Questions and Answers

Wicca is a modern pagan religion of witchcraft that became public in England in the early 1950s. Its followers honour a Goddess and a Horned God, celebrate eight seasonal festivals and the full moons, work magic within a cast circle, and try to live by the counsel "an it harm none, do what ye will". The fuller answer is on the page What Is Wicca?

Yes. It has gods, worship, festivals, rites for birth, marriage and death, an ethic and a priesthood. In Britain, pagans, Wiccans among them, are counted in the census and are provided for in hospital and prison chaplaincy. Wicca is a young religion and a small one, but it is not a game, a hobby or a costume.

No. The Devil is a figure of Christian belief, and Wiccans do not believe in him, let alone worship him. The Horned God of the witches is a god of nature, of the hunt, of death and rebirth, and his horns are those of the stag and the bull. Such resemblance as there is belongs to the history of art: medieval painters are thought to have given their Devil the horns and hooves of Pan and the satyrs. Wicca is not Satanism and has no connection with it.

As a religion in its present form, about seventy-five years. Gerald Gardner said he was initiated into an existing coven in 1939, and he made the Craft public from 1951. Many of the things Wicca draws on are far older: seasonal customs, ceremonial magic, the gods themselves. But the old claim that Wicca is a direct survival of a pre-Christian witch religion is not supported by the evidence, and we do not make it. See the history of Wicca.

Wicca is the Old English word for a male witch. In Old English it was pronounced roughly "witch-a". The modern religion pronounces it "wick-a". Gerald Gardner spelled it Wica and used it for the people of the Craft, not for the religion. The double c and the present meaning became usual in the 1960s.

Wiccan worship is addressed to a Goddess and a God. Beyond that, witches differ. Some hold that there are many gods and that these are the two who have called us. Some hold that all goddesses are one Goddess and all gods one God. Some see the pair as two faces of a single ultimate reality. The Craft has no creed, and a coven can contain all three views without strain. See the Goddess and the God.

Most Wiccans believe in rebirth. The traditional teaching is that the dead rest for a time in a place of renewal, often called the Summerland, and are then born again, and that those who have loved one another will meet and know one another in the next life. There is no hell and no judgement. See death and rebirth.

The Craft does not ask anyone to renounce anything, and it has no quarrel with any other faith. But its gods are not the God of the creeds, and the churches for their part are clear that their members may not worship other gods. Most people find in the end that they cannot honestly be both. Initiation into a Gardnerian coven is a commitment to the gods of the Craft, and we would expect a candidate to have settled the question first.

We do. In a coven, magic means raising power together, by chant or dance or concentration, and directing it to an agreed end, which is most often somebody's healing. We believe it works, having seen it do so often enough to be going on with. We also believe in doctors, in effort and in common sense, and we do not offer magic as a substitute for any of them. See magic.

The ethic of the Craft is to harm none, and a coven that set out to hurt someone would be breaking the first thing it teaches. There is a traditional understanding that a witch may act to stop a person doing harm, by binding the harm and not by injuring the person. That is as far as it goes, and it is rarely needed.

Traditionally, yes. The word is skyclad. Initiates in a Gardnerian circle are usually naked, as a sign of equality, of freedom and of standing before the gods without disguise. It is not sexual, and after the first few minutes it is not even remarkable. It applies only among adult initiates in a closed circle. Training circles and anything attended by non-initiates are robed or in ordinary clothes. There is more about this on the page about the circle.

Not in the way the question usually supposes. The Craft honours sexuality as sacred, and the highest of its rites, called the Great Rite, is a symbol of the union of the Goddess and the God. In practice that rite is almost always performed in token, with the athame and the cup. Nobody is ever required to have sex with anyone as part of training or initiation, and nobody may be asked to. If you ever meet a person who tells you otherwise, you have met an abuser and not a High Priest. Leave, and warn others.

No. Nothing is killed or hurt in any Wiccan rite. A good many witches keep animals and are foolishly fond of them.

Four things, chiefly. It is entered only by initiation, at the hands of someone who was themselves properly initiated, in a line reaching back to Gerald Gardner. It works from a particular Book of Shadows, copied by hand. Its rites are protected by an oath. And it is practised in small, self-governing covens led by a High Priestess. See What Is Gardnerian Wicca?

Less is secret than people suppose. Our history, beliefs, festivals and customs are all open, and this website describes them. What is kept private is the text of the rites, the names by which the gods are invoked, and the identities of other initiates. The first two are kept because a mystery is meant to be met, not read about beforehand. The third is kept because people have lost jobs and families for being witches, and some still would. See secrecy and the oath.

Versions of Gardnerian material have been in print since the 1960s, some put out by people who had broken their oath and some assembled by outsiders. They vary a good deal, none is complete, and none matches any one coven's book. More to the point, the book is a set of instructions for rites, and reading a rite is not the same as undergoing it. See the Book of Shadows.

No. You can dedicate yourself to the gods, and nobody can tell you that the dedication is not real. But Gardnerian is the name of a lineage, and a lineage is something that another person hands to you. There is no self-initiation into it, by definition. See lineage and initiation and solitary practice.

Yes. Gardnerian ritual is built on the polarity of Goddess and God, priestess and priest, and in Gardner's own day that was read in a narrow way. It has not been read so for a long time. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have been initiated into Gardnerian covens in Britain for decades and serve as High Priestesses and High Priests. Individual covens differ, as they do on most things. Ours has always judged a seeker by character and nothing else.

Slowly. You find initiates, usually through the open pagan gatherings held in most British towns. You get to know them and they get to know you. If a coven has room and thinks you may suit, you may be invited into its training circle. After at least a year and a day, if both sides are willing, you may be offered initiation. The whole of this is described on the page for seekers.

Nothing. It is a rule of the Gardnerian Craft that no one may take money for teaching or for initiation. You may be asked to bring a bottle of wine or a plate of food to a meeting, and to buy your own candles. That is all. Anyone who quotes you a fee for initiation is selling something else.

Eighteen at the very least, and many covens prefer their candidates somewhat older. No reputable coven will train or initiate anyone under eighteen, whatever the circumstances and whatever the parents say. Younger people who feel drawn to the Craft can read, keep the festivals in their own way, and wait. The gods are patient.

Not a Gardnerian one. Our circles are closed to all but initiates. Many pagan groups in Britain hold open rituals at the Sabbats to which anyone may come, and those are a good way to see what pagan worship is like.

You cannot do so through this website, and we are sorry if that is a disappointment. We are a small private coven. We publish no address, telephone number or email address, and the site has no contact form. New people reach us as they always have, by personal introduction from someone already known to us. Our advice for seekers is offered to help you find a coven near you, which is far more likely to be useful than finding ours.

It is the name of the hill below which the coven was founded. The name is an old border spelling of a Welsh word that the chapels used for the Devil, in the same way that the English landscape is full of Devil's Dykes and Devil's Chairs: names given by nervous neighbours to wild places and old earthworks. We took the name of our hill, as covens often do. We have no more to do with the Devil than the hill has. Our founding High Priestess tells the story in What the Hill Is Called.

No. We do not work magic for strangers, and we never work it for payment. If you are ill, please see a doctor. If you are in trouble, please tell someone you trust. If you want the help of magic as well, the best worker for your purpose is you.

No, and nothing could be. There is no authority in the Craft above the coven. These pages give the understanding of one coven, written with care and checked against the history as best we can. Other Gardnerians would put some things differently, and they would be within their rights.