60 Fun Facts About Wicca

Which retired British civil servant, often called the "Father of Wicca", introduced the religion to the public in 1954?

He had spent decades in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya, and claimed initiation into a witches' group in the New Forest in 1939.

Which five-pointed star inside a circle is the most-used symbol of Wicca?

Its five points stand for air, fire, water, earth and spirit; the US Department of Veterans Affairs approved it for military headstones in 2007.

What is the moral maxim followed by most Wiccans, "An it harm none, do what ye will", called?

"Rede" is Middle English for advice or counsel; the couplet was first publicly recorded in a 1964 speech by Gardner's former high priestess.

The seasonal festivals of the Wiccan calendar, taken together, are called what?

Four are the solstices and equinoxes and four are the Celtic cross-quarter fire festivals in between.

Wiccan seasonal festivals are called Sabbats. What are the rituals held at the full moon called?

Esbats are linked to the Triple Goddess and the Moon; Sabbats to the Sun and the God.

A Wiccan's personal collection of rituals and spells is traditionally called what?

Originally one copy existed per coven, kept by the high priestess; Gardner's own dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s.

What is the black-handled ritual knife used by Wiccans, never for physical cutting, called?

For witches it represents fire; the white-handled boline is the working knife that actually cuts herbs and cords.

The word "Wicca" is borrowed from Old English, where wicca and wicce meant what?

It is the root of the modern word witch, and Wiccans adopted it as a less loaded self-description than "Witchcraft".

Wicca is generally classified by scholars as which type of religion?

It is the largest and most studied form of modern paganism, and eclectic rather than reconstructionist.

Most early Wiccan groups worshipped a Mother Goddess alongside which male deity?

He is tied to animals, the wild and the afterlife; Gardner's secret names for the pair were leaked in 1964 as Cernunnos and an Italian witch-goddess.

The Wiccan Goddess is often pictured as a Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and which third aspect?

The three stand for virginity, fertility and wisdom, and are commonly matched to the waxing, full and waning moon.

Which Wiccan Sabbat falls at Halloween, on the night of 31 October?

Gardner called the four great Sabbats Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween; the Gaelic names came later.

Which Wiccan Sabbat is celebrated on 1 May?

It marks the start of summer with fire and greenery; the maypole customs Wiccans attach to it actually date from the Middle Ages.

What is a group of Wiccan initiates, traditionally led by a High Priest and High Priestess, called?

Tradition puts the ideal size at thirteen, an idea one Egyptologist built from a single witch-trial statement.

What is the traditional Wiccan word for the practice of performing rituals in the nude?

It comes from a line in Charles Leland's 1899 witch gospel; some say clothes impede the flow of power, others that nudity erases social rank.

Which Wiccan tenet holds that whatever you send out, good or ill, comes back to you three times over?

It was framed by Monique Wilson and popularised in American books; a prototype line appears in Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's Aid.

Which woman, initiated by Gardner in 1953, wrote much of Wicca's early liturgy including the best-known Charge of the Goddess?

A wartime translator at Bletchley Park, she stripped an infamous occultist's borrowed lines out of Gardner's rituals to protect the young religion's reputation.

What is a Wiccan wedding ceremony, in which the couple's hands are bound together, called?

Some traditions treat it as a trial marriage, ideally contracted at Lughnasadh after the old Irish Telltown marriages.

Which repealed British law had made it a crime to claim magical powers, its 1951 repeal opening the way for Gardner to go public?

The 1735 act had assumed there were no real witches, only cheats; its maximum penalty was a year in prison.

Gardner founded his first coven in the 1940s at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire, on the grounds of what kind of establishment?

He bought a plot at the Fiveacres club and drew many early members from its nudists.

What is the traditional length of the apprenticeship before a Wiccan initiation?

Gardner said the rule was traditional, though he frequently broke it with his own initiates.

Which Egyptologist's 1921 book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe" supplied Wicca with its founding myth of a surviving pagan religion?

Her theory has been disproven from witch-trial archives, but she wrote the Britannica entry on witchcraft for decades and Gardner took her seriously.

Which flamboyant English occultist, elected "King of the Witches" in 1965, founded the Alexandrian tradition?

Born Orrell Alexander Carter, he claimed initiation by a Welsh grandmother who turned out to have died 19 years before his birth.

Who brought Gardnerian Wicca to the United States in 1964 and later founded the Anglo-Saxon-flavoured Seax-Wica?

He was initiated in Britain by Gardner's high priestess Monique Wilson and claimed to be the first American to openly admit being Wiccan.

Dianic Wicca, the female-focused tradition honouring a single Great Goddess, was founded in 1970s America by whom?

It is named for the Roman goddess Diana; British Traditional Wiccans attacked its Goddess monotheism as an inverted copy of Christianity.

Whose 1979 book "The Spiral Dance" became a bestselling guide to Goddess religion and helped found the Reclaiming tradition?

Born Miriam Simos, she trained with Feri founder Victor Anderson; she finished the book in 1977 but could not find a publisher at first.

Which of the four Wiccan elemental tools represents the element of earth?

The chalice is water, and for witches the black-handled knife is fire, though ceremonial magicians assign it to air.

What term do Wiccans use for the raising of group energy by dancing, drumming or chanting in a circle, then releasing it toward a goal?

Gardner claimed New Forest witches raised one in 1940 and aimed it at Berlin, chanting "you cannot cross the sea".

What do Wiccans call the resting place of the soul between incarnations?

Reincarnation is the dominant Wiccan afterlife belief; Gardner taught that Wiccans would be reborn as future Wiccans.

What is the Wiccan term for a non-Wiccan outsider?

Denominations, meanwhile, are called traditions, and members who leave to start their own coven are said to have hived off.

Which historian's 1999 book "The Triumph of the Moon" showed that most supposedly pagan folk customs, like the maypole dance, date from the Middle Ages?

He nonetheless called Wicca the only full-formed religion England has given the world.

Charles Leland's 1899 book, supposedly translated from an Italian manuscript, that gave Wicca its nude-ritual custom and a goddess name, was titled what?

Leland said an informant he called Maddalena took eleven years to bring him the manuscript.

Which two 1990s screen hits, a film and a TV series, are credited with drawing a wave of young people toward religious witchcraft?

Traditional groups grumbled as authors like Silver RavenWolf catered to the new teenage audience.

Which US president said he did not believe Wicca to be a religion?

Wiccans nonetheless won key legal recognition in a 1986 federal case and the headstone pentacle in 2007.

Wicca is the largest non-Christian faith in which branch of the US military, with more than 1,400 members identifying as Wiccan?

US self-identified Wiccans grew from 8,000 in 1990 to 342,000 in 2008 according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Wiccans jokingly call revealing their faith to family and colleagues what?

Many still keep the old habit of secrecy for fear of persecution.

The word "Wicca" as the name of the religion is first recorded in which decade?

Gardner only ever spoke of "the Wica" with one c; a British newsletter called The Wiccan appeared in 1968.

How many virtues are listed in the Charge of the Goddess, arranged in pairs of opposites such as mirth and reverence?

The full set is mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power and compassion.

How many Craft Laws, or Ardanes, exist in the Gardnerian tradition?

The Alexandrians have 161; Valiente suspected Gardner invented the first thirty in mock-archaic language during a quarrel in his group.

Who gave the names Litha, Ostara and Mabon to the Wiccan solstice and equinox festivals in 1974?

Timothy Zell then promoted the names through his Green Egg magazine; Litha comes from Bede's list of Anglo-Saxon month names.

Which couple founded the Church and School of Wicca in 1968, the first federally recognised Wiccan church in the United States?

They spread their idiosyncratic version by correspondence course from St. Louis and later West Virginia.

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, home to the world's largest such collection, is in which Cornish village?

Cecil Williamson opened it on the Isle of Man in 1951 with Gardner as "resident witch", then sold that site to Gardner and started again in England.

Gardner's ritual texts drew heavily on which occultist's writings, material Valiente later cut out?

Gardner's original Charge of the Goddess lifted passages from The Book of the Law, tying early Wicca to Thelema.

Which non-profit pagan church founded by Selena Fox in 1974 is based on a 200-acre site near Mount Horeb, Wisconsin?

For years it was the only national networking resource for American neopagans.

Which English witch, dubbed "Britain's most famous witch" by the BBC, ran antique shops in the New Forest and endorsed a belief in angels?

She claimed descent from Molly Leigh, a woman accused in the witch hunts.

Which 1986 US federal case, often cited as the landmark ruling on Wiccans' legal status, held that Wicca counts as a religion?

It is the decision most often cited as validating the status of Wiccans in the United States.

Which American writer's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" is one of the best-selling Wicca books ever?

A San Diego author who died at 36, he was openly gay and a friend of Buckland.

Gardner's 1954 book that first laid out the religion for the public was titled what?

It also floated his theories that the Knights Templar had practised the religion and that fairy legends recalled a secret pygmy race.

How many people gave "Wicca" as their religion in the 2021 census of England and Wales?

A further 74,000 wrote "Paganism"; Scotland and Northern Ireland count separately.

Which cross-traditional Wiccan federation of solitaries and over a hundred covens was founded in 1975 to win legal protections for witches?

Member covens broadly focus on the Goddess but vary in tradition.

Which Canadian anthropologist became the first officially recognised Wiccan chaplain of a public university?

With her husband Gary she also won the right in 1995 to perform legal Wiccan weddings in British Columbia.

Wicca took the number thirteen for a group of witches, and the four cross-quarter meetings, from Murray. On what evidence did she base the thirteen?

Mainstream folklorists say the trial testimony was fiction needing no naturalistic explanation, but Gardner adopted her readings wholesale.

Wicca's founder was born on Friday 13 June 1884 in Blundellsands, a suburb of which English city?

He spent much of his childhood in Madeira before a working life in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya.

Which name is sometimes proposed as the coiner of "Wicca" for the religion, since he was calling it the "Craft of the Wiccens" by 1958?

He was Gardner's rival; nobody knows for certain who first applied the word.

Which historian gave the witch-cult theory its first expression in 1828, decades before Murray?

Mone and then Michelet took it up, and the American Charles Leland promoted a version in his 1899 witch gospel.

Which anthropologist upset Wiccans by publishing what she learned as an initiate in her academic study of ritual magic in England?

Oath-bound secrecy makes Wicca hard for outside scholars to research; several felt she had broken initiation oaths.

Which craft name did the founder of Gardnerian Wicca use?

Verbius belonged to the founder of the Alexandrian tradition and Robat to the man who carried Gardnerianism to America; Dafo was the woman said to have initiated Gardner.

Vivianne Crowley, a psychologist and high priestess, is notable for having done what in the 1980s?

She views the Wiccan deities as Jungian archetypes that ritual can evoke from the subconscious.

Gardner's original version of the Charge of the Goddess bore a Latin title meaning "Lift Up the Veil". What was it?

It paraphrased Crowley's Book of the Law and Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent before Valiente rewrote it in verse.

In Wicca, what is the curved ritual blade used for practical cutting, unlike the athame, called?

Other tools on the altar typically include a wand, a pentacle, a chalice, a cauldron and a broomstick known as a besom.