Wicca

Overview

Wicca is the largest of the modern Pagan religions, a new religious movement that came into public view in England in the 1950s around the retired civil servant Gerald Gardner. Gardner and his early followers held that Wicca continued a pre-Christian witches' religion that had secretly survived for centuries, an idea the folklorist Margaret Murray had argued for; historians who later examined the witch-trial evidence rejected it, and most Wiccans today accept that their religion took shape in the twentieth century rather than being an unbroken survival, even as they still draw on older folklore and ceremonial magic. Wiccans usually call themselves witches and honour a Goddess and a Horned God through seasonal festivals, often meeting in small groups called covens.^[9–11]

History

Esoteric roots 1880s–1930s

Wicca grew out of Britain's Western esoteric subculture. Secret magical societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, and the ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley shaped its later ritual style. Into this milieu came the Egyptologist and folklorist Margaret Murray, who argued that people tried as witches in early modern Europe had actually followed a surviving pre-Christian fertility religion built around a horned god.^[12–13]

Gardner and Gardnerian Wicca 1939–1950s

Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant who had spent much of his career in Asia, returned to England in the 1930s and settled near the New Forest. He later said that in 1939 a coven of hereditary witches initiated him there, though historians still dispute whether such a group existed as he described it. After Britain repealed its old witchcraft law in 1951, Gardner published Witchcraft Today (1954), presenting Wicca as a surviving ancient religion, and, with his high priestess Doreen Valiente, built the rituals and the Book of Shadows that became Gardnerian Wicca.^[14–16]

New branches 1960s–1980s

Other occultists soon founded their own lines. Alex Sanders, initiated in the 1960s, built a more ceremonially styled branch known as Alexandrian Wicca. In the United States, Victor Anderson's Feri tradition and, from 1971, the Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna Budapest's feminist Dianic Wicca carried the religion into the counterculture and second-wave feminism. Starhawk's book The Spiral Dance (1979) and the Reclaiming tradition she helped found in San Francisco in 1980 fused witchcraft with environmental and left-wing activism.^[17–19]

Growth, suspicion and today 1970s–today

From the 1970s, self-initiation books let Wicca grow fast outside the coven system, and most Wiccans today practise alone rather than in groups. Wicca's public image was still damaged by Evangelical claims that linked it to Satanism, which fed the unfounded Satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s and early 1990s; Wiccan and Pagan organisations rejected the charge. Historians specialising in early modern witchcraft dismantled Murray's thesis from the 1960s onward, and most Wiccans came to accept that their religion began in the twentieth century.^[20–21]

Key moments

1. 1954 CEWicca goes public · England

Beliefs

The Goddess and the Horned God

Gardner taught that Wicca's deities were a Mother Goddess and a Horned God who represent nature's cycle of growth and death. Later Wiccans have taken this many ways: some treat the Goddess and God as literal beings, others as one divine force, and others as symbols or psychological archetypes rather than literal persons; some feminist branches honour the Goddess alone.^[22–23]

Drawing down the Moon

In this central Wiccan rite a priestess, or sometimes a priest, enters a trance so that the Goddess may speak and act through her during ritual. It expresses the wider Wiccan belief that divinity is immanent, present within the circle and the practitioners themselves, rather than remote in a separate heaven.^[24]

Wiccan Rede

Most Wiccans follow this short ethical guideline, commonly put as "If it harm none, do what you will," which leaves moral judgment to the individual's own conscience rather than a fixed code of commandments. Deliberately cursing or harming others through magic is generally rejected as unethical under it.^[25]

The Summerland

Beliefs about death vary across Wicca, but many practitioners hold that the soul rests afterward in the Summerland, a peaceful afterlife realm, before being reincarnated into a new body to keep learning. Other Wiccans hold different views, or none in particular.^[26]

Practice

Covens and initiation

Wiccans traditionally joined through initiation into a coven, a small group often led jointly by a high priestess and high priest, with thirteen traditionally cited as an ideal size. Several older lines, including Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, use three initiatory degrees modelled loosely on Freemasonry, connecting each initiate to that line's lineage.^[27]

Ritual tools and the circle

A Wiccan rite usually casts a circle, with an altar at one point, and uses tools such as a chalice, a pentacle, incense and a ceremonial knife called an athame that is not used to cut anything physical. Some practitioners work "skyclad," or naked, while others wear robes or ordinary clothes, and a ritual often ends with a shared meal.^[28]

The Wheel of the Year

Most Wiccans keep eight seasonal festivals, called sabbats, together known as the Wheel of the Year: the solstices and equinoxes together with four festivals adapted mainly from British and Irish folk calendars, among them Samhain and Beltane. Wiccans in the Southern Hemisphere often shift the dates so the festivals match their own seasons.^[29]

Solitary practice

Since the 1970s, how-to books aimed at individual readers have let people practise Wicca without finding or joining a coven, and solitary practitioners now outnumber those in covens. The shift, reinforced by the internet, has made Wicca far less centrally organised than in Gardner's day.^[30]

Holy days

Samhain

31 October–1 November (autumn, start of winter)

A festival honouring the dead and the year's turn to winter, adapted from the Gaelic Samhain and counted among Wicca's four "greater sabbats"; it is one root of the secular Halloween.^[31]

Beltane

30 April–1 May (spring to summer)

A fire festival marking the start of summer, with roots in British and Irish May Day custom; some Wiccans mark it with fertility rites and handfasting, a Wiccan wedding rite.^[32]

Yule

20–22 December (winter solstice)

The winter solstice sabbat, marking the symbolic rebirth of the sun and, in Wiccan telling, of the Horned God, drawing on older northern European midwinter customs.^[33]

People

Scripture

Witchcraft Today

1954

Gerald Gardner's book, published soon after Britain repealed its old witchcraft law, introduced Wicca to the public and argued, with an introduction by Margaret Murray, that it continued an ancient pre-Christian religion. Most historians now reject that claim of unbroken survival.^[38]

Book of Shadows

from the 1950s

Not one fixed volume but a personal or coven ritual book, copied and added to by each owner, holding spells, seasonal rites and ethical teaching. Gardner's original version, which he claimed had ancient roots, was reworked by Doreen Valiente and others into the forms used today.^[39]

The Spiral Dance

1979

Starhawk's widely read handbook of feminist witchcraft set out goddess-centred ritual alongside political and environmental activism, selling heavily since its first publication and shaping Wicca's more activist wing in North America.^[40]

Places

New Forest

GBR

A royal forest in Hampshire where Gerald Gardner said in 1939 he was initiated by a coven of witches already active there; the claim, central to Wicca's origin story, is doubted by most historians, who think any such group was itself recent.^[41]

Numbers

National censuses

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2021, 'Religious affiliation in Australia' (Table 4), CC BY 4.0. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0 Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0342-01 Religion by visible minority and generation status: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations with parts, released 2022-10-26. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Source: Stats NZ, 2018 Census, licensed by Stats NZ for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Common misconceptions

Glossary

Coven

A small Wiccan group, traditionally led by a high priestess and high priest, through which members are initiated and ritual is practised together.^[45]

Athame

A ceremonial double-edged knife used to direct ritual energy and mark a circle's boundary; it is not used to cut anything physically.^[46]

Skyclad

Ritually naked; some Wiccan traditions perform rites skyclad, while others wear robes or ordinary clothing.^[47]

Sabbat

One of Wicca's eight seasonal festivals making up the Wheel of the Year.^[48]

Book of Shadows

A Wiccan's or coven's own book of rituals, spells and ethical teaching, copied and expanded from earlier versions by each owner.^[49]

Wiccan Rede

A short ethical guideline, often put as "If it harm none, do what you will," that leaves moral judgment to the individual.^[50]

Drawing down the Moon

A rite in which a priestess enters trance so that the Goddess may speak or act through her.^[51]