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Occultwiki (talk | contribs) (Created page with "450px|thumb|Gerald Gardner in his ritual room '''Gardnerian Wicca''', or '''Gardnerian witchcraft''', is a tradition in the neopagan religion of ...") |
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On retirement from the British Colonial Service, Gardner moved to London but then before World War II moved to Highcliffe, east of Bournemouth and near the New Forest on the south coast of England. After attending a performance staged by the [[Rosicrucian]] Order Crotona Fellowship, he reports meeting a group of people who had preserved their historic [[occult]] practices. They recognised him as being "one of them" and convinced him to be initiated. It was only halfway through the initiation, he says, that it dawned on him what kind of group it was, and that [[witchcraft]] was still being practised in England. | On retirement from the British Colonial Service, Gardner moved to London but then before World War II moved to Highcliffe, east of Bournemouth and near the New Forest on the south coast of England. After attending a performance staged by the [[Rosicrucian]] Order Crotona Fellowship, he reports meeting a group of people who had preserved their historic [[occult]] practices. They recognised him as being "one of them" and convinced him to be initiated. It was only halfway through the initiation, he says, that it dawned on him what kind of group it was, and that [[witchcraft]] was still being practised in England. | ||
The group into which Gardner was initiated, known as the New Forest coven, was small and utterly secret as the Witchcraft Act of 1735 made it illegal to claim to predict the future, conjure spirits, or cast | The group into which Gardner was initiated, known as the New Forest coven, was small and utterly secret as the Witchcraft Act of 1735 made it illegal to claim to predict the future, conjure spirits, or cast spells; it likewise made an accusation of witchcraft a criminal offence. Gardner's enthusiasm over the discovery that witchcraft survived in England led him to wish to document it, but both the witchcraft laws and the coven's secrecy forbade that, despite his excitement. | ||
After the witchcraft laws were repealed in 1951, and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, [[Gerald Gardner]] went public, publishing his first non-fiction book about witchcraft, ''Witchcraft Today'', in 1954. Gardner continued, as the text often iterates, to respect his oaths and the wishes of his High Priestess in his writing. | After the witchcraft laws were repealed in 1951, and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, [[Gerald Gardner]] went public, publishing his first non-fiction book about witchcraft, ''Witchcraft Today'', in 1954. Gardner continued, as the text often iterates, to respect his oaths and the wishes of his High Priestess in his writing. | ||