Wicca history
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04 Nov 2007 21:36 #8833
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Origins
The history of Wicca is much debated. 'Gardner claimed that the religion was a survival of matriarchal Pagan religions of pre-historic Europe, taught to him by members of the New Forest Coven; their rites were fragmentary, and he had substantially rewritten them. It has been posited by authors such as Aidan Kelly and Francis X. King that Gardner invented the rites in their entirety,[27] incorporating elements from the thesis of Dr. Margaret Murray, incantations from Aradia[28] and practices of ceremonial magic.[29]
Heselton concludes that while Gardner may have been mistaken about the ancient origins of the religion, his statements about it were largely made in good faith. Gardner's account is as follows: After retiring from adventuring around the globe, Gardner encountered the New Forest coven. Subsequently fearing that the Craft would die out,[30] he worked on his book Witchcraft Today, releasing it in 1954, followed by The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959. These books formed the basis for the growth of Wicca from the 1960s onwards.
Much of Gardner's rites and precepts can be shown to have come from the writings of earlier occultists and other extant sources, and the remaining original material is uncohesive and mostly takes the form of substitutions or expansions within unoriginal material. Roger Dearnaley describes it as a patchwork.[31]
Some, such as Isaac Bonewits, have argued that Valiente and Heselton's evidence points to an early 20th century revival pre-dating Gardner, rather than an intact old Pagan religion. This argument points to some of Gardner's historical claims which agree with the scholarship of that period but contradict later scholarship. Bonewits writes, \"Somewhere between 1920 and 1925 in England some folklorists appear to have gotten together with some Golden Dawn Rosicrucians and a few supposed Fam-Trads to produce the first modern covens in England; grabbing eclectically from any source they could find in order to try and reconstruct the shards of their Pagan past.\"[32]
The idea of a supreme Mother Goddess was common in Victorian and Edwardian literature: the concept of a Horned God — especially related to the gods Pan or Faunus — was less common, but still significant.[33] Both of these ideas were widely accepted in academic literature and the popular press at the time.[34]
Later developments
Gardnerian Wicca was an initiatory mystery religion, admission to which was limited to those who were initiated into a pre-existing coven. Wicca was introduced to North America by Raymond Buckland, an expatriate Briton who visited Gardner's Isle of Man coven to gain initiation. Interest in the USA spread quickly, and while many were initiated, many more non-initiates compiled their own rituals based on published sources or their own fancy.[35]
Another significant development was the creation by feminists in the late sixties and seventies of an eclectic movement known as Dianic Wicca, or feminist Dianic Witchcraft. Dianic Wicca has no connection of lineage to traditional Wicca, and creatively interprets published materials on Wicca as a basis for their ritual structure. This specifically feminist, Goddess-oriented faith had no interest in the Horned God, and discarded Gardnerian-style hierarchy and lineage as irrelevant. Rituals were created for self-initiation to allow people to identify with and join the religion without first contacting an existing coven. This contrasts with the Gardnerian belief that only a witch of opposite gender can initiate another witch.
In the United Kingdom, initiates of Gardner had begun to perform their own initiations, and a number of lines of Gardnerian descent began to arise. From one of these (although it was originally claimed to derive from a traditional, non-Gardnerian source) came the line known as Alexandrian Wicca. Increasing popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and in other countries, along with the increasing availability of published material, meant that many people started to practice a form of Wicca without being part of a coven or having participated in an initiation. In response to this, traditionally initiated Wiccans in North America began to describe their version as British Traditional Wicca.
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey estimated that at least 134,000 adults identified themselves as Wiccans in the United States, compared to 8,000 in 1990.[36] This works out to a doubling of numbers every thirty months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca#Origins
The history of Wicca is much debated. 'Gardner claimed that the religion was a survival of matriarchal Pagan religions of pre-historic Europe, taught to him by members of the New Forest Coven; their rites were fragmentary, and he had substantially rewritten them. It has been posited by authors such as Aidan Kelly and Francis X. King that Gardner invented the rites in their entirety,[27] incorporating elements from the thesis of Dr. Margaret Murray, incantations from Aradia[28] and practices of ceremonial magic.[29]
Heselton concludes that while Gardner may have been mistaken about the ancient origins of the religion, his statements about it were largely made in good faith. Gardner's account is as follows: After retiring from adventuring around the globe, Gardner encountered the New Forest coven. Subsequently fearing that the Craft would die out,[30] he worked on his book Witchcraft Today, releasing it in 1954, followed by The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959. These books formed the basis for the growth of Wicca from the 1960s onwards.
Much of Gardner's rites and precepts can be shown to have come from the writings of earlier occultists and other extant sources, and the remaining original material is uncohesive and mostly takes the form of substitutions or expansions within unoriginal material. Roger Dearnaley describes it as a patchwork.[31]
Some, such as Isaac Bonewits, have argued that Valiente and Heselton's evidence points to an early 20th century revival pre-dating Gardner, rather than an intact old Pagan religion. This argument points to some of Gardner's historical claims which agree with the scholarship of that period but contradict later scholarship. Bonewits writes, \"Somewhere between 1920 and 1925 in England some folklorists appear to have gotten together with some Golden Dawn Rosicrucians and a few supposed Fam-Trads to produce the first modern covens in England; grabbing eclectically from any source they could find in order to try and reconstruct the shards of their Pagan past.\"[32]
The idea of a supreme Mother Goddess was common in Victorian and Edwardian literature: the concept of a Horned God — especially related to the gods Pan or Faunus — was less common, but still significant.[33] Both of these ideas were widely accepted in academic literature and the popular press at the time.[34]
Later developments
Gardnerian Wicca was an initiatory mystery religion, admission to which was limited to those who were initiated into a pre-existing coven. Wicca was introduced to North America by Raymond Buckland, an expatriate Briton who visited Gardner's Isle of Man coven to gain initiation. Interest in the USA spread quickly, and while many were initiated, many more non-initiates compiled their own rituals based on published sources or their own fancy.[35]
Another significant development was the creation by feminists in the late sixties and seventies of an eclectic movement known as Dianic Wicca, or feminist Dianic Witchcraft. Dianic Wicca has no connection of lineage to traditional Wicca, and creatively interprets published materials on Wicca as a basis for their ritual structure. This specifically feminist, Goddess-oriented faith had no interest in the Horned God, and discarded Gardnerian-style hierarchy and lineage as irrelevant. Rituals were created for self-initiation to allow people to identify with and join the religion without first contacting an existing coven. This contrasts with the Gardnerian belief that only a witch of opposite gender can initiate another witch.
In the United Kingdom, initiates of Gardner had begun to perform their own initiations, and a number of lines of Gardnerian descent began to arise. From one of these (although it was originally claimed to derive from a traditional, non-Gardnerian source) came the line known as Alexandrian Wicca. Increasing popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and in other countries, along with the increasing availability of published material, meant that many people started to practice a form of Wicca without being part of a coven or having participated in an initiation. In response to this, traditionally initiated Wiccans in North America began to describe their version as British Traditional Wicca.
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey estimated that at least 134,000 adults identified themselves as Wiccans in the United States, compared to 8,000 in 1990.[36] This works out to a doubling of numbers every thirty months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca#Origins
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