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The History of Wiccans

Monday, September 07, 2009

Related Tags: wicca | gardner | magick | wiccans | witchcraft

Instructions

The Founder

Step 1:
Gerald Gardner was a British civil servant who spent much of his career in India gaining a fascination with Eastern mysticism. Returning to England upon retirement, he joined a Wiccan coven in 1939. Ten years later, with the approval of his group, Gardner wrote a book called "High Magick's Aid." (Wiccans add the letter k to the word "magic" in order to distinguish their practices from that of present-day illusionists.) A fictional novel about witches in 1940 who tried to repel Hitler with magick, it detailed some Wiccan beliefs and practices. He also fleshed out missing elements of Wiccan rituals, adding symbols and rites from other religions and organizations, including the Masons, to add substance to Wiccan practices.

The 1950s were about to become a watershed decade for the Wiccan movement. In 1951, Britain officially repealed a centuries-old law that condemned practicing witches to death. Building on the acceptance of "High Magick's Aid" and no longer fearing for their lives, Wiccans began to move out of the shadows and into the open, at least in the U.K. In 1954, Gardner published his next book, "Witchcraft Today," in which he declared himself a witch and spoke of the prevalence of the practice in Britain. He became an instant celebrity and the face of modern-day witchcraft. Wicca began to move into the mainstream with covens forming worldwide.

Practice

Step 1:
In their book "Pocket Guide to Wicca," Paul Tuitéan and Estelle Daniels declare "The modern incarnation of Wicca is an amalgam of ceremonial magick, mysticism, theosophy and the spiritualist movement, Masonic practices, Eastern religions and thought, fairy tales, mythologies, folklore and legends, divination, and individual imagination and belief."

Gardnerian Wicca

Step 1:
Many other traditions and Wiccan covens were in existence at the time of Gardner's writings. However, the publicity surrounding his work led to the mass acceptance of Gardnerian Wicca as the standard. Today, Gerald Gardner is considered the father of modern-day Wicca.

Other Forms

Step 1:
In the decades since Gardner brought Wicca out into the open, other practitioners have developed slightly different forms of the religion. In the book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft," Denise Zimmermann, Katherine Gleason and Miria Liguana list several, including Seax Wicca, developed by a Gardner protege, Raymond Buckland, in 1962. It draws heavily from English Anglo Saxon tradition. Additionally, Alexandrian Wicca was founded by Alex Sanders in the 1960s, and George Patterson founded Georgian Wicca in Bakersfield, California, in 1970.

Today

Step 1:
Many Wiccans now practice their faith openly. A 1986 U.S. court ruling affirmed that Wicca is considered a religion with full, First Amendment protection. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service grants Wiccan religious organizations tax-exempt status. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs added the Wiccan pentacle to the list of religious symbols it allows to be engraved onto veterans' headstones.