The Canon · No. 106
Wicca
The Craft; Witchcraft (modern)
1954 CE – present · Esoteric / Occult · Living · UK, US, Australia, Canada, Brazil
VIII. POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY — 1945 – PRESENT
How many
Roughly 1.5 million in the United States by some survey estimates, though the boundary with the broader pagan and witchcraft milieu is very blurry. Among the fastest-growing religious identifications in the English-speaking world.
Who began it
Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), a retired British civil servant, who published Witchcraft Today in 1954 claiming to have been initiated into a surviving coven in the New Forest. Doreen Valiente rewrote much of his liturgy and is the author of its best-known texts.
What it is for
To live in attunement with the cycles of nature and to develop the self through ritual, magic and direct experience of the divine.
What it worships
The Goddess, in her aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone, and the Horned God, who dies and is reborn annually. Some traditions are duotheist, some polytheist, some regard the deities as archetypes. Feminist and Dianic branches worship the Goddess alone.
What it holds
The Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do what ye will — an ethic of consequence rather than commandment. The Threefold Law, that what you send out returns three times over, is widely taught and is a modern addition Gardner did not teach. Immanent divinity in nature. Reincarnation. Magic understood as the directed use of will and attention. There is no devil in Wicca — Satan is a Christian figure and Wicca is not a Christian heresy.
What it does
The Wheel of the Year: eight sabbats — Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon — several of whose modern names were coined in the twentieth century. Esbats at the full moon. Casting a circle; calling the quarters; the athame, chalice, pentacle and wand. Initiation through three degrees in Gardnerian and Alexandrian lines; solitary practice is now much more common than coven practice. Handfasting. Skyclad (ritually nude) working in some traditions and not others.
After death
Reincarnation, with a rest between lives in the Summerland, a place of peace and reunion where the soul reviews its life and prepares to return. There is no hell and no punishment. Many Wiccans also hold that one is reborn among those one loved. Death is understood as one point on a cycle rather than as a verdict.
Its texts
No scripture. The Book of Shadows is a working notebook of rituals, traditionally copied by hand from one's initiator. Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess is the closest thing to a shared sacred text. Influential books: Starhawk's The Spiral Dance (1979), Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (1988).
Its branches
Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Dianic, Feri, Reclaiming, Seax-Wica, and a very large majority of eclectic solitary practitioners.
Of note
Wicca's historical claim — an unbroken pagan survival — is false, and its practitioners have largely stopped making it. What remains is a genuine modern religion that was assembled in the 1950s from Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, Crowley, folklore and Murray's mistaken history, and that has since become something its founders would not recognise.
Its timeline
- 1899, 1921 CE Charles Leland's Aradia; Margaret Murray's witch-cult hypothesis, which claimed European witch trials had persecuted a surviving pagan religion. It is now comprehensively rejected by historians, and it was the historical premise on which Wicca was built.
- <strong>1951 CE</strong> Britain repeals the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which had criminalised claiming magical powers. Wicca could not have been published before this.
- 1954 CE Gardner publishes Witchcraft Today.
- 1953–1960s CE Doreen Valiente rewrites the ritual corpus, removing much of Crowley's material and giving Wicca its distinctive voice.
- 1960s CE Alex Sanders founds the Alexandrian tradition.
- 1968–1979 CE Wicca reaches America; Dianic Wicca founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in 1971; Starhawk's Spiral Dance connects it to feminism and ecological activism.
- 1985 CE Dettmer v. Landon — a US federal court recognises Wicca as a religion entitled to First Amendment protection.
- 1980s–90s CE The Satanic Panic falsely associates Wicca with ritual abuse; no evidence for the alleged network was ever found.
- 2007 CE After a decade of litigation, the US Department of Veterans Affairs permits the pentacle on military headstones.
- 2010s–present Rapid growth, largely solitary and online; substantial internal argument over cultural appropriation and over the exclusion of transgender women by some Dianic groups.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.