The Bookshelf: Books on Wicca and Its History

The Craft cannot be learned from books, but its history can, and a seeker who has read well is a pleasure to teach. This is the shelf we point people to.

We keep one rule on this page, as on the rest of the site: we name no living person. Every author listed here has died, and their books must now speak for them. That leaves out some excellent modern books, and we say something about how to find them at the end.

We give titles, authors and the year of first publication. Most of these books have been reprinted many times, and any library or second-hand bookseller can find them.

The founders in their own words

Begin here. Whatever has been written about the Craft since, these are the people who were in the room.

Witchcraft Today, by Gerald Gardner (1954): The book that announced the Craft to the world. It is rambling, charming, and by turns shrewd and credulous. Read it for what Gardner says his witches believed and did, and treat his history with caution.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, by Gerald Gardner (1959): A longer and more combative book, written partly to answer the newspapers. It contains his fullest statements on the gods and on ethics.
High Magic's Aid, by Gerald Gardner (1949): A historical novel, published under his Craft name. It is not great fiction, but it is the first appearance in print of a good deal of the ritual, and is of interest for that reason.
The Rebirth of Witchcraft, by Doreen Valiente (1989): If you read only one book from this shelf, read this. It is her memoir of the Craft from the 1950s to the 1980s, written with honesty and humour by the person best placed to know.
An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present, by Doreen Valiente (1973): An encyclopaedia in one voice. Dip into it anywhere. It is the best single reference to the lore of the Craft as its early members understood it.
Witchcraft for Tomorrow, by Doreen Valiente (1978): Her statement of what the Craft is for, with a complete set of rites for people working alone. Essential for the solitary.
Where Witchcraft Lives, by Doreen Valiente (1962): Her first book, on the witch lore of Sussex. It is slight but delightful, and shows the folklorist she always was.
Natural Magic, by Doreen Valiente (1975): A gentle book on the magic of herbs, weather, numbers and dreams, of the kind that needs no coven and no equipment.

Those who were there

Gerald Gardner: Witch, published under the name of J. L. Bracelin (1960): The authorised biography, written in Gardner's lifetime and largely from his own account. It is the source of most of the stories about his life, and should be read with that in mind.
Witch Amongst Us, by Lois Bourne (1979): The autobiography of a High Priestess of Gardner's Hertfordshire coven. It gives a vivid picture of what the early Craft was like from the inside.
Fifty Years of Wicca, by Frederic Lamond (2004): The reflections of a man initiated into Gardner's coven in 1957, who was present when the eight Sabbats were settled. He is candid about what the Craft has done well and badly.
What Witches Do, by Stewart Farrar (1971): A journalist's account of his own training in an Alexandrian coven in London. It was the first book to describe the working life of a coven in detail.

The books behind the Craft

These are the works that Gardner and his friends had read. None of them is reliable as history. All of them are necessary for understanding where the ideas came from.

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, by Charles Godfrey Leland (1899): The supposed scripture of the witches of Tuscany. Whatever its origin, it gave the Craft the opening of the Charge of the Goddess and the picture of witchcraft as the religion of the oppressed.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, by Margaret Murray (1921): The book that persuaded two generations that the witches of the trials were pagans. Its argument has not survived examination. Read it as the blueprint from which the modern coven was drawn.
The God of the Witches, by Margaret Murray (1931): A more popular statement of the same theory, with the Horned God at its centre.
The Golden Bough, by James Frazer (1890): The vast study of the dying and reviving god that shaped how the whole English-speaking world thought about paganism. The one-volume abridgement of 1922 is enough for most readers.
The White Goddess, by Robert Graves (1948): A poet's vision of the triple Goddess, presented as scholarship. It is not scholarship, and it is magnificent. The Maiden, Mother and Crone of modern Wicca come largely from here.

For the solitary

Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, by Scott Cunningham (1988): The book that opened the Craft to those without a coven. It is not Gardnerian and does not pretend to be. It is kind, clear and practical, and it has started more people on the path than any other.

Doreen Valiente's Witchcraft for Tomorrow, listed above, belongs here too.

How to read the older books

A newcomer who reads Gardner, Murray and Leland without warning will come away believing that Wicca is the surviving religion of Stone Age Europe. It is important to read them alongside the modern history. Three points should be kept in mind.

Where the founders describe what witches did and believed in their own day, they are witnesses, and generally good ones.
Where they describe what witches did in the Middle Ages or before, they are repeating the scholarship of their time, which has since been overturned.
Where they contradict one another, the later Valiente is usually the safest guide.

Modern histories

Since the 1990s the origins of Wicca have been studied by professional historians, and the results are indispensable. Because of our rule we do not name the authors here. Ask any good bookshop or public library for the standard academic history of modern pagan witchcraft, which was published by a university press in 1999 and revised twenty years later, and for the full-length biographies of Gerald Gardner and of Doreen Valiente that have appeared since 2000. A librarian will know them at once.

Read at least the first of these before you approach a coven. Our own account of what the historians found is on the page about the history of Wicca.

What books cannot do

No book will make anyone a witch. The Craft is a practice, learned by doing it, and in its Gardnerian form by doing it in the company of people who learned it the same way. What books can do is to tell you truthfully what you are looking at, so that when you meet the real thing, or its imitation, you will know which is which. That is a great deal, and it is the reason for this page.