How did so-called traditional witchcraft develop throughout European history, especially from pre-Christian folk practices and periods of persecution such as the witch trials, and to what extent did historical figures associated with occultism—such as Gerald Gardner, often considered one of the main figures responsible for popularizing witchcraft in the 20th century—influence how the concept of “traditional witchcraft” is understood today?
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Historical Development of Traditional Witchcraft and the Influence of Gerald Gardner
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The short answer to the question of how did witchcraft develop despite persecution is "because practitioners found it helpful." Those on the margins of society will often find ways to do what they want to do regardless of the mainstream's desires and attempts to stamp things out. (It's the same with sexual behaviour that is outside the monogamous married heterosexual model. It will always exist no matter what the authorities do to stop it.)
There are books written on the topic of witchcraft history and how it has developed. For example, Michael Howard's "Children of Cain" discusses non-Wiccan ("traditional") witchcraft trends in the UK. His "Modern Wicca" does the same thing but for Wicca specifically, attempting to put Gardner and his influence into perspective.
For more historical and scholarly material, look for Owen Davies' books such as "Witchcraft, Magic and Culture: 1736-1951" and Bengt Ankarloo's series "Witchcraft and Magic" which has at least six volumes, each covering a different time period in history.
Isaac Bonewits' "Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca" discusses the various categories of witches, properly identifying Wiccans as just one modern subgroup of the larger category. His insights into the history of Wicca are valuable as he gives some first-hand accounts.
Doreen Valiente, who was one of Gardner's early and possibly most influential high priestesses, wrote a number of books about Wicca and witchcraft in general. Her book "The Rebirth of Witchcraft" documents the various people and events that led to the modern witchcraft and Wiccan communities we have today.
Sabina Magliocco's "Witching Culture" documents the development of various witchcraft as well as Wiccan groups but in the United States.
A helpful overview of many topics as well as individuals and groups that have been involved in witchcraft through history is Rosemary Ellen Guiley's "The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft."
Regarding Gerald Gardner's role in how witchcraft developed, especially with regard to "traditional" witchcraft, is interesting and definitely not simple or straightforward.
The first the to remember is that the type of witchcraft he practiced and taught to his initiates, which we now call Wicca, was not really distinguished with that name until after Gardner's death. When Gardner was alive he promoted the idea (and probably thoroughly believed) that witchcraft, all witchcraft around the world (or at least in Western Europe and the British Isles and Ireland) was really one thing although fragmented. He promoted Margaret Murray's idea that this European/British/Irish form of witchcraft was the survival of a specific pre-Christian Pagan religion based on worshipping a moon goddess (Murray usually names her as Diana) and the goddess' horned consort god.
Murray's hypothesis that witchcraft was a survival of a single Pagan religion has been pretty thoroughly debunked. And we also know from examination of Gardner's own teachings, as well as his documents and historical accounts of his activities, that the system he taught was very likely his own work cobbled together from pretty much any source that caught his attention. That's why Wicca has material from Freemasonry, Aleister Crowley's works, Golden Dawn materials, Dion Fortune's works, Ross Nichol's druidry, mythology, and ideas he learned from other occultists at the time who he met or corresponded with.
Gardner was also clearly a fan of the "secret society" model (Freemasonry, and other groups inspired by them such as the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune's group, and Aleister Crowley's groups) and so it was not surprising that Gardner would make formal initiation into a coven, with a system of three degrees, part of his teachings. And putting a formal initiation requirement in led to the common attitude that "only a witch can make a witch" (that you needed formal initiation to be a "real" witch.)
At the time Gardner started publicizing his status as a witch, his Museum of Magic & Witchcraft (first with Cecil Williams where Gardner was the "resident witch" and later with Gardner as sole proprietor after he bought the museum from Cecil) there were very few witches who were public in the UK. There were other practitioners of course but the vast majority were secretive to preserve their privacy and safety. But others did start to reach out to Gardner, and some of those started to question his authority to declare what was and wasn't witchcraft, who was and wasn't "really" a witch.
One of the few who were semi-public early on was Charles Cardell. He approached Gardner about working with him (Gardner sent Doreen Valiente to meet Cardell and report back), but that soured quickly. Cardell recruited a young woman to infiltrate Gardner's coven as a potential initiate and then used her to gather information about Gardner and his group. Cardell published a booklet revealing some of the "secrets" of Gardner's group in an attempt to damage Gardner's reputation.
Another who was semi-public in the early 1960s who promoted witchcraft that he declared was definitely not Gardner's Wicca was Robert Cochrane (a pseudonym). Cochrane claimed that his witchcraft was handed down to him by family members and was therefore an authentic "traditional" form of witchcraft. The author Michael Howard, himself a promoter of "traditional" forms of witchcraft, has said that this was a "classic granny story" and likely untrue (page 46 of his book "Children of Cain".) Cochrane however was influential and his work and teachings have inspired many other subsequent English witchcraft practitioners. They use the term "traditional" to distinguish themselves from Gardner's Wicca. Michael Howard, in the preface to "Children of Cain", states that despite having drawn on historical witchcraft material there isn't really such a thing as an intact transmission of practice from one practitioner to another that can honestly trace their system past the 1800s. So it's extremely unlikely that there is such a thing as an intact pre-Christian traditional witchcraft system at least in the UK.
There are books written on the topic of witchcraft history and how it has developed. For example, Michael Howard's "Children of Cain" discusses non-Wiccan ("traditional") witchcraft trends in the UK. His "Modern Wicca" does the same thing but for Wicca specifically, attempting to put Gardner and his influence into perspective.
For more historical and scholarly material, look for Owen Davies' books such as "Witchcraft, Magic and Culture: 1736-1951" and Bengt Ankarloo's series "Witchcraft and Magic" which has at least six volumes, each covering a different time period in history.
Isaac Bonewits' "Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca" discusses the various categories of witches, properly identifying Wiccans as just one modern subgroup of the larger category. His insights into the history of Wicca are valuable as he gives some first-hand accounts.
Doreen Valiente, who was one of Gardner's early and possibly most influential high priestesses, wrote a number of books about Wicca and witchcraft in general. Her book "The Rebirth of Witchcraft" documents the various people and events that led to the modern witchcraft and Wiccan communities we have today.
Sabina Magliocco's "Witching Culture" documents the development of various witchcraft as well as Wiccan groups but in the United States.
A helpful overview of many topics as well as individuals and groups that have been involved in witchcraft through history is Rosemary Ellen Guiley's "The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft."
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Regarding Gerald Gardner's role in how witchcraft developed, especially with regard to "traditional" witchcraft, is interesting and definitely not simple or straightforward.
The first the to remember is that the type of witchcraft he practiced and taught to his initiates, which we now call Wicca, was not really distinguished with that name until after Gardner's death. When Gardner was alive he promoted the idea (and probably thoroughly believed) that witchcraft, all witchcraft around the world (or at least in Western Europe and the British Isles and Ireland) was really one thing although fragmented. He promoted Margaret Murray's idea that this European/British/Irish form of witchcraft was the survival of a specific pre-Christian Pagan religion based on worshipping a moon goddess (Murray usually names her as Diana) and the goddess' horned consort god.
Murray's hypothesis that witchcraft was a survival of a single Pagan religion has been pretty thoroughly debunked. And we also know from examination of Gardner's own teachings, as well as his documents and historical accounts of his activities, that the system he taught was very likely his own work cobbled together from pretty much any source that caught his attention. That's why Wicca has material from Freemasonry, Aleister Crowley's works, Golden Dawn materials, Dion Fortune's works, Ross Nichol's druidry, mythology, and ideas he learned from other occultists at the time who he met or corresponded with.
Gardner was also clearly a fan of the "secret society" model (Freemasonry, and other groups inspired by them such as the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune's group, and Aleister Crowley's groups) and so it was not surprising that Gardner would make formal initiation into a coven, with a system of three degrees, part of his teachings. And putting a formal initiation requirement in led to the common attitude that "only a witch can make a witch" (that you needed formal initiation to be a "real" witch.)
At the time Gardner started publicizing his status as a witch, his Museum of Magic & Witchcraft (first with Cecil Williams where Gardner was the "resident witch" and later with Gardner as sole proprietor after he bought the museum from Cecil) there were very few witches who were public in the UK. There were other practitioners of course but the vast majority were secretive to preserve their privacy and safety. But others did start to reach out to Gardner, and some of those started to question his authority to declare what was and wasn't witchcraft, who was and wasn't "really" a witch.
One of the few who were semi-public early on was Charles Cardell. He approached Gardner about working with him (Gardner sent Doreen Valiente to meet Cardell and report back), but that soured quickly. Cardell recruited a young woman to infiltrate Gardner's coven as a potential initiate and then used her to gather information about Gardner and his group. Cardell published a booklet revealing some of the "secrets" of Gardner's group in an attempt to damage Gardner's reputation.
Another who was semi-public in the early 1960s who promoted witchcraft that he declared was definitely not Gardner's Wicca was Robert Cochrane (a pseudonym). Cochrane claimed that his witchcraft was handed down to him by family members and was therefore an authentic "traditional" form of witchcraft. The author Michael Howard, himself a promoter of "traditional" forms of witchcraft, has said that this was a "classic granny story" and likely untrue (page 46 of his book "Children of Cain".) Cochrane however was influential and his work and teachings have inspired many other subsequent English witchcraft practitioners. They use the term "traditional" to distinguish themselves from Gardner's Wicca. Michael Howard, in the preface to "Children of Cain", states that despite having drawn on historical witchcraft material there isn't really such a thing as an intact transmission of practice from one practitioner to another that can honestly trace their system past the 1800s. So it's extremely unlikely that there is such a thing as an intact pre-Christian traditional witchcraft system at least in the UK.
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Its because it is simple, codified, utopist and accessible.
The truth is there's no system of "traditionnal witchcraft" that existed before Wicca and Cochrane's Trad Craft. Before those systems, there were only secret high magick groups and folk magick practices that were very local and heavily christian oriented.
Plus Gardener heavily promoted Wicca. Then his successors made their rituals accessible and even published them.
Also the romantized side of those systems were truly appealing.
The truth is there's no system of "traditionnal witchcraft" that existed before Wicca and Cochrane's Trad Craft. Before those systems, there were only secret high magick groups and folk magick practices that were very local and heavily christian oriented.
Plus Gardener heavily promoted Wicca. Then his successors made their rituals accessible and even published them.
Also the romantized side of those systems were truly appealing.
Especially back then
... I luv them retro ( and sometimes saucily suggestive ) early Wiccapics ; 
Ahhh ... the good old days with the indoor bedroom cramped into a tiny circle ( she had to sit down as the room was not big enough for the photographer to stand back and get it all in in a standing shot
) .... nice bit o' leg though is that a 1970s negligee she is wearing ? ( note the bed near by for the 'Great Rite ' .
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Basically this, it's difficult to even give witchcraft a satisfactory definition beyond something along the lines of "taboo folk magic" or "that thing witches do". There was never a single coherent system we can call "traditional witchcraft"
Here's the thing - your perspective is a bit skewed here, Christianity is a thousand and a half years old. It predates any decent source on Scandinavian, Slavic, Baltic paganism by at least five hundred years. Hell, there are arguments in favor of Loki being a christian invention. And by the time of the witch trials, per-Christian folk practices weren't really a thing anymore, not to mention the victims of the witch trials weren't even witches in the first place.
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There still isn't. I've been involved in the community as an active practitioner since the early 1980s, and while there is probably more consensus now about witchcraft being the practice of folk magic for practical goals, there is still lots of debate.
This is itself a very skewed perspective. Folk magic didn't die out -- it adapted as times changed. There has always been a need, especially among the marginalized, for do-it-yourself and accessible ways of dealing with problems whether its health issues, finding something that was lost, conflicts with others, etc. When European and UK & Ireland became Christianized, many folk magic practices survived adapted to the new mainstream religious ideas and rituals. Why would the Scandinavian, Slavic, and Baltic regions be any different? Looking at the Greek Magical Papyri documents for example it's easy to see that practical magical techniques that were used by pre-Christian Pagans were not really that different from the magical practices (in that same Papyri collection) of Christian practitioners. Just the names of the deities varied.
With regard to the witch trials -- while it is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of the accused were clearly not witches or even necessarily folk magic practitioners, there were instances of actual practitioners getting caught up in the system. One excellent example is documented in Joseph H. Peterson's book, "The Secrets of Solomon: A Witch's Handbook from the trial records of the Venetian Inquisition." In this case actual practitioners, who sold their services to others, were arrested and tried and some of the evidence presented in court included the magical notebooks used by the practitioners.
Another excellent example that comes quickly to mind for me is the case of the Pendle witch trials, from Lancashire in England. This is another case that is pretty well documented with lots of modern examinations of the trial records. While I don't have any doubt that some of the individuals who were arrested and tried were not practitioners of folk magic but were innocents caught up in the witch hunt mania, the initial accused, specifically Elizabeth Southerns ("Demdike") and her daughter Elizabeth Device, as well as their former friend and later competitor Anne Whittle ("Chattox") appear, at least from the evidence, to have been practitioners selling charms and magical services in the community.
Owen Davies has a few books out on pre-Gardner folk magic practice in the UK, such as his "Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736-1951" which is worth looking for if you want to learn more.
So it's fair to say there was evidence for pre-Gardner witchcraft and folk magic practice in the UK, Ireland, and Europe. Iceland of course has lots documented, too. (For a gruesome Icelandic example, look up the "necropants" that records date back to the 1600s. There are photos of modern replicas on various websites.)
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OK. Traditional witchcraft...cool... from where? The UK? Mexico? France? And what kind? Catholic witchcraft? Witchcraft of the Philippines?
To have a useful conversation and unpack many assumptions about historical witchcraft '(historical 'being the proxy for traditional), we probably need to decouple it even more from the now-debunked Murrayite Hypothesis - the idea that it is a 'pagan' survival from a matrilineal Neolithic era, which is still living in people's heads and causing widespread hallucinations.
The "Traditional Witchcraft" label is often used as a catch-all that ignores the massive cultural differences between a brujo in Mexico, a mambabarang in the Philippines, and a cunning man in 17th-century Devon. Most historical "traditional" witchcraft in Europe and the Americas was, and still is, practiced by people who considered themselves Christians. They used psalms, invoked saints, and operated within the dominant religious framework, not as a secret "old religion" resistance movement against the Abrahamist modern boogeyman.
The debunking of 19th - 20th century "pagan" witchcraft hypothesis (That everyone believed in back in the 1980s. As a teen. I sure did.) was a tag-team effort across several decades. Professor Ronald Hutton is widely considered to have delivered the finishing blow to the Margaret Murray’s "Old Religion" theory. See his 1999 book, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft.
Because her narrative was so tidy - "The Burning Times" vs. "The Old Religion" - became the foundational myth for early Wicca and feminist spirituality. (All fine, there is much to like there, the wide propagation of misinformation aside.) It took Hutton’s work in the 90s to finally bridge the gap between academic history and the occult community, forcing a re-reckoning with the truth of their origins.
More recently the term "Traditional Witchcraft" is frequently used now to distinguish practices from Wicca (I agree with David Rankine here it's an offshoot of the Grimoire Tradition. Firetree is also correct Wicca is also downstream of OTO. ). However by failing to define which tradition they are talking about, people end up creating a "New Tradition" that is just as ahistorical as the myths they are trying to avoid.
If we can get to the point where we can decouple all this it should all us to see historical "witches" (or folk healers, cunning men, and service magicians , as well Haitian bokors, and Mexican brujos and brujas ) as they actually were - diverse, culturally specific, and usually messy and not so much as characters in a 19th-century pastoral Victorian romanticized novel.
To have a useful conversation and unpack many assumptions about historical witchcraft '(historical 'being the proxy for traditional), we probably need to decouple it even more from the now-debunked Murrayite Hypothesis - the idea that it is a 'pagan' survival from a matrilineal Neolithic era, which is still living in people's heads and causing widespread hallucinations.
The "Traditional Witchcraft" label is often used as a catch-all that ignores the massive cultural differences between a brujo in Mexico, a mambabarang in the Philippines, and a cunning man in 17th-century Devon. Most historical "traditional" witchcraft in Europe and the Americas was, and still is, practiced by people who considered themselves Christians. They used psalms, invoked saints, and operated within the dominant religious framework, not as a secret "old religion" resistance movement against the Abrahamist modern boogeyman.
The debunking of 19th - 20th century "pagan" witchcraft hypothesis (That everyone believed in back in the 1980s. As a teen. I sure did.) was a tag-team effort across several decades. Professor Ronald Hutton is widely considered to have delivered the finishing blow to the Margaret Murray’s "Old Religion" theory. See his 1999 book, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft.
Because her narrative was so tidy - "The Burning Times" vs. "The Old Religion" - became the foundational myth for early Wicca and feminist spirituality. (All fine, there is much to like there, the wide propagation of misinformation aside.) It took Hutton’s work in the 90s to finally bridge the gap between academic history and the occult community, forcing a re-reckoning with the truth of their origins.
More recently the term "Traditional Witchcraft" is frequently used now to distinguish practices from Wicca (I agree with David Rankine here it's an offshoot of the Grimoire Tradition. Firetree is also correct Wicca is also downstream of OTO. ). However by failing to define which tradition they are talking about, people end up creating a "New Tradition" that is just as ahistorical as the myths they are trying to avoid.
If we can get to the point where we can decouple all this it should all us to see historical "witches" (or folk healers, cunning men, and service magicians , as well Haitian bokors, and Mexican brujos and brujas ) as they actually were - diverse, culturally specific, and usually messy and not so much as characters in a 19th-century pastoral Victorian romanticized novel.
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Especially back then
Ahhh ... the good old days with the indoor bedroom cramped into a tiny circle ( she had to sit down as the room was not big enough for the photographer to stand back and get it all in in a standing shot
is that a 1970s negligee she is wearing ? ( note the bed near by for the 'Great Rite ' .
Ah, the legendary , wife of ! I definitely recommend reading her Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders 'Witch Queen', fascinating book! It's in the Library albeit with a dead mega link, maybe someone can reupload it.
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Philip Heselton's exhaustive biography of Gerald Gardner is really great. I came away really liking Gerald, warts and all.
Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner: Into the Witch Cult
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Occult historian Mitch Horowitz tracked down information that the Gardener's initiatory "coven," the New Forest Coven (a forest which was actually the Crown's royal holdings, we learn from Heselton) to be organization started by Mabel Besant-Scott. So basically we can say Wicca is also downstream from Theosophy. I have his article somewhere.
Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner: Into the Witch Cult
Book – PDF - Philip Heselton - Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner: Into the Witch Cult
From the author of the highly acclaimed Wiccan Roots, this is the first full-length biography of Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) a very personal tale of the man who single-handedly brought about the revival of witchcraft in England in the mid 20th Century. From his birth into an old family...
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Occult historian Mitch Horowitz tracked down information that the Gardener's initiatory "coven," the New Forest Coven (a forest which was actually the Crown's royal holdings, we learn from Heselton) to be organization started by Mabel Besant-Scott. So basically we can say Wicca is also downstream from Theosophy. I have his article somewhere.
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It's obvious that Gardener lied about his "mystical witch coven".
The man was in so many magickal group, he learned the power of using "fantasized" elements to put practictionners in the zone. Just like the Golden Dawn with their "egyptian" elements...
This is why im always pissed when people laugh at chaos magick and pop culture magick.
The man was in so many magickal group, he learned the power of using "fantasized" elements to put practictionners in the zone. Just like the Golden Dawn with their "egyptian" elements...
This is why im always pissed when people laugh at chaos magick and pop culture magick.
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It's not my thing, but I cut Gerald some slack. He couldn't have seen this globally connected information architecture of the Internet, digging into his mythic construct with a fine-toothed comb.
Dude accidentally made Rock and Roll by scooping up a lot of Anglo Academic hallucinations from the British romanticizing their own past since the early 1800s. They were living through machined edge of the Industrial Revolution and Empire, and living through the leading edge of the Disenchantment of the World and materialism. He did them a favor by giving them a dream.
OK, he leaned heavily into the common myths of "Ye' Merry Ole' England" - a Romanticist idea that before the factories, there was a pagan, pastoral paradise. He essentially remixed the works of many but mostly Sir James Frazer, Margaret Murray - whose (now debunked) "Witch-Cult" theory provided the academic bones. Aleister Crowley, who likely helped him polish the rituals. Tricksy Ole' Gerald was... what? 7th degree OTO, if I recall?
This stuff was just the Pagan Mind Virus of that time (hallucination spread by social contagion among the "thought leaders" of their day)., That is lasted until the late 1990s, and only started being questioned by an academic or two in the late 1960's, is quite the lesson about the tenacity of beautiful dreams needing left-brained validation.
Look at the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, England.
In Doreset there's what the academics swore up and down was " Big Penis Pagan Fertility Man on a Hillside"or something. All the prominent archaeologists and historians all championed the idea that he was an ancient Celtic deity or a Romano-British representation of Hercules. The Giant is carved directly into the hillside, positioned right below the site of a former Benedictine Abbey. Turns out it was just a big, bathroom stall penis drawing punking the Church and Oliver Cromwell.
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I don't doubt that Gardner did meet a group of practicing witches in the New Forest, and was initiated as a witch and even participated in at least a couple of rituals with them (such as the Cone of Power that was raised to try and keep Hitler away from British shores.) We can fault Gardner, though, for claiming the group was some sort of pre-Christian intact survival of a universal witch religion a la Margaret Murray.
Gardner was always honest in saying that when he was initiated into the New Forest coven that they had very fragmentary material they were working with. He said that he therefore had to fill in the gaps in order to make it work -- and of course that meant borrowing from anywhere he could.
The real question is what exactly he learned from the New Forest coven, and where did they get it from? And is there any evidence the New Forest coven existed at all prior to the specific members who were in it -- and were they self-taught or trained by some other group or teacher? From my time reading everything I could find about Wiccan history it seems that there was very little Gardner actually got from his initiators. He only ever received a first degree initiation, and that was likely at the very start of his time with them rather than the culmination of anything like a training program. Likely one of the things he did get from them was the idea of worshipping a goddess as the main deity, and the god being her consort rather than the main deity. And following that, having the High Priestess of the coven as the leader with the high priest as her assistant. But everything else could very easily have been borrowed from existing published sources -- working in a circle, calling the quarters and elements, the ritual tools, are all easy to find in classical grimoires. The idea of formal initiations and a degree system comes from Freemasonry and magical systems like the Golden Dawn that were inspired by Freemasonry. And we know Gardner was into nudism already, and witches have often been depicted as cavorting naked, so it's not surprising that Gardner would make nudity part of his witch cult.
Philip Heselton does a good job documenting evidence for the New Forest coven that initiated Gardner in his book "In Search of the New Forest Coven". His two-volume "Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner" focusses on Gardner's life and the influences that led to his promotion/creation of Wicca.
For more about likely sources for Wiccan ideas, practice, etc. look for Doreen Valiente's "The Rebirth of Witchcraft", as well as Aidan Kelly's "Inventing Witchcraft", and also Sorita d'Este & David Rankine's "Wicca Magickal Beginnings."
There's also lots of helpful information on the Gerald Gardner dot com website, and the Doreen Valiente dot com website. There is also a lot of excellent historical material on a website called TheWica dot co dot uk (note the single C spelling of Wicca that they use.)
Gardner was always honest in saying that when he was initiated into the New Forest coven that they had very fragmentary material they were working with. He said that he therefore had to fill in the gaps in order to make it work -- and of course that meant borrowing from anywhere he could.
The real question is what exactly he learned from the New Forest coven, and where did they get it from? And is there any evidence the New Forest coven existed at all prior to the specific members who were in it -- and were they self-taught or trained by some other group or teacher? From my time reading everything I could find about Wiccan history it seems that there was very little Gardner actually got from his initiators. He only ever received a first degree initiation, and that was likely at the very start of his time with them rather than the culmination of anything like a training program. Likely one of the things he did get from them was the idea of worshipping a goddess as the main deity, and the god being her consort rather than the main deity. And following that, having the High Priestess of the coven as the leader with the high priest as her assistant. But everything else could very easily have been borrowed from existing published sources -- working in a circle, calling the quarters and elements, the ritual tools, are all easy to find in classical grimoires. The idea of formal initiations and a degree system comes from Freemasonry and magical systems like the Golden Dawn that were inspired by Freemasonry. And we know Gardner was into nudism already, and witches have often been depicted as cavorting naked, so it's not surprising that Gardner would make nudity part of his witch cult.
Philip Heselton does a good job documenting evidence for the New Forest coven that initiated Gardner in his book "In Search of the New Forest Coven". His two-volume "Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner" focusses on Gardner's life and the influences that led to his promotion/creation of Wicca.
For more about likely sources for Wiccan ideas, practice, etc. look for Doreen Valiente's "The Rebirth of Witchcraft", as well as Aidan Kelly's "Inventing Witchcraft", and also Sorita d'Este & David Rankine's "Wicca Magickal Beginnings."
There's also lots of helpful information on the Gerald Gardner dot com website, and the Doreen Valiente dot com website. There is also a lot of excellent historical material on a website called TheWica dot co dot uk (note the single C spelling of Wicca that they use.)
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This it the high probability theory, in my opinion:
Mitch Horowitz, drawing on the historical research of scholars like Ronald Hutton, posits that the "ancient coven" Gardner claimed to have found in 1939 was effectively a subset of the Crotona Fellowship, an occult theater group in Christchurch , southern England.
Horowitz argues that the group Gardner encountered wasn't a survival of a prehistoric "Witch Cult," but a group of Co-Masons and Theosophists. Mabel Besant-Scott was a high-ranking leader in British Co-Masonry (an offshoot of Freemasonry that admits women).
The theory Horowitz supports is that Gardner "Wiccanized" what was essentially Theosophical and Co-Masonic ritual. By attributing his initiation to a super secret, surviving rural coven (led by figures like "Old Dorothy" Clutterbuck), he was able to distance his new religion from the then-fading Victorian Theosophical movement and give it a "folk" pedigree.
I have not read it but I hear the chapter "The Secret History of the Religion of Tomorrow" in Mitch Horowitz's book Modern Occultism (2023), contains the specific exploration of Gerald Gardner, Mabel Besant-Scott, and the Co-Masonic connection. I shoud read it.
All that said, in the end it does not matter.
As Panthiest / NeoPlatonist , a grim trad magician, I'm also enough of a Chaos magician to say it "The Mystery" (as the One, God, or the God and the Goddess will come through rituals that have a level of mythic immersion and resonance. But the evidence of New Forest being a "real" historical "witch cult" is slim to none
(That is a big topic were we also unpack Theurgy from Sorcery, that Gardner confalted togethern his contruct, , following Crowley's bad lead here )
If they thhis group of Brits has any historical pratice of magic - and juging from early Wicca, they was very little there - the Britsh magic they hoovered up was mostly the local Cunning Men and Women , who were also not pagans. In the late 1970's and early 1980's they hoovered up Brujeria and Hoodoo, but that is a another story.
Mitch Horowitz, drawing on the historical research of scholars like Ronald Hutton, posits that the "ancient coven" Gardner claimed to have found in 1939 was effectively a subset of the Crotona Fellowship, an occult theater group in Christchurch , southern England.
Horowitz argues that the group Gardner encountered wasn't a survival of a prehistoric "Witch Cult," but a group of Co-Masons and Theosophists. Mabel Besant-Scott was a high-ranking leader in British Co-Masonry (an offshoot of Freemasonry that admits women).
The theory Horowitz supports is that Gardner "Wiccanized" what was essentially Theosophical and Co-Masonic ritual. By attributing his initiation to a super secret, surviving rural coven (led by figures like "Old Dorothy" Clutterbuck), he was able to distance his new religion from the then-fading Victorian Theosophical movement and give it a "folk" pedigree.
I have not read it but I hear the chapter "The Secret History of the Religion of Tomorrow" in Mitch Horowitz's book Modern Occultism (2023), contains the specific exploration of Gerald Gardner, Mabel Besant-Scott, and the Co-Masonic connection. I shoud read it.
All that said, in the end it does not matter.
As Panthiest / NeoPlatonist , a grim trad magician, I'm also enough of a Chaos magician to say it "The Mystery" (as the One, God, or the God and the Goddess will come through rituals that have a level of mythic immersion and resonance. But the evidence of New Forest being a "real" historical "witch cult" is slim to none
(That is a big topic were we also unpack Theurgy from Sorcery, that Gardner confalted togethern his contruct, , following Crowley's bad lead here )
If they thhis group of Brits has any historical pratice of magic - and juging from early Wicca, they was very little there - the Britsh magic they hoovered up was mostly the local Cunning Men and Women , who were also not pagans. In the late 1970's and early 1980's they hoovered up Brujeria and Hoodoo, but that is a another story.
Good post . One thing ; Crowley gave Gardiner a 4th degree 'charter' ( meaning he didnt 'work hos way up' from Minerval ) ... in those days they were thrown around for various ' reasons to do with set up and formation of OTO bodies ' .
Now AC could have made GG a 3rd degree and that would have enabled an iniatoru body ( 'Oasis' ) to have been formed , if he had two others . So why a 4th degree charter ? perhaps they planed the next level, a Lodge ? But that requires a 5th degree ? So maybe thats why some historians think he may have been 'recognized' as a 7th ? In any case , 7 is more up with 'admin degrees' so He might have been set up for some future body .... maybe plans changed and a new approach was needed ( there seems some evidence for this ; a type of 'folk expression' of the OTO 'mysteries' ... hence ; Wicca ) or maybe it was some blend or hybrid of some type . ?
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Nice, Firetree.
OK, this is a tough one becasue I actually like Wiccans. But this other stuff is a net negative.
Gerald Gardner is responsible for conflating Sorcery (nee Goetia, witchcraft) with all magic, philosophy, and Theurgy. (To be fair Levy and Crowley really got it going.) This affected Wiccans and, later, worldwide modern pagan revivalist efforts (who still work within a "Wiccanate" reality tunnel as well - see Prof. Ronald Hutton). As religions, they are totalizing worldviews and need serious unpacking, and included in a wide discussion of 'occult' nomenclature and how it’s culturally contained is germane to Anglo, and Caucasian "witchcraft" in general, moving forward.
For discussion of historical nomenclature about what we are doing here see:
wizardforums.com
wizardforums.com
Moving to recent history and the 20th Century Anglo magical revivial.
What Haitians mean by the word Magic (Magi, pronounced mah-gee) is closer to what was goetia, the Greek word for sorcery. Gerald Gardner did not practice sorcery. He practiced New Thought inside circles, with nudity and spanking, while taking the tools of the Grimoire Tradition. He appropriated our traditional black-handled knife and called it an "Athame".
Wiccan have candle magic , now but that was only added in the 1980's after Raymond Buckland appropriates the practice from Hoodoo back in his candle magic book. All good, just honor the people who came before you. Back in the late 1970s, Wiccans in New York started hanging out with Latino and Latina brujos and brujas and picked up some recipes.
Malcolm Mil's Potion Book was then stolen and published by Herman Slater of the Magickal Childe in New York as his Magical Formulary he added a few Anglo folk magic recipes and then claimed it was all "pagan witchcraft." His book was compiled similarly to Harry Hyatt’s survey of African American Conjure/Hoodoo: by interviewing people (maybe) and collecting publications from the Chicago Hoodoo supply stores of the early 20th century (probably)
I know becasue I am old enough to watched it happen as a young tween. A local High priest who started a famous seminal coven in my towen, and went to my Unitarian Church (and ran a great seance one Halloween when I was 10) started making condition oils, but did not call them that. They wer "witch" oils.
That aside, Slater was notorious for pirating or re-editing existing works (like the Grimoire of Lady Sheba) and marketing them under the Magickal Childe brand. The connection between the 1920s Chicago Hoodoo supply shops and the later "Wiccan" adoption of color correspondences for candles is a well-documented trajectory in the history of North American folk magic.
Herman Slater and his contemporaries essentially performed a spiritual strip-mining of the Bronx and Brooklyn. They saw what worked - candle colors from Hoodoo supply shops, botanica recipes, Psalm magi, and "Paganized" it to make it more palatable to a white, middle-class audience seeking a "European" identity.
This is how Raymond Buckland’s candle magic book was able to include Psalms yet still claim his new incantations were the older, more "authentic" version of what was actually Brujeria and Hoodoo practice. That is where Wiccans got their colored candles.
When a new religion comes along and claims to be older than the indigenous practices, it causes issues - usually by appropriating that which came before. Now, I am not a moralist, and I say have fun, just don't spread misinformation about one’s five-minute-old "tradition."
The friction is a classic example of 'invented tradition', a term coined by historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. When a movement like Wicca or Neo-Paganism claims "ancient lineage" while actually being a modern synthesis, it creates a historical displacement that can be particularly abrasive to practitioners of living, unbroken lineages, such as Brujeria and Hoodoo.
The "Wiccanate" ideas form an overlay. Because Wicca was the first to "brand" modern witchcraft, its specific tools (the Athame, the Quarters, the Wheel of the Year) so it became a default template. When this template is exported to places like Italy, Greece, or Mexico, it often overwrites local folk practices. By claiming a tradition is 500 to 5,000 years old rather than 50 years old it unconsciously (and maybe quite consciously where money and status is involved. ) attempts to bypass the usual "burden of proof." It creates an instant hierarchy where the newcomer claims to be the "source," and the existing local practitioner is viewed as having "forgotten" their own history. The low-information magic of the WitchTok explosion and magical consumer marketplace are a direct result of this type of self-serving distortion of history. It makes us all pooerer and stupider over the log run (And uglier, see Neo-nazi pagans in Ukraine) .
See also
Localizing Neo-Paganism: integrating global and indigenous traditions in a Mediterranean Catholic society
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Vol. 17, No. 4 (December 2011)
For more on the dynamic of Anglo Protesto-Pagan (who are same folks by one generation) erasure of indigenous magical and religious cultures, see ex-Wiccan Paul Kingsnorth here on Wiccante reality tunnel displacing the Catholic religion by inventing a goddess.
I am enough of a Pantheist and chaos magican to shrug it off, but many Latino grimoire magicans and follk magic prationioers get pretty peeved when Wiccanate WitchTokers come AT THEM with these very moderisnist reivsionist ideas. The anger is a real thing and I have had to be in the middle fo this more often than I prefer.
-----------------------------
------------------------------
How to build a Goddess
The changing face of St Brigid
Feb 01, 2026
Today is the feast day of St Brigid, one of Ireland's three patron saints. But who was Brigid - and why do we hear less about her these days, and more about the ‘Goddess Brigid’ who seems to be taking her place? This is a slightly rewritten version of an essay originally posted here in 2024. I think it’s more relevant by the year.
Grokopedia has a surprisingly accurate if breezy introduction to global modern pagan reconstruction, revivalist effort (and lets be honest for a sec, sometimes outright fabrication efforts, well-meaning or malign).
To be fair off screen, zoomed out, there's a fractal hen captioned "Theosophy" and "Freemasonry. "
OK, this is a tough one becasue I actually like Wiccans. But this other stuff is a net negative.
Gerald Gardner is responsible for conflating Sorcery (nee Goetia, witchcraft) with all magic, philosophy, and Theurgy. (To be fair Levy and Crowley really got it going.) This affected Wiccans and, later, worldwide modern pagan revivalist efforts (who still work within a "Wiccanate" reality tunnel as well - see Prof. Ronald Hutton). As religions, they are totalizing worldviews and need serious unpacking, and included in a wide discussion of 'occult' nomenclature and how it’s culturally contained is germane to Anglo, and Caucasian "witchcraft" in general, moving forward.
For discussion of historical nomenclature about what we are doing here see:
Working definition of: Sorcerer vs Magician vs ????
Ok. I can't sleep so, welcome to: The insomniatic ramblings of Zmaji! 🤫🫣😲 Tonight at 2:45AM London England, 48mins short of the dreaded 3:33AM basically reflecting on years of practice looking in the mirror like Frankenstein's monster wondering, 'what am I... what have I become!?' 👹👹👹😭 This...
wizardforums.com
Working definition of: Sorcerer vs Magician vs ????
Ok. I can't sleep so, welcome to: The insomniatic ramblings of Zmaji! 🤫🫣😲 Tonight at 2:45AM London England, 48mins short of the dreaded 3:33AM basically reflecting on years of practice looking in the mirror like Frankenstein's monster wondering, 'what am I... what have I become!?' 👹👹👹😭 This...
wizardforums.com
Moving to recent history and the 20th Century Anglo magical revivial.
What Haitians mean by the word Magic (Magi, pronounced mah-gee) is closer to what was goetia, the Greek word for sorcery. Gerald Gardner did not practice sorcery. He practiced New Thought inside circles, with nudity and spanking, while taking the tools of the Grimoire Tradition. He appropriated our traditional black-handled knife and called it an "Athame".
Wiccan have candle magic , now but that was only added in the 1980's after Raymond Buckland appropriates the practice from Hoodoo back in his candle magic book. All good, just honor the people who came before you. Back in the late 1970s, Wiccans in New York started hanging out with Latino and Latina brujos and brujas and picked up some recipes.
Malcolm Mil's Potion Book was then stolen and published by Herman Slater of the Magickal Childe in New York as his Magical Formulary he added a few Anglo folk magic recipes and then claimed it was all "pagan witchcraft." His book was compiled similarly to Harry Hyatt’s survey of African American Conjure/Hoodoo: by interviewing people (maybe) and collecting publications from the Chicago Hoodoo supply stores of the early 20th century (probably)
I know becasue I am old enough to watched it happen as a young tween. A local High priest who started a famous seminal coven in my towen, and went to my Unitarian Church (and ran a great seance one Halloween when I was 10) started making condition oils, but did not call them that. They wer "witch" oils.
That aside, Slater was notorious for pirating or re-editing existing works (like the Grimoire of Lady Sheba) and marketing them under the Magickal Childe brand. The connection between the 1920s Chicago Hoodoo supply shops and the later "Wiccan" adoption of color correspondences for candles is a well-documented trajectory in the history of North American folk magic.
Herman Slater and his contemporaries essentially performed a spiritual strip-mining of the Bronx and Brooklyn. They saw what worked - candle colors from Hoodoo supply shops, botanica recipes, Psalm magi, and "Paganized" it to make it more palatable to a white, middle-class audience seeking a "European" identity.
This is how Raymond Buckland’s candle magic book was able to include Psalms yet still claim his new incantations were the older, more "authentic" version of what was actually Brujeria and Hoodoo practice. That is where Wiccans got their colored candles.
When a new religion comes along and claims to be older than the indigenous practices, it causes issues - usually by appropriating that which came before. Now, I am not a moralist, and I say have fun, just don't spread misinformation about one’s five-minute-old "tradition."
The friction is a classic example of 'invented tradition', a term coined by historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. When a movement like Wicca or Neo-Paganism claims "ancient lineage" while actually being a modern synthesis, it creates a historical displacement that can be particularly abrasive to practitioners of living, unbroken lineages, such as Brujeria and Hoodoo.
The "Wiccanate" ideas form an overlay. Because Wicca was the first to "brand" modern witchcraft, its specific tools (the Athame, the Quarters, the Wheel of the Year) so it became a default template. When this template is exported to places like Italy, Greece, or Mexico, it often overwrites local folk practices. By claiming a tradition is 500 to 5,000 years old rather than 50 years old it unconsciously (and maybe quite consciously where money and status is involved. ) attempts to bypass the usual "burden of proof." It creates an instant hierarchy where the newcomer claims to be the "source," and the existing local practitioner is viewed as having "forgotten" their own history. The low-information magic of the WitchTok explosion and magical consumer marketplace are a direct result of this type of self-serving distortion of history. It makes us all pooerer and stupider over the log run (And uglier, see Neo-nazi pagans in Ukraine) .
See also
Localizing Neo-Paganism: integrating global and indigenous traditions in a Mediterranean Catholic society
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Vol. 17, No. 4 (December 2011)
Post automatically merged:
For more on the dynamic of Anglo Protesto-Pagan (who are same folks by one generation) erasure of indigenous magical and religious cultures, see ex-Wiccan Paul Kingsnorth here on Wiccante reality tunnel displacing the Catholic religion by inventing a goddess.
I am enough of a Pantheist and chaos magican to shrug it off, but many Latino grimoire magicans and follk magic prationioers get pretty peeved when Wiccanate WitchTokers come AT THEM with these very moderisnist reivsionist ideas. The anger is a real thing and I have had to be in the middle fo this more often than I prefer.
-----------------------------
------------------------------
How to build a Goddess
The changing face of St Brigid
Feb 01, 2026
Today is the feast day of St Brigid, one of Ireland's three patron saints. But who was Brigid - and why do we hear less about her these days, and more about the ‘Goddess Brigid’ who seems to be taking her place? This is a slightly rewritten version of an essay originally posted here in 2024. I think it’s more relevant by the year.
Post automatically merged:
Grokopedia has a surprisingly accurate if breezy introduction to global modern pagan reconstruction, revivalist effort (and lets be honest for a sec, sometimes outright fabrication efforts, well-meaning or malign).
Post automatically merged:
To be fair off screen, zoomed out, there's a fractal hen captioned "Theosophy" and "Freemasonry. "
Last edited:
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That was definitely one of his sources. But Gardner was a magpie gathering bits from all over the place. He clearly also borrowed from Robert Graves, Charles Leland (particularly "Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches"), British folklore, things about druidry he learned from his friend Ross Nichols, classical grimoires, etc.
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Wiccans and modern pagans, as much as I like them, are not grimoire magicians or bothered much with daimonic sublunar entities until recently, when the Grimoire Revival, of the late 1990's to about 2016, reached the mainstream occult audience.
I never get the impression Gardner ever used the grimoires. He had them around mostly as window dressing. Our stuff is cool looking. He was much more of a romantic revivalist. Alex Sanders tried to summon a demon once, a scared himself silly, and never did it again. The older folks who were Wiccan that knew in the 1980's had no interest in them.
'Pagan' magic in the USA - until they hoovered up African American and Latino folk magic starting around the time Sybil Leek opened up her 'Witch Shop' in Houston, Texas (true) and started getting interested in Vodou and Brujeria - mostly involved dancing in a circle and visualizinga New Thought 'Cone of Power.' All good. I like that stuff.
And traditional British folk magic has a Christianity problem.
There was a real living tradition of magic in England among the Cunning Folk. But they were not pagan, and Wicca does not like to talk about them at all, because they don't fit the message. See Owen Davies, Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History.
Davies points out the historical British Cunning-folk were often the most Christian people in the village. Their charms were built on their faith in the Trinity or biblical apocrypha. Wicca, as a modern movement trying to establish itself as an "Old Religion" AND an alternative to Christianity had, and still has, a authenticity issue, when their living tradition was deeply Christian.
That said, as a Pantheist., I support efforts to make something new, but it should be labeled as such, and not retconned into the history of magic. Now if modern pagans would just embrace Chaos Magic, there would be no issue.
I never get the impression Gardner ever used the grimoires. He had them around mostly as window dressing. Our stuff is cool looking. He was much more of a romantic revivalist. Alex Sanders tried to summon a demon once, a scared himself silly, and never did it again. The older folks who were Wiccan that knew in the 1980's had no interest in them.
'Pagan' magic in the USA - until they hoovered up African American and Latino folk magic starting around the time Sybil Leek opened up her 'Witch Shop' in Houston, Texas (true) and started getting interested in Vodou and Brujeria - mostly involved dancing in a circle and visualizinga New Thought 'Cone of Power.' All good. I like that stuff.
And traditional British folk magic has a Christianity problem.
There was a real living tradition of magic in England among the Cunning Folk. But they were not pagan, and Wicca does not like to talk about them at all, because they don't fit the message. See Owen Davies, Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History.
Davies points out the historical British Cunning-folk were often the most Christian people in the village. Their charms were built on their faith in the Trinity or biblical apocrypha. Wicca, as a modern movement trying to establish itself as an "Old Religion" AND an alternative to Christianity had, and still has, a authenticity issue, when their living tradition was deeply Christian.
That said, as a Pantheist., I support efforts to make something new, but it should be labeled as such, and not retconned into the history of magic. Now if modern pagans would just embrace Chaos Magic, there would be no issue.
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My point wasn't really that it'd died out, bur rather that it stopped being pre-christian. I should've been clearer on that, thank you! The reason why I am strongly again the way the original question was worded is because it carries an implication that there was a separate, distinct brand of "witchcraft" before christianity. The pre/post christian split is simply an unhelpful way of looking at it.
I frankly don't really understand what you are trying to say. Of course there was folk magic in the UK before wicca, no one in their right might would credit Gardener with inventing it. The point is that traditional British witchcraft has very little to do with Gardener and the New Forest Coven and the supposed ancient wiccan pagan witch-cults were completely made up to give his new religion more credibility.
(On a side note I do enjoy Icelandic sorcery)