Wicca - Debates Over The Origin of Wicca

Debates Over The Origin of Wicca

According to Gerald Gardner's account, Wicca is the survival of a theoretical European witch-cult that was persecuted during the witch trials. Theories of an organised pan-European witch-cult, as well as mass trials thereof, have been largely discredited, but it is still common for Wiccans to claim solidarity with witch trial victims.

The notion of the survival of Wiccan traditions and rituals from ancient sources is contested by most recent researchers, who suggest that Wicca is a 20th century creation which combines elements of freemasonry and 19th century occultism. However, historians such as Ronald Hutton have noted that Wicca not only predates the modern New Age movement but also differs markedly in its general philosophy.

In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton researched the Wiccan claim that ancient pagan customs have survived into modern times after being Christianised in medieval times as folk practices. Hutton found that most of the folk customs which are claimed to have pagan roots (such as the Maypole dance) actually date from the Middle Ages. He concluded that the idea that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation.

Modern scholarly investigations have concluded that Witch trials were substantially fewer than claimed by Gardner, and seldom at the behest of religious authorities. For example, in the book Witches and Neighbors, Robin Briggs (1996) examines the history of witchcraft in medieval Europe and refutes the widely-told story that large numbers of independent women were burned at the stake by vindictive Christian ecclesiastics for the crime of practising naturalistic healing or neopagan religion. Most scholars estimate that a total of 40,000 people were executed as witches during the entire medieval period, and that church authorities participated reluctantly in this process, which was largely fuelled by the political turmoil of the Reformation.