Gerald Gardner (Wiccan) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gerald Brosseau Gardner
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| Born | 13 June 1884 Blundellsands, Lancashire, England
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| Died | 12 February 1964 (aged 79) aboard ship, en route to Tunis
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| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Rosedale |
| Parent(s) | William Robert Gardner Louise Burguelew Ennis |
Gerald Brosseau Gardner (13 June 1884 – 12 February 1964), also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist. He was instrumental in bringing the Contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca to public attention, writing some of its definitive religious texts and founding the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
Born into an upper-middle-class family in Blundellsands, Lancashire, Gardner spent much of his childhood abroad in Madeira. In 1900, he moved to colonial Ceylon, and then in 1911 to Malaya, where he worked as a civil servant, independently developing an interest in the native peoples and writing papers and a book about their magical practices. After his retirement in 1936, he travelled to Cyprus, penning the novel A Goddess Arrives before returning to England. Settling down near the New Forest, he joined an occult group, the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, through which he said he had encountered the New Forest coven into which he was initiated in 1939. Believing the coven to be a survival of the pre-Christian witch-cult discussed in the works of Margaret Murray, he decided to revive the faith, supplementing the coven's rituals with ideas borrowed from Freemasonry, ceremonial magic and the writings of Aleister Crowley to form the Gardnerian tradition of Wicca.
Moving to London in 1945, he became intent on propagating this religion, attracting media attention and writing about it in High Magic's Aid (1949), Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). Founding a Wiccan group known as the Bricket Wood coven, he introduced a string of High Priestesses into the religion, including Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, through which the Gardnerian community spread throughout Britain and subsequently into Australia and the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Involved for a time with Cecil Williamson, Gardner also became director of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, which he ran until his death.
Gardner is internationally recognised as the "Father of Wicca" among the Pagan and occult communities. His claims regarding the New Forest coven have been widely scrutinised, with Gardner being the subject of investigation for historians and biographers Aidan Kelly, Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton.
Images for kids
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Gardner with his Irish nursemaid, Com, during the 1880s
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While working in Borneo in 1911, Gardner eschewed the racist attitudes of his colleagues by befriending members of the Dayak indigenous community, fascinated by their magico-religious beliefs, tattoos and displays of weaponry.
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A selection of kris knives; Gardner took a great interest in such items, even authoring the definitive text on the subject, Keris and Other Malay Weapons (1936).
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A plaque erected to mark the house at Highcliffe where Gardner lived during the Second World War.
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The Temple of the Rose Cross, Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618.
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The Mill House in Highcliffe, where Gardner was supposedly initiated into the Craft
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The Witches' Cottage, where Gardner and his Bricket Wood coven performed their rituals
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The Witches' Cottage in 2006
See also
In Spanish: Gerald Gardner para niños
