What is the wiccan religion based on?
Wicca was “founded” (not really the right term, but as I can’t think of a better, we’ll use it) by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. (He retired from Civil Service, and returned to Britian from India in the 1940s) Gardner was really interested in the Occult (Thelema, Witchcraft theatre: Rosicrucians, Theosophy, etc), which was popular in Britian, and in Archeology: particularly the Goddess theory espoused by respected British archaeologist, Margaret Murray. He put these together to piece together his “Witchcraft” religion. (He never used the term Wicca, that was adopted in the 1970s to describe his religion, and the varieties that came about from his varied pupils; Doreen Valiente, Alex Sanders, the Farrars, Raymond Buckland, etc) What further confuses things is that many pre-Gardnerian groups, in the 70s, began also using the popular term, Wicca, to describe their own Pagan, Neo-pagan, Druidic, and Meso-Pagan (mixed with Christian) practices. Some of these still call themselves Wicca today
