Witch School November 4th
“Out Of The Broom Closet” An essay on our forefather-Gerald Gardener

  Since the ancient times being Pagan or being a witch has not necessarily been a popular life choice. It is of course much more open today than it was years ago but there are still problems with judgmental zealous beings.
  Ironic as this seems since all the religions stemmed off the Pagan Tree we are still the most persecuted yet fastest growing religion in the world today.
  The person we have to thank the very very most for is Gerald Brosseau Gardner-father of the Gardenarian Tradition of Wicca. Born in 1884 died in 1964. (Craft name "Scire"),
 
  Gerald Gardner,  was born at Blundell Sands near Liverpool, England, June 13, 1884. Beginning at age 16, he spent much of his life in the East, as a tea planter in Ceylon (1900-19), a rubber planter in Borneo and Malaya (1923), and a customs official in Malaya (1936). In the East he took the opportunity to study magic practices and even became an expert on the kris, a Malay ceremonial dagger, about which he wrote a definitive text. In Ceylon he also became a Mason.
On his retirement from Malaya, Gardner and his wife settled in New Forest in Hampshire, England, where he associated with members of a theosophical group, the Crotona Fellowship of Rosicrucians.( Just to mention some of Gerald’s peers were Aleister Crowley, Alex Sanders, Macgregor Matthews(Father of the Golden Dawn Tradition) and Arnold Crowther, a skilled stage magician, ventroliquist and puppetter, was firm promoter of Witchcraft, and was friends with Gerald and Donna Gardner. In the Wiccan community Raymond Buckland (Craft name "Robat") is most known for his authorship of Wiccan primary source material, and is considered "The Father of American Wicca". On May Day 1947, his friend, the stage magician Arnold Crowther, introduced Gardner to his friend, the Magus Aleister Crowley. Shortly before his death, Crowley elevated Gardner to the VII° of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and issued a charter decreeing that Gardner could perform its preliminary initiation rituals. After Crowley's death on December 1, 1947, Gardner was considered the highest ranking O.T.O. member in Europe, and contacted another English member Lady Frieda Harris (painter of the Thoth tarot deck) about continuing the work of the Order in the U.K. Lady Harris wrote to Karl Germer, Crowley's successor as head of O.T.O., on January 2, 1948 that Gardner was now the "Head of the O.T.O. in Europe".  Alongside his work with the Craft in his coven, Gardner became interested in many other forms of esotericism and the occult around this time. He joined the Ancient Druid Order, an organisation that promoted the Neopagan religion of Druidry, as well as a mystical Christian group, the Ancient British Church, who ordained him as a priest. The researcher Philip Heselton also speculated that Gardner may well have met Dion Byngham, the leader of the pagan wing of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, whose beliefs and practices, termed Dionisianism after the Greco-Roman god Dionysus, bore many similarities with Gardnerian Wicca.In fact, it appears that Gardner set out to construct a new popular occult religion, drawing upon all the things he had learned in the East. Elements of this new religion were first published in 1949 in a novel, High Magic's Aid, issued under a pseudonym, Scire. Then in 1951 the last of the archaic anti-witchcraft laws (which had in this century been used primarily to attack Spiritualists) were removed from British law. Three years later Gardner completed his most important book, Witchcraft Today. In 1951 he started a Fertility Religion of the type which we now call Wicca.  He recruited and structured members into an organized system of initiation and grades or degrees as we call them today.
  In 1952, Gardner had begun to correspond with a young woman named Doreen Valiente. She was initiated by Gardner into Wicca on Midsummer 1953. Valiente went on to join the Bricket Wood Coven. She soon rose to become the High Priestess of the coven, and helped Gardner to rewrite his Book of Shadows.   He wrote spells and rituals under a title of “A Book of Shadows”  and his By this time he had created a working coven, but he presented his new religion as the faith of an old witchcraft group that was dying out. The book was a means of contacting people who wanted to be members of the witchcraft faith. It was followed by Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). 
  Gardner’s form of Wicca was based on Polytheism-a belief in multiple Deities-The Mother Goddess and her consort the Horned God. Within the coven structure the two deities are symbolized by the priest and priestess. The Priestess has the clear dominance and the lineage of authority is passed through her. The initiation is in 3 degrees.
  As Gerald’s movement began to spread branches of his tradition started to spring up everywhere.  Alex sanders who studied with Gerald began the Alexandrian Tradition. Sybil Leek in the early 1960s moved to the United States. With the assistance of her publisher and a set of public relations people, she soon became famous as a public witch. She lectured widely, appeared on television, and built a large clientele as an astrologer. Quietly, she founded and for a period led several covens, two in Massachusetts, one in Cincinnati, and one in St. Louis.
  Shortly before Gardner's death in 1964, Buckland and his wife became Gardner's first American initiates, and they assumed the religious names Robat and Lady Rowan. After they moved to the United States in 1962, they began the first Gardnerian coven (an assembly or band of usually 13 witches.
When Americans contacted Raymond Buckland or his followers they referred to them  as the “Buckland’s” thus establishing the Gardenerian movement in the United States.
  In the early 1970s Buckland divorced and began to disagree with some of the elements of the Gardnerian tradition. In 1973 he turned the leadership of the Gardnerian movement over to another couple, Lady Theos and Phoenix, and created a new non-secret form of Witchcraft that he called Seax (or Saxon) Wicca. He presented this new Witchcraft in a 1974 book, The Tree: The Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft. That same year he also married Joan Helen Taylor, who became his new high priestess.
  To date Dr. Buckland has written more than 60 books and his focus is on Anglo-Saxon Wicca.  Dr. Buckland is largely responsible for the Wicca Movement we have to day in America.



Information from this article
Answers.com
About.com
geraldgardner.com
Out Of The Broom Closet
Lindy and Dr.Buckland in Lily Dale