#gardnerianwicca

People make a lot of assumptions.  Everybody knows that Gardnerian Wica has a Goddess and a God.  But...

* Just because we refer to them in public as “the Goddess” and “the God” doesn’t mean they don’t have names.  In fact, they have SPECIFIC names, which are initiatory secrets, so we don’t use them in public.

* Just because we have a Goddess and a God doesn’t mean that they are somehow universal Deities that encompass and absorb all others.  They aren’t.  They have unique identities.  They are OUR Goddess and OUR God.

* Just because we have a Goddess and a God as tutelary deities of OUR  Tradition doesn’t mean that these are the only Gods.  There is a vast multitude of Deities out there, and we often address them in our practice.  It’s just that two of that vast multitude of Deities are special to our Tradition.  That’s all.

* Just because we have a Goddess and a God doesn’t mean that we all believe that the cosmos can be reduced to a dyad of all things.  Some of us do; many of us don’t.

* Just because we have a Goddess and a God doesn’t mean that our theology is biased towards heterosexuality.  It isn’t.  At the risk of giving away a Traditional secret, nowhere in our texts are the Goddess and God referred to as a couple - as Hera & Zeus are, for example.

* Just because we have a Goddess and a God doesn’t mean that our theology is gender binary.  Both of these Deities have complex relationships with gender.

Just a few points...

* Gardnerian Wicca is an initiatory tradition - a secret society.  Every secret society in the history of the world has done its best to hide from non-initiates the truth of its origins and the extent and nature of its teachings.  If you believe that Gerald Gardner made it all up, that everything has been published, and that what has been published is accurate… then we've succeeded.

* To define the Gardnerian Tradition by the texts that you read online is to ignore 70+ years of discussion within the Tradition – discussion in which those texts have been accepted, rejected, argued over, and re-interpreted.  This should be obvious to anyone who has been involved in any living religion.  Sure, texts are important, but so is the living community’s engagement with those texts.

* What an individual teacher says or does reflects that teacher’s interpretation of the Tradition. No one (including me) speaks for the Tradition as a whole, not even Gardner.  He was a reporter – a transmitter of information – not a prophet, and not our only source for information about the tradition he joined.  A LOT came through him, but not everything.

I’m amazed at how much misinformation there is about Wicca on Tumblr. I don’t know if it’s coming from folks who assume that if they’ve read some published books they know all there is to know about an oath-bound SECRET society or if it’s coming from poorly trained Wiccans.

There’s also a lot of sloppy use of terms - especially "Wicca" - which I'll address in another pinned post.

Speaking as a Gardnerian who sometimes takes such ill-informed comments personally…

* Every version of the “Book of Shadows” that’s been published is both inaccurate and incomplete (on the order of hundreds of pages). The Gods protect their secrets.

* The “3-fold Law” or "Law of Three-fold Return" is not a part of the tradition I inherited. It’s part of the metaphysical context of the middle-twentieth century. It became popular and accepted by many people as a sort of shorthand for “what goes around comes around”.

* The "Wiccan Rede" was invented by Doreen Valiente. Some of us like it, some of us less so, but it wasn’t in the Tradition ‘til she wrote it - several months after Gardner died.

* Gardner was an excellent transmitter of information, but a crappy folklorist. We can usually trust what he passed along, but his observations are often bullshit. It’s important to distinguish between these.

* Saying “Blessed Be” has nothing to do with wishing someone fertility or invoking the blessing of a particular deity. The texts make this very clear. It’s a general well-wishing. If almost all of us can deal with “God bless you!” almost every day and accept the good will behind the words, the odd “Blessed Be” here and there should be a small thing, especially when understood correctly. (A friend who is a Catholic priest once said before an interfaith service: “It’s easy for us to bless each other. The challenge is in accepting the blessings.” Think about it.)

* Gardner was a homophobe (as were many in his day), but he also WASN’T a prophet! What he thought, said, or did personally has no influence on the rest of us. The material he transmitted reflected it’s times, but is not necessarily heterosexual (surprise!) and nowhere are the God and Goddess described as anything like a married couple. There’s plenty of room for interpreting the Tradition in other ways. Ask all the LGBTQ+ Gardnerians.

* The God & Goddess aren’t mushed together versions of all the other deities. They are specific deities with specific names who are OUR Gods, while we acknowledge the existence of all the other Gods. We can’t name our Gods publicly, so they are just called “the God” and “the Goddess” among outsiders. This was a common practice in antiquity. Outsiders got this muxed up with Dion Fortune's "All goddesses are one Goddess..." and assumed we were saying the same thing when we weren't. Unfortunately, through the folk process called rucklauf ("backflow"), this mistaken understanding has sometimes made its way back into some Gardnerian groups.

* There is a lot of traditional magic in the Tradition. Remember, everything hasn’t been published.

* The Tradition has a philosophy based on late-antique Neoplatonism.

* Not all Gardnerians are religious. I recently had an avowed atheist apply to work with my coven. I turned to an e-list of Gardnerian elders in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia and asked, "Can an atheist be Gardnerian?" After a chorus of responses saying "Absolutely not!" the other half of the list spoke up, saying "Why not? I'm an atheist!" A spirited discussion ensued, resulting in a broader understanding of what it means to be Gardnerian.

Before assuming you know all there is to know about Wicca (at least the Gardnerian version):

1) Understand that “common knowledge” is often bullshit.

2) Read Gardner’s books, paying attention to what he says the Witches told him vs. what he thinks.

3) In the end, recognize that there will be a lot you still don’t know because you aren’t an Initiate. Not only do you not have access to all the texts, you have know idea what goes on in the community of Initiates discussing those texts (and has been doing so for over 70 years); some will texts be accepted by all while others may have historical value, but be widely regarded as nonsense. Any text, no matter how central, is still only a PART of any living religious community.

I’d also like to offer the suggestion that one can always promote and sing the praises of one’s own Tradition or practice without dumping on those of others. So many times I’ve been brought up short in reading a beautiful description of someone’s Tradition by the words “unlike those Wiccans”, or words to that effect. It’s unnecessary and usually untrue.

"Common knowledge" is all too often actually common ignorance.

Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, but I hope it was still informative. I might update it as I run across more misinformation.

A retired British civil servant named Gerald B. Gardner is the 'Grandfather', at the very least, of almost all Neo-Wicca. He was initiated into a coven of Witches in the New Forest region of England in 1939 by a High Priestess named 'Old Dorothy' Clutterbuck. In 1949 he wrote a novel [*High Magic's Aid*] about medieval Witchcraft in which quite a bit of the Craft as practiced by that coven was used. In 1951 the last of the English laws against Witchcraft were repealed (primarily due to the pressure of Spiritualists) and Gardner published *Witchcraft Today*, which set forth a version of the rituals and traditions of that coven. There is an enormous amount of disagreement about virtually every statement I have made in this paragraph.

Gardnerism is both a tradition and a family, and lineage is a family tree. The High Priestess rules the coven, and the principles of love and trust preside. We follow our handed down book more carefully than many others, but we are free to add and improvise, as long as we preserve the original.

We work skyclad, practice binding and scourging, are hierarchal and secretive, therefore we are controversial. We're also controversial because we were first - the first craft tradition in the U. S. and descended from the man largely responsible for starting the craft revival. So, we're called the snobs of the Craft, but I think we're as much fun as anyone else; our parties as good, our jokes as bad.

*Each Gardnerian coven is autonomous and is headed by a High Priestess who can turn to her queen (the High Priestess who trained her) for counsel and advice. This maintains the lineage and creates a pool of experienced and knowledgeable leaders and teachers.

*Reincarnation and the Wiccan Rede [An it harm none do what you will] are basic tenants of the tradition. Covens are as much as possible composed of male/female pairs for balance. Most working is accomplished with the energy raised by the interaction of the Lord and Lady as represented by the couples in the coven by dancing, chanting, etc.

*Like many Wiccan traditions, Gardnerians have three degrees. An American Gardnerian must be of the 3rd degree before she can become a HPS. The HPS/HP are responsible for conducting services (circles), training their conveners, and preserving and passing on Gardnerian Craft. *[This material quoted from Converging Paths Newsletter, Kyril, Brita, & Hugh authors.]

A lot of the controversy surrounding Gardnerianism questions the sources of the rituals and other materials, particularly those appearing in print. It is true that Gardner presented these materials as if they were directly from his New Forest tradition. It is clear, however, that whatever materials the coven may have had when he was initiated, Gerald made a lot of changes and added a great deal. Literary sources of the published Book of Shadows include Blake, Kipling, Yeats and Crowley. Much of the published material was written by Doreen Valiente, a member of the coven for a time and later founder of her own groups and author of many excellent books on the Craft.