Gerald Gardner
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| Gerald Brousseau Gardner | |
 Father of the Wicca
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| Born | 1884-06-13 Crosby, Lancashire, England |
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| Died | 1964-02-12 at sea, returning from Lebanon |
| Occupation | Tea planter; rubber planter; customs officer; Wiccan Priest |
| Spouse | Donna Gardner née Rosedale |
| Parents | William Robert Gardner; ??? Gardner |
Gerald Brosseau Gardner (June 13, 1884 - February 12, 1964) was an English civil servant, amateur anthropologist, writer, and occultist who published some of the definitive texts for Wicca, which he was instrumental in founding.
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[edit] History
Credited with “saving Wicca from total extinction”, founder of the “Gardnerian Tradition” of Wicca. According to Gardner and his cronies, Gardner, being an amateur folklorist, discovered a cult of goddess worshiping Pagans who were the witches of Margaret Murray’s “Dianic Witchcraft” thesis. These witches called their religion Wicca, and initiated him into the cult. The cult supposedly went back to the Stone Age, and had adapted the rituals over time. Gardner said the Wiccans went underground during the witch hunt era, for which he coined the phrase “The Burning Times”. Gardner revealed information about Wicca in a series of books, published in the 1950's. He appeared on the BBC, gave lectures and interviews to promote Wicca...all the while claiming “witches don’t proselytize”! Not everyone bought Gardner’s incredible story. Folklorists and anthropologists found it strange that somehow this Stone Age Pagan cult had remained secret for thousands of years in a small place like England. Historian Ronald Hutton has even noted secret societies in England aren’t very secret, and can easily be tracked [ref?]. The folklore society he belonged to rejected for publication in their journal an article detailing Wicca that Gardner wrote. Folkorists also noted the witchcraft described by Gardner was nothing like the known and well documented forms of witchcraft of the British Isles. Occultists wanted to believe, however. They were desperate for it. People who had grown dissatisfied with Satanism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and Spiritualism could now indulge in the kinky nude rites of Gardnerian Wicca that involved being tied up, flogged, and of course “The Great Rite”, sex. The British press treated the whole thing as a joke at first. One article featured a cartoon of naked people dancing around a fire, with the men chasing the women. It certainly seemed Wicca was just another swinging sex club of the 60's to outsiders. Adian Kelly, the “Traditionhead” for a Wiccan “denomination” if you will, called the New Reformed Orthodox Order of The Golden Dawn” did an expose of Gardner that was published very briefly in 1991. Kelly discovered things which forced many Wiccans to change their claims about Gardner. Kelly discovered Gardner was a sado-masochist and nudist, as well as a feminist who enjoyed being tied up and beaten, and had penchants for knives and writing in archaic English. It seems a mighty strange coincidence that Gardner happened to find a cult...allegedly going back to the Stone Age...that practiced all of his fetishes! Being a disciple of Aleister Crowley, Gardner created Wicca primarily so he could fulfill his fetish of being beaten by strong willed women, according to Wiccan tradition head Aidan Kelly. Gardner stole rituals from Thelema, The Golden Dawn, Freemasonry, The Greater Key of Solomon, Rudyard Kipling, and even Gothic Satanism to create Wicca (although I should point out again Wicca and Satanism are not the same thing, as most people already know). After doing much investigation into Wicca which included reading Gardner’s original drafts for the Wiccan Book of Shadows, Kelly drew this conclusion; ” [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) Gerald Garndner claimed he had been allowed to copy a Wicca coven’s Book of Shadows, which in reality, was his own creation. Kelly was allowed access to Gardner original manuscripts, and chronicled the various stages of development the book went through. In it’s earliest stage, it was said to have been “80% Crowley’s writings”. When Doreen Valiente was intitated into the cult, she recognized the Book of Shadows was lifted from Crowley. Gardner told her basically yo write a better one if she thought she could. She continued with the hoax, and re-wrote the book, adding her own poetry. But elements of Crowley can stll be found in Wicca. The most obvious one is the initiation to the 2nd Degree. It’s blatantly obvious that the Wiccan Third Degree ritual mentioned in Chapter One is plagiarized from Crowley's Gnostic Mass word for word. Honestly, who could believe peasant farmers living in rural England could write things like “...Marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space.....”? Apparently a lot of Wiccans do! The rituals of Crowley and Wicca have many similarities; such as the enthronement of the priestess upon the altar, and the consecration of cakes and wine, the eights Sabbats of Wicca, sex magick rituals, etc. Even the moto of Thelema “Do What Thou Will” sounds strikingly similar to the Wiccan Rede “An It Harm None, Do What Ye Wilt”. . Gardner rewrote things such as 'I am alone; there is no God where I am' to become 'I am alone, the Lord within ourselves' Crowley's 'peace unutterable, rest, ecstacy' became 'peace unutterable, rest, the ecstacy of the Goddess'. The public at large certainly knew nothing of what the Book of Shadows contained at the time, and likely didn’t read Crowley’s obscure books either. Knowing that his plagiarism would might be discovered eventually, Gardner attempted to create a cover story in his book Witchcraft Today: “The only man I can think of who could have invented the rites was the late Aleister Crowley. When I met him he was most interested to hear that I was a member, and said he had been inside when he was very young, but would not say whether he had rewritten anything or not. But the witch practices are entirely different in method from any kind of magic he wrote about, and he described very many kinds. There are indeed certain expressions and certain words used which smack of Crowley; possibly he borrowed things from the cult writings, or more likely someone may have borrowed expressions from him.” Gardner was obviously lying through his teeth when he made this statement. He tries to make it sound like he had at best a passing friendship with Crowley, and fails to mention he was in Crowley's O.T.O.! Gardner was a member of Crowley's organization, not the other way around. Since Gerald Gardner was not only a member, but a high ranking member of Crowley's organization no less, it means he was certainly well aware of Crowley's writings. In the “Minerval Initiation” of the O.T.O.:, Gardner would have stood bound hand and foot, blindfolded,, and then heard the words, 'I give unimaginable joys upon earth: certainty, not faith, etc, etc,...all this while standing at swordpoint, just like in Wiccan initiations. At the end of the ritual, the initiate is given a copy of Crowley’s Book of the Law, much like how a newly initiated Wiccan is given a copy of the Book of Shadows. Here we see two occult organizations with exactly the same words and similar initiation ritual. It is absolutely impossible this is a coincidence, or that Gardner could have somehow missed this! Wicca is compiled from many sources Aleister Crowley would have certainly been familiar with (such as Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn), so why would Wicca be “unlike any from of magick Crowley had ever seen”, as Gardner claims? Nor was it likely that Crowley ever was initiated into Wicca, because he wrote down every detail of his occult studies and practices. He never mentions Wicca in any of his voluminous writings, not even once. If Crowley was so dog gone interested in Wicca as Gardner claims, why did he not make some kind of mention of it? His diaries from the time he knew Gardner only mention him dropping by for visits, but no mention about Wicca or ever coming into contact with a cult of stone age goddess worshipers living in England. That’s hardly something he would have omitted! Crowley would have been well aware what such a discovery would have meant, and he would have certainly have mentioned it somewhere in his writings. He also doesn’t mention knowing Sybil Leek or her family as she later claimed, “babysitting” Alex Sanders or knowing his family as he later claimed, or ever knowing or meeting “Old George Pickingill”, and learning Wicca from him as Lugh later claimed. Gerald Garnder; a perverted liar who created the Wiccan hoax.
[edit] Life
Gardner was born at The Glen, The Serpentine, Blundellsands, near Liverpool, England to a well-off family who had in their service Josephine "Com" McCombie, an Irish nursemaid[1]. The family business was Joseph Gardner & Sons, the Empire's oldest and largest importer of hardwood. Gardner had been suffering asthma at the time, bearing the illness from a young age, and his nursemaid had offered to take him to the warmer climates of the Continent. They both eventually settled in Asia, where Gardner stayed for a large portion of his young-adult life.
Beginning in 1908 he was a rubber planter, first in Borneo and then in Malaya. After 1923 he held civil service posts as a government inspector in Malaya. In 1936, at the age of 52, he retired to England. He published an authoritative text, Keris and other Malay Weapons (1936)[2], based on his field research into southeast Asian weapons and magical practices. Apparently on medical advice, he took up naturism.
Retiring to England in 1936 he and his wife Donna soon moved from London to Highcliffe, just south of the New Forest, Hampshire.[3] Here he pursued his interests in the occult and naturism. Those who knew him within the modern witchcraft movement recalled how he was a firm believer in the therapeutic benefits of sunbathing.[4]
Gardner became a member of the Folklore Society in 1939[5]. His first contribution to its journal 'Folklore', appeared in the June 1939 issue and describes a box of witchcraft relics. Later, in 1946, he became a member of the society's council[6]. He seemed to be anxious to achieve academic acceptance, and for a period claimed to have doctoral degrees from the Universities of Singapore and Toulouse. Doreen Valiente has shown this not to be the case[7].
While cycling around Christchurch, Gardner discovered the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, where he took part in theatre productions. It was at this theatre that Gardner claims he first met members of the New Forest coven, who initiated him into a surviving tradition of English witchcraft. It has been suggested that Gardner may also have been introduced to Co-Freemasonry through this theatre; Mabel Besant Scott, the one-time head of the British Federation of Co-Freemasonry, was a prominent member of the theatre, and several of the members that have been proposed as members of the New Forest coven were also very active in Co-Freemasonry[6].
Gardner published two works of fiction, A Goddess Arrives (1939) and High Magic's Aid (1949) under the pen name of Scire. These were followed by two books, Witchcraft Today (1954) which was edited by Ross Nichols and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), in which Gardner described the tradition of witchcraft he had been initiated into. He claimed that High Magic's Aid had been an attempt to portray the tradition under the guise of fiction, without revealing oath-bound material, but that following the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951 he had received permission from others in the coven to discuss the tradition more openly in the two non-fiction books.
Gardner was married once. His wife Donna remained his loyal companion for 33 years during which she never took part in the craft or his activities within it. Gardner was devastated by her passing and began to suffer once more his childhood affliction of asthma. In 1964, after suffering a heart attack, Gardner died at sea on a ship returning from Lebanon. He was buried on the shore of Tunisia.
[edit] Wicca
Gardner claimed to have been initiated in 1939 into a tradition of religious witchcraft that he believed to be a continuation of European Paganism. The group he supposedly joined is known as the New Forest coven. Doreen Valiente, one of Gardner's priestesses, later identified the woman who initiated Gardner as Dorothy Clutterbuck based on references Valiente remembered Gardner making to a woman he called "Old Dorothy".[8] Scholar Ronald Hutton instead argues that Gardner's witchcraft tradition was largely the inspiration of members of the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship and especially a woman known by the magical name of "Dafo".[5] Her identity is uncertain, but Philip Heselton believes her to be Edith Woodford-Grimes [9]. Dr Leo Ruickbie concluded that Aleister Crowley played a crucial role in inspiring Gardner to establish a new pagan religion.[10] Ruickbie, Hutton, and others further argue that much of what has been published of Gardnerian Wicca, as Gardner's practice came to be known by, was written by Doreen Valiente and Aleister Crowley and also contains borrowings from other identifiable sources.[citation needed]. Gerald Gardner was an initiate of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) under Crowley, and sections of Gardner's third degree Wiccan initiation ritual are lifted directly from Crowley's "Gnostic Mass," written for the OTO in 1913. This is consistent with Gardner's claims that the rituals he had received were fragmentary, and that he had incorporated other material to make a coherent system.[11]
[edit] Bibliography
- 1936: Keris and Other Malay Weapons
- 1939: A Goddess Arrives (fiction)
- 1949: High Magic's Aid (fiction)
- 1954: Witchcraft Today
- 1959: The Meaning of Witchcraft
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Themystica.com: Gardner, Gerald B.
- ^ Gardner, Gerald. Keris and other Malay weapons (1936) Singapore: Progressive Publishing Company
- ^ Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation Into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Milverton, Somerset: Capall Bann Publishing. ISBN 186163-1642.
- ^ Valiente, Doreen (1989). Rebirth of Withcraft. Phoenix Publishing. ISBN 0-919345-39-5
- ^ a b Hutton, Ronald (2001). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285449-6.
- ^ a b Heselton, Philip (2000). Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Chieveley, Berkshire: Capall Bann Publishing. ISBN 186163-110-3.
- ^ Valiente, Doreen. The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989) Custer, WA: Phoenix. pp 41-2.
- ^ Farrar, Janet & Steward (2002). A Witches' Bible. Robert Hale. ISBN 0-7090-7227-9
- ^ Heselton, Wiccan Roots pp. 262ff.
- ^ Ruickbie, Leo (2004). Witchcraft out of the Shadows: A Complete History. Robert Hale Limited. ISBN 0-7090-7567-7
- ^ Gardner, Gerald. Witchcraft Today (1954) London: Rider
[edit] External links
- GeraldGardner.com an online reference resource
- Historical documents and media reports about Gardner.
- Biography at Controverscial.com
- Biography at About.com
