Wicca Trivia
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58 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.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which retired British civil servant, often called the "Father of Wicca", introduced the religion to the public in 1954?
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner, a retired colonial civil servant who had served in Ceylon, Borneo and Malaya, went public with a 1954 book and claimed initiation into a New Forest coven in 1939.
Q 02Which symbol is the most widely used emblem of Wicca?
The pentagram
The pentagram, a five-pointed star usually shown inside a circle, is Wicca's main emblem; its points stand for air, fire, water, earth and spirit, and the VA approved it for veterans' 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
The Wheel of the Year is the cycle of eight sabbats: the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and the four Celtic cross-quarter fire festivals that fall between them.
Q 05What are Wiccan 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
A Book of Shadows holds a Wiccan's rituals and spells; originally each coven kept a single copy under its high priestess, and Gardner's own manuscript dates from around 1949.
Q 07What is the black-handled ritual knife used by Wiccans, never for physical cutting, called?
Athame
The athame is the black-handled ritual knife used to direct energy and cast circles, never to cut; the white-handled boline is the working knife for herbs and cords.
Q 08The word "Wicca" is borrowed from Old English, where wicca and wicce meant what?
Male and female magic-workers
Old English wicca (masculine) and wicce (feminine) meant male and female magic-workers, the roots of the modern word witch; Gardner's followers took the name as less loaded 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
The Horned God, lord of animals, the wild and the afterlife, is paired with the Goddess in Gardnerian Wicca, where his traditional secret name is Cernunnos.
Q 11The Wiccan Goddess is often pictured as a Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and which third aspect?
Crone
The Crone completes the Triple Goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone, standing for wisdom and age; the three are commonly matched to the waxing, full and waning moon.
Q 12Which Wiccan Sabbat falls at Halloween, on the night of 31 October?
Samhain
Samhain, the Gaelic festival of 31 October, is the Wiccan Sabbat at Halloween; Gardner originally called the four great Sabbats Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween.
Q 13Which Wiccan Sabbat is celebrated on 1 May?
Beltane
Beltane, kept on 1 May, marks the start of summer with bonfires and greenery; the maypole customs Wiccans attach to it are medieval English folk practice.
Q 21What is the traditional length of the apprenticeship before a Wiccan initiation?
A year and a day
A year and a day is the traditional wait before initiation; Gardner called the rule traditional but often waived it for 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
Margaret Murray's 1921 book argued witchcraft was a surviving pagan fertility cult; trial archives have since disproven it, but she wrote the Britannica witchcraft entry from 1929 and Gardner took her seriously.
Q 23Which English occultist, elected "King of the Witches" in 1965, founded his own Wiccan tradition?
Alex Sanders
Q 14What is a group of Wiccan initiates, traditionally led by a High Priest and High Priestess, called?
A coven
A coven is the Wiccan group, led by a High Priest and High Priestess; the ideal of thirteen members was built by one Egyptologist from a single 1662 witch-trial confession.
Q 15What is the traditional Wiccan word for the practice of performing rituals in the nude?
Skyclad
Skyclad means ritually naked. Gardner justified the practice with a line in Charles Leland's 1899 witch gospel telling witches to be naked in their rites; some say clothes impede power, others that nudity erases rank.
Q 16Which Wiccan tenet holds that whatever you send out, good or ill, comes back to you three times over?
The Threefold Law
The Threefold Law holds that whatever a witch sends out returns three times over; a prototype line appears in Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's Aid, and American authors popularised it in the 1970s.
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
Doreen Valiente, initiated by Gardner in 1953, rewrote the Charge of the Goddess and stripped an infamous occultist's borrowed lines from the rituals; she had worked as a wartime translator at Bletchley Park.
Q 18What is a Wiccan wedding ceremony called?
Handfasting
A handfasting is the Wiccan wedding, named for the binding of the couple's hands; some traditions treat it as a trial marriage echoing the old Irish Teltown 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.
Alex Sanders, born Orrell Alexander Carter in 1926, was proclaimed King of the Witches in 1965 and founded the Alexandrian tradition with his wife Maxine; June Johns's 1969 biography spread his fame.
Q 24Who brought Gardnerian Wicca to the United States in 1964 and later founded the Anglo-Saxon-flavoured Seax-Wica?
Raymond Buckland
Raymond Buckland, initiated in Britain by Gardner's high priestess Monique Wilson, set up the first US Gardnerian coven on Long Island in 1964 and published his Anglo-Saxon Seax-Wica in 1974.
Q 25Dianic Wicca, the female-focused tradition honouring a single Great Goddess, was founded in 1970s America by whom?
Zsuzsanna Budapest
Zsuzsanna Budapest founded Dianic Wicca in 1971 with the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number One in Los Angeles; named for the Roman goddess Diana, it honours the Goddess alone.
Q 26Whose 1979 book "The Spiral Dance" became a bestselling guide to Goddess religion and helped found the Reclaiming tradition?
Starhawk
Starhawk, born Miriam Simos, trained with Feri founder Victor Anderson and published The Spiral Dance in 1979; it became a bestselling Goddess-religion guide and the seed of the Reclaiming tradition.
Q 27Which of the four Wiccan elemental tools represents the element of earth?
The pentacle
The pentacle, a disc bearing a pentagram, represents earth; the chalice is water, and the wand and athame share fire and air, witches usually giving the black-handled knife fire.
Q 28What do Wiccans call group energy raised in a circle and released toward a goal?
The cone of power
The cone of power is energy raised by dancing, drumming or chanting and then released; Gardner claimed New Forest witches raised one against Hitler in 1940, chanting "you cannot cross the sea".
Q 29What do Wiccans call the resting place of the soul between incarnations?
The Summerland
The Summerland is the Wiccan name for the soul's resting place between lives; reincarnation is the dominant afterlife belief, and Gardner taught that Wiccans would be reborn among their own people.
Q 30What is the Wiccan term for a non-Wiccan outsider?
Cowan
Cowan, a term borrowed from Freemasonry, is the Wiccan word for an outsider; denominations are called traditions, and members who leave to start their own coven are said to have hived off.