Gerald Gardner
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Gerald Brosseau Gardner (June 13, 1884 - February 12, 1964) was an English civil servant, amateur anthropologist, writer, and occultist who published some of the definitive texts for modern Wicca, which he was instrumental in founding.
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[edit] Life
Gardner was born in Crosby, near Liverpool, England to a well-off family who had in their service Josephine "Com" McCombie, an Irish nursemaid[1]. The family business was Joseph Gardner & Sons, the Empire's oldest and largest importer of hardwood. Gardner had been suffering asthma at the time, bearing the illness from a young age, and his nursemaid had offered to take him to the warmer climates of the Continent. They both eventually settled in Asia, where Gardner stayed for a large portion of his young-adult life.
Beginning in 1908 he was a rubber planter, first in Borneo and then in Malaya. After 1923 he held civil service posts as a government inspector in Malaya. In 1936, at the age of 52, he retired to England. He published an authoritative text, Keris and other Malay Weapons (1936), based on his field research into southeast Asian weapons and magical practices.
Apparently on medical advice, he took up naturism on his return to England, and also pursued his interest in the occult. Those who knew him within the modern witchcraft movement recalled how he was a firm believer in the theraputic benefits of sunbathing.[2]
Gardner published two works of fiction, A Goddess Arrives (1939) and High Magic's Aid (1949). These were followed by his purportedly-factual works, Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).
Gardner was married once to a woman named Donna who remained his loyal companion for 33 years during which she never took part in the craft or his activities within it. Gardner was devastated by her passing and began to suffer once more his childhood affliction of asthma.
In 1964, after suffering a heart attack, Gardner died at sea on a ship returning from Lebanon. He was buried on the shore of Tunisia.
[edit] Wicca
Gardner claimed to have been initiated in 1939 into a tradition of religious witchcraft that he believed to be a continuation of European Paganism. Doreen Valiente, one of Gardner's priestesses, later identified the woman who initiated Gardner as Dorothy Clutterbuck in A Witches' Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar.[3] This identification was based on references Valiente remembered Gardner making to a woman he called "Old Dorothy". Scholar Ronald Hutton instead argues in his Triumph of the Moon that Gardner's witchcraft tradition was largely the inspiration of members of the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship and especially a woman known by the magical name of "Dafo".[4] Dr. Leo Ruickbie, in his Witchcraft Out of the Shadows, analysed the documentary evidence and concluded that Aleister Crowley played a crucial role in inspiring Gardner to establish a new pagan religion.[5] Ruickbie, Hutton, and others further argue that much of what has been published of Gardnerian Wicca, as Gardner's practice came to be known by, was written by Doreen Valiente, Aleister Crowley and also contains borrowings from other identifiable sources.[citation needed]. However, it would appear that Crowley never did this intentionally. Wicca founder Gerald Gardner was an initiate of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) under Crowley, and the material used in Gardner's third degree Wiccan initiation ritual is lifted directly from Crowley's "Gnostic Mass," written for the OTO in 1913.
There is a claim that Gardner founded an order of Wicca called the Wiccan Order in 1959.[6] There is disagreement as to whether there is sufficient evidence for the existence of any such order.
[edit] Etymology
Gardner, in his two books on the subject, referred to religious witchcraft as "Wica", or "The Craft". Gardner's spelling was quickly replaced by usage of "Wicca".[citation needed] In Old English, "Wicca" is a relatively obscure noun of apparently masculine grammatical gender, glossed in two cases as Latin "ariolus", i.e., "magician", "seer", while "Wicce" is an equivalent feminine gender form glossed once as Latin "phitonissa", i.e., "one possessed; as Pythia". Historical use of the word "Wicca" as any sort of religion is unsupported by etymology. The verb form, "wiccian", which means "to practice witchcraft", does not appear in Gardner's written material, and is not commonly used in literature about the religious movement.
[edit] Bibliography
- 1936: Keris and Other Malay Weapons
- 1939: A Goddess Arrives (fiction)
- 1949: High Magic's Aid (fiction)
- 1954: Witchcraft Today
- 1959: The Meaning of Witchcraft
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Themystica.com: Gardner, Gerald B.
- ^ Valiente, Doreen (1989). Rebirth of Withcraft. Phoenix Publishing. ISBN 0-919345-39-5
- ^ Farrar, Janet & Steward (2002). A Witches' Bible. Robert Hale. ISBN 0-7090-7227-9
- ^ Hutton, Ronald (2001). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285449-6
- ^ Ruickbie, Leo (2004). Witchcraft out of the Shadows: A Complete History. Robert Hale Limited. ISBN 0-7090-7567-7
- ^ [1] Facsimile of this Charter in Geoffrey Basil Smith: "Knights of the Solar Cross", 1983
[edit] External links
- GeraldGardner.com an online reference resource
- Biography at Controverscial.com
- Biography at About.com
