Gerald Gardner

Gerald Brosseau Gardner (June 13 1884 - February 12 1964) was a British civil servant, amateur anthropologist, writer, and occultist who published some of the definitive texts for modern Wicca, which he was instrumental in founding.

Life

Gardner was born in Crosby, near Liverpool, England to a well-off family who had in their service Josephine "Com" McCombie, an Irish nursemaidhttp://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/g/gardner_gerald_b.html. The family business was Joseph Gardner & Sons, the Empire's oldest and largest importer of hardwood. Gardner, who had asthma at the time was suffering and his nursemaid offered to take him to warmer climates in the Continent. Com 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), based on his field research into southeast Asian weapons and magical practices.

Apparently on medical advice, he took up naturism on his return to England, and also pursued his interest in the occult.

Gardner published two works of fiction, A Goddess Arrives (1939) and High Magic's Aid (1949). These were followed by his purportedly-factual works, Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).

Gardner was married once to a woman named "Donna" who 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.

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. Doreen Valiente, one of Gardner's priestesses, later identified the woman who initiated Gardner as Dorothy Clutterbuck in a book published by Janet and Stewart Farrar. This identification was based on references Valiente remembered Gardner making to a woman he called "Old Dorothy". Scholar Ronald Hutton instead argues in his Triumph of the Moon 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. Dr Leo Ruickbie in his Witchcraft Out of the Shadows analysed the documentary evidence and concluded that Aleister Crowley played a crucial role in inspiring Gardner to establish a new pagan religion. 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, Aleister Crowley and also contains borrowings from other identifiable sources.

Etymology

Gardner, in his two books on the subject, referred to religious witchcraft as "Wica", or "The Craft". Gardner's spelling was quickly replaced by usage of "Wicca". In Old English, "Wicca" is a relatively obscure noun of apparently masculine grammatical gender, glossed in two cases as Latin "ariolus", i.e., "magician", "seer", while "Wicce" is an equivalent feminine gender form glossed once as Latin "phitonissa", i.e., "one possessed; as Pythia". Historical use of the word "Wicca" as any sort of religion is unsupported by etymology. The verb form, "wiccian", which means "to practice witchcraft", does not appear in Gardner's written material, and is not commonly used in literature about the religious movement.

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

Notes and references

External links

GeraldGardner.com an online reference resource
Biography at Controverscial.com
Biography at About.com