Founder: Gerald Gardner
Wicca emerged in 1940s Britain as a highly ritualistic, nature venerating, polytheistic, magical and religious system, which made use of Eastern techniques but operated within a predominantly western framework. It arose from the cultural impulses of the fin de siecle, in particular from the occult revival of the 1880s onwards, and was heavily influenced by the theories of Margaret Murray. Murray proposed that witchcraft was the survival of remnants of a pre-Christian, indigenous fertility religion, which worshipped a horned god and was almost extinguished by the Great Witch Hunts of the early modern period. These influences were woven into Wicca in the 1940s by Gerald Gardner (see Gardner, Gerald), and developed by Doreen Valiente (see Valiente, Doreen). Most, though not all, Wiccans today acknowledge that there is little evidence for a continuous Witchcraft tradition, but claim rather that Wicca is a revitalization and re-invention of ancient folk practices that existed in pre-Christian Britain, even if they were not part of any organized tradition. Some Wiccans today continue to identify Wicca with 'The Burning Times', as they call the witch persecutions, and this is particularly true of feminist Wicca and witchcraft.
By the mid-1950s, Wicca had become relatively popular due to Gardner's love of publicity which drew the religion to the attention of the public, and in the early 1960s it was exported to North America. Gardner died in 1964, but his tradition of Gardnerian Wicca was firmly established. In the 1960s, as Alex Sanders (see Sanders, Alex) brought a stronger application of high ritual magic to his branch of Wicca, and outside the UK other traditions have evolved, based on Wicca and drawing in their own local or national folklore and culture, with the USA in particular developing a multitude of derivations, including Faery Wicca, Dianic Wicca and Seax Wicca.
Since Gardner's first covens, Wicca has spread across North America, northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Wicca has thus become a global phenomenon and significant Wiccan communities can be found in most countries inhabited by significant populations of people of European descent, but also in countries such as Japan that are closely linked to Western cultures by the global economy and media. Wicca is used to refer to 'covens' of friends who have no initiation or training but gather together to celebrate the seasons or full moons, but it traditionally styles itself as an esoteric religion and mystery tradition, entry to which is solely through initiation ceremonies which include oaths of secrecy and which are designed to trigger personal transformation.
Wicca is organized in small, often intense groups called covens. It does not seek converts but believes that those who are right for the religion, which includes the practice of magic in its rites, holds nature to be sacred, and venerates deity in the form of both gods and goddesses, will find their way to an appropriate coven. Wicca is a religion in which the divine is immanent, being apparent in the earth, the moon, the stars, the bodies of men and women. Humans, nature and deities are all regarded as interconnected and sacred. Wiccans have only a few beliefs that most of them adhere to, and these include
'The Witches Rede: An it harm none, do what you will', and 'The Law of Three-fold Effect', the belief that any action a person commits will return to that person threefold.
The etymology of the word 'Wicca' has been hotly debated among practitioners. It has been argued that the word derives from the same root as the Anglo-Saxon word for knowledge, wit:, wittich, which stems from weetmeaning 'to know', and such a definition lends itself to modern Wiccan understanding of themselves as 'wise' men and women who practise the 'Craft of the Wise'. Similarly, some suggest that 'Wicca' derives from wik, meaning to 'bend or shape', which links nicely with modern Wicca's definition of magic, which is to bend or shape energy through will in order to make manifest something on the physical plane. Wicca in fact derives from 'weik' and 'wicce'. Wicca is actually the Anglo-Saxon word for a male witch (female, 'wicce'), the plural form of which may have been 'Wiccan'.