Today I Have Mostly Been Reading...

Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' is distinctive for three reasons. Firstly, it was the first publically available book which states that witchcraft had survived into the 20th century, something which the author was quite sure about as he was one; secondly, it is the first book which actually consults modern witches about their religion and practices; and thirdly, it was the first book to name this tradition Wica.

It was written as a response to Pennethorne Hughes's 'Witchcraft' and agrees with his thesis on a number of points, including the survival of a pre-Christian religion throughout centuries of persecution and the linking of 'fairies' to indigenious British races. However, Gardner states categorically that the witches do not know their own history and that these are suppositions made by himself based on his own deductions and the research of Margaret Murray and her scholaristic successors. While Hughes's 'Witchcraft' relies heavily upon secondary sources, Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' uses the primary sources of the oral testimony of witches in his acquaintance as touchstones throughout.

Whilst Gardner believes that the origins of Wica lie in Stone Age culture, he concludes that the tradition was influenced by Roman, Greek and Egyptian (pagan) practices. Taking an anthropological view, he also travelled to New Orleans, Italy and thrice to Nigeria and the Gold Coast, to determine how closely the indigenious witchcraft there compared to the witchcraft in Britain.

'Witchcraft Today' may surprise many Pagans, including Wiccans, for whom the book is (in)famous and about which much has been erroneously supposed. Chief amongst these is the assumption that Gardner stated that Wiccans can trace their lineage to pre-Christian religious practice. He does not. The second most common charge is that Gardner was attempting to create his own Tradition with this work. If so, it seems strange that he should present his own credentials as, 'I am a humble member of a coven. I am not its head or leader in any way, and I have to do what I am told..' (p 163), while stating elsewhere that the witch cult is doomed to failure, as modern society has no place for what the religion offers, 'so the coven dies out or consists of old and dying people'. (p 152)

If it is the work of a man who is creating a religion as has been concluded by his detractors (notably Aidan Kelly), then it is cleverly achieved. Gardner often states that he is forbidden to pass on information (for example, p 27); or that the witches whom he has consulted simply do not know the answer to his questions (for example, p 174). It would have been far easier for him to simply make up this information, if he was founding a tradition, as the witches are unidentifiable from his text.

Gardner was also accused, by Kelly, of basing his tradition, in part, on Crowley and the Key of Solomon. Both of these sources are name-checked within 'Witchcraft Today', where Gardner speculates upon their links with the Craft, having noted himself the similarly of certain attributes. He similarly speculates on other late-modern influences upon the craft, considering and discounting a list of historical people who could have written the surviving rites and traditions. (p 52-53)

Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' is an illuminating book and is worth reading both for its historigraphic significance and for the truth of what he actually said, rather than what secondary sources later claimed he said.

A Murray-ite scholar, Hughes's thesis takes the view that witchcraft is a survival of pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices, which had all but died out by the 20th century. He cites isolated incidents of people believing in witchcraft in the early part of this century, but nothing to suggest that the practice continued in an organized fashion. Hughes also sets out to prove that the terms fairies and witches were originally interchangable, with both relating to a suppressed indigenious race in Britain.

As a work alone, there seems nothing notable about Hughes's book, other than as a more 'user-friendly' reworking of Margaret Murray's 'The Witch Cult in Western Europe' and 'The God of the Witches'. Ronald Hutton describes it as 'pop-history' and it is certainly easy to read. The main point of interest is therefore that Gerald Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' was written as a response to Hughes's 'Witchcraft'. Gardner's book being the first to disclose the fact that Wiccans, a survival of the witch-cult decribed by Murray and Hughes, survived into the present day.

It is interesting to note that, by the book's third imprint in 1967, Hughes continued to maintain that the witch-cult had not survived 'in spite of anything that has happened since I wrote this book' (p 218), yet he now included Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' in the book's bibliography.

If the reader is familiar with Murray's works, then there will be nothing new gleaned from Hughes's 'Witchcraft'; however, if Murray's books have too great an academic dryness to suit, then Hughes's easier style and tone may help bridge the gap.