The Gnostic Roots of Wicca

As Wiccans, we struggle with the terms with which we identify ourselves. The meaning of the word 'witch' has become diffuse to the point of meaninglessness. The website lists sixteen mutually exclusive definitions of the word. The word 'pagan' has become similarly vague, especially when the word is used to describe contemporary pagan movements.

Gerald Gardner is the acknowledged father of this religion, which was originally said to have been a surviving strain of mankind's oldest faith. Gardner, Sanders, and others relied on the theories of Egyptologist and feminist Margaret Murray. Later, Murray's theories were disproved, as other scholars successfully argued she had not been able to establish proof of an uninterrupted tradition. Aidan Kelly, in Crafting the Art of Magic, produced several successive drafts of Gardner's Book of Shadows, pointing out that genuinely ancient material is not subject to revision. Gardner's apologists were quick to redefine Wicca as a reconstructionist attempt to recover Europe's nearly lost indigenous mysteries. I would like to offer another perspective: that Wicca is actually a recent incarnation of the Gnostic tradition. While not the continuation of an ancient religion, it is the continued preservation of the mysteries underlying all faiths.