Gardnerian Wicca is the oldest tradition of Wicca and the root from which most of the others grew. It is an initiatory mystery religion, passed from person to person in small covens, and it is ours.
The tradition takes its name from Gerald Brosseau Gardner, who made the Craft public in England between 1951 and his death in 1964. Every Gardnerian witch alive today was initiated by someone who was initiated by someone who, a few steps further back, was initiated by Gardner himself or by one of his High Priestesses. That unbroken chain is the first thing the name means.
The second thing it means is a particular way of working. Gardnerian covens share a body of rites, a ritual book, a structure and a set of customs that have been handed on with the initiation. A Gardnerian from the Welsh Marches could step into a Gardnerian circle in Australia and know what was happening and what came next.
A name given by others
Gardner never called his religion Gardnerian. He called it witchcraft, or the cult, or the Craft, and its people the Wica. The word Gardnerian seems to have been coined in the 1960s by a rival witch who meant it unkindly, to suggest that the whole thing was one man's invention. It was taken up as a convenient label when other traditions appeared and some means was needed of telling them apart, and Gardner's heirs have worn it cheerfully ever since.
What makes a witch a Gardnerian
There is no single authority that defines the tradition, but nearly every Gardnerian would recognise the following as its marks.
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Lineage
Entry is by initiation alone, at the hands of a properly initiated Gardnerian, in a line that runs back to Gardner. It cannot be claimed, bought or bestowed on oneself.
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Three degrees
The path is walked in three initiations. The first makes a witch and a priestess or priest. The third confers the standing to lead a coven independently.
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The Book of Shadows
The rites are kept in a book that each initiate copies by hand from the book of their initiator. Its core is common to the whole tradition.
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The oath
At initiation every witch swears to keep the secrets of the Art. The text of the rites, the names of the gods and the names of other initiates are not disclosed.
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The coven
The tradition lives in small, self-governing covens. Each is led by a High Priestess with a High Priest beside her, and no body stands above them.
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Goddess and God
Worship is given to the Goddess and the Horned God, under names kept within the circle. The rites are built on the meeting of the two.
Three further customs are near-universal. Gardnerian circles are traditionally worked skyclad. The tradition does not proselytise, and a seeker must ask to be admitted. And nobody may be charged money for training or initiation, a rule we regard as beyond negotiation.
A mystery religion
Gardnerian Wicca is what scholars of religion call a mystery tradition. Like the mystery cults of the ancient world, it holds that its central truths cannot be taught in words. They have to be undergone. An initiation is not a ceremony of membership, like the signing of a form. It is intended as a real event in the life of the person who passes through it, and the rites of the circle exist to bring witches, again and again, into the presence of their gods.
This is why the tradition sets so much store by doing things properly and so little by doctrine. Two Gardnerians may disagree entirely about the nature of the gods or the mechanics of magic, and it will not matter, provided they can cast a circle together. It is also the truest reason for the oath. A mystery that has been read about in advance is to that extent spoiled.
How fixed is the tradition?
Less than outsiders imagine, and more than some would like. Gardner himself revised his rites continually, and the Book of Shadows that he gave to his last High Priestesses was not the one he had given to his first. Covens have always added material of their own to the common core. In Britain especially, there is a long habit of regarding the Book as a foundation to build on.
What does not change is the core: the casting of the circle, the three initiations, the central rites, the oath. A coven that altered those would have left the tradition, whatever it went on calling itself. How much else may vary is a matter on which Gardnerians have argued, mostly amiably, for seventy years. Our page on the Craft in Britain today says more.
What we do not claim
We do not claim that Gardnerian Wicca is thousands of years old. Its history is set out candidly on the page about the history of Wicca. We do not claim that it is the only real Wicca, or that an initiate is a better person or a better witch than a solitary who has found the gods on their own. And we do not claim that Gerald Gardner was a saint. He was vain, mischievous and not always truthful, and he would have been the first to laugh at a pious account of himself.
What we do claim is modest. The tradition is the original of its kind. It has been handed down carefully, person to person, by people who loved it. And it works: it does what a religion is for.
In this section
- Gerald Gardner: the life of the founder.
- Doreen Valiente: the High Priestess who gave the Craft its words.
- Lineage and initiation: how the tradition is passed on.
- The three degrees: the steps of the path.
- The Book of Shadows: the ritual book and its history.
- Secrecy and the oath: what is kept private, and why.
- The Craft in Britain today: how it is lived in the country where it began.