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The Surprisingly Recent Origins of Wicca and Druidism
In this intriguing episode, we delve into the modern origins of what is known today as witchcraft, Wicca, and Druidism. Discussing key figures like Gerald Gardner, who invented Wicca in the 20th century, and how he convinced people of its ancient roots, we also explore other notable personalities such as Aleister Crowley. The episode sheds light on how these new-age religions were shaped by modern influences and entirely invented narratives. The conversation further debunks misconceptions about ancient connections to current mystical practices, analyzing the role of historic beliefs and comparing them to modern adaptations. Dive into the fascinating history and evolution of these mystical traditions with a critical eye.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today is going to be a very interesting episode on a topic I should have done a long time ago. It's going to be on how the movement that today purports itself to be witchcraft or Wiccan or juridic, all of these religious systems.
are very, very modern. They are some of the youngest religious systems to exist and have literally no ties to any historic pagan faith practices. And even when they were revived, were revised as monotheistic traditions and only became pagan in their later iterations. What?!
Specifically here, I'm talking about the guy who made up the druidic phase, not the Wiccan phase.
And these were both around the 1900s. So we're gonna go into these individuals, how they made it up, how they got people to believe them. We're gonna go into Alistair Crawley, another interesting figure. He didn't even claim to have connections to anything in the past, he was just Okay.
A wackadoo. I didn't know he was a real guy. I, I saw him from the show, right? And I was like, [00:01:00] Oh, a real guy. No, he was a, he was a wacko, but way more fun than the other guys. Cause at least he owned that he was just making everything up. And the other guys, well, and he stole a bunch from Kabbalah and we'll go over where So were the other guys trying practiced as witchcraft today within the Wiccan community, not realizing that what they're practicing doesn't come from ancient witches, but it comes from Jewish mysticism.
Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Do I understand correctly then that the two men who claimed to have either rediscovered or who reignited druidic practices in Wicca sort of pointed to historical materials that they may have made either misinterpreted or made up kind of like Joseph Smith using funerary texts from Egypt?
Malcolm Collins: It's, well, maybe not crazier than the Joseph Smith story, but he said he, he, he met a cult in the woods that taught him about all of this is the first one we're going to go to. And we think we know who some of the figures he was talking about were. So we know that like, they didn't do this. There's been people who have [00:02:00] gone through and, and, and researched him to learn more about this.
So the guy. Was Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, with a taste for the occult. He returned to England in the 1930s, and he claimed that in 1939, he was initiated into a secret coven. in New Forest by a group he called the Wicca, allegedly survivors of an ancient pagan witch cult. His story leaned heavily on the now debunked theories of anthropologist Margaret Murray, who argued in the 1920s that European witchcraft was a remnant of pre christian fertility religions.
Scholars later dismantled Murray's hypothesis. There is no solid evidence of a contiguous witch cult surviving the middle ages, but Garner ran with it. So a quick note here, if you're like, well, where did all of these mystical traditions come from if they didn't come from some ancient religion it turns out that people will invent the same [00:03:00] mystical traditions over and over again.
For example, when you hear a sports player keeps a lucky s
Published on 9 months ago