TRADITIONAL AND INNOVATIVE TRENDS IN POST-GARDNERIAN WITCHCRAFT
by Jon Hanna
Abstract
The publication of Gerald Gardner’s non-fiction works on witchcraft has led to the current existence of two different trends of religio-magical belief and/or practice, which both identify themselves as Wicca. One form places a strong emphasis upon the transmission of traditional practices and a form of initiatory lineage similar to that practiced by Gardner himself. The other covers a wider range of views on each of these aspects, but with the most common position being a strong distance between the traditional practices—giving a greater importance to innovation—and a complete or near-complete abandonment of the concept of initiatory linage.
Within both the trends the traditional is often seen as a subset of a wider religio-magical stream of post-Gardnerian Pagan Witchcraft of which the innovative form is a larger part, though in different ways; the traditional view of the innovative form typically labels that form eclectic even in cases where the practitioners would understand eclectic differently, and considers it to be something outside of what it terms Wicca. The innovative form typically label all post-Gardnerian Pagan Witchcraft, or beyond, as Wicca, and as such recognises all traditional practitioners as Wicca but does not generally make a more significant distinction between e.g. Alexandrian and Correlian than between Alexandrian and Gardnerian and as such often does not even recognise the self-identification of the traditional streams.
As such, the traditional stream considers the differences between the two streams as significant to the point of typicality while the innovative stream considers the differences as much less significant. Analysis of these differences offer a chance insights into both.
Edit 12/2/09
Click here to read the whole essay. Very interesting!!!