Known as a publicity seeker, he catapulted to fame following an autobiography and a film in 1970, Legend of the Witches.
DOREEN VALIENTEįuture Wiccan leader Doreen Valiente met Gardner in 1952 when she contacted him following an article in Illustrated magazine that presented to their readers the reality of covens and their practices in a context of normal, educated people. The origin of the title is unknown, but some believe he borrowed it from the work of Scottish children’s author Helen Douglas Adams. Written in the 1940s and 1950s, initiates were required to make their own copy by hand. Gardner’s fantasy novel High Magic’s Aid, published in 1949, is considered one of the first standards of Wicca, but his Book of Shadows, a collection of spells and rituals, is central to Wiccan practice. Crowley had, in 1914, proposed the idea of forming a new religion that would pull from old pagan traditions worshipping the earth, celebrating equinoxes and solstices and other hallmarks of nature-based worship. When Gardner formally wrote out his Wiccan rituals, he drew strongly from Crowley’s own, dating back to 1912. Gardner met famed occultist Aleister Crowley in 1947. In 1973, his extensive personal collection of artifacts was sold to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Gardner died of a heart attack in 1964 while onboard a ship off the North African coast. A world traveler with an interest in the occult, Gardner first heard the word “Wica” used in the 1930s when he became involved with a coven in Highcliffe, England. Gardner, considered the founder of Wicca, was born in 1884, north of Liverpool in England. According to Gardner, the word was derived from Scots-English and meant “wise people.” Wicca was first given a name in Gerald Gardner’s 1954 book Witchcraft Today, in which he announced it as “wica,” the extra “c” being added in the 1960s. Later scholarship disputed Murray’s claims about witch cults, but her influence could not be erased within Wicca. She wrote several books on medieval religion centered around witch cults in medieval Europe that inspired British seekers to create their own covens and structure worship around her descriptions, starting with 1921’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. The rituals of modern Wiccan practice can be traced to famed first-wave feminist, Egyptologist, anthropologist and folklorist Margaret Murray.
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