Wicca

Origin

Gerald Gardner claimed initiation into a surviving English witch-cult by a coven in the New Forest of Hampshire in 1939, conducted by a high priestess he called Old Dorothy and now identified as Dorothy Clutterbuck (1880 to 1951). The historical reality of this initiation has been debated, but Clutterbuck's existence has been documented by the historian Doreen Valiente. After the repeal of the British Witchcraft Act in 1951, Gardner published the novel High Magic's Aid (1949) under a pseudonym and the non-fiction Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), in which he presented Wicca to the public.

Gardner's Wicca, now called Gardnerian Wicca, used the Book of Shadows, a coven liturgical book whose early form Gardner produced with input from Doreen Valiente (1922 to 1999), who refined many of the rituals into the form still used today. From Gardnerian Wicca developed Alexandrian Wicca, founded by Alex Sanders (1926 to 1988) and Maxine Sanders in 1962, with a more ceremonial-magical emphasis. From the 1970s, Wicca diversified into many traditions: Dianic Wicca (Z. Budapest, 1971, feminist and goddess-focused), Seax-Wica (Raymond Buckland, 1973, Saxon-themed), Reclaiming (Starhawk, 1979, eco-feminist and activist), Faery (Victor and Cora Anderson), and many eclectic and solitary forms. Wicca was recognised as a religion by the US courts in 1985 and by the British armed forces in 2004.

Teachings and method

Wiccan theology centres on a divine duality: the Goddess in her three aspects of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, often associated with the moon, the earth, and the underworld; and the God in his two aspects of Oak King (light half of the year) and Holly King (dark half), often associated with the sun, the forest, and the hunt. Some Wiccans regard these deities as separate beings, some as polarities of a single divine reality, some as symbolic personifications. The God and Goddess celebrate their sacred marriage at Beltane and the God's death and rebirth at Samhain and Yule.

The Wheel of the Year consists of eight festivals called sabbats: four solar festivals (Yule at the winter solstice, Ostara at the spring equinox, Litha at the summer solstice, Mabon at the autumn equinox) and four cross-quarter festivals (Imbolc on 2 February, Beltane on 1 May, Lughnasadh or Lammas on 1 August, Samhain on 31 October). The thirteen full moons of the year are called esbats, smaller working meetings of the coven. The traditional coven structure includes a high priestess, a high priest, and up to eleven additional initiates, totalling thirteen. Initiation proceeds through three degrees of training.

In practice

A Wiccan ritual typically opens with the casting of a circle, an act of marking sacred space. The circle is traditionally cast deosil (clockwise) with a ritual knife called an athame. The four cardinal directions are called the watchtowers, each associated with an element (east-air, south-fire, west-water, north-earth) and invoked at the opening of the rite. The God and Goddess are then invoked, the working of the rite is performed (a sabbat celebration, a moon ritual, a spell, an initiation), cakes and wine are shared, the deities are thanked, and the circle is opened.

Solitary practice has become the most common form of contemporary Wicca, following Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (1988). A solitary practitioner observes the same Wheel of the Year, the same lunar cycle, and the same ritual structure, adapted for one person. Many keep a Book of Shadows recording their own rituals, spells, and reflections. Combine Wiccan practice with Runes for divination, with Tarot for self-reflection, and with Druidism for the wider Celtic Neopagan context. The Wiccan Rede, "an it harm none, do what ye will", is the principal ethical guideline.

Symbolic depth

Wicca's deepest claim is the sacredness of nature, the body, and the cyclical character of all life. The Wheel of the Year is a meditation on time as cyclical rather than linear: each season returns, each life dies and is reborn, each moon waxes and wanes. The divine is immanent in the world, not transcendent of it. The Goddess herself is the earth, the moon, the sea; the God is the sun, the forest, the deer. To celebrate the sabbats is to align personal time with cosmic time, individual life with the life of the world.

The historical authenticity of Wicca as a survival of pre-Christian witchcraft has been largely rejected by scholarship since Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon (1999). Hutton showed that Wicca is a twentieth-century synthesis drawing on Margaret Murray's discredited witch-cult thesis, Charles Leland's Aradia (1899), the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn, English folklore, Romantic literature, and Gardner's own creative imagination. Wicca is therefore best understood as an authentic modern religion in dialogue with reconstructed elements of European pre-Christian heritage, not as an unbroken survival. Continue with Neopaganism, Druidism, and the oracle hub.

Also known as

• Modern Witchcraft
• Gardnerian Craft
• The Craft
• Pagan Witchcraft
• Old Religion