From the Straight Dope. Obviously this skeptical explanation is not accepted by all on here, but it is on topic and informative.

What is the origin of the Wiccan religion? Most Wiccans you talk to say the religion is an extension of ancient, matriarchal earth worship and will attempt to turn you into a frog if you disagree. Others point to a descendancy from medieval healers and claim close kinship with all those who were burnt at the stake for allegedly conjuring up spirits, riding on brooms (there's that again), and otherwise hobnobbing with demons.

However, some say Wicca as currently practiced is a modern invention and point to the works of a follower of Aleister Crowley, one Gerald Gardner, as the actual starting point of this religion. At least these people don't attempt to magically mess with your personal space.

Dear Patrick:

The nice thing about writing for the alternative press is that you don't have to cover a lot of boring village board meetings. However, you do occasionally get affronted letters from witches. Not that riling the Wiccans was originally my plan. It's just that every time I discuss witches in less than effusive terms, as I did a few weeks ago, I hear from folks who act like I just insulted their relatives. The assumption is that modern pagans (neopagans, Wiccans, witches--take your pick) are linear descendants of medieval witches. Some take it farther and say Wicca directly descends--in the sense of being handed down continuously from one generation to the next--from the pre-Christian, pan- or polytheistic "old religion" that was driven underground but never completely destroyed by the papist upstarts.

To put it as kindly as I can, this be wack, Jack. There is no evidence for historical continuity between the pagan religious practices of antiquity (or even the Middle Ages) and modern Wicca. On the contrary, there's lots of evidence that Wicca is a modern invention. What's more, this is cheerfully conceded by many leading Wiccans, who point to the roll-your-own character of much Wiccan ritual as one of its great strengths.

Since my credibility on this score has been called into question, let me turn to the work of the respected Wiccan writer Margot Adler. In Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (1979), Adler writes, "The Wiccan revival starts with a myth, [that] Witchcraft is a religion that dates back to paleolithic times, to the worship of the god of the hunt and the goddess of fertility. . . . Today most revivalist Witches in North America accept the universal Old Religion more as metaphor than as literal reality--a spiritual truth more than a geographic one."

So how did 20th-century Wicca get started? Power of the pen, babe. According to Adler, several writers helped stir public interest in witchcraft. One was Margaret Murray, who published The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and several more books. Murray argued that medieval witches practiced an ancient fertility religion she called the Dianic cult. While this was obviously a seminal idea, as it were, Adler says that "most scholars today view her work as filled with errors." An even more controversial figure is Gerald Gardner, an amateur anthropologist and folklorist who claimed he'd been initiated into a coven in 1939 and who wrote two influential books, Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). Among other things, he popularized the idea that witchcraft rituals ought to be conducted in the nude, a notion that titillated the masses for years. Gardner's work contained a lot of archaic-sounding ritual, some of which supposedly originated in a 16th-century "Book of Shadows." But it's been pretty well established that Gardner, who was influenced by occultists like Aleister Crowley, wrote or commissioned most of this stuff himself.

So, is Wicca a fraud? That's such a negative way of putting it. Quite a few world religions are built on shaky stories--you think God really gave Moses the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone? Many credit Gardner with giving Wicca its contemporary feminist slant, with its emphasis on the Goddess. (In Murray's account, female witches were subordinate to a male sometimes known as the Black Man.) Personally I find the "an ye harm none" stuff a bit rich, but I'm a live-and-let-live kinda guy. Just don't go putting on airs.

(considering we are quite a new society compared to them).

The history of Wicca is a much debated topic. Gardner claimed that the religion was a survival of matriarchal religions of pre-historic Europe (see Völva), taught to him by a woman named Dorothy Clutterbuck. Many believe he invented it himself, following the thesis of Dr. Margaret Murray and sources such as Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland, and the practices of Freemasonry and ceremonial magic; and while Clutterbuck certainly existed, historian Ronald Hutton concluded that she is unlikely to have been involved in Gardner's Craft activities. While the ritual format of Wicca is undeniably styled after late Victorian era occultism, the spiritual content is inspired by older Pagan faiths, with Buddhist and Hindu influences. Whether any historical connection to Pagan religion exists, the aspiration to emulate Pagan religion (as it was understood at the time) certainly does.

Gardner probably had access to few, if any, traditional Pagan rites. The prevailing theory is that most of his rites were the result of his adapting the works of Aleister Crowley. There is very little in the Wiccan rites that cannot be shown to have come from earlier extant sources. The original material is not cohesive and mostly takes the form of substitutions or expansions within unoriginal material, such as embellishment of Crowley lines.

Philip Heselton, writing in Wiccan Roots and later in Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration, argues that Gardner was not the author of the Wiccan rituals but received them in good faith from an unknown source. He notes that all the Crowley material that is found in the Wiccan rituals can be found in a single book, The Equinox vol 3 no. 1 or Blue Equinox. Gardner is not known to have owned or had access to a copy of this book.

The idea of primitive matriarchal religions, deriving ultimately from studies by Johann Jakob Bachofen, was popular in Gardner's day, both among academics (e.g., Erich Neumann, Margaret Murray) and amateurs such as Robert Graves. Later academics (e.g. Carl Jung and Marija Gimbutas) continued research in this area, and later still Joseph Campbell, Ashley Montagu and others highly esteemed Gimbutas's work on the matrifocal cultures of Old Europe. Both matrifocal interpretation of the archaeological record, and the foundations of criticism of such work, continue to be matters of academic debate. Some academics carry on research in this area (consider the 2003 World Congress on Matriarchal Studies). Critics argue that matriarchal societies never actually existed, and are an invention of researchers such as Margaret Murray.

The idea of a supreme Mother Goddess was common in Victorian and Edwardian literature: the concept of a Horned God--especially related to the gods Pan or Faunus--was less common, but still significant. Both of these ideas were widely accepted in academic literature, and in the popular press. Gardner used these concepts as his central theological doctrine, and constructed Wicca around this core.

Plenty of pagan religions are based on self awareness. I know I exist, maybe a plant knows that it exists. It's similar to the notion that as soon as we got into space, UFO's began to appear everywhere. The notion that there is a spirit in everything is not new. It has been pervasive throughout recorded time.

The idea that there is a good and an evil force are equally historically based. You only appeal to the rebellious side of the human spirit to join the "other team" if you will. To claim that your religion is based on the work of Gerald Gardner is no claim to authenticity.

His grandmother was burned as a witch in the 1600's, wrote books on the goddess aphrodite and was obviously family with pagan mythology as would any anthropologist. What made him unusual was the he was given charge by the British government of inspecting opium. So we have to ask ourselves: does any here remember the 60's?

Wic, know you're a bit young to remember this but hallucinogenic drugs were as popular as peanut butter and jelly. Your spiritual founder may have found spirits in everything from apples to mayonnaise because everyone else at the time was finding the same thing. Not just from opiates, but LSD and phencyclidine were very popular. This was especially true of academians such as Mr. Gardner.

Would anyone be surprised to find that his heart failure at age 74 may have been brought on by external stimuli? Of course no such claim would be made by friends, family or followers. But try to remember the 60's. It's pretty well documented but tough to get a feel for unless you were alive.