60 free Wicca trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Wicca is the only fully formed religion England has given the world, in Ronald Hutton's phrase, and it is barely seventy years old. This quiz covers what Wiccans believe and do and how the religion came to be. It starts with the essentials: the Rede and the Threefold Law, the Horned God and the Triple Goddess, the eight Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year and the full-moon Esbats, the pentacle, the athame and the other tools, the coven of thirteen, the year-and-a-day apprenticeship, skyclad ritual and the Book of Shadows. Then the history: Margaret Murray's discredited witch-cult, Charles Leland's Aradia, the 1951 repeal of the Witchcraft Act, Gerald Gardner's naturist-club coven at Bricket Wood, Doreen Valiente cutting Aleister Crowley out of the liturgy, Alex Sanders crowning himself King of the Witches, Raymond Buckland carrying the Craft to America, and the traditions that followed, from Dianic and Feri to Reclaiming and Seax-Wica. It finishes with Wicca in the modern world: The Craft and Charmed, the census numbers, the US Air Force, Dettmer v. Landon and the long fight for the pentacle on veterans' headstones. Easy questions suit anyone with a passing curiosity; the expert tier reaches Leviter Veslis, Karl Ernest Jarcke and Gardner's craft name. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Wicca, its founders and its traditions, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. Our witches, Salem witch trials and Halloween pages cover the neighbouring ground.
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Q 01Which retired British civil servant, often called the "Father of Wicca", introduced the religion to the public in 1954?
Gerald Gardner
He had spent decades in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya, and claimed initiation into a witches' group in the New Forest in 1939.
Q 02Which five-pointed star inside a circle is the most-used symbol of Wicca?
The pentagram
Its five points stand for air, fire, water, earth and spirit; the US Department of Veterans Affairs approved it for military headstones in 2007.
Q 03What is the moral maxim followed by most Wiccans, "An it harm none, do what ye will", called?
The Wiccan Rede
"Rede" is Middle English for advice or counsel; the couplet was first publicly recorded in a 1964 speech by Gardner's former high priestess.
Q 04The seasonal festivals of the Wiccan calendar, taken together, are called what?
The Wheel of the Year
Four are the solstices and equinoxes and four are the Celtic cross-quarter fire festivals in between.
Q 05Wiccan seasonal festivals are called Sabbats. What are the rituals held at the full moon called?
Esbats
Esbats are linked to the Triple Goddess and the Moon; Sabbats to the Sun and the God.
Q 06A Wiccan's personal collection of rituals and spells is traditionally called what?
A Book of Shadows
Originally one copy existed per coven, kept by the high priestess; Gardner's own dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Q 07What is the black-handled ritual knife used by Wiccans, never for physical cutting, called?
Athame
For witches it represents fire; the white-handled boline is the working knife that actually cuts herbs and cords.
Q 08The word "Wicca" is borrowed from Old English, where wicca and wicce meant what?
Male and female magic-workers
It is the root of the modern word witch, and Wiccans adopted it as a less loaded self-description than "Witchcraft".
Q 09Wicca is generally classified by scholars as which type of religion?
Modern paganism
It is the largest and most studied form of modern paganism, and eclectic rather than reconstructionist.
Q 10Most early Wiccan groups worshipped a Mother Goddess alongside which male deity?
The Horned God
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.
Q 11The Wiccan Goddess is often pictured as a Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and which third aspect?
Crone
The three stand for virginity, fertility and wisdom, and are commonly matched to the waxing, full and waning moon.
Q 12Which Wiccan Sabbat falls at Halloween, on the night of 31 October?
Samhain
Gardner called the four great Sabbats Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween; the Gaelic names came later.
Q 13Which Wiccan Sabbat is celebrated on 1 May?
Beltane
It marks the start of summer with fire and greenery; the maypole customs Wiccans attach to it actually date from the Middle Ages.
Q 21What is the traditional length of the apprenticeship before a Wiccan initiation?
A year and a day
Gardner said the rule was traditional, though he frequently broke it with his own initiates.
Q 22Which Egyptologist's 1921 book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe" supplied Wicca with its founding myth of a surviving pagan religion?
Margaret Murray
Her theory has been disproven from witch-trial archives, but she wrote the Britannica entry on witchcraft for decades and Gardner took her seriously.
Q 23Which flamboyant English occultist, elected "King of the Witches" in 1965, founded the Alexandrian tradition?
Alex Sanders
Q 14What is a group of Wiccan initiates, traditionally led by a High Priest and High Priestess, called?
A coven
Tradition puts the ideal size at thirteen, an idea one Egyptologist built from a single witch-trial statement.
Q 15What is the traditional Wiccan word for the practice of performing rituals in the nude?
Skyclad
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.
Q 16Which Wiccan tenet holds that whatever you send out, good or ill, comes back to you three times over?
The Threefold Law
It was framed by Monique Wilson and popularised in American books; a prototype line appears in Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's Aid.
Q 17Which woman, initiated by Gardner in 1953, wrote much of Wicca's early liturgy including the best-known Charge of the Goddess?
Doreen Valiente
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.
Q 18What is a Wiccan wedding ceremony, in which the couple's hands are bound together, called?
Handfasting
Some traditions treat it as a trial marriage, ideally contracted at Lughnasadh after the old Irish Telltown marriages.
Q 19Which repealed British law had made it a crime to claim magical powers, its 1951 repeal opening the way for Gardner to go public?
The Witchcraft Act 1735
The 1735 act had assumed there were no real witches, only cheats; its maximum penalty was a year in prison.
Q 20Gardner founded his first coven in the 1940s at Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire, on the grounds of what kind of establishment?
A naturist club
He bought a plot at the Fiveacres club and drew many early members from its nudists.
Born Orrell Alexander Carter, he claimed initiation by a Welsh grandmother who turned out to have died 19 years before his birth.
Q 24Who brought Gardnerian Wicca to the United States in 1964 and later founded the Anglo-Saxon-flavoured Seax-Wica?
Raymond Buckland
He was initiated in Britain by Gardner's high priestess Monique Wilson and claimed to be the first American to openly admit being Wiccan.
Q 25Dianic Wicca, the female-focused tradition honouring a single Great Goddess, was founded in 1970s America by whom?
Zsuzsanna Budapest
It is named for the Roman goddess Diana; British Traditional Wiccans attacked its Goddess monotheism as an inverted copy of Christianity.
Q 26Whose 1979 book "The Spiral Dance" became a bestselling guide to Goddess religion and helped found the Reclaiming tradition?
Starhawk
Born Miriam Simos, she trained with Feri founder Victor Anderson; she finished the book in 1977 but could not find a publisher at first.
Q 27Which of the four Wiccan elemental tools represents the element of earth?
The pentacle
The chalice is water, and for witches the black-handled knife is fire, though ceremonial magicians assign it to air.
Q 28What term do Wiccans use for the raising of group energy by dancing, drumming or chanting in a circle, then releasing it toward a goal?
The cone of power
Gardner claimed New Forest witches raised one in 1940 and aimed it at Berlin, chanting "you cannot cross the sea".
Q 29What do Wiccans call the resting place of the soul between incarnations?
The Summerland
Reincarnation is the dominant Wiccan afterlife belief; Gardner taught that Wiccans would be reborn as future Wiccans.
Q 30What is the Wiccan term for a non-Wiccan outsider?
Cowan
Denominations, meanwhile, are called traditions, and members who leave to start their own coven are said to have hived off.