Glossary - exWitch Australia (formerly 'Born Again Pagan')

GARDNER, Gerald Brosseau (1884-1964)

Gerald Gardner - the 'father' of modern Wicca... The British founder of modern Wicca and the author of several books including the novel High Magic's Aid (1949) and Witchcraft Today (1954), the latter representing the first authoritative account of Wicca.

Born in Lancashire, England, the third of four siblings, his father was a timber merchant and Justice of the Peace. However, much of his formative years were influenced by an Irish nanny, Josephine 'Com' McCombie, who possessed a dominant, bohemian personality and with whom he travelled extensively abroad in search of climates condusive to combatting a chronic asthma condition.

In 1900 McCombie and the sixteen year old Gardner emigrated to Ceylon where he worked on a tea plantation before moving on, in 1908, first to Singapore and then to a rubber plantation in North Borneo.

There he developed an interest in the culture and Traditions of the local Dyak tribes before returning to Singapore in 1923, gaining the job of a customs inspector while expanding further his knowledge of occult lore and practice. In Malaya he also developed a life-long fascination for knives, swords and other weaponry.

He visited England in 1916 to enlist in the army but was discharged, returning to Malaya a year later. He travelled to England again in 1927 when he met and married his wife, Donna (nee Rosedale), the daughter of a clergyman.

In contrast with some ambivalent reactions to his personality, Donna seems to have been universally liked. By 1935 he was back in England via the Middle East wheJe he had met the archaeologist, Flanders Petrie.

In 1936 he retired to become involved in middle eastern archaeology. He spent part of the following years in Cyprus, where he bought a temple site and had aspirations to develop a Goddess cult, before being expelled by the local authorities and returning to England in 1938.

In England he developed an interest in Druidy and in Rosicrucianism through the Rosicrucian Theatre, at Christchurch, Hampshire, where he met Dorothy Clutterbuck and through whom he was Initiated into the Southern Coven of British Withes.

He was also intrigued by naturism in pursuance of which he obtained a piece of land at Bricketts Wood near St Albans in the grounds of a property owned by a nudist club and from where he ran a Coven.

He found a 16th century timber framed cottage, alleged to have been that of a witch, that he purchased from a defunct museum at New Barnet. He had the cottage dismantled and transported to Bricketts Wood where he stocked it with various occult artifacts, partly from his own collection and partly with items obtained from the New Barnet witchcraft museum.

In 1993, an investigator found part of the cottage still standing though in a poor state. It was without any of its decorations and being used as a storage hut.

The claim that Gardner was Initiated into the Craft in September 1939 by Dorothy Clutterbuck has been supported to some extent by modern research. There is only hearsay evidence of Clutterbuck's Coven but she is known to have been a person of means living in the Bournemouth area.

The Coven was said to be traditionalist but with a strong influence derived from Co-masonic principles.

While little has come down overtly into modern ritual, it is significant that Clutterbuck's involvement with the Rosicrucians provided her with knowledge of rituals, some of which are virtually indistinguishable from those of modern Wicca.

There is also an argument that the coven drew some of its Inspiration and its members from the various organizations of Woodcraft Folk who were active in the New Forest in the 1930's and 40's.

Gardner met Aleister Crowley in 1946 (the year before Crowley's death) through a mutual friend, Arnold Crowther, and Gardner was a pupil of, and liaised with Crowley under whose influence he was Initiated, in 1946, into the ninth degree of the Ordo Templi Orientis, describing himself as SCRIRE [sic] OTO 4=7.

Crowley extended a charter to Gardner permitting him to organize a Lodge and to dispense the first 'Minerva!' degree of OTO.

The two men were perceived to have become linked closely enough that, after Crowley's death, many lodges in the United States considered that Gardner was Crowley's appointed successor. It would seem more likely, however, that relations between Crowley and Gardner had become strained and subject to bickering, enmity and a lack of mutual respect. Gardner paid Crowley about Ł300 for his OTO Charter (possibly against Crowley's contribution of ritual material for Gardner's Book of Shadows).

Gardner's biographer, Jack Bracelin, implies that Gardner viewed Crowley as a self-deluded charlatan who advertised himself, sometimes in the most ludicrous way and claims that Gardner followed the flamboyant instinct of the unsuccessful magician. . . wasted money like water. . .and was not too honest. From the opposing viewpoint, in Gerald Suster's biography of Crowley, Gerald Gardner does not even merit a mention among the stream of visitors to Hastings from 1945 onwards.

However, in Witchcraft Today (1954) Gardner states with a little tongue-in-cheek, knowing full well the facts of the case but also wishing not to take away from the mystery of the "Old Religion" and its "ancient mysteries and practices", that:

"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. ... 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."

And in The Meaning of Witchcraft, (1959), Gardner strongly defends and supports his old friend, Aleister Crowley:

"I wish here that I could nail the silly lie that Aleister Crowley was a ' Satanist'. Crowley, like most intelligent people, did not believe in Satan. ... The statements I have read in 'popular' articles about him, that he had 'made a solemn pact with the Devil', and 'sold his soul to Satan', are either sheer ignorance or journalistic invention."

Although Gardner is said to have liaised with Crowley in the preparation of his Book of Shadows and there has been much conjecture as to whether one copied from the other, recent research suggests that much of the Crowleyan material used by Gardner was trawled 'secondhand' from magazine articles.

However, Gardner is known to have possessed copies of a limited number of Crowley's original works including The Equinox of the Gods which contained a reprint of Crowley's sacred text, the Book of the Law. It is this text that Gardner appears to have used, in part, as the basis for Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical which he compiled in the late 1940's, claiming it to be of archaic and traditional origin and on which, in turn, he based much of the first version of the Book of Shadows, including the early version of the Charge of the Goddess.

The manual which evolved became an accepted source of Wiccan laws, rituals and theory but only after substantial revision in the 1950s from Doreen Valiente, who had become Gardner's High Priestess and who argued for the removal - or at least, rewriting - of much of the 'Crowleyan material'.

In terms of provenance, there is no evidence that a genuine medieval manuscript ever existed and the efforts to make Gardner's handwritten material appear arcane are, on close inspection, naive and crudely executed. In reality, much of Gardner's thesis is now known to have been drawn from the ideas of friends and other spiritualist organizations (see also HERMETIC ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN) whose intellectual teachings Gardner sought to popularize and make available to the person-in-the-street. It is also undeniable that Gardner possessed a passionate interest in overseeing the revival of an ancient and time-honoured Craft although he was probably not alone in this ambition amongst various Neo-Pagans operating in southern England.

Gardner claimed that the New Forest Coven was a genuine survival of the Celtic craft. However his efforts at popularization of so-called 'traditional' Witchcraft brought him into conflict with some other Hereditary and Traditional (non-Wiccan) witches who claimed he had assimilated knowledge from their Covens and proceeded to debase their hallowed rituals, claiming them as his own. It is worth noting that such allegations have neither been proven nor repudiated.

Gardner's personality also brought a degree of animosity. He was not a particularly charismatic man and Cecil Williamson, who is generally critical of Gardner, describes him in the Talking Stick as being very, very vain, very self-centred, very tight with money, a voyeur, lacking in diplomacy and a bit clumsy. Williamson has also made repeated claims, that Gardner was always economical with the truth.

Gardner implied, in a 1951 interview, that he possessed Doctorates of Philosophy (Singapore, 1934) and Literature (Toulouse), yet both universities rejected these claims as fraudulent.

Gardner also possessed an interest in Druidry and befriended George Watson McGregor Reid and his son Robert, successive chiefs of the Ancient Order of Druids. For a while he was caretaker of the ceremonial sword which was used in the Midsummer Solstice ritual, having been lent it by Dorothy Clutterbuck.

In 1950 Gardner took over from Cecil Williamson the Museum of Witchcraft, the Witches' Mill, at Castletown in the Isle of Man where a unique, although often unprovenanced, collection of witch tools and weapons was displayed. It has since been relocated in Toronto.

Allegedly Gardner also amplified his occult knowledge through collaboration with Williamson, in whose house he lodged for a period of time.

In his later years, Gardner spent time in both the United States and in West Africa.

Gardner suffered a fatal heart attack in February 1964 while sailing on the SS Prince in the Mediterranean and his grave is in Tunis.

Before his death, Gardner, who was already in his late seventies, became the self-appointed Pope of British Witchcraft. On his retirement he became curator of his own museum of witchcraft, The Witches' Mill Museum at Castletown on the Isle of Man. This curious institution was for a time run by Monique Wilson, a Scottish High Priestess, who claimed to have inherited also the high rank he had assumed for himself in the witch movement.

Such a claim was more than some witches could stomach and so they promptly transferred their allegiance to a rival 'pontiff' who lived in the north of England. As a result so-called 'traditional' British witchcraft, like the fourteenth-century Church, is rent by schism.

For some years after his death, the Gardnerian witches were looked down upon by so-called Hereditary Witches, although now the distinction has become more blurred and the Hereditary concept has lost some popularity with its abuse by newer Covens claiming the right to use the name and title.

PLEASE NOTE:
One of the major problems with 'defining' Paganism and/or its beliefs and practices is that it is an 'organic' movement, in that it is undergoing constant change and re-evaluation from within, and as such any 'one-size-fits-all' approach to understanding Paganism will be found wanting.

Due to the very 'organic' nature of Paganism, and the many differing Paths and Traditions within it, in many cases no one definition may be universally accepted by all Pagans. Therefore, where such cases of possible conflicting and/or contradictory meanings of certain terms occur I have endevoured to give not only the generally accepted meaning, but also any major 'variations' in belief and/or practice.

Christians who believe this difference in meaning of certain key terms, beliefs and practices to be unique to Paganism need to remember that such conflicts also arise within the Body of Christ - the Church. Take for instance the differing practices amongst Christians concerning Baptism and the different attitudes towards women in the clergy.

- Jean-Luc