Gerald Gardner: Book of Shadows

Impact

As Wicca grew and became more formalized, the Book of Shadows became known as “oath-bound material” that should be passed only from witch to witch and never shown to anyone who had not taken oaths of allegiance to Wicca. Needless to say, this increased its value to those who sought to find out the secrets of Gardner’s Wicca. In 1964, the commercially minded witch Charles Cardell (using the pseudonym Rex Nemorensis) published parts of the 1953 Book of Shadows (which he had obtained underhandedly) as a thin booklet titled “Witch.” Aidan Kelley republished the book in 1991, with extensive analysis of its text, in Crafting the Art of Magic. Kelley’s study established that some Book of Shadows material was drawn from previously published matter, and he concluded that the Book of Shadows and the religion of Wicca were fundamentally creations of Gardner’s, rather than being the preserved remnants of an ancient pagan religion. Meanwhile, the myth of an unbroken line of an Old Religion had been proved impossible by historians.

Since the 1990s, however, scholars such as Ronald Hutton, Sorita D’Este, David Rankine, and Philip Heselton have demonstrated the importance of the Book of Shadows for the way it represents a published synthesis of the Western esoteric traditions, in a simple form, that has been adopted by the adherents of a successful modern religion that draws on ancient roots. It offers a template for magical religiosity that is easily followed and adapted. It contains some of the favorite liturgy of Wicca and reflects the early mythos of Wicca. Although it is not seen as doctrine or creed or even a “holy book,” the Book of Shadows as a text has fueled much discussion and literature about modern pagan witchcraft and has been widely replicated in many forms.