Witchcraft Today & The Meaning of Witchcraft w/ CD Book Set

by Gerald B. Gardner

This is a very rare set of Witchcraft Today, The Meaning of Witchcraft, and a CD full of interviews, songs, and chants with Monique Wilson, Patricia Crowther, and Gerald Gardner HIMSELF from the early sixties. Witchcraft Today is 157 pages full of information and useful photos. Quote about Witchcraft Today; "Written shortly after the repeal of the English Witch laws in 1954, WITCHCRAFT TODAY offered the world a new religion, Wicca, and captured the imaginations of spiritual seekers everywhere. The author, Gerald Gardner, was writing about a small, secret coven of hereditary Witches, brave people who had hidden their faith for centuries to avoid persecution. His descriptions of their practices and history, their working tools and festivals, impelled a rediscovery of indigenous British religion and, globally, fueled a movement now boasting between 3 and 5 million members, making Wicca one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. Witchcraft Today also includes important biographical information on Gardner and his historical context." The Meaning of Witchcraft is 286 pages from Mercury Publishing. "Thought to be the father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner published The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959, not long after laws punishing witches were repealed. It was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch. The Meaning of Witchcraft is an invaluable source book for witches today. The Meaning of Witchcraft is a record of witches' roots-and a tribute to a founding pioneer with the courage to set that record straight."

Genres: Occult

Paperback

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

Gerald Brousseau Gardner was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and wrote some of its definitive religious texts. He himself typically referred to the faith as "witchcraft" or "the witch-cult", its adherents "the Wica", and he claimed that it was the survival of a pre-Christian pagan Witch cult that he had been initiated into by a New Forest coven in 1939.
Gardner spent much of his life abroad in southern and south-eastern Asia, where he developed an interest in many of the native peoples, and wrote about some of their magical practices. It was after his retirement and return to England that he was initiated into Wicca by the New Forest coven. Subsequently fearing that this religion, which he apparently believed to be a genuine continuance of ancient beliefs, would die out, he set about propagating it through initiating others, mainly through the Bricket Wood coven, and introduced a string of notable High Priestesses into Wicca, including Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone.
He also published two books on the subject of Wicca, Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), along with a couple of novels, and ran the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, which was devoted to the subject. For this, he has left an enduring legacy on the modern Wiccan and Neopagan movement, and is frequently referred to as "the Father of Wicca".