The Man Who Made Witchcraft (Pagan Documentary) | Timeline

Britain is a hugely diverse religious society, but of all the religions practiced here only one is truly British. Modern

pagan

witchcraft

, also known as wickerwork. Wicker is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. Her followers call themselves witches, worship the goddess of nature and believe in her. the power to cast spells witches are among us there is no doubt about it an ingrained presumption about us that we worship the devil oh no we don't but the most extraordinary thing about Wicca is the story of how it came to be because while it seems that An ancient folk religion was developed in the 1940s by a middle-aged New Forest nudist named Gerald Gardner.

He won because he was very cunning. He was not the typical founder of a religion. The king of the witches. the hair goes this way his beard goes that way it was

witchcraft

I'm Professor Ronald darling as a historian of British Paganism I've been studying wicker for over 20 years in this film I'm in search of the truth about this magical secret Faith, I want Learn how this extraordinary Englishman reinvented witchcraft, became the first British celebrity, and in the process created a new world religion. It did not affect the speed of the match. Really very big. His sexual orgies. but in modern Britain you're never far from a winch, but they wear pointy hats and they don't ride brooms, but they do cast spells and they definitely believe in magic and, unless we're talking about Harry Potter, a lot of people find that.

Problematic to the public, wicker is often seen as mysterious, secretive, perhaps even dangerous, but is that fair? I've been studying Wicca for two decades and I still haven't been turned into a frog, but if I really want to understand wicker, I need to. go beyond the textbooks and get under the skin of this religion, but first I need to find them and since Wiccans are notoriously secretive, even that is a challenge. I was invited to attend a Wiccan group ritual, which is quite an honor unlike other religions. When Wiccans go to worship, they don't go to a church or temple, they go somewhere completely different.

Modern witches are typically urban creatures, but because reverence for nature is at the heart of their faith, they perform their rituals in parks and forests. in the heart of the city, but despite this you would never know they were there as an outsider attending this ritual as a rare privilege to tell me about it as one of Britain's highest ranking Wiccan priestesses Christina Oakley Harrington this is a beautiful place why have you chosen it? What are we going to do here? Well, we are in Queens Wood, which has been used by

pagan

s for ceremonies for decades and decades, and what we are here to do is have a Wiccan-based ceremony to remember what is sacred. us and about our connection and our connection to the land and the place where we live and it is customary in Wicca that there are no observers, only participants, so I would like to invite you to join us if you are willing to do so.

I would be honored, I'm a little nervous when doing a Wiccan ritual you feel connected to something very, very ancient and connected to the earth and those things that we find deeply moving in the beautiful moon, the sunsets, those parts of nature that I don't understand that gives us a feeling of mystery and wonder we do a Wiccan ceremony by drawing a circle and that is done with a magic wand what it is to draw a circle is to create a space that is completely within nature so that we can let ourselves aside those things that we have to deal with every day but this is a place of rest there is a part of the ceremony in which we consecrate ourselves to each other and in that moment we are doing the balancing act which is remembering the divinity that dwells within so when we consecrate ourselves with a salt in the water we are remembering oh you know you are a human being in front of me but you were also divinely blessed, when doing a Wiccan ritual one feels connected to something very, very ancient. and very beautiful and very connected to the earth and all the tension of all the duties and all the things that we have to carry out.

I feel like he's fading. Blessed be. Now I thought it was a lovely ritual. There's clearly more going on here. just a group of people having a good time in a forest there is something quite profound, but does it get me any closer to understanding what wicker really is? Rituals like this with their reverence for nature feel like the continuation of a very ancient tradition, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth because Wicca does not have its origins in the mists of time, but in the 1930s. 1930s Dorset In 1938, a 52-year-old former colonialist, Gerald Gardner, retired with his wife to the south coast of England.

This is Highcliff, an archetype. conservative English community with its village church, the Rotary Club and the Conservative MP, but hidden just below the surface 75 years ago was something much stranger and Gerald soon found it, for one thing, the high cliff was a place of fashion for naturists and, despite his eminence, respectable-looking Gerald liked nothing more than taking off his clothes. Well, Gardiner moved to this area in 1938 and this is the house he bought. Wow, and this is where Gerald and his naturist friends would have enjoyed the sun. It's almost the perfect private nudist paradise. It's bigger and sunnier, but it's a good thing Gerald found the perfect place to retire and he wasn't alone: ​​bankers, accountants, teachers and a host of tea and scone blokes seem keen on embarrassingly retiring.

We have extraordinary evidence of this from quite a prankster. An article that appeared in the Christchurch Times in 1939 has been an instant hit with the residents of the Elphinston Road nudist colony. An elderly gentleman who rented a second flat back says his outlook on life in general has completely changed in recent weeks. now it's no good for your car or your fishing tackle and you want to trade it for something useful like telescopes, binoculars or a camera and also God had a darkroom built and I think you were going to develop and print your own photographs, but there may be they were of such a nature that it was not something you would want to take to the local pharmacies because even more rumors would have spread, then he would stand out and he came because he would look very different, he had this tuft of white hair and also and what I remember is that he had tattoos on his arm and I know of guys crossing the street, who looked a bit strange, so even with his clothes on, Gerald looked different, his risqué photo shoots were rumored to continue. full of adventure and a taste for flogging, but Gerald was not satisfied that he was looking for something strange and in 1939 he discovered that Gerald was about to become a witch.

This old house in Hampshire has a notable claim to fame because he stayed here one night in 1939, but a middle-aged man called Gerald's gardener was apparently initiated into witchcraft. They blindfolded me, held me from behind and told me: I'll give you the password. Jerald claims that he was naked. He was taken to a room full of witches, all equally naked, and then they gave him the secrets of an ancient magical religion, then they pushed me through a door and into the circle and then the word Wicca was mentioned Wicca, which still exists since That night until his death, almost thirty years later, Gerald Gardner dedicated his life to witchcraft.

He appeared in newspapers off television, wrote books, and most importantly, introduced others to the world of wicker so it wouldn't die with him. The question is what kind of man in 1930s England decides to become a witch to gain clues to Gerald's journey to become Britain's most famous. where we have to delve into his previous life diary, Gardiner came from a family that had

made

a fortune and was involved in the lumber trade. He grew up in Lancashire but at the age of six was sent abroad with his nanny due to health problems and never went to school Gerald Gardner was essentially an unwanted child, I think actually because he was asthmatic and Branca tic and lo He was sent to the Far East for his health, but the family never claimed him.

Gerald was left more or less alone. To find out what he was doing, Jerald traveled a lot very quickly and as a colonial it was natural for him to search for his forked rune among the tea and rubber plantations of the Far East, but while most colonials were content to sit and drink GMT , Gerald went and studied the tribal cultures of the places he lived in particular, he became fascinated by tribal ritual magic. One of the rituals he attended was putting a girl in a trance. The disease was expelled from their bodies through magical spells for these tribals. people were a practical matter, they were real.

Gerald says they were actually quite different atmospheres to anything he had seen before. Gardner's fascination with tribal magic was accompanied by a deep interest in Western occultism. He was inspired by pioneers like Sherlock Holmes. Author Arthur Conan Doyle, who was heavily involved in spiritualism and had become one of the most prominent public figures in magic and the supernatural, Gerald became familiar with the magical world of Conan Doyle and it was not long before he Follow in his footsteps by experimenting with seances and spiritualism, the tribal rituals he then witnessed in Malaya only cemented this belief that magic was something powerful and very real, so by the time he retired, Highclere Gerald had been studying magic for decades and soon contacted local law cultists, particularly a large group.

Of the Masons residing nearby, he found people who, if not exactly the same mentality, did have the same mentality. There are some people who are very interested in esoteric things, but others who were interested in nature and nature spirits, they were people who could use local folklore. They knew the lay of the land, those people, as he came to know, were also interested in something else, this something else turned out to be a sort of native English version of ritual magic. Gerald has experience in the Far East, it was real English witchcraft. and Gerald wanted to take part, he started taking part in magical rituals after the New Forest, but what did witches really add at this point in British history?

What did it mean to call yourself a witch as Gerald tells it? After his initiation, he and his coven began. to perform rituals in the new forest and certainly started a tradition that continues to this day. I have come to meet Wiccan priestess Pam Dora, who is going to demonstrate a ritual that Gerald and his coven would recognize is based on a traditional type of healing. spell, but the way it is done in a group forming a circle using certain words comes from Gerald, so you have some hazelnuts here in a cauldron, what we are going to do is imbue them with some of our desires, strengths and things that I believe that we can use it in the darkness of next year.

Does this really cost a spell? Natural objects. In this case, hazelnuts are packed with energy designed to cure winter ailments and since I have a cold, I hope they can help me. Pandora, I think I know what was happening there, it felt like we were charging these material objects with our own spiritual energy with the support of other spiritual entities that you would invite into our circle, is it that good or is there more to do? In addition to that, the other thing to add is also writing our own energies because what we do is take that energy that is around us and we have attracted it to ourselves and as we moved, we have used it. that energy within us to charge them imagine, if you can, what this sort of thing would have seemed like to most people in 1939 to most residents of Highcliff if they had known the truth.

Gerald's aura seemed nothing short of crazy, but was this all crazy or was it Gerald? Simply following tradition, in Britain there is a long history of useful witchcraft dating back to the Middle Ages, known as cunning people who these witches cast spells to cure the sick or bring good luck. Research has shown that Gerald essentially used these spells in his own new forest rituals, but it was his ambition that distinguished Gerald from the crafty people of old, for to him these spells of English folklore had far greater power. . Gerald had ambitions to use magic on a much larger scale that would change not only his health but the entire world.

He was about to test his new magical powers against something really dangerous when, across the sea, Hitler began threatening an invasion when he wasn't casting spells. Gerald was also a prominent member of the local National Guard, so it

made

sense to Gerald to prepare to repel the Nazis not only with rusty bayonets but with magic and one night in 1914, that's exactly what he and his coven they made. We were taken at night to a place in the forest where the Great Circle was erected. I've come. atdeep into the New Forest in search of the exact location of this famous magical encounter and here to tell me about it is Gerald's biographer, Philip Peasant, we are here because Gerald Gardner said that we were taken at night to a place in the woods and there We created the largest cone of power we have ever attempted.

What a separate cone is, well, it's not a physical cone, it's something magical, something in thought form, if you like. For Gerald, the threat of German invasion was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate true power. of Wiccan magic and the great cone of power rose and slowly headed in Hitler's general direction, they accumulated power by dancing rapidly around it and then when that power had reached its climax, this code of power appeared that could be seen by those who were sensitive to these things the order was given you cannot cross the sea you cannot cross the sea they rushed towards the fire at the same time raising this code of power and sending it to the German High Command and in fact to Hitler himself.

I have to confess although the night is not particularly cold I am shivering a little here I have wet feet it is quite uncomfortable it would have been equally physically exhausting for them well yes, because they were not in the first stage of youth, for most of them it was something that they He tried hard, he tried them hard, and Gardner says several of them died shortly after that. Ritchie, you can't cross the sea, you can't come, you can't come, this was that if you like the life force of the individuals coming out, this was important and they were willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary to achieve this goal now from the perspective Today, this story may seem completely absurd, they effectively sacrificed their lives to create a spell to protect themselves from the Nazis, but Hitler did not come and even the British government seemed to feel threatened by the power of magic shortly after the cone.

Gerald. power ritual a spiritualist called Helen Duncan was actually prosecuted for her occult activities Duncan had raffles of nervous naval officers and attracted the attention of the authorities in 1944 when she held seances in Portsmouth and began answering questions about people's relatives who had been killed in action. She had been too good at her prophecies and had alarmed the security forces and was in fact imprisoned for a time, but Gerald's passion for the occult was unwavering and, most importantly, he was not alone, he was getting closer to the most famous magician in the entire world. Aleister Crowley, known as the Great Beast, Crowley was an infamous magician whose supposed black magic had earned him the title of the world's most evil man, never far from controversy.

Crowley could have a dark and distinctive vision of the cult of him. I simply went over to Satan's side. I found myself. As passionately eager to serve my new master as I had been to serve old Gerald in Crowley's work and indeed I appropriated many of his magical writings and early Wiccan rituals, but Gerald were now very different men where the Crowley's type of magic could be Dark Gardner. He was interested in the positive side of occultism and these colorful characters gathered here at the Atlantis bookstore which had a temple in the basement and sold rare texts with instructions on how to summon the dead, talk to angels and wield supernatural powers.

It became a safe haven. that like-minded people would get together and discuss things without prejudice and it gave them the protective color that they needed at that moment what kind of things happened in this shot and why they are important to the story, they are important because there were very few places that people who have been interested in this type of thing could meet with their peers where they could talk as equals where if they were a witch or a wizard of high ceremony or an astrologer and numerologist they have always been treated as equals here what Do you think of Gerald Gardner?

My father used to come home. He says that today he was in a game. Children. The king of the witches. His hair goes this way. His beard goes that way. He had style, he had presence and he also had great wit. Crowley was nearing the end of his life and wanted Gardner as heir to his secret occult society, but Gerald wasn't happy with a secret, underground subculture, he wanted to bring wicker to the masses, so that's exactly what he was about. to do with force. It didn't affect the fact that these gatherings are actually largely sexual orgies.

They are not released. Dr. Gerald Russell Garner is a qualified scientist. He is also a witch. This is Gerald Gartner. He appeared on the BBC's Panorama program in 1958. My desires began quite young and, of course, they are there. Some of them were young people just a few years before Gardner acted. spells in the new forest with a small coven of witches, so how did Gerald make the transition from local eccentric to celebrity on the BBC's flagship current affairs programme? Gerald had returned to London in the mid-1940s full of enthusiasm for Wicca, but he had to be careful, it might be okay to discuss this matter of the security of the Atlantis bookstore, but the witchcraft law was still in force in those days, proclaiming himself public, which was illegal, and being involved in the occult, perhaps a social pariah in the In the 1940s, Wicker's core beliefs were so radical that it was a very risky religion;

In fact, Britain was still a very orthodox society and anything other than Christianity was treated with suspicion, but Gerald was desperate to spread the word Wiccan and so in 1949 he found a compromise by adopting a pseudonym and publishing a novel and this is the help of Magic, although it had to be disguised as a work of fiction, it is actually the first published story about Wiccan magic. This passage, one of many, describes how to perform a classic Wiccan ritual in On the altar was the remaining pentacle, also because there was black cloth and other things that he would need for the operation.

Taking this Pentagon, he tied it with a rope and wrapped it with a cloth. It could be seen as just a story, but for those in the know, you know it was, it was quite revealing, it included a lot of witchcraft rituals that are quite familiar today, in some ways, it's a terrible novel, for many years, latrines, forces and vowels, but in essence it's witchcraft writ large, hello magic, di It wasn't exactly a bestseller, but it was. The first wicker seeds to come out to the rest of the world, then, in 1951, offered a campaign by a group of spiritualist parliamentarians supported by Winston Churchill, who had also become interested in the occult and witchcraft.

It was finally repealed. Gerald was now free to declare himself a witch and tell the world all about Wicca, which was now becoming a full-fledged religious system since his new initiation at Forrest. Gerald had become something of a magpie who was building his new religion from many sources which he borrowed heavily from both English folklore witchcraft and modern shamanic magic for his spells and rituals, while the symbols Iconic symbols that would become synonymous with Wicca, particularly the pentagram, were in fact ancient symbols that have been adopted by Freemasons, this mix of influences finding expression. in Gerald's collection of magical items, but to see some of these you have to go to a rather unlikely place.

I have come here in search of one of the most important collections of Wiccan artifacts in the world and among them is one of the most important. Wicked Manuscripts of All The owner is John Bellum Pain, a real estate developer now living in Spain. He is also one of Whicker's chief priests and, in the great tradition of the faith, many of Gerald's most prized magical possessions have been passed down to him. Wow, you talked to me. through some of the general topics and explained what they were for. This was our gardener's wand or at least one of them and he would have used it to draw a circle.

The other items here that we have from Gerald are one of the famous ones about him. Which are ours? famously, it is a ritual knife that we only use in a Samey for magical purposes. Oh, it's obviously phallic, so it would be used for some kind of recreational purpose. I think Gerald's other items are these two crowns that priests would wear. representing the triple aspects of the moon and this would be what he would have used, which was representative of the Horned God, it is there representing the goddess and the God and the Goddess in God, absolutely true, Ron.

In fact, I think... your size would you like to try it on if you want me to, yes, okay, it's very convenient to write it in a journal as a kind of practical talk, but the real prize is too valuable to keep in the basement of John, who is worth more than a million dollars and is locked up there. a much safer place I am now being granted a notable privilege. I'm about to see a Wiccan Holy Grail here in a secure vault in this bank. It is one of the most significant and valuable religious documents of the 20th century.

This is the base text. The closest thing to a modern pagan witchcraft Bible is called The Book of Shadows is Gerald's own magical book his experimental notes on what would become here wicker Gerald wrote the original rituals and spells that Wiccans have been using since it is a manual unlike wicker itself which remained a work in progress rather than a fixed set of doctrines, so this is it, this is Gerald Gardner's first and original book of shadows, first of all, it is probably the most famous book that exists in the craft and, as far as possible, As far as my opinion on this book goes, I think it is as important as having the original Bible because it is full of everything that is learned at that stage of the garden from a lot of different sources.

First, draw a circle with Athena and spray it with exercise water. light candles and this is the important part this is a book of experiences this is a book about things that have gone right and some things that have gone wrong this is wonderful it is certainly the oldest surviving Wiccan book in Europe it is a mix strange that I think it's a Gerald classic hmm, it's a mix of a real ritual book to be used in the temple read. It is also a kind of notebook with details taken from all kinds of sources. I call on the goddess to illuminate the hearts. of everyone I call and seeing this gives me two more ideas and tools, Gerald, the first is simply your love of beautiful things, art, your love of scripts, yes, like your love of magic wands, your love for the crowns and also their willingness to adapt.

Moving from one thing to another is someone who is creating a work in progress that other people can pick up and do things with and move forward. Yes, that's the exciting thing about the craft is that it never stays still in the book. Gerald had written not only a guide to wicker spells and rituals, but would produce a manifesto for a new religion. Wicker had truly been born and I was now desperate to bring it to the masses. Gerald was now a man in a hurry. Desperate to ensure that Wicca did not die with him, he would spend the next 10 years spreading it across the country, whatever the consequences in 1954.

Gerald published his essential guide to Wiccan witchcraft. Today he also opens Britain's first witchcraft museum. the Isle of Man and began appearing in newspapers looking for a sensational story today people the existence of optical shops and three statistics go crazy it was after a series of sensational articles accusing gerald of practicing black magic and devil worship , but he really got his big break, Gerald was invited to defend himself on the scene. This would become a defining television moment watched by millions of people which gave the British public their first glimpse of a real concert. Is it true that the dance is generally performed naked?

Yes because? that it is a good tradition it is the order of the goddess that you must only be naked on my right and of course to do magic you must believe it Gerald could not have expected a larger audience and even in the face of some provocative questions his dignity was maintained I just want to tell you this very frankly. I've been reading his book and I'm tempted to ask him: it's not a fact that these gatherings are largely sexual orgies; They are not the least that Gerald could have faced. mockery for the BBC, but twelve million people had just heard about wicker for the first time and what happens then when the circle is well drawn, then of course the general thing you have felt with the dance, then there is a worship of God , then of course it depends. what they want to do if we want to work magically do magic I think Gerald felt it was nothing less than a sacred mission and now that he had found his audience, what he intended was to plant this thing in as many places as possible. straight because he thought it was something cool and he wanted it, he wanted to survive, he was the one who posted it and said no one should know about this, this is amazing, thank you so much, broomsticks, I think everyone is waiting and through all of this , Jerald fulfilled his wish of becoming the first celebritymodern Britain, which is not the case.

It's like turning the crank of an old car. You know nothing is happening at that moment and suddenly it comes to life. You know that's what happened while gardeners were growing up. Her next people also wrote to her hundreds wanting to become witches. One of his converts who joined him in Panorama was born Louis. Tell him how old are you? Are you a hereditary witch? Well, I don't have witch ancestry, but it's only been in the last few years that I've practiced witchcraft, how did you find out about Wicca? I had all these spiritual gifts and I didn't know what to do with them and finally I read a book by Gerald Gardner.

I think it was called. witchcraft today and I wrote to him and asked him if he could explain to me these strange things that had happened to me throughout my life and he told me well, I am very clear, dear, that you are a witch, which makes people take out witchcraft, Well. It seems to me that we live in a highly mechanized age in which many people have lost their sense of belonging. Witchcraft returns them to live in harmony with the rhythm and seasons of the earth. Why did Gerald value publicity so much? I think he was motivated.

For something outside of him I believe that this was his purpose in life well, I am sure, I am convinced that we all come to earth with a purpose, that there is something we have to do and I believe that this is Gerald's purpose. Wasn't it just women who were attracted to Wicca? Several young men joined Gerald's original columns. One of them was Zachary Cox. His eyes were bright blue and believably bright. I didn't know he was angry in any destructive sense, but he looked pretty good. magic, you know what I mean, these were the eyes of someone who had only one foot in the world in the world of the common.

I don't know how a guy gets into that situation, I'm sure, but somehow he got into it, it was witchcraft. if you want but the really strange thing is that it works and at the dawn of the new decade there was something else in the air that would work and the social revolution favored by Whicker when the 60s began to swing. Whicker's emphasis on gender equality. The cult of nature and sacred sexuality fit perfectly into the historical moment. It was almost as if Gerald had predicted what the world would be like. was about to change, he was a conduit for something that the time was right for it, but when Gerald died in 1964, Wicker was on its way to becoming a global faith and an America where the counterculture was really shaking up the society.

Gerald's new radical religion exploded into a phenomenon throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Wicker continued its march into the mainstream, helped in no small part by blockbuster cult films like The Wicker Man, which provided a tantalizing if inaccurate view of the pagan faith to cenomar-goers around the world. the world, but as Wicker spread around the world without its eccentric leader, this very British religion would flourish or perish in Britain today. Gerald Gardner's radical, feminist, ecological magical faith has taken its place at the heart of our culture, where he once persecuted witches. and driven underground today they could be out and proud. 21st century wicker is clearly a long way from its roots in the new forest.

The results of the next census are expected to show it among the top 10 religions in the UK and how the faith has done. Adult Wiccans have formed campaign groups. These organizations pressure the government to recognize the rights of Wicker and his followers. One of the most prominent and active groups is found in the modern police service. I want to know how Gerald's legacy is influencing us. politics and changing attitudes within some of our most respected professions Andrew Party as police spokesperson Pagan Association The border officer Adam started represents Pagans at head office the format we use in the way things are presented us It was brought by Gerald Gardner and when you look at it, if I look at Wicca, it's probably the only religion that England has ever given to the world.

Police sources may come in and may see an altar set up and may not know whether the position of a ritual knife falls under the defenses in law or not and it's simple things like that that just make the police a little more wary. sure of how they are dealing with people, but they also let us in the Pagan community know that they can be treated fairly as anyone else would and if Gerald his legacy is becoming influential in the UK in America his faith English radical has infiltrated the very heart of the establishment the US military Roberta Stewart and the Reverend Selina Fox are on a mission Stewart's husband, Sergeant Patrick Stewart, was killed in combat last September in Afghanistan the Nevada native received the Star of Bronze and the Purple Heart.

He was also a member of the Wiccan religion whose symbol is the pedicle. Stewart was denied the Wiccan memorial because authorities viewed his faith as a cult and not a true religion. I said where is my husband's license plate? They stated that the emblem of our chosen faith was not allowed to be there since this test case in 2007. The Wiccan pentagram has been an officially recognized religious symbol by the US military and can be carved on men's tombstones and military women who were murdered. In the line of duty in the UK the evolution of Whicker shows no signs of slowing down, in fact it is almost certainly the fastest growing religion in the country and what is interesting to me is that it is the youngest generation the one leading the March, this is Croydon, south of London, perhaps not the most magical place on the planet Croydon this weekend will host the largest gathering of witches in the world.

I have come to what fist where Gerald Gardner wanted to find witchcraft, he had to do it by entering a secret coven that today would be witches. You can do it, sir, with the click of a mouse, but do these young people know who Jarrell Gardner is? Gerald is a pioneer and a revolutionary. He was so brave to embrace a religion that he was so outside of the norm. He inspires me because he was. so alive in her own life and vibrant that she ate how he helps make it more public and you know we're all interested in it, probably because, like with his influence with India, which in part well, the legacy of Gardner is clearly still alive among this new generation of witches.

But have modern Wiccan beliefs remained true to the original vision of their eccentric creator? What does paganism mean to you? For me, paganism is a spiritual path and involves reverence for nature. Wicca means to me finding my spirituality embodied in a religion that incorporates the feminine. divine, what would you call it religion for you? Is it a spirituality? Is it a job? It is a craft because we practice witchcraft and it is a spirituality because it is independent of how we are as individuals and how we explore it within ourselves, whether its nature feminism or the spirituality that inspires young gardeners wicker followers it is about power of magic magic changed Gerald's life it gave him a vision of the new kind of religion and pushed him to push the boundaries of what was possible magic works the fact that it dawns every morning and we are here to say that it is magical the fact that That the moon shines and is big and bright and lights the way in the dark is magical and we have that and we celebrate it and we hold it very, very dear to our hearts, it is very difficult to define but it is so powerful a witch alone cannot do a lot but when put together they are so powerful.

In the course of making this film I have encountered many people who practice a religion called pagan witchcraft that to them is clearly as beautiful, transcendental and effective as other religions are to their believers. and was brought into the world by a classical English eccentric who managed to publicize a religion that was losing power, its feminists, its centered nature, it seems to give people many options, but The most powerful idea I take away from the wicker is this, while Other religions say this is how you should feel about the divine, this one says this is how you can feel divine.