Wicca was launched in 1954 by a retired British civil servant
Wicca presents itself as ancient, but it went public in 1954 through Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Its founding story rested on the claim that persecuted witches secretly kept a Stone Age religion alive. Historians have since disproved that, yet Wicca became the most influential form of modern paganism.
Gardner took his theology largely from the Egyptologist Margaret Murray, whose 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe argued that people tried as witches had worshipped a Horned God and, much earlier, a Mother Goddess. He adopted that pairing and said it reached back to the Old Stone Age. The deities' names were meant to stay secret among initiates, but in 1964 they were published as Cernunnos and Aradia, and the Gardnerian names were changed. In the 1950s Doreen Valiente joined him and expanded the rituals and liturgy.
Gardner himself never seems to have called the religion Wicca. He spoke of the Craft of the Wise or the Witch-cult and called his followers the Wica, with one c. The religion's current name took hold in Britain in the 1960s, first recorded in 1962; one candidate for coining it is Gardner's rival Charles Cardell. By 1968 British practitioners had launched a newsletter titled The Wiccan. Taking an Old English term for male and female magic-workers let followers claim a pre-Christian link while sounding less provocative than witchcraft.
Most traditions honour a goddess and a god, often the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, sometimes addressed as Lady and Lord. Rituals follow two calendars: lunar gatherings called Esbats and seasonal solar festivals called Sabbats. The Wiccan Rede sums up the ethics, particularly around magic. Yet belief is loose: the membership includes polytheists, pantheists and even atheists who treat the gods as Jungian archetypes. Members call outsiders cowans and discourage the words wizard and warlock.
Who counts as Wiccan is disputed. British Traditional Wicca insists on direct initiatory descent from Gardner, while scholars prefer a broad definition covering newer eclectic groups. Some evangelical Christians have tried to deny Wicca legal status as a religion, and some Wiccans reject the word religion themselves, preferring to call it a way of life.
Source: Wicca
