THE GARDNERIAN TRADITION

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Gerald Gardner

Just as one cannot define Christianity without discussing Jesus, St. Paul, or the unsettled times in which they developed -- one cannot define Wicca/Witchcraft without defining Gerald Gardner, some of his contemporaries and the unsettled times in which WIcca developed.

Gardner was born near Liverpool, England in 1884. As a child, he suffered from asthma, and his nurse was permitted to take him to the warmer climates of Europe during the English winters. His nurse married a man who lived in Ceylon, (an island off of India) and Gardner traveled there with her and worked on a tea plantation. Later he worked in Borneo and Malaysia.

In those native countries he became acquainted with folklore, and was especially fascinated by ritual daggers and knives, later writing a book called 'Kris, and Other Malay Weapons'. The ways and legends of the natives had more of an impact on him than Christianity. From 1923-1936, Gardner worked in the Far East for the British Government as a civil servant, and during those years, he became an amateur archeologist. After Gardner married, he continued traveling around Europe and Asia Minor, and wrote a novel in 1939, A Goddess Arrives, about Aphrodite and the worship of the Goddess.

In New Forest, England, he joined a Masonic Order, and met Mrs. Besant Scott, daughter of well known theosophist and author, Annie Besant. That group established "The First Rosicrucian Theater in England", which put on plays with occult themes. Soon after, Gardner and other witches, claimed to have discovered secret witchcraft groups in New Forest and was initiated into one of them by a mysterious woman named Dorothy Clutterbuck. Despite valiant attempts, no one has ever been able to verify this person's existence. Gardner met Ale/stet Crowley in 1946, a stage magician, and an honorary member of the Ordo Ternpti Orient/s, (OTO), a tantric sex magic order, at one time under Crowley's leadership. Most researchers today believe that Gardner incorporated some of Crowley's ideas into his own rituals. Indeed, in the ritual of Drawing Down the Moon, some of Crowley's writings can be found. In 1949, Gardner wrote a fiction book titled High Magic's Aid. It included rituals from his own coven, and involved the worship of a Horned God. A Goddess was not mentioned at that time.

In 1951, England repealed it's witchcraft laws. Gardner left New Forest, broke away from his original coven and formed one of his own. That same year he visited the Isle of Man, where a museum of Magic and Witchcraft had been set up by a man named Cecil Williamson. Gardner became the 'resident witch', and added his own collection of artifacts and ritual tools he'd collected over the years.

In 1953, Gardner initiated Doreen Valiente, now author of many books on Witchcraft. Valiente re-wrote most of Gardner's original rituals, which were fragmentary at best, and as Valiente has written, inappropriate because they were too modern. (After all, this book was supposedly handed down, unchanged for centuries.) From 1954-57, Valiente and Gardner collaborated on the writing of many ritual and non-ritual material, which became the final authority for the Gardnerlan Book of Shadows. (Book of Shadows suggests secrecy.) It was during this time, that the Goddess became preeminent, the High Priestess -- all but infallible.

Gardner's first non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today, became an immediate success, and covens began springing up around England, vaulting Gardner into the public spotlight. The press dubbed him "England's Chief Witch". The Crown further enhanced his fame by giving him an award for his distinguished civil-service in the Far East. Many witch or Wiccan traditions today are modified rites from the original Gardnerian/Vatiente rituals.

In 1972, Llewellyn published a book by Lady Sheba called the Grirnoire of Lady Sheba. which contained most of the Gardnerian rituals and rites. She claimed in her book to be a hereditary witch who was accepted into Gardnerian Wicca as an honor to her family. The charter for her group from the state of Michigan appears in the preface of her book. Witches and especially Gardnerian witches were angered by the printing, and the book went off the market quickly. Lady Sheba defended the book claiming she had been directed by the Goddess to write it. The secret 161/2 Laws of Wicca, and the entire text of the Book of Shadows including alt the initiation rites (previously held secret) were published in the book. Those rites had been hand copied by many students from their HP and HPS and professed to be totally secret. Lady Sheba was billed as the Witch Queen of America.

At this point one cannot continue without mentioning the vast amount of Wiccan/pagan material now published on the subject. Twenty years ago, you couldn't find such a book in print, with the exception of Lady Sheba, and that book was never on a student's reading list. Most books were vague, but enticing -- claiming all was secret. Today Wiccans and pagans have researched the true origins of Wicca and found that such claims as heredity are nothing more than fiction. Author and teacher, Doreen Valiente, admits having written most of the original Gardnerian Book of Shadows.

Gardnerian tradition is centered on worship of the Goddess and her consort the Horned God, represented by the HPS and HP. It emphasizes polarity in all things manifest in the universe. Eight seasonal pagan Sabbats are observed, and the Wiccan Rede is the guiding principle. Formal initiation into a coven by a HP and HPS is stressed. A woman is initiated by a man, and vice-versa. The tradition has three degrees, separated by a minimum of a year and a day. The deities are called by a multitude of names, and rituals are performed sky-clad (nude) in a magick circle. Gardnerians hold that worshipping in the nude brings them closer to nature and keeps all coveners equal. (Some covens today no longer practice sky-clad.)

Magic in the tradition is the ureic, that is, performed with the aid of beneficent spirits such as Elementals and Guardians of the four Watchtowers which loosely resemble the four Archangels. Mild scourging (symbolizing 'one must suffer to learn') and sex magick are two of the eight ways in which Gardner advocated the raising of power. Others were meditation, chants, spells and invocations. astral projection, incense, hallucinogenic drugs, and the use of special cords for binding and knot mag/ck. It is no surprise, given Gardner's background that these techniques are similar to those employed by Eastern mystics, i.e. Many witches now practice Eastern Tantric sex magic. One also finds correspondences between the practices of Masonic Craft and Wicca Craft, which is not unusual, in light of Gardner's Masonic membership.

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