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The New Forest coven was an alleged group of pagan witches who met around the area of the New Forest in Southern England during the early 20th century. According to his own claims, in September 1939, a British occultist named Gerald Gardner was initiated into the coven and subsequently used its beliefs and practices as a basis from which he formed the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
Gardner portrayed the coven as a survival of the theoretical "witch-cult" discussed in the works of Margaret Murray—a theory that is now discredited. He supplemented the coven's rituals with ideas borrowed from Freemasonry , ceremonial magic , and the writings of Aleister Crowley to form the Gardnerian tradition of Wicca.
Wicca (English: / ˈ w ɪ k ə /), also known as "The Craft", [1] is a modern pagan, syncretic, earth-centered religion.Considered a new religious movement by scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esotericism, developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant.
Gary Charles Erbe (April 12, 1951 – March 10, 2019), known as Raven Grimassi, was an American author of over 20 books, including topics on Wicca, Stregheria, witchcraft and neo-paganism. He popularized Stregheria, the religious practice of witchcraft with roots in Italy. Grimassi presented this material in the form of neo-paganism through his ...
The witch-cult hypothesis states that such stories are based upon a real-life pagan cult that revered a horned god. The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pagan religion that had survived the Christianization of Europe. According to its proponents, accused ...
Grimassi shares in common, in his books, the general "Witch-cult hypothesis" that appears in the writings of Charles G. Leland (Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, 1899), a discredited theory that European witchcraft was the continuation of an ancient pre-Christian religion.
Raymond Buckland (31 August 1934 – 27 September 2017), whose craft name was Robat, was an English writer on the subject of Wicca and the occult, and a significant figure in the history of Wicca, of which he was a high priest in both the Gardnerian and Seax-Wica traditions.
The history of magic extends from the earliest literate cultures, who relied on charms, divination and spells to interpret and influence the forces of nature. Even societies without written language left crafted artifacts, cave art and monuments that have been interpreted as having magical purpose.