims, in September 1939, a British occultist named Gerald Gardner was initiated into the coven and subsequently used its beliefs and practices as a basis from which he formed the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca. Gardner described some of his experiences with the coven in his published books Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) although on the whole revealed little about it, saying he was respecting the privacy of its members. Meanwhile, another occultist, Louis Wilkinson, corroborated Gardner's claims by revealing in an interview with the writer Francis X. King that he too had encountered the coven and expanded on some of the information that Gardner had provided about them. According to Gardner, the faith they followed was the Witch-Cult, a supposed pagan religion that had survived in secret after the Christianization of Europe. This was in keeping with the now-discredited theories of Margaret Murray and her supporters.
A craft name, also referred to as a magical name, is a secondary religious name often adopted by practitioners of Wicca and other forms of Neopagan witchcraft or magic. Craft names may be adopted as a means of protecting one's privacy, as an expression of religious devotion, or as a part of an initiation ritual. It may also be used as a protective method, as it is believed by some that one's "true name" can be used to identify that person for the purpose of magical activities.
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is a book composed by the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland that was published in 1899. It contains what he believed was the religious text of a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, Italy that documented their beliefs and rituals, although various historians and folklorists have disputed the existence of such a group. In the 20th century, the book was very influential in the development of the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca.
Aidan A. Kelly is an American academic, poet and influential figure in the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Having developed his own branch of the faith, the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, during the 1960s, he was also initiated into other traditions, including Gardnerianism and Feri, in subsequent decades. Alongside this, he was also an important figure in the creation of the Covenant of the Goddess, an organisation designed to protect the civil rights of members of the Wiccan community in the United States. He has also published academic work studying the early development of Gardnerian Wiccan liturgy, primarily through his controversial 1991 book Crafting the Art of Magic.
Philip Heselton is a retired British conservation officer, a Wiccan initiate, and a writer on the subjects of Wicca, Paganism, and Earth mysteries. He is best known for two books, Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival and Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration, which gather historical evidence surrounding the New Forest coven and the origins of Gardnerian Wicca.
The history of Wicca documents the rise of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based Neopagan religions. Wicca originated in the early 20th century, when it developed amongst secretive covens in England who were basing their religious beliefs and practices upon what they read of the historical witch-cult in the works of such writers as Margaret Murray. It also is based on the beliefs from the magic that Gerald Gardner saw when he was in India. It was subsequently founded in the 1950s by Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated into the Craft – as Wicca is often known – by the New Forest coven in 1939. Gardner's form of Wicca, the Gardnerian tradition, was spread by both him and his followers like the High Priestesses Doreen Valiente, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone into other parts of the British Isles, and also into other, predominantly English-speaking, countries across the world. In the 1960s, new figures arose in Britain who popularized their own forms of the religion, including Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek and Alex Sanders, and organizations began to be formed to propagate it, such as the Witchcraft Research Association. It was during this decade that the faith was transported to the United States, where it was further adapted into new traditions such as Feri, 1734 and Dianic Wicca in the ensuing decades, and where organizations such as the Covenant of the Goddess were formed.
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In traditional Wicca, as expressed in the writings of Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, the emphasis is on the theme of divine gender polarity, and the God and Goddess are regarded as equal and opposite divine cosmic forces. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is given primacy or even exclusivity. In some forms of traditional witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess.
In the early modern period, witch trials were seen between 1400 and 1782, where around 40,000 to 60,000 were killed due to suspicion that they were practicing witchcraft. These trials occurred primarily in Europe, and were particularly severe in some parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Some witch hunts would last for years, and some sources estimate 100,000 trials occurred. Groundwork on the concept of witchcraft was developed by Christian theologians as early as the 13th century. However, prosecutions for the practice of witchcraft would only reach a highpoint from 1560 to 1630 during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion, with some regions burning those who were convicted at the stake, of whom roughly 80% were women,, mostly over the age of 40.
The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that the witch trials of Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pre-Christian, pagan religion that had survived the Christianisation of Europe. According to its proponents, accused witches were actually followers of this hypothetical religion. They argue that the supposed witch cult revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility and the underworld, whose Christian persecutors identified with the Devil, and whose followers participated in nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath.
The Meaning of Witchcraft is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner. Gardner, known to many in the modern sense as the "Father of Wicca", based the book around his experiences with the religion of Wicca and the New Forest Coven. It was first published in 1959, only after the British Parliament repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735, and proved to be Gardner's final book. The Wicca religion as expounded by Gardner was focused on a goddess, identified with the night sky and with wild nature, and a horned god who represented the fertilizing powers of the natural world. It was organized into covens, through which members were initiated through three ascending degrees of competence and authority and which were governed by a high priestess, supported by a high priest.
In Modern English, the term Wicca refers to Wicca, the religion of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft. It is used within the Pagan community under competing definitions. One refers to the entirety of the Pagan Witchcraft movement, while the other refers explicitly to traditions included in what is now called British Traditional Wicca.
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