The History of wicca is a very interesting topic. Mainly due to the controversy surrounding this Religion in modern years. The histoy of wicca haecvdp and shrouded with innuendo and lies. We at www.allaboutwitchcraft.blogspot.com are trying to set the facts straight. We will work very hard to make sure the history of wicca is known. Wicca effectively began with a man named Gerald Gardner in the mid 20th century. Many people give the year 1954 as its inception, because this is when Gardner published Witchcraft Today. .
Gardner's Wicca was initiatory, and Gardnerian Wicca continues to be so to this day - if you're not a member, you can't participate. You can't even learn a great deal about them. Other initiatory Traditions also emerged, and Gardner embraced them as being branches of the Old Religion. Eventually, others started to emerge that claimed no formal membership in the Old Religion but who nevertheless followed and practiced its ways. All of these practices were bound up under the term witchcraft, which became synonymous with Wicca. Today, those terms are frequently separated, but who falls under what is still debated.
Wicca certainly bears the influence of older pagan (and non-pagan) traditions, but they are pieces - sometimes tiny pieces - fit together into new meanings and context. Evidence continues to be entirely lacking that anything like Wicca existed in ancient times, and it bears many marks of modern thought, such as the arrangement of Maid/Mother/Crone, which was first expressed in 1949. Was Gardner taught something by Dafo? Probably. Possibly he even believed that she was teaching him something old. She probably did not hand him Wicca as a developed package, however. Even Gardner admitted that the rituals were "fragmentary," justifying the need for him to supplement them with more modern material.
Some Wiccans feel they are baseless without an ancient foundation beneath their practices. The truth is your base is pretty shaky if it depends upon ancient pedigree for you to consider it legitimate. It is not that Wicca has no foundation. That foundation is simply somewhere other than where some once thought. All religions are new at some point. Wicca's foundation (at least it's public, non-oathbound face) is Gardner, with roots that snake out and draw upon all manner of source material, including considerable connections with the 19th and 20th century occult revival, which in turn have complex roots in older traditions.
That is the basic history of wicca. We hope you join us at www.allaboutwitchcraft.blogspot.com for more information. We will be posting daily recipes and spells. We hope to shed the light and have fun. Please remeber to set the record straight when it comes to the history of wicca.
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