(1884-1964) Gerald Brousseau Gardner Gerald was the son of a respectable, affluent Liverpool family of Scots descent. He was a sickly child with asthma, and his nurse persuaded his parents to allow him to travel with her around the warmer climes of Europe, where he spent a great deal of time reading and examining ancient ruins. When she married a tea plantation owner in Ceylon he moved there with her, and later became a colonial civil servant, inspecting rubber plantations and other establishments. There he furthered his interest in Eastern spirituality and ancient archaeology, and he travelled throughout Southeast Asia. Initiation: He returned to England in 1936, and became involved with an occultist organisation, a Masonic-based group called the Fellowship of Crotona. Amongst this group were members claiming to be hereditary witches, practising an "unbroken tradition" passed down to them through the ages. Gardner was initiated into their coven by Old Dorothy Clutterbuck, and claimed to have learned a great deal from them. The 1950s: After the war, and the repeal of the Witchcraft Act  in 1951, Gardner founded his own coven. In 1953 he initiated Valiente, and together they "fleshed out" the beliefs and practices of the Hereditary coven, as it seemed much of the old beliefs had been long forgotten. They included elements from Freemasonry and other sources, including their own works and quotes from Crowley, whom he had met in 1946. (Valiente was uncomfortable with the inclusion of Crowley material.) Later in life, Valiente described Gardner as a generous man, "utterly without malice", who possessed "real, but not exceptional, magical powers". High Magic's Aid (1949) and his most seminal work Witchcraft Today (1954) described and laid out the foundations of the faith, and led to many covens being formed throughout Britain. The Meaning of Witchcraft, inspired by the work of Margaret Murray, described in detail the history of Wicca in Northern Europe, although his and Murrays' work have since been largely discredited by archaeologists and historians. In 1963 he met Raymond Buckland, an Englishman who was to promote Gardner's work in the United States, initiating the spreading of Wicca around the world. He spent the winter of 1964 in Lebanon, and while returning from there by ship he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of eighty. He is buried at Tunis. ©1999 - 2008 - Aradias~Attic™