GARDNER, Gerald Brousseau

(1884-1964)

   English Mason, OCCULTIST and creator of modern WITCHCRAFT or "WICCA." He was a sickly child and received very little formal education. In 1900 he moved to Sri Lanka where he worked on a plantation and later became a civil servant. He travelled widely in the East, absorbing local CULTURES and FOLK BELIEFS. Retiring to England in 1938, he joined a THEOSOPHICAL group led by the daughter of Annie BESANT, through whom he met Dorothy Clutterbuck who claimed to be a WITCH and initiated him into "the craft." In 1949, under the assumed name "Scire," he published a novel High Magic's Aid where he outlined many of his ideas about MAGICAL RITUAL. Following the repeal of England's Witchcraft Laws in 1951, he published Witchcraft Today (1954) and numerous other books. Gardner's system is a mish-mash of Masonic ritual, Eastern FOLK CULTURE, YOGIC RELIGION and his own vivid imagination designed to appeal to a popular audience on the basis of its alleged historical roots. Central to his ideas is the creation of a CULT of the Mother Goddess about whom he wrote in his novel A Goddess Arrives (1948). In 1963 Gardner initiated Raymond and Rosemary Buckland who spread his CREED to North America.