When you think about Wicca, you might initially think of witches, spells, and oddly scary rituals. However, considered to be a contemporary pagan religion, Wicca is anything but the former. The wicca religion can be traced back to the early 1800s, making it one of the youngest religions in the world. Some argue that Wicca has its roots in Celtic religion, although the truth to that, if any, cannot be found on paper.
Gerald Gardner, supposed founder of the Wiccan religion
According to religioustolerance.org, here are a few ideas about the history of Wicca:
"According to Gardner, Wicca:
- began in prehistory, as ritual associated with fire, the hunt, animal fertility, plant propagation, tribal fertility and the curing of disease.
- developed into a religion which recognized a Supreme Deity, but realized that at their state of evolution, they "were incapable of understanding It" . Instead, they worshipped what might be termed "under-Gods": the Goddess of fertility and her horned consort, the God of the hunt.
- continued their predominately Moon based worship, even as a mainly Sun-based faith of priests, the Druids, developed and evolved into the dominant religion of the Celts. By this time, Celtic society had gradually spread across Northern Europe into what is now England, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland etc. They never formed a single political entity, but remained as many tribes who shared a common culture and religions.
- survived the Roman, Saxon, and Norman invasions by going underground
- suffered major loss in numbers during the active Christian genocides, which continued into the 18th Century
- reached a low ebb by the middle of the 20th century. Much of the theology and ritual had been lost; Wiccan covens had become so isolated that they had lost contact with each other.
- was revived in the UK by himself, his High Priestess Doreen Valiente, (1922 - 1999) and others, who took the surviving beliefs and practices, and fleshed them out with material from other religious, spiritual and ceremonial magick sources.
Other individuals discount this belief system and maintain that there was no continuous Wiccan presence from Celtic times to the 20th century. They maintain that present-day Wicca was created by merging a few ancient Celtic beliefs, deity structure, and seasonal days of celebration with modern material from ceremonial magick, the Masonic Order, etc.
Still others trace Wicca back to a little known faith group in New England in the early 20th century." (ReligiousTolerance.org)
Wicca has a cloudy history. It is hard to determine exactly when it became more organized. For a complete look at the history of Wicca, click here: http://www.religionfacts.com/neopaganism/timeline.html
