WICCA. Wicca originated in 1940s England as an attempt to recreate what was believed to be an ancient religious system indigenous to Britain and Europe, characterized by the veneration of nature, polytheism, and the use of magic and ritual. It was heavily influenced by the occult revival of the late nineteenth century, including secret, magical societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (established in 1888), the notorious magician Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), Freemasonry, and Spiritualism. The rediscovery of classical ideas of nature and deity in Romantic literature and archaeology provided additional sources, as did British folklorist and Egyptologist Margaret Murray's (1862–1963) "anthropological" study of witchcraft in Europe, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).

These threads were woven into early Wicca by Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884–1964), a British civil servant who had spent much of his working life in the Far East and had a lifelong passion for folklore and archaeology, visiting...