Witchcraft (contemporary)

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Contemporary witchcraft or modern witchcraft refers to the various traditions of witchcraft practiced in the present day.[1]

Contemporary witchcraft is largely a subset of greater Modern paganism.[2] Its practice involves varying degrees of magic, shamanism, folk medicine, spiritual healing, calling on elementals and spirits, veneration of ancient deities and archetypes, and attunement with the forces of nature.


In the years following the witchhunts of Early modern Europe and North America, little information of Witches trickled into the public space (from Witches nor those who claimed to know of Witches).[3] However, this began changing during the early to mid 20th century. In the 1920s, the long standing Witch-cult hypothesis gained increasing attention in occult circles.[3] Though the hypothesis itself was largely falsifiable, it spurred renewed interest into witchcraft - this time with new eyes and free of the panicked bias of years past.[3]

English revival[edit]

Main article: History of Wicca


Gerald Gardner was not the only person claiming to be a member of a surviving remnant of old European witchcraft. Others such as Sybil Leek, Charles Cardell, Raymond Howard, Rolla Nordic and, Robert Cochrane also claimed to have been initiated their ancestors and to be following "Hereditary" or "Traditional" forms of witchcraft.[5] They alleged Gardner was propagating a modern, less true form of witchcraft. For a time, there were attempts to reconcile and unite all the emerging traditions of the 1950s.

The acclaimed expert on witchcraft, Professor Ronald Hutton, notes that modern pagan witchcraft is "the only religion which England has ever given the world".[6]

Westward expansion[edit]

Following its establishment abroad, Gardnerianism was brought to the U.S. in the early 1960s[7] by an English initiate Raymond Buckland and his then-wife Rosemary, who together founded a coven in Long Island.[3][8][9] In the U.S., numerous new variants of Wicca then developed.[7]


Due to the secrecy prevalent among Witches (and Pagans as a whole), establishing exact numbers pertaining to witchcraft is difficult.[10] Nevertheless, there is a slow growing body of data on the subject.[11]


United States[edit]

Based on the most recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion, there an estimated 1.2 million Pagans in the US.[12] Six per mill of respondents answered "Pagan" or "Wiccan" when polled.[12]



Education Percentage[13]
Claimed to have at least a College degree 65.4%
Claimed to have Post-graduate degrees 16.1%
Claimed to have completed some college or less 7.6%
Location Percentage[13]
Urban areas 27.9%
Suburban areas 22.8%
Rural areas 15.8%
Small towns 14.4%
Large towns 14.4%
Didn't respond 5.6%
Ethnicity Percentage[13]
White 90.4%
Native American 9%
Asian 2%
Hispanic 0.8%
African American 0.5%
"Other" 2.2%
Didn't respond 5%

Currents and traditions[edit]



Main article: Wicca

Wicca English pronunciation: /ˈwɪkə/ is a modern pagan religion that draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan religious motifs for its theological structure and ritual practice. The religion usually incorporates the practice of witchcraft. Developed in England in the first half of the 20th century,[14] Wicca was later popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by Gerald Gardner.[3] Gardner was a retired British civil servant, and an amateur anthropologist and historian who had a broad familiarity with pagan religions, esoteric societies and occultism in general. At the time Gardner called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft", and referred to its adherents as "the Wica".[15] From the 1960s onward, the name of the religion was normalised to "Wicca".[16]





Gardnerian Wicca[edit]

Main article: Gardnerian Wicca


Alexandrian Wicca[edit]

Main article: Alexandrian Wicca

Alexandrian Wicca is the tradition founded by Alex Sanders (also known as "King of the Witches"[18]) who, with his wife Maxine Sanders, established it in Britain in the 1960s. Alexandrian Wicca is similar in many ways to and largely based upon Gardnerian Wicca, in which Sanders was trained to the first degree of initiation.[19] It also contains elements of ceremonial magic and Qabalah, which Sanders studied independently. It is considered one of Wicca's most widely recognized traditions.[20] The name of the tradition is a reference both to Alex Sanders and to the ancient occult library of Alexandria.





Eclectic Wicca[edit]



Main article: Stregheria

Stregheria is an Italian based form of witchcraft, claimed to be rooted in Etruscan religion. Just as the term "Wicca" is rooted in the Old English for "Witch", the word stregheria is an archaic Italian word for "witchcraft". The modern Italian word is stregoneria.[25] Stregheria is also referred to as La Vecchia Religione ("the Old Religion"),[26] however its most frequent contemporary usage indicates a form of ethnic Italian Italian witchcraft originating in the United States as popularized by Raven Grimassi since the 1980s. Grimassi formerly taught what he called the Aridian tradition. In this tradition he openly incorporated elements of Gardnerian Wicca with elements of Italian witchcraft and lore.


Feri Tradition[edit]

Main article: Feri Tradition





Cochrane's Craft[edit]

Main article: Cochrane's Craft
See also: Roy Bowers
Genuine Witchcraft is Defended



Roy Bowers incognito, November 1963 issue of Psychic News[30]

Roy Bowers, a.k.a. Robert Cochrane (1931–1966), founded "Cochrane's Craft", a form of traditional witchcraft, in opposition to Gardnerian Wicca. Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain worshipped a Horned God and a Triple Goddess, much akin to Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood Coven. Cochrane himself disliked Gardner and his take on Wicca, and often ridiculed him and his Craft.[31] Whilst the Cochran Tradition uses ritual tools, they differ somewhat from those used by Gardnerians, some being the ritual knife (known as an athamé), a staff (known as a stang), a cup (or commonly a chalice), a stone (used as a whetstone to sharpen the athame), and a ritual cord worn by coven members.[32]

At a gathering at Glastonbury Tor held by the Brotherhood of the Essenes in 1964, Cochrane met Doreen Valiente, who had formerly been a High Priestess of Gardner's Bricket Wood Coven.[33] The two became friends, and Valiente joined the Clan of Tubal Cain. Cochrane often insulted and mocked Gardnerian witches, which annoyed Valiente. This reached an extreme in that even at one point in 1966 he called for "a Night of the Long Knives of the Gardnerians", at which point Doreen "rose up and challenged him in the presence of the rest of the coven."[34] Shortly after Valiente's departure, Cochrane's wife Jean also left, and the Coven soon ceased to function.

Cochrane is often credited with originating the term "Gardnerian" as a derogatory description of Gardner's Wicca; however, his published letter terms it as "Gardnerism".[35][36]



Hedge witchcraft, Hedgecraft, or Hedge-riding is an approach to witchcraft focusing on shamanic experience and varying degrees of herbalism.[37] It is said to be derived from the Old English term Haegtesse, an Old English word that translates to "hedge rider".[38]


Author Rae Beth popularised Hedgecraft, albeit with a Wiccan spin, in the 1990s - 2000s.[39]


Reclaiming is a tradition of modern, feminist witchcraft. It is made of an international community of women and men working to combine witchcraft, the Goddess movement, earth-based spirituality, and political activism. The tradition developed in the classes and rituals of its predecessor, the Reclaiming Collective (1978-1997). It was founded in 1979, amidst the peace and anti-nuclear movements, by two Neopagan women of Jewish descent, Starhawk (Miriam Simos) and Diane Baker, in order to explore and develop feminist Neopagan emancipatory rituals.[40] Today, the organization focuses on progressive social, political, environmental and economic activism.[41] Reclaiming's spiritual approach is based in a blending of influences from Victor and Cora Anderson's Feri Tradition, Z. Budapest's Dianic witchcraft, and the feminist & Anarchist movements.[42] The author Starhawk has been its most prominent spokesperson and her book The Spiral Dance inspired many new covens to practice along similar lines.

Sabbatic craft[edit]

Sabbatic craft, a term coined by Andrew D. Chumbley, is described as "an initiatory line of spirit-power that can inform all who are receptive to its impetus, and which – when engaged with beyond names – may be understood as a Key unto the Hidden Design of Arte."[43] Chumbley sometimes referred to the Nameless Faith,[44] Crooked Path, and Via Tortuosa.[43][45] He reserved "Sabbatic Craft" as a unifying term to refer to the "convergent lineages"[43] of the "Cultus Sabbati," a body of traditional witchcraft initiates.[45] The Sabbatic craft is a path of traditional witchcraft.

Chumbley's works and those of Daniel Schulke on the Cultus Sabbati's "ongoing tradition of sorcerous wisdom"[44] continue to serve as the prototypical reference works. The craft is not an ancient, pre-Christian tradition surviving into the modern age. It is a tradition rooted in "cunning-craft," a patchwork of older magical practice and later Christian mythology.

‘Sabbatic Craft’ describes a corpus of magical practices which self-consciously utilize the imagery and mythos of the "Witches' Sabbath" as a cipher of ritual, teaching and gnosis. This is not the same as saying that one practises the self-same rituals in the self-same manner as the purported early modern "witches" or historically attested cunning folk, rather it points toward the fact that the very mythos which had been generated about both "witches" and their "ritual gatherings" has been appropriated and re-orientated by contemporary successors of cunning-craft observance, and then knowingly applied for their own purposes.

Andrew Chumbley defining Sabbatic Craft [43]

In his grimoire Azoëtia, Chumbley incorporated diverse iconography from ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Yezidi, and Aztec cultures.[45] He spoke of a patchwork of ancestral and tutelary spirit folklore which he perceived amidst diverse "Old Craft" traditions in Britain as "a gnostic faith in the Divine Serpent of Light, in the Host of the Gregori, in the Children of Earth sired by the Watchers, in the lineage of descent via Lilith, Mahazael, Cain, Tubal-cain, Naamah, and the Clans of the Wanderers."[43] Schulke believed that folk and cunning-crafts of Britain absorbed multicultural elements from "Freemasonry, Bible divination, Romany charms, and other diverse streams,"[45] what Chumbley called "dual-faith observance," referring to a "co-mingling of ‘native’ forms of British magic and Christianity".[45]

Kitchen Witchery[edit]

Main article: Kitchen witchcraft

Kitchen witchcraft, kitchen witchery or sometimes hearth witchery ( a term popularised by Anna Franklin in her book Hearth Witch), is a form of witchcraft practiced concurrently with tasks centred around the kitchen, such as cooking and baking. Like other forms of witchcraft, kitchen witchcraft concerns the practice of magic which may or may not be combined with other forms of spirituality.[46]

See also[edit]


  3. ^ a b c d e f g Buckland, Raymond (2002) [1986], "Lesson One: The History and Philosophy of Witchcraft", Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft (Second edition, revised & expanded ed.), Llewellyn Publications, ISBN 0-87542-050-8 
  6. ^ Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon. Oxford University Press. p. vii. ISBN 9780192854490. 
  8. ^ Hutton 1999 pp. 205–252.
  9. ^ Clifton 2006. pp. 24–25.
  17. ^ The Rebirth of Witchcraft, Doreen Valiente, page 122
  25. ^ Nuovo Dizionario Italiano-Latino, the Società Editrice Dante Alighieri (1959)
  28. ^ Is Feri a Wiccan tradition?
  29. ^ [1][dead link]
  30. ^ "The Rebirth of Witchcraft", papges 120f.
  31. ^ The Rebirth of Witchcraft, page 122
  32. ^ The Rebirth of Witchcraft, page 123
  33. ^ The Rebirth of Witchcraft, Doreen Valiente, page 117
  34. ^ The Rebirth of Witchcraft, page 129
  35. ^ Letters to Joe Wilson from Robert Cochrane
  36. ^ First Letter from Robert Cochrane to Joe Wilson dated 20 Dec 1965
  39. ^ Hedgecraft, House Shadow Drake, retrieved 10 September 2012 
  40. ^ Salomonsen (2002:1)
  42. ^ Reclaiming Quarterly.
  43. ^ a b c d e Chumbley, Andrew D.; Howard, Michael; Fitzgerald, Robert (February 2002). "An Interview with Andrew D. Chumbley". The Cauldron (103). In essence, the Crooked Path Teachings intend a direct means of autonomous initiation into the Knowledge of the Magical Quintessence. 



External links[edit]