58 Fun Facts About Wicca

Which retired British civil servant, often called the "Father of Wicca", introduced the religion to the public in 1954?

Gerald Gardner, a retired colonial civil servant who had served in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya, went public with a 1954 book and claimed initiation into a New Forest coven in 1939.

Which symbol is the most widely used emblem of Wicca?

The pentagram, a five-pointed star usually shown inside a circle, is Wicca's main emblem; its points stand for air, fire, water, earth and spirit, and the VA approved it for veterans' headstones in 2007.

What is the moral maxim followed by most Wiccans, "An it harm none, do what ye will", called?

"Rede" is Middle English for advice or counsel; the couplet was first publicly recorded in a 1964 speech by Gardner's former high priestess.

The seasonal festivals of the Wiccan calendar, taken together, are called what?

The Wheel of the Year is the cycle of eight sabbats: the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and the four Celtic cross-quarter fire festivals that fall between them.

What are Wiccan rituals held at the full moon called?

Esbats are linked to the Triple Goddess and the Moon; Sabbats to the Sun and the God.

A Wiccan's personal collection of rituals and spells is traditionally called what?

A Book of Shadows holds a Wiccan's rituals and spells; originally each coven kept a single copy under its high priestess, and Gardner's own manuscript dates from around 1949.

What is the black-handled ritual knife used by Wiccans, never for physical cutting, called?

The athame is the black-handled ritual knife used to direct energy and cast circles, never to cut; the white-handled boline is the working knife for herbs and cords.

The word "Wicca" is borrowed from Old English, where wicca and wicce meant what?

Old English wicca (masculine) and wicce (feminine) meant male and female magic-workers, the roots of the modern word witch; Gardner's followers took the name as less loaded than Witchcraft.

Wicca is generally classified by scholars as which type of religion?

It is the largest and most studied form of modern paganism, and eclectic rather than reconstructionist.

Most early Wiccan groups worshipped a Mother Goddess alongside which male deity?

The Horned God, lord of animals, the wild and the afterlife, is paired with the Goddess in Gardnerian Wicca, where his traditional secret name is Cernunnos.

The Wiccan Goddess is often pictured as a Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and which third aspect?

The Crone completes the Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone, standing for wisdom and age; the three are commonly matched to the waxing, full and waning moon.

Which Wiccan Sabbat falls at Halloween, on the night of 31 October?

Samhain, the Gaelic festival of 31 October, is the Wiccan Sabbat at Halloween; Gardner originally called the four great Sabbats Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween.

Which Wiccan Sabbat is celebrated on 1 May?

Beltane, kept on 1 May, marks the start of summer with bonfires and greenery; the maypole customs Wiccans attach to it are medieval English folk practice.

What is a group of Wiccan initiates, traditionally led by a High Priest and High Priestess, called?

A coven is the Wiccan group, led by a High Priest and High Priestess; the ideal of thirteen members was built by one Egyptologist from a single 1662 witch-trial confession.

What is the traditional Wiccan word for the practice of performing rituals in the nude?

Skyclad means ritually naked. Gardner justified the practice with a line in Charles Leland's 1899 witch gospel telling witches to be naked in their rites; some say clothes impede power, others that nudity erases rank.

Which Wiccan tenet holds that whatever you send out, good or ill, comes back to you three times over?

The Threefold Law holds that whatever a witch sends out returns three times over; a prototype line appears in Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's Aid, and American authors popularised it in the 1970s.

Which woman, initiated by Gardner in 1953, wrote much of Wicca's early liturgy including the best-known Charge of the Goddess?

Doreen Valiente, initiated by Gardner in 1953, rewrote the Charge of the Goddess and stripped an infamous occultist's borrowed lines from the rituals; she had worked as a wartime translator at Bletchley Park.

What is a Wiccan wedding ceremony called?

A handfasting is the Wiccan wedding, named for the binding of the couple's hands; some traditions treat it as a trial marriage echoing the old Irish Teltown marriages.

Which repealed British law had made it a crime to claim magical powers, its 1951 repeal opening the way for Gardner to go public?

The 1735 act had assumed there were no real witches, only cheats; its maximum penalty was a year in prison.

Gardner founded his first coven in the 1940s at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire, on the grounds of what kind of establishment?

He bought a plot at the Fiveacres club and drew many early members from its nudists.

What is the traditional length of the apprenticeship before a Wiccan initiation?

A year and a day is the traditional wait before initiation; Gardner called the rule traditional but often waived it for his own initiates.

Which Egyptologist's 1921 book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe" supplied Wicca with its founding myth of a surviving pagan religion?

Margaret Murray's 1921 book argued witchcraft was a surviving pagan fertility cult; trial archives have since disproven it, but she wrote the Britannica witchcraft entry from 1929 and Gardner took her seriously.

Which English occultist, elected "King of the Witches" in 1965, founded his own Wiccan tradition?

Alex Sanders, born Orrell Alexander Carter in 1926, was proclaimed King of the Witches in 1965 and founded the Alexandrian tradition with his wife Maxine; June Johns's 1969 biography spread his fame.

Who brought Gardnerian Wicca to the United States in 1964 and later founded the Anglo-Saxon-flavoured Seax-Wica?

Raymond Buckland, initiated in Britain by Gardner's high priestess Monique Wilson, set up the first US Gardnerian coven on Long Island in 1964 and published his Anglo-Saxon Seax-Wica in 1974.

Dianic Wicca, the female-focused tradition honouring a single Great Goddess, was founded in 1970s America by whom?

Zsuzsanna Budapest founded Dianic Wicca in 1971 with the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number One in Los Angeles; named for the Roman goddess Diana, it honours the Goddess alone.

Whose 1979 book "The Spiral Dance" became a bestselling guide to Goddess religion and helped found the Reclaiming tradition?

Starhawk, born Miriam Simos, trained with Feri founder Victor Anderson and published The Spiral Dance in 1979; it became a bestselling Goddess-religion guide and the seed of the Reclaiming tradition.

Which of the four Wiccan elemental tools represents the element of earth?

The pentacle, a disc bearing a pentagram, represents earth; the chalice is water, and the wand and athame share fire and air, witches usually giving the black-handled knife fire.

What do Wiccans call group energy raised in a circle and released toward a goal?

The cone of power is energy raised by dancing, drumming or chanting and then released; Gardner claimed New Forest witches raised one against Hitler in 1940, chanting "you cannot cross the sea".

What do Wiccans call the resting place of the soul between incarnations?

The Summerland is the Wiccan name for the soul's resting place between lives; reincarnation is the dominant afterlife belief, and Gardner taught that Wiccans would be reborn among their own people.

What is the Wiccan term for a non-Wiccan outsider?

Cowan, a term borrowed from Freemasonry, is the Wiccan word for an outsider; denominations are called traditions, and members who leave to start their own coven are said to have hived off.

Which historian wrote the 1999 history of Wicca "The Triumph of the Moon"?

Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon (1999) traced Wicca's modern origins and debunked pagan-survival claims, yet he called Wicca the only full-formed religion England has given the world.

Charles Leland's 1899 book, supposedly translated from an Italian manuscript, that gave Wicca its nude-ritual custom and a goddess name, was titled what?

Leland said an informant he called Maddalena took eleven years to bring him the manuscript.

Which two 1990s screen hits, a film and a TV series, are credited with drawing a wave of young people toward religious witchcraft?

The Craft (1996) and Charmed (1998) are the film and series most often credited with the teen witchcraft boom; traditional groups grumbled as authors like Silver RavenWolf catered to the new audience.

Which US president said he did not believe Wicca to be a religion?

George W. Bush, asked in 1999 about Wiccan rituals at Fort Hood, said he did not think witchcraft was a religion; Wiccans had nonetheless won recognition in a 1986 federal appeals case.

Which Christchurch amateur-theatre group introduced Gardner to the New Forest witches in 1939?

The Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship ran a theatre in Christchurch; Gardner joined it in 1938 and said members of the group initiated him into the New Forest coven in September 1939.

What do Wiccans call revealing their faith to family and colleagues?

Coming out of the broom-closet is the Wiccan pun for disclosing the faith; many keep the old habit of secrecy for fear of losing jobs or custody.

The word "Wicca" as the name of the religion is first recorded in which decade?

The 1960s: Gardner only ever wrote of "the Wica" with one c; the spelling Wicca for the religion appears in the mid-1960s, and a British newsletter called The Wiccan launched in 1968.

How many virtues are listed in the Charge of the Goddess, arranged in pairs of opposites such as mirth and reverence?

Eight: mirth and reverence, honour and humility, strength and beauty, power and compassion, as listed in Doreen Valiente's version of the Charge of the Goddess.

Who gave the names Litha, Ostara and Mabon to the Wiccan solstice and equinox festivals in 1974?

Aidan Kelly coined Litha, Ostara and Mabon in 1974 while compiling a pagan calendar; Tim Zell spread them through Green Egg magazine, and Litha comes from Bede's list of Anglo-Saxon month names.

Which couple founded the Church and School of Wicca in 1968, the first federally recognised Wiccan church in the United States?

Gavin and Yvonne Frost founded the Church and School of Wicca in 1968, winning federal recognition in 1972; they spread their idiosyncratic version by correspondence course from St. Louis and later West Virginia.

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, home to the world's largest such collection, is in which Cornish village?

Boscastle has housed the museum since 1960; Cecil Williamson first opened it on the Isle of Man in 1951 with Gardner as "resident witch", then sold that site to Gardner and started again in England.

Gardner's ritual texts drew heavily on which occultist's writings, material Valiente later cut out?

Aleister Crowley: Gardner's original Charge of the Goddess lifted passages from Crowley's The Book of the Law, tying early Wicca to Thelema until Valiente rewrote the rituals.

Which non-profit pagan church founded by Selena Fox in 1974 is based on a 200-acre site near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin?

Circle Sanctuary, founded by Selena Fox in 1974, owns a 200-acre nature preserve near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, and for years was the main national networking resource for American neopagans.

Which English witch, dubbed "Britain's most famous witch" by the BBC, ran antique shops in the New Forest and endorsed a belief in angels?

She claimed descent from Molly Leigh, a woman accused in the witch hunts.

Which 1986 US federal case, often cited as the landmark ruling on Wiccans' legal status, held that Wicca counts as a religion?

Dettmer v. Landon (4th Circuit, 1986) held that Wicca is a religion protected by the First Amendment, even while denying a Virginia prisoner the ritual items he had requested.

Which American writer's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" is one of the best-selling Wicca books ever?

Scott Cunningham, a San Diego author who died in 1993 at 36, published Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner in 1988; it opened the religion to people without a coven.

Gardner's 1954 book that first laid out the religion for the public was titled what?

Witchcraft Today (1954) was Gardner's first non-fiction account, with a foreword by Margaret Murray; it also floated theories that the Knights Templar practised the religion and that fairy legends recalled a secret pygmy race.

How many people gave "Wicca" as their religion in the 2021 census of England and Wales?

About 13,000 people wrote Wicca in the 2021 census of England and Wales, up from 11,766 in 2011; a further 74,000 gave Pagan, and Scotland and Northern Ireland count separately.

Which cross-traditional Wiccan federation of solitaries and over a hundred covens was founded in 1975 to win legal protections for witches?

The Covenant of the Goddess was formed in California in 1975 to win legal recognition and clergy credentials for witches; its member covens span traditions but broadly honour the Goddess.

Which anthropologist became the first officially recognised Wiccan chaplain of a public university?

Heather Botting, an anthropologist at the University of Victoria, became the first officially recognised Wiccan chaplain at a public university; she and her husband Gary also perform legal Wiccan weddings in British Columbia.

In which city was Gerald Gardner buried after dying at sea in 1964?

Gerald Gardner died of a heart attack aboard ship on 12 February 1964, returning from Lebanon; he was buried at the next port, Tunis, where Eleanor Bone later had his grave moved.

Wicca's founder was born on Friday 13 June 1884 in Blundellsands, a suburb of which English city?

Liverpool: Blundellsands, in Great Crosby on the Lancashire coast, was a wealthy seaside suburb of the city; Gardner spent much of his childhood in Madeira before a working life in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya.

Which name is sometimes proposed as the coiner of "Wicca" for the religion, since he was calling it the "Craft of the Wiccens" by 1958?

He was Gardner's rival; nobody knows for certain who first applied the word.

Which historian gave the witch-cult theory its first expression in 1828, decades before Murray?

Mone and then Michelet took it up, and the American Charles Leland promoted a version in his 1899 witch gospel.

Which anthropologist upset Wiccans by publishing what she learned as an initiate in her academic study of ritual magic in England?

Tanya Luhrmann's Persuasions of the Witch's Craft (1989) drew on her initiation into London covens; several Wiccans felt she had broken oath-bound secrecy, which makes the religion hard for outsiders to research.

Which craft name did the founder of Gardnerian Wicca use?

Scire, Latin for "to know", was Gerald Gardner's craft name; Verbius belonged to Alex Sanders, Robat to Raymond Buckland, and Dafo was the woman said to have initiated Gardner.

What was the title of Gardner's original version of the Charge of the Goddess?

Leviter Veslis, Gardner's original Charge, paraphrased Crowley's Book of the Law and Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent before Doreen Valiente rewrote it in verse.

Which journalist's 1971 book "What Witches Do" described Alex Sanders's coven from the inside?

Stewart Farrar, a journalist initiated by Alex Sanders, published What Witches Do in 1971, the first detailed account of Alexandrian ritual; he and his wife Janet later wrote Eight Sabbats for Witches.