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•  Who was Gerald Gardner?       

Gerald Gardner is often referred to as the 'Father of Modern Witchcraft'. Following the repeal of the last of the Witchcraft Laws in the early 1950's, he published his classic book Witchcraft Today, which really brought the 'Witch Cult', as he often called it, into the public domain.

In 1952, along with his wife Donna, he moved to the Isle of Man to become the 'resident Witch' at Cecil Williamson's Museum of Witchcraft. Ultimately, the museum became Gardner's after he purchased it from Cecil in 1954.

•  Articles about Gerald Gardner

◉ 'Calling All Covens' - an article about Gardner which appeared in The Sunday Pictorial, (29th July 1951).

 

◉ The Illustrated (September 27th 1952) printed a report on 'Witchcraft in Britain'. As a result of this article, Doreen Valiente wrote to Cecil Williamson, who was at that time, the owner of the Isle of Man Witchcraft museum. Cecil subsequently introduced Doreen to Gerald Gardner.

Illustrated 1952 (PDF) (This file is 2mb in size so may take a while to download.)   

Illustrated 1952 transcription (Recommended for those on 56k connections.)

 

◉ The Daily Dispatch (5th August 1954) newspaper printed this interview with Gerald Gardner: Part 1  Part 2  (Files are quite large and may take a while.)

 

◉ Gardner gave a talk at the Marylebone Spiritualist Association in London. An article about this appeared in Psychic News (9th April 1955). Read it here.

 

◉ A more negative opinion on Gardner and Witchcraft was voiced by the Sunday Pictorial (June 17th 1955). Read this ignorant example of press article here.

 

◉ Weekend magazine (June 24th-26th 1957) printed this interview with Gerald Gardner. View it here

 

◉ Read an article entitled 'Witchcrafts Inner Sanctum' from True magazine (1959/60) here.

 

◉ Read a 1961 article by a Scottish reporter entitled 'The day I met a Witch' here.

 

◉ Read a 1961 article entitled 'Scots Witches Still Casting Spells' here.

 

◉ Read an article from February 1963 by Rev. Stephan A. Hoeller entitled 'Occultism Through the Eyes of Religion' here.

 

◉ In February 1964, Gardner passed away onboard the ship The Scottish Prince whilst returning from over-wintering in sunnier climes. Here is a News of the World article about his passing and here you can find a photograph of Gardner's final resting place in a Tunis cemetery.

 

 

◉ FATE magazine ran a fairly negative article on Witchcraft in September 1965, which mentions Gardner. Read it here. Doreen Valiente responded and her thoughts were published in the December 1965 edition of FATE. Read her response here.

 

◉ Mike Howard, the editor and owner of the UK magazine The Cauldron, wrote a series of four articles about Gerald Gardner. These were first published in 1997, and you can now read them here:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

 

◉ www.geraldgardner.com is where, among other things, you can find the excellent little essay From Man to Witch, Gerald Gardner 1946 - 1949 (PDF)

 

◉ Here you can find a website with a piece entitled 'D. Valiente on Gardner'. This has been compiled from extracts taken from Doreen Valiente's hard to find book The Rebirth of Witchcraft.

 

◉ You can find some audio MP3's of Charles speaking about Gardner in my Charles Clark section.

 

◉ A list of books that were in Gerald Gardner's library can be found here. This helps to give you an overview into the sort of topics that Gerald was interested in.

 

◉ For insight into the life and times of Gerald Gardner, I urge you to read Philip Heselton's excellent books Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration and Wiccan Roots.

 

◉ Additionally, be sure to take a look at Gerald Gardner's own biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch by Jack Bracelin, although it was actually ghost-written by Idries Shah who was a close friend of Gardner's.

 

 

Click the images to see The original Witches Mill booklet at www.geraldgardner.com

Modern Image of Witches Mill taken in 2008. Many thanks to Tof.

 

(Many thanks to Melissa and Rufus Harrington, from whose collection of Doreen Valiente's scrapbooks, several of the articles and images on this site, came from.)

•  Gardner's books

Gerald Gardner wrote several books on Witchcraft and Magic. In 1939, his first magical book A Goddess Arrives was published, this was followed in 1949 by High Magics Aid. Both of these books were works of fiction.  Gardner is probably best known for his non-fiction books; Witchcraft Today, first published in 1954 shortly after the repeal of the Witchcraft Laws, and the The Meaning of Witchcraft, published in 1959.

 

Aside from his interest in magic, Gardner was a leading expert on the Malay Kris and wrote a respected book about them called The Kris and other Malay Weapons. A PDF is available from the following website:- http://lawica.free.fr/liv/Keris.pdf . This website also has a small article for French readers, written by Gardner, about the Cyprian knife http://lawica.free.fr/cypriote.pdf

 

•  Book Downloads   

Witchcraft Today (PDF)  - Gardner's classic book.

The Meaning of Witchcraft - Gardner's second non-fiction book on Witchcraft.

High Magics Aid - A 'fictional' book on Magic.

Gerald Gardner: Witch - Gardner biography attributed to Jack Bracelin but actually written by Idries Shah

God of the Witches (PDF) - by Dr Margaret Murray, a friend of Gardner's.

The Witch Cult in Western Europe (PDF) - Another book by Dr Margaret Murray.

Aradia, Gospel of the Witches (PDF) - A book by Charles Leland that is known to

have influenced Gardner's writings.