Alternative Religions...Page Ten..

Alternative Religions, Con't...

Page Ten...

Gardner claimed to have been initiated into a coven of witches by Old Dorothy Clutterbuck, who he claimed was a part of an unbroken chain of witches going back to ancient times (Christensen). The reason he claimed there was no documentation of witchcraft having been kept intact and active all those years was because it was, out of necessity for avoiding persecution, an oral tradition passed witch to witch. Gardner advocated the use of a Book of Shadows, a secret book of rituals with information about the Craft, written by the individual witch using it, that could be destroyed at any time, destroying all evidence of having participated in the Craft at all. Gardner was also the one who coined the terms “the Craft” (after the Masons) and the term “Wicca” (the Old Saxon word for a male witch) (Christensen). He also started the idea that nine million witches were put to death during the Witch Craft trials. Many schisms of Gardnerian witchcraft began to arise after he established his Gardnerian covens.

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