Is Wicca really an ancient religon?

Question

I've heared that it started in the 1800's but then I've also heared that it started in the 1950's, so I'm really confused. Is it really an ancient religon? If so, was it the first pagan religon? When did it actually start, and can you prove that it started then?

Answer 1

Not in its current form. It is a reconstruction of practices that were done long ago. Once Christianity overcame the Roman pantheon, the Church found its main competition in rural folk religions tied to natural and seasonal phenomena.

Many celebrations were co-opted by the Church. The WInter quickening festival some called Imbolc became the feast of the Circumcision of Christ. The Spring festival name Eostara was appropriated to become Easter. The late Summer harvest festival of Lughnassa became Lammas ("loaf-mass"). Samhain became the eve of the Feast of All Saints and Yule became Christmas. This is how the annual cycle of Christian observances came about, driven by the competition of natural religion.

The current revivals are a revolution against the ubiquity and artificiality of Christianity to some people, and indicates a desire of some people to practice a religion more in tune with the rhythms of the Earth.

Answer 2

Wicca, as a word, is pretty old - but in Old/Middle English, it was merely an adjective, not the title of a religion.

As a religion, Wicca started around the 1950s, roughly. There's some evidence that there was some stuff you could arguably call "proto-Wicca" as early as around WWI, but that's pushing it. That said, Wicca's development does owe a lot to the culture of the 1800s, where mystic orders and magic pursuits were semi-fashionable.

Most of this information can be found in research done by Ronald Hutton or Philip Hesselton. Be warned, they draw differing conclusions, so there's still a little debate there.

It's by far not the first Pagan religion - that honor rests in the religions of the ancients, with the first being lost to time. And, you can arguably claim that Asatru got off the ground before Wicca did, though its early days are a bit different from its early incarnations. (Then again, the same could be said about Druidry, which started in the 1800s, but was so different from its modern incarnation that I don't count that.) However, Wicca certainly was one of the forerunners, and got popular enough to have a heavy influence on the Pagan community as a whole.

Answer 3

It publically emerged in its current form in the 1950s. It may have been in development for a few decades before that, but the evidence is very sketchy. No evidence suggests that it is more than 100 years old.

The idea of it being an ancient religion comes from bad scholarship that was popularized by the Encyclopedia Brittanica between 1929 and 1969, which claimed that witchcraft was actually a pagan religion that was 25,000 years old. When Wicca emerged, it claimed to be that witch religion. Problem is there's no evidence to support the claim about witchcraft. The evidence was pieced together, editted, occasionally fabricated, grossly misinterpreted, and generally turned on its head. There's a LOT of information out ther about the demolishing of that theory. Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic has a good (and readable) chapter on it. Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon is all about the development of modern witchcraft and Wicca.

To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence that suggests that Wicca was being practiced in ancient times, much less that it managed to survive in secret all these years.

Answer 4

I don't think so; at least I have trouble getting any data before, say, 1910 or 1920. While it is true that wicca is a nature-based religion found in various countries throughout the world, as far as I can ascertain it was in 1954 that Gerald Gardner claimed that the religion, of which he was an initiate, was a modern survival of an old witchcraft religion, which had existed in secret for hundreds of years. According to Gardner wicca originated in the old paganism of Europe long before the introduction of Christianity or Islam. I have never been able to find any corroborating evidence for that claim. There is some evidence that wicca theology began to be compiled no earlier than about 1910 or 1920.

HTH

Charles

Answer 5

No, it's not. The earliest mentions of it date back only to the 1950s and even then Gerald Gardner in his book "Witchcraft Today" didn't call it Wicca, just Witchcraft. The label Wicca was given to it later on to differientiate between the religion Wiccans practice and try to distance it from Satanism, since it was also starting to come up at the time.

The concepts are based on some ancient beliefs and teachings but the religion in it's modern form is only about 60 or so years old.

Answer 6

Wicca is a modern religion with ancient roots. The religion was popularized by Gerald Gardner in the 1950's although he stated that it was based on an older initiatory tradition.

I would hesitate to say that it was the first Pagan religion as we have no documentable evidence of what ANY religion taught prior to about 5000 years ago in any portion of the world. The earliest documented religious beliefs were polytheistic in nature, but although those religions may be part of the BASIS for Wicca, they bear little resemblance to the modern form of that religion.

Answer 7

Yes, there were ancient Pagan gods that people abandoned for Christianity, but Wicca does not have a direct connection to them. (And please note there was never a Duotheistic Pagan religion. They all worshipped lots of god and goddess idols.)

I could start "The First Church of Dinosaurs". Dinosaurs are millions of years old, does that make my religion millions of years old as well???

”[M]any of the Book of Shadows rituals did not exist in 1954 (when Witchcraft Today was published) but instead were still being written. [T]he major sources from which the rituals had been constructed included: (a) Mather's edition of the Greater Key of Solomon; (b) Aleister Crowley's Magic in Theory and Practice; (c) Leland's Aradia (d) some Masonic rituals akin to those described by Duncan and those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (aside from those transmitted by Crowley; and (e) Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult in Western Europe. There were also bits and pieces from other works by Leland, Jane E. Harrison, Gilbert Murray, James Frazier, and other great classicists from the 19th century. That accounted for EVERYTHING in the rituals…There was nothing left that differed in any important way from what you can find in those sources-but that is NOT at all what Gardner had claimed”
(Crafting The Art of Magic by Adian Kelly, Page xvii)

Answer 8

To quote Wikipedia:
The word seems to be based on the Old English word wicca (pronounced /w?t??/), which meant "wise". Old English wicca and its feminine wicce are the predecessors of the modern English witch.

So what it was in old england (and other places with other names attached to it) was someone who learned the powers of herbs and certain actions. The "Wise One" was the person in the woods that you visited when you wanted help with something.

So its roots definetly predates most religions. But as an organized religion itself, not until certain religions came into power and started to persecute others. Before that most of them didnt like sharing their secrets, and after that they had to group up for defense. And it didnt exist in a researchable form until about the 1950's if I remember right.

Of course many of the "wise ones" methods have been swept over into science now. Processed and purified into medicines, lotions, shampoos, creams which do seem to be better replacements (my apologies to any die-hard oldstyle wiccans out there). And things like the rule of three have been renamed things such as self-actualization or self-empowerment exercises or even in some extremes self hypnosis which actually dont seem to work as well (its hard to convince someone that it will work better to believe its in them all along)

Answer 9

Wicca takes its name from the wise woman/man. The modern Pagans who study the craft are wiccans and its rebirth was around 30s to the 50s. The fact it is a religion is a big question. It depends on your definition of religion. I personally would not want it classified.

Answer 10

Wicca is a term that is about a 100 years old. The religion "Wicca" comes from witchcraft or "The Craft." The Craft is an ancient religion.