![]() ![]() Although many of Wicca’s early exponents espoused conservative and right-wing views, by the close of the 20th century the Wiccan community had come to be numerically dominated by people with progressive and left-leaning opinions.Īs well as influencing other modern Pagan groups, such as the Church of All Worlds and modern Druidry, Wiccans played a prominent role in establishing organizations to defend Neo-Pagan civil rights, such as the U.K.-based Pagan Federation and the U.S.-based Covenant of the Goddess. Growing environmentalist sentiment also had an impact on Wicca, which by the 1970s was increasingly presenting itself as a “ nature religion.” Radical left-wing politics came to the fore in the work of Starhawk (born 1951), an American practitioner who helped establish the Reclaiming tradition in San Francisco and wrote an influential book, The Spiral Dance (1979). Drawing on the gay rights movement, the Minoan Brotherhood was established in 1977 by Eddie Buczynski (1947–89) as a Wiccan tradition for gay and bisexual men. Informed by second-wave feminism, Dianic Wicca was formed in 1971 by Hungarian émigré Zsuzsanna Budapest (born 1940) as a women’s tradition placing central focus on the goddess. Wicca’s rapid spread through the United States during the 1960s and ’70s was part of the broader countercultural zeitgeist, and many of those Americans joining Wicca were also influenced by the new social movements of the period. By the 1960s the word Wicca had emerged as a general term for this new religion, although there was some internal contestation as to its specific applicability. Among the most prominent of these occultists was the Englishman Alexander Sanders (1926–88), who founded Alexandrian Wicca, and the California-based Victor Anderson (1917–2001) and Cora Anderson (1915–2008), who spearheaded the Feri tradition. All typically claimed to be practicing a pre-Christian witchcraft religion that had clandestinely survived for centuries, although these claims were dismissed by historians following greater research into early modern witchcraft during the 1960s and ’70s. Other occultists drew on Gardner’s writings and on other texts about witchcraft to establish their own Wiccan traditions during the 1950s and ’60s. Following the 1951 repeal of Britain’s archaic witchcraft laws, Gardner published Witchcraft Today (1954), founded his first coven of followers, and, with the assistance of high priestess Doreen Valiente (1922–99), developed what became known as Gardnerian Wicca. If it did, it likely formed earlier in the 1930s. He later alleged that it was their teachings that provided the basis of Wicca, although historians disagree on whether the New Forest group ever existed. Upon returning to Britain in the 1930s, Gardner became involved in the British occult community and claimed to have discovered a group of witches operating near England’s New Forest in 1939. He also read widely in Western esoteric literature, including the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley. Gardner spent most of his career in Asia, where he became familiar with various indigenous religious traditions. ![]() SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!Īlthough there were precursors to the movement, the origins of modern Wicca can be traced to a retired British civil servant, Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884–1964).Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning. ![]()
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