Gardnerian Wicca
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Gardnerian Wicca is a tradition of the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Gardnerian Wicca is named after Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), a British civil servant and scholar of magic, among other topics.
Gardner claimed to have been initiated in 1939 into a tradition of religious witchcraft that he believed to be a continuation of European Paganism. He knew and worked with many famous occultists, not the least of which was Aleister Crowley. After his retirement Gardner moved to Christchurch near the New Forest on the south coast of England, where he says he met a group of people who had preserved certain traditional practices. They recognised him as being "one of them" and convinced him to be initiated. It was only halfway through the initiation, he says, that it dawned on him what kind of group it was, and that witchcraft had not died out in England.
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.[1] 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".[2] 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.[3] 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]
Gardner himself admitted that the rituals of the existing group were fragmentary at best, and he set about reconstructing it, drawing on his skills as an occultist and amateur folklorist. Gardner seems not to have been confident writing original poetry, and instead borrowed and wove together appropriate material from other artists and occultists, most notably Crowley, Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, the Key of Solomon as published by S.L. MacGregor Mathers, Masonic ritual, and Rudyard Kipling. Doreen Valiente wrote much of the most well-known poetry, including the much-quoted Charge of the Goddess.
The group into which Gardner claimed to be initiated, known as the New Forest coven, was small and utterly secret as Witchcraft was illegal in Britain at the time. When the Witchcraft Laws were replaced, in 1951, by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, Gerald Gardner went public, initially somewhat cautiously, but during the late 1950s and until his death in 1964 even courted the attentions of the tabloid press, to the consternation of some of the other members of the tradition. The question of publicity and Gardner's sudden production of the Wiccan Laws in 1957 led to Doreen Valiente breaking from Gardner for a period. Nevertheless, the increased publicity seems to have allowed Gardnerian Wicca to grow much more rapidly. Certain intiates such as Alex Sanders and Raymond Buckland started off their own major traditions allowing further expansion.
Gerald Gardner formed a series of covens from the early 1950s on, with a succession of High Priestesses. The earliest known of these is the North London coven, which originally met in the Witch's Cottage near the Five Acres naturist club in Bricket Wood near London; it has operated continuously for over 50 years, since shortly after the end of World War II, and has included many leading lights of Gardnerian Wicca including Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, and Jack Bracelin.[4]
The best-known covens of the original Gardnerian lineage are: New Forest, Bricket Wood, Rainbow Wood, Isle of Man, Oak Tree, Sparrow, Isis Urania and Druid Oak.
The form of witchcraft to which Gardner was introduced was originally referred to as "Wica", or more commonly "witchcraft" or "the Old Religion". Later publications standardised the spelling to "Wicca". "Gardnerian Wicca" was originally a pejorative coined by Gardner's contemporary Roy Bowers (also known as Robert Cochrane), a British cunning man.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Farrar, Janet & Stewart (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
- ^ Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty Years of Wicca. Sutton Mallet, England: Green Magic. ISBN 0-9547230-1-5.
