Wicca

Considered a new religious movement by scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esotericism, developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant.

Doreen Valiente joined Gardner in the 1950s, further building Wicca's liturgical tradition of beliefs, principles, and practices, disseminated through published books as well as secret written and oral teachings passed along to initiates.

Many variations of the religion have grown and evolved over time, associated with a number of diverse lineages, sects, and denominations, referred to as traditions, each with its own organisational structure and level of centralisation.

[37] In some popular culture, such as television programs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, the word "Wicca" has been used as a synonym for witchcraft more generally, including in non-religious and non-pagan forms.

With this mindset, a Wiccan may regard the Germanic Ēostre, Hindu Kali, and Catholic Virgin Mary each as manifestations of one supreme Goddess and likewise, the Celtic Cernunnos, the ancient Greek Dionysus and the Judeo-Christian Yahweh as aspects of a single, archetypal god.

This view was heavily criticised in 1999 by the historian Ronald Hutton who claimed that the evidence displayed the very opposite: that "a large number [of Wiccans] were in jobs at the cutting edge [of scientific culture], such as computer technology".

[24] Nevertheless, Gardner and other founders of Wicca believed the theory was true, and saw the witch as a "positive antitype which derives much of its symbolic force from its implicit criticism of dominant Judaeo-Christian and Enlightenment values".

[87] Many Wiccans also seek to cultivate a set of eight virtues mentioned in Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess,[88] these being mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power, and compassion.

[91] Although Gerald Gardner initially demonstrated an aversion to homosexuality, claiming that it brought down "the curse of the goddess",[92] it is now generally accepted in all traditions of Wicca, with groups such as the Minoan Brotherhood openly basing their philosophy upon it.

Carly B. Floyd of Illinois Wesleyan University has published an informative white paper on this subject: Mother Goddesses and Subversive Witches: Competing Narratives of Gender Essentialism, Heteronormativity, Feminism, and Queerness in Wiccan Theology and Ritual.

The scholar of religion Joanne Pearson noted that in her experience, most Wiccans take a "realistic view of living in the real world" replete with its many problems and do not claim that the gods "have all the answers" to these.

[98] Various analogies have been devised to explain the concept of the five elements; for instance, the Wiccan Ann-Marie Gallagher used that of a tree, which is composed of earth (with the soil and plant matter), water (sap and moisture), fire (through photosynthesis) and air (the formation of oxygen from carbon dioxide), all of which are believed to be united through spirit.

[99] Traditionally in the Gardnerian Craft, each element has been associated with a cardinal point of the compass; air with east, fire with south, water with west, earth with north, and the spirit with centre.

Gardner's wording of the original "Charge" added extracts from Aleister Crowley's work, including The Book of the Law, (especially from Ch 1, spoken by Nuit, the Star Goddess) thus linking modern Wicca irrevocably to the principles of Thelema.

Gardner himself made use of the English names of these holidays, stating that "the four great Sabbats are Candlemas [sic], May Eve, Lammas, and Halloween; the equinoxes and solstices are celebrated also".

Subsequently, when Wicca was first developing in the 1930s through to the 1960s, many of the early groups, such as Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain and Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven adopted the commemoration of these four Sabbats as described by Murray.

The first of these to be published was in Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft (1970), and unusually involved recitation of the Lord's Prayer backwards as a symbol of defiance against the historical Witch Hunt.

[135] Subsequent, more overtly pagan self-initiation rituals have since been published in books designed for solitary Wiccans by authors like Doreen Valiente, Scott Cunningham and Silver RavenWolf.

In his Book of Shadows, there are texts taken from various sources, including Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) and the works of 19th–20th century occultist Aleister Crowley, whom Gardner knew personally.

These eclectic Wiccans each create their own syncretic spiritual paths by adopting and reinventing the beliefs and rituals of a variety of religious traditions connected to Wicca and broader paganism.

From these humble beginnings, this radical religion spread to the United States, where it found a comfortable bedfellow in the form of the 1960s counter-culture and came to be championed by those sectors of the women's and gay liberation movements which were seeking a spiritual escape from Christian hegemony.

This was the idea that those persecuted as witches in early modern Europe were actually followers of a surviving pagan religion; not Satanists as the persecutors claimed, nor innocent people who confessed under threat of torture, as had long been the historical consensus.

[178] The notion that Wiccan traditions and rituals have survived from ancient times is contested by most recent researchers, who say that Wicca is a 20th-century creation which combines elements of freemasonry and 19th-century occultism.

[74] Other influences upon early Wicca included various Western esoteric traditions and practices, among them ceremonial magic, Aleister Crowley and his religion of Thelema, Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and Theosophy.

[182] It was further influenced both by scholarly works on folkloristics, particularly James Frazer's The Golden Bough, as well as romanticist writings like Robert Graves' The White Goddess, and pre-existing modern pagan groups such as the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry and Druidism.

[190][191] Many notable figures of early Wicca were direct initiates of this coven, including Dafo, Doreen Valiente, Jack Bracelin, Frederic Lamond, Dayonis, Eleanor Bone, and Lois Bourne.

[165] In 1998, the Wiccan high priestess and academic psychologist Vivianne Crowley suggested that Wicca had been less successful in propagating in countries whose populations were primarily Roman Catholic.

[204] Based on their analysis of internet trends, the sociologists of religion Douglas Ezzy and Helen Berger argued that, by 2009, the "phenomenal growth" that Wicca has experienced in preceding years had slowed.

[205] [The average Wiccan is] a man in his forties, or a woman in her thirties, Caucasian, reasonably well educated, not earning much but probably not too concerned about material things, someone that demographers would call lower middle class.

[212] Wiccans have also made up significant proportions of various groups within that country; for instance, Wicca is the largest non-Christian faith practised in the United States Air Force, with 1,434 airmen identifying themselves as such.