Neopaganism and Wicca
Modern religions drawing on pre-Christian imagery; Wicca was publicised by Gerald Gardner in England in the 1950s.
Also: Wicca, modern paganism, Gardnerian Wicca, contemporary witchcraft
Neopaganism covers a range of modern religions, including Wicca, Druidry, Heathenry and reconstructionist paths. Wicca was made public by Gerald Gardner, a retired civil servant, in Witchcraft Today (1954), after the Witchcraft Act was repealed in Britain in 1951. He claimed to have found a surviving witch-cult, a view that historians such as Ronald Hutton, in The Triumph of the Moon (1999), have judged largely a twentieth-century creation, drawing on the folklorist Margaret Murray, ceremonial magic and Freemasonry. Wicca spread to the United States and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s, where it took varied forms, and is recognised as a religion in several countries.