A SKEPITCAL LOOK
AT FAMOUS
OCCULTISTS by
The Notorious Doctor Zoom Zoom
GERALD B. GARDNER (1884-1964)
Credited
with “saving Wicca from total extinction”, founder of the “Gardnerian
Tradition” of Wicca. According to Gardner and his cronies, Gardner,
being an amateur folklorist, discovered a cult of goddess worshiping
Pagans who were the witches of Margaret Murray’s “Dianic Witchcraft”
thesis. These witches called their religion Wicca, and initiated him
into the cult. The cult supposedly went back to the Stone Age, and had
adapted the rituals over time. Gardner said the Wiccans went
underground during the witch hunt era, for which he coined the phrase
“The Burning Times”. Gardner revealed information about Wicca in a
series of books, published in the 1950's. He appeared on the BBC, gave
lectures and interviews to promote Wicca...all the while claiming
“witches don’t proselytize”!
Not
everyone bought Gardner’s incredible story. Folklorists and
anthropologists found it strange that somehow this Stone Age Pagan cult
had remained secret for thousands of years in a small place like
England. Historian Ronald Hutton has even noted secret societies in
England aren’t very secret, and can easily be tracked [ref?]. The
folklore society he belonged to rejected for publication in their
journal an article detailing Wicca that Gardner wrote. Folkorists also
noted the witchcraft described by Gardner was nothing like the known
and well documented forms of witchcraft of the British Isles.
Occultists wanted to believe, however. They were desperate for it.
People who had grown dissatisfied with Satanism, Rosicrucianism,
Theosophy, and Spiritualism could now indulge in the kinky nude rites
of Gardnerian Wicca that involved being tied up, flogged, and of course
“The Great Rite”, sex. The British press treated the whole thing as a
joke at first. One article featured a cartoon of naked people dancing
around a fire, with the men chasing the women. It certainly seemed
Wicca was just another swinging sex club of the 60's to outsiders.
Adian Kelly, the “Traditionhead” for a Wiccan “denomination” if you
will, called the "New Reformed Orthodox Order of The Golden Dawn” did
an expose of Gardner that was published very briefly in 1991. Kelly
discovered things which forced many Wiccans to change their claims
about Gardner. Kelly discovered Gardner was a sado-masochist and
nudist, as well as a feminist who enjoyed being tied up and beaten,
and had penchants for knives and writing in archaic English. It
seems a mighty strange coincidence that Gardner happened to find a
cult...allegedly going back to the Stone Age...that practiced all of
his fetishes!
Being a disciple of
Aleister Crowley, Gardner created Wicca primarily so he could fulfill
his fetish of being beaten by strong willed women, according to Wiccan
tradition head Aidan Kelly. Gardner stole rituals from Thelema, The
Golden Dawn, Freemasonry, the book The Greater Key of Solomon,
poetry of Rudyard Kipling, and even legends of Gothic Satanism to
create Wicca (although I should point out again Wicca and Satanism are
not the same thing, as most people already know). After doing much
investigation into Wicca which included reading Gardner’s original
drafts for the Wiccan Book of Shadows, Kelly drew this conclusion;
”
[M]any of the Book of Shadows rituals did not exist in 1954 (when
Witchcraft Today was published) but instead were still being
written...[T]he major sources from which the rituals had been
constructed included: (a) Mather's edition of theGreater Key of
Solomon; (b) Aleister Crowley's Magic in Theory and Practice; (c)
Leland's Aradia (d) some Masonic rituals akin to those described by
Duncan and those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (aside from
those transmitted by Crowley); and (e) Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult
in Western Europe. There were also bits and pieces from other works by
Leland, Jane E. Harrison, Gilbert Murray, James Frazier, and other
great classicists from the 19th century. That accounted for EVERYTHING
in the rituals…There was nothing left that differed in any important
way from what you can find in those sources-but that is NOT at all what
Gardner had claimed” (Crafting The Art of Magic by Adian Kelly, Page
xvii)
Gerald Garndner claimed he had
been allowed to copy a Wicca coven’s Book of Shadows, which in reality,
was his own creation. Kelly was allowed access to Gardner original
manuscripts, and chronicled the various stages of development the book
went through. In it’s earliest stage, it was said to have been “80%
Crowley’s writings”. When Doreen Valiente was intitated into the cult,
she recognized the Book of Shadows was lifted from Crowley. Gardner
told her basically to write a better one if she thought she could. She
continued with the hoax, and re-wrote the book, adding her own poetry.
But elements of Crowley can stll be found in Wicca. The most obvious
one is the initiation to the 2nd Degree.
It’s blatantly obvious that the Wiccan Third Degree ritual mentioned on
Wicca: The Old Religion? page is plagiarized from Crowley's
Gnostic Mass word for word. Honestly, who could believe peasant farmers
living in rural England could write things like
“...Marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space.....”?
Apparently a lot of Wiccans do! The rituals of Crowley and Wicca have
many similarities; such as the enthronement of the priestess upon the
altar, and the consecration of cakes and wine, the eights Sabbats of
Wicca, sex magick rituals, etc. Even the moto of Thelema “Do What Thou
Will” sounds strikingly similar to the Wiccan Rede “An It Harm None, Do
What Ye Wilt”. .
Gardner rewrote
things such as 'I am alone; there is no God where I am' to become 'I am
alone, the Lord within ourselves' Crowley's 'peace unutterable, rest,
ecstacy' became 'peace unutterable, rest, the ecstacy of the Goddess'.
The public at large certainly knew nothing of what the Book of Shadows
contained at the time, and likely didn’t read Crowley’s obscure books
either. Knowing that his plagiarism would might be discovered
eventually, Gardner attempted to create a cover story in his book
Witchcraft Today:
“The only
man I can think of who could have invented the rites was the late
Aleister Crowley. When I met him he was most interested to hear that I
was a member, and said he had been inside when he was very young, but
would not say whether he had rewritten anything or not. But the witch
practices are entirely different in method from any kind of magic he
wrote about, and he described very many kinds. There are indeed certain
expressions and certain words used which smack of Crowley; possibly he
borrowed things from the cult writings, or more likely someone may have
borrowed expressions from him.”
Gardner was obviously lying through his teeth when he made this
statement. He tries to make it sound like he had at best a passing
friendship with Crowley, and fails to mention he was in Crowley's
O.T.O.! Gardner was a member of Crowley's organization, not the other
way around. Since Gerald Gardner was not only a member, but a high
ranking member of Crowley's organization no less, it means he was
certainly well aware of Crowley's writings. In the “Minerval
Initiation” of the O.T.O.:, Gardner would have stood bound hand and
foot, blindfolded,, and then heard the words, 'I give unimaginable joys
upon earth: certainty, not faith, etc, etc,...all this while standing
at swordpoint, just like in Wiccan initiations. At the end of the
ritual, the initiate is given a copy of Crowley’sBook of the Law, much
like how a newly initiated Wiccan is given a copy of theBook of
Shadows. Here we see two occult organizations with exactly the same
words and similar initiation ritual. It is absolutely impossible this
is a coincidence, or that Gardner could have somehow missed this!
Wicca is compiled from many sources Aleister Crowley would have
certainly been familiar with (such as Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn),
so why would Wicca be “unlike any from of magick Crowley had ever
seen”, as Gardner claims? Nor was it likely that Crowley ever was
initiated into Wicca, because he wrote down every detail of his occult
studies and practices. He never mentions Wicca in any of his voluminous
writings, not even once. If Crowley was so dog gone interested in Wicca
as Gardner claims, why did he not make some kind of mention of it? His
diaries from the time he knew Gardner only mention him dropping by for
visits, but no mention about Wicca or ever coming into contact with a
cult of stone age goddess worshipers living in England.
That’s hardly something he would have omitted! Crowley would have been
well aware what such a discovery would have meant, and he would have
certainly have mentioned it somewhere in his writings. He also
doesn’t mention knowing Sybil Leek or her family as she later claimed,
“babysitting” Alex Sanders or knowing his family as he later claimed,
or ever knowing or meeting “Old George Pickingill”, and learning Wicca
from him as Lugh later claimed.
Gerald Garnder; a perverted liar who created the Wiccan hoax.
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