Wicca (Part IV)

Covens

Lineaged Wicca is organized into covens of initiated priests and priestesses. Covens are autonomous, and are generally headed by a High Priest and a High Priestess working in partnership, being a couple who have each been through their first, second and third degrees of initiation. Occasionally the leaders of a coven are only second-degree initiates, in which case they come under the rule of the parent coven. Initiation and training of new priesthood is most often performed within a coven environment, but this is not a necessity, and a few initiated Wiccans are unaffiliated with any coven.

A commonly quoted Wiccan tradition holds that the ideal number of members for a coven is thirteen, though this is not held as a hard-and-fast rule.  Indeed, many U.S. covens are far smaller, though the membership may be augmented by unaffiliated Wiccans at "open" rituals. When covens grow beyond their ideal number of members, they often split (or "hive") into multiple covens, yet remain connected as a group.

Initiation into a coven is traditionally preceded by an apprenticeship period of a year and a day.  A course of study may be set during this period. In some covens a "dedication" ceremony may be performed during this period, some time before the initiation proper, allowing the person to attend certain rituals on a probationary basis. Some solitary Wiccans also choose to study for a year and a day before their self-dedication to the religion.

Eclectic Wicca

A large number of Wiccans do not exclusively follow any single tradition or even are initiated. These eclectic Wiccans each create their own syncretic spiritual paths by adopting and reinventing the beliefs and rituals of a variety of religious traditions connected to Wicca and broader Paganism.

While the origins of modern Wiccan practice lie in covenantal activity of select few initiates in established lineages, eclectic Wiccans are more often than not solitary practitioner’s uninitiated in any tradition. A widening public appetite, especially in the United States, made traditional initiation unable to satisfy demand for involvement in Wicca. Since the 1970s, larger, more informal, often publicly advertised camps and workshops began to take place. This less formal but more accessible form of Wicca proved successful. Eclectic Wicca is the most popular variety of Wicca in America and eclectics now significantly outnumber lineaged Wiccans.

Eclectic Wicca is not necessarily the complete abandonment of tradition. Eclectic practitioners may follow their own individual ideas and ritual practices, while still drawing on one or more religious or philosophical paths. Eclectic approaches to Wicca often draw on Earth religion and ancient Egyptian, Greek, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Asian, Jewish, and Polynesian traditions.

History

Origins, 1921–1935

"Wicca originated in the early decades of the twentieth century among those esoterically inclined Britons who wanted to resurrect the faith of their ancient forebears, and arose to public attention in the 1950s and 1960s, largely due to a small band of dedicated followers who were insistent on presenting their faith to what at times was a very hostile world. From these humble beginnings, this radical religion spread to the United States, where it found a comfortable bedfellow in the form of the 1960s counter-culture and came to be championed by those sectors of the women's and gay liberation movements seeking a spiritual escape from Christian hegemony."— Religious studies scholar Ethan Doyle White

Wicca was founded in England between 1921 and 1950, representing what the historian Ronald Hutton called "the only full-formed religion which England can be said to have given the world".  Characterized as an "invented tradition" by scholars, Wicca was created from the patchwork adoption of various older elements, many taken from pre-existing religious and esoteric movements.[

Wicca took as its basis the witch-cult hypothesis, the idea that those persecuted as witches during the early modern period in Europe were not, as the persecutors had claimed, followers of Satanism, but adherents of a surviving pre-Christian pagan religion.  This theory had been first expressed by the German Professor Karl Ernest Jarcke in 1828, before being endorsed by German Franz Josef Mone and then the French historian Jules Michelet.   In the late 19th century it was then adopted by two Americans, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Charles Leland, the latter of whom promoted a variant of it in his 1899 book, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. The theory's most prominent advocate was the English Egyptologist Margaret Murray, who promoted it in a series of books – most notably 1921's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and 1933's The God of the Witches – and in her entry on "witchcraft" for the Encyclopædia Britannica.  The witch-cult theory represented "the historical narrative around which Wicca built itself", with the early Wiccans claiming to be the survivors of this ancient pagan religion.

Other influences upon early Wicca included various Western esoteric traditions and practices, among them ceremonial magic, Aleister Crowley and his religion of Thelema, Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and Theosophy.  To a lesser extent, Wicca also drew upon folk magic and the practices of cunning folk. It was further influenced both by scholarly works on folkloristics, particularly James Frazer's The Golden Bough, as well as romanticist writings like Robert Graves' The White Goddess, and pre-existing modern Pagan groups such as the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry and Druidism.

It was during the 1930s that the first evidence appears for the practice of a pagan Witchcraft religion (what would be recognizable now as Wicca) in England. It seems that several groups around the country, in such places as Norfolk, Cheshire and the New Forest had set themselves up as continuing in the tradition of Murray's Witch-Cult, albeit with influences coming from disparate sources such as ceremonial magic, folk magic, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Romanticism, Druidry, classical mythology and Asian religions.

Early development, 1936–1959

The history of modern Wicca starts with Gerald Gardner (the "Father of Wicca") in the mid-20th century. Gardner was a retired British civil servant and amateur anthropologist, with a broad familiarity in paganism and occultism. He claimed to have been initiated into a witches' coven in New Forest, Hampshire, in the late 1930s. Intent on perpetuating this craft, Gardner founded the Bricket Wood coven with his wife Donna in the 1940s, after buying the Naturist Fiveacres Country Club.  Much of the coven's early membership was drawn from the club's members and its meetings were held within the club grounds.  Many notable figures of early Wicca were direct initiates of this coven, including Dafo, Doreen Valiente, Jack Bracelin, Frederic Lamond, Dayonis, Eleanor Bone and Lois Bourne.

The Witchcraft religion became more prominent beginning in 1951, with the repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, after which Gerald Gardner and then others such as Charles Cardell and Cecil Williamson began publicizing their own versions of the Craft. Gardner and others never used the term "Wicca" as a religious identifier, simply referring to the "witch cult", "witchcraft", and the "Old Religion". However, Gardner did refer to witches as "the Wica".  During the 1960s, the name of the religion normalized to "Wicca".  Gardner's tradition, later termed Gardnerianism, soon became the dominant form in England and spread to other parts of the British Isles.

Adaptation and spread, 1960–present

Following Gardner's death in 1964, the Craft continued to grow unabated despite sensationalism and negative portrayals in British tabloids, with new traditions being propagated by figures like Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek and most importantly Alex Sanders, whose Alexandrian Wicca, which was predominantly based upon Gardnerian Wicca, albeit with an emphasis placed on ceremonial magic, spread quickly and gained much media attention. Around this time, the term "Wicca" began to be commonly adopted over "Witchcraft" and the faith was exported to countries like Australia and the United States.

It was in the United States and in Australia that new, home-grown traditions, sometimes based upon earlier, regional folk-magical traditions and often mixed with the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca, began to develop, including Victor Anderson's Feri Tradition, Joseph Wilson's 1734 Tradition, Aidan Kelly's New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn and eventually Zsuzsanna Budapest's Dianic Wicca, each of which emphasized different aspects of the faith.  It was also around this time that books teaching people how to become Witches themselves without formal initiation or training began to emerge, among them Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft (1970) and Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows (1971). Similar books continued to be published throughout the 1980s and 1990s, fueled by the writings of such authors as Doreen Valiente, Janet Farrar, Stewart Farrar and Scott Cunningham, who popularized the idea of self-initiation into the Craft. Among witches in Canada, anthropologist Dr. Heather Botting (nee Harden) of the University of Victoria has been one of the most prominent, having been the first recognized Wiccan chaplain of a public university. Original high priestess of Coven Celeste, she is one of the founders of the Canadian Aquarian Tabernacle Church.

In the 1990s, amid ever-rising numbers of self-initiates, the popular media began to explore "witchcraft" in fictional films like The Craft and television series like Charmed, introducing numbers of young people to the idea of religious witchcraft. This growing demographic was soon catered to through the Internet and by authors like Silver RavenWolf, much to the criticism of traditional Wiccan groups and individuals. In response to the way that Wicca was increasingly portrayed as trendy, eclectic, and influenced by the New Age movement, many Witches turned to the pre-Gardnerian origins of the Craft, and to the traditions of his rivals like Cardell and Cochrane, describing themselves as following "Traditional Witchcraft". Prominent groups within this Traditional Witchcraft revival included Andrew Chumbley's Cultus Sabbati and the Cornish Ros an Bucca coven.

Debates over the origin of Wicca

According to Gerald Gardner's account in Witchcraft Today and The Meaning of Witchcraft, Wicca is the survival of a European witch-cult that was persecuted during the witch trials.  Theories of an organized pan-European witch-cult, as well as mass trials thereof, have been largely discredited, but it is still common for Wiccans to claim solidarity with witch trial victims.

The notion of the survival of Wiccan traditions and rituals from ancient sources is contested by most recent researchers, who suggest that Wicca is a 20th-century creation which combines elements of freemasonry and 19th-century occultism.  However, historians such as Ronald Hutton have noted that Wicca not only predates the modern New Age movement but also differs markedly in its general philosophy.

In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon, Bristol University history professor Ronald Hutton researched the Wiccan claim that ancient pagan customs have survived into modern times after being Christianized in medieval times as folk practices. Hutton found that most of the folk customs which are claimed to have pagan roots (such as the Maypole dance) actually date from the Middle Ages. He concluded that the idea that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation.

Modern scholarly investigations have concluded that Witch trials were substantially fewer than the number claimed by Gardner, and seldom held at the behest of religious authorities. For example, in the 1996 book Witches and Neighbors, Robin Briggs examines the history of witchcraft in medieval Europe and refutes the widely told story that large numbers of independent women were burned at the stake by vindictive Christian ecclesiastics for the crime of practicing naturalistic healing or neopagan religion. Most scholars estimate that a total of 40,000 people were executed as witches during the entire medieval period, and that church authorities participated reluctantly in this process, which was largely fueled by the political turmoil of the Reformation.

Demographics

The actual number of Wiccans worldwide is unknown, and it has been noted that it is more difficult to establish the numbers of members of Neopagan faiths than many other religions due to their disorganized structure. However, Adherents.com, an independent website which specializes in collecting estimates of world religions, cites over thirty sources with estimates of numbers of Wiccans (principally from the USA and the UK). From this, they developed a median estimate of 800,000 members.  As of 2016, Doyle White suggested that there were "hundreds of thousands of practicing Wiccans around the globe".

[The average Wiccan is] a man in his forties, or a woman in her thirties, Caucasian, reasonably well educated, not earning much but probably not too concerned about material things, someone that demographers would call lower middle class.

Leo Ruickbie (2004)

In the United States, the American Religious Identification Survey has shown significant increases in the number of self-identified Wiccans, from 8,000 in 1990, to 134,000 in 2001, and 342,000 in 2008.  Wiccans have also made up significant proportions of various groups within that country; for instance, Wicca is the largest non-Christian faith practiced in the United States Air Force, with 1,434 airmen identifying themselves as such.[

In the United Kingdom, census figures on religion were first collected in 2001; no detailed statistics were reported outside of the six main religions.  For the 2011 census a more detailed breakdown of responses was reported with 56,620 people identifying themselves as Pagans, 11,766 as Wiccans and a further 1,276 describing their religion as "Witchcraft".

Acceptance of Wiccans

 The use of the inverted pentagram by the Church of Satan has contributed to the misidentification of Wiccans as Satanists.

Wicca emerged in a predominantly Christian country, and from its inception suffered opposition from certain Christian groups and from the popular tabloids like the News of the World. Some Christians still believe that Wicca is a form of Satanism, despite important differences between these religions.  Detractors typically depict Wicca as a form of malevolent Satanism.   Due to negative connotations associated with witchcraft, many Wiccans continue the traditional practice of secrecy, concealing their faith for fear of persecution. Revealing oneself as Wiccan to family, friends or colleagues is often termed "coming out of the broom-closet".  In a similar way, some people have accused Wicca of being anti-Christian, a claim disputed by Wiccans such as Doreen Valiente, who stated that whilst she knew many Wiccans who admired Jesus, "witches have little respect for the doctrines of the churches, which they regard as a lot of man-made dogma".

The religious studies scholar Graham Harvey noted that "the popular and prevalent media image [of Wicca] is mostly inaccurate".

In the United States, a number of legal decisions have improved and validated the status of Wiccans, especially Dettmer v. Landon in 1986. However, Wiccans have encountered opposition from some politicians and Christian organizations, including former president of the United States George W. Bush, who stated that he did not believe Wicca to be a religion.

In 2007 the United States Department of Veterans Affairs after years of dispute added the Pentagram to the list of emblems of belief that can be included on government-issued markers, headstones, and plaques honoring deceased veterans.

In Canada, Dr. Heather Botting ("Lady Aurora") and Dr. Gary Botting ("Pan"), the original high priestess and high priest of Coven Celeste and founding elders of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church, successfully campaigned the British Columbian government and the federal government in 1995 to allow them to perform recognized Wiccan weddings, to become prison and hospital chaplains, and (in the case of Heather Botting) to become the first officially recognized Wiccan chaplain in a public university.