Update: There is now a Declaration of Belief for Traditional Gardnerians which outlines where the split in the community has occurred. It may be useful to consider that document within the context of Gardner’s quotes collected here.
The most critical part of this paper is the idea that if someone removes Gerald Gardner from Wicca, or removes or fundamentally alters the practices that he passed down (for example, removing the fertility cult emphasis which is central to the practice), they have ceased to be Gardnerian. The intent of this collection of quotes is that it will help seekers make a discerning choice for themselves.
If you’re thinking about joining a Gardnerian coven, and these quotes make you uncomfortable for any reason, please reconsider your decision. You’re even welcome to contact me and I will try to help you find a different tradition that will fit you better. You can also check out Gardnerian.us or Traditional Gardnerian Seekers on Facebook. Both offer high quality covens and let you know who is open to talking. Both groups service covens who uphold the tenets of the tradition.
If you’ve joined a Gardnerian coven, and you’ve been told to avoid Gerald Gardner, consider that you’re being manipulated. No-one of any worth will ever tell you “you can’t read that” or “you can’t talk to those people”. Statements like those should be a warning signs of a cult, or an abusive leader. Removing Gardner from Gardnerian Wicca is the same as removing the apostles from the Bible, or Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings, or Eliza Snow deciding to remove Joseph Smith from the Book of Mormon. Who’s ritual then are you practicing? Would another Gardnerian recognize it? Or is that person just trying to start their own thing, and slink around on Gardner’s coattails? Or worse – control you? We’ve seen other traditions stem from Gardnerian Wicca, and its brave people who do it. On the other hand, social media is filled with people claiming Gardnerian understanding and insight and asking Wicca 101 questions. The ritual they have been given has been altered to the point where they can’t even make sense of it, if they have received any training and material at all. Those people who told them “these are the goods, but pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” have done them a disservice. You owe it to yourself to peek behind the curtain, and keep reading.
A collection of quotes is just that – little snippets of information. I’ve tried to include a bit of context where I think it’s applicable but nothing is going to be a substitution for sitting down and reading the books and deciding for yourself. You owe it to yourself, if you’re even a little bit interested in the tradition, to read Gardners works and firsthand account of how things are done. When you get done Gardner’s public writing – think about what experience will follow that by joining Gardnerian Wicca.
Witchcraft Today is the first printing of the fiftieth anniversary edition published in April 2004.
Our Lady is best known as Mother Nature, or Mother Earth, although people have given Her countless other names. She is the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. All that lives comes from her generous womb. All that dies returns to Her as a drop of rain returns, at last, to the ocean.
Witchcraft Today, pp 180
I have examined the figure, which is the usual type of Osiris, with a short sword and scourge crossed on his breast – the symbols of death and resurrection I believe.
Witchcraft Today, pp 133
In early trials witnesses speak of seeing the accused riding on poles, or brooms, across the fields (not
through the air), and this was often accepted as the evidence that they were practising fertility magic,
which became a penal offence. In the Castletown Museum there is one of these poles for riding, the
head being carved in the shape of a phallus to bring fertility.
Witchcraft Today, pp 35
There are indications that the Church knew of or suspected some secret rite among the Templars and
that it was of a phallic nature, for with fiendish cruelty they attached heavy weights to that organ
when torturing the unfortunate Knights, as if to say: your rites centre round that member, so we
torture you there to extract the most damning evidence. The men of the fourteenth century quite
understood the principle of ‘making the punishment fit the crime’.
Witchcraft Today, pp 78
The Puritan writer, Philip Stubbles, speaks of the maypole as ‘a stinking idol, of which it is the perfect
pattern, or rather the thing itself, meaning that it was phallic. He also says: ‘Both men and women, old
and young ,… go to the woods and groves, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes and in
the morning they return. I have heard it credibly reported, viva voce, by men of great gravity and
reputation, that of the maids going to the woods overnight, there have scarcely the third part returned
home again undefiled.’
Witchcraft Today, pp 67
A sword or dagger [dripping] blood (or wine) into a cauldron would have great meaning to witches,
and they have a head or skull tradition. Could the story be a hidden way of hinting that an ancestor of
Peredur had gone through the circle to Death and returned, and so Peredur himself was of the Witch
Blood and entitled to know the Mystery of the Cauldron? Most scholars agree that the bleeding spear
is phallic.
Witchcraft Today, pp 80
A Satyr and Satyra are seated; a fawn is stretching out its muzzle towards the Satyra who is offering her breast; on the left Old Silenus gazes on the scene playing ecstatically on a lyre.
Witchcraft Today, pp 86
The neophyte after receiving the annunciation would now become the mystical bride of Dionysus,
and to signify symbolically this wedlock she is about to uncover a huge phallus which she has brought
in a sacred basket.
Witchcraft Today, pp 87
If a Grand Master stood for a minute or two with his arms crossed on his breast, who would notice it?
Witchcraft Today, pp 74
The late Aleister Crowley used occasionally to perform a ceremony, gashing his breast and using his blood, and it is quite possible some witches do this.
Witchcraft Today, pp 138
Lately, however, talking it over with someone, he pointed out to me that it was not at all necessary to kill anything; that one could draw blood from his own body and that the late Aleister Crowley, as mentioned above, occasionally performed a rite when he cut his own breast and made use of the blood.
Witchcraft Today, pp 146
The Meaning of Witchcraft is the Weiser edition published in 2004.
The Meaning of Witchcraft presents not only gendered language and references to the parts of the body but also heavily stresses nudity. There are no fancy clothes and makeup to hide things, they’re plainly on display.
One interesting burial was found at Stonehenge which may bear out the witches’ idea that the Blue-stone “horse-shoe” represents the womb. […] It would here symbolize the Life lying in the womb of the goddess, waiting to be reborn. The custom of burying shells with the dead may be another form of the same symbolism, as the shell is a female symbol (i.e. of the womb), and this, too, was a frequent custom among ancient peoples.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 59
A body laying on its side in this position, under the rounded hillock of earth, may have been intended to mimic an unborn child lying in the womb of its mother. In other words, they laid their dead in the womb of Mother Earth, to be born again when the time should come, an this customer may well be a mute witness to the belief in reincarnation.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 39
This is yet another version of the primordial male-female, mother-father religious image. The well symbolises the womb, the deep container of life, and the green, living, up-springing tree, the phallus.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 54
Psychologically, of course, the weapon has also a phallic significance.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 55
If we accept the witch legend that Stonehenge is the temple of their great goddess, symbolic of her womb, which the Druids called the Cauldron of Cerridwen and the Cauldron of Inspiration, combined with the great stone phallus, the Hele Stone, we may presume that the ancient worship was everywhere the same, that of the creative powers, as shown by the avenue at Avebury, the Cornish Men-an-Tol, the Asserim of the Old Testament, the Twin Pillars of Solomon’s Temple, and the Jehovah and the Ashtaroth whom he and the early Israelites worshipped, and who are still adored by the Qabalists as the Supernatural Father and the Supernal Mother. […] While among the Jews the male god seems to have been chief, or at least equal to the goddess, in the early times it appears that, whether as a survival of the matriarchal system or from other causes, the goddess was the ruling partner.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 45-46
Hence the appearance of the red disk of the setting sun, glowing between the mighty stones of the great trilithon through the gathering winter dusk, would symbolize to those ancient people not only death but the promise of rebirth, alike perhaps for man as for the sun, from the womb of the Great Mother. […] The cauldron here represents the same idea as the “gate”; the Great Mother. The fire in the Sun-child in her womb. […] Another ancient monument I must mention, as typifying the “male-and-female” imagery of early religion, is the Men-an-Tol, meaning “Stone with the Hole”, near Penzance in Cornwall.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 43
At any rate, according to the witch beliefs the inner “horseshoe” of stones at Stonehenge represents the womb, and what should watched for at sunrise at the Summer Solstice, the longest day, is the shadow of the Hele Stone which enters this “womb“, as the sun rises and fecundates it for the coming year. It is the local custom to watch for this, though it is generally said that it is to see the tun ride of the Hele Stone, which is obviously phallus-shaped.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 40-41
Together with the perpetual fire in the temples of the moon goddesses there were usually phallic symbols to represent her divine fertility.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 120
In the Microcosm, that is, man and woman, these two planets are replaced by the lingam and yoni, which are worshipped in temples dedicated to them. The words “lingam” and yoni” mean the male and female genital organs respectively. […] Nowadays, every Church of England clergyman has to study Paley’s “Evidences” to get his degree, and Paley’s chief argument as to the existence of God is this: “Supposing you found a watch; looking at it one would realise that this was no natural object, so its existence involves a designer and a creator, who might be human; but if in this watch was a full set of machinery which enabled this watch to manufacture many other watches, each equipped with all machinery to construct many others, this would involve the existence of a God, to design and create such an article.” This is the polite way of putting this analogy with human reproduction; but the primitive man was no prude. To him the phallus and its feminine counterpart were the only reasonable representation of the Divine creative energy.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 40
Carl Clemen in his Religions of the World illustrates a phallic statue of Frey; and he was sometimes called Fricco.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 78
Their laws were clear on the subject: “If any wicca or wiglaer (male witch), or false swearer, or morthwyrtha . . . or any foul, contaminated, manifest horcwenan (whore, quean, or strumpet), be anywhere in the land, man shall drive them out. “We teach that every priest shall extinguish all heathendom, and forbid Witweorthunga (fountain worship) and licwiglunga (incantations or invocations of the dead), hwata (omens or soothsayings), and galdra (magic), and man-worship, and the abominations that men use in the various craft of the Wica, and frithspottum with elms and other trees, and with stones (“going to the stones”?), and with many phantoms.” […] The allusion to “man-worship” is notable, as it may well refer to the appearance of the old Horned God in the form of his priest, the god’s representative, dressed in his ritual costume of skin and horns.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 78-79
When the witch cult, on the other hand, regarded St. Augustine as being a singularly nasty minded old man, and believed in the divine purpose and sanctity of its Horned and Phallic God, and His Moon Goddess consort […]
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 133
He is the old phallic god of fertility who has come forth from the morning of the world, and who was already of immeasurable antiquity before Egypt and Babylon, let alone the Christian era.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 13
In these mysteries, to demonstrate the truth that God is Male and Female, and that true
blessedness consists in their union, it was customary for women at their initiation into the mysteries
of the Great Goddess to sacrifice their virginity by entering into a sacred marriage, hieros gamos,
which was consummated sometimes with a phallic image, sometimes with a stranger, and sometimes with a priest.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 123
It is noteworthy that the witches’ “sacred meal”, “Cakes and Wine”, consists of cakes (any
sort) and wine, which are blessed and then eaten and drunk out of the “working tools”, and this
blessing has at least a phallic or fertility significance.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 122
However, it was still a long time before the rule of the old matriarch gave way to patriarchy; that the understanding of the facts of procreation brought into prominence the male, phallic deity as “Opener of the Door of Life”.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 31
This is interesting, because it shows the early meaning of the wand as a phallic symbol, and its relationship to the broomstick which witches carried as such.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 154
Hence the Lord of the Gates of Death is also the phallic deity of fertility, the Opener of the Doors of Life.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 33
The twin towers which are so often a feature of the fabric hark back to the memory of the Twin Pillars; and the soaring spire is a phallic symbol.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 159
All I can say is that there is a witch tradition that this teaching among others was
given and believed, namely that the ancient religion of Israel was the worship of the Elohim, the
Supernal Father and the Supernal Mother, Who had made man in Their image, male and female
(Genesis, Chap. I, v.26-28): this mystery was symbolised by the sacred Twin Pillars, Jachin and
Boaz, of Solomon’s Temple; but after Solomon’s time wicked priests arose who perverted the true
faith, and instead of the Gods of Love, preached a solitary God of hate and vengeance.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 20
In the very early days, descent was traced, not through the father, but through the mother. It was
the priestess who enroyalled the king by choosing him as her mate in the sacred marriage; and the
heir to the throne was not the king’s son, but the man who married the priestess-queen’s daughter.
Then, with the collapse of the older civilisations, like that of Minoan Crete, for instance, before the
Aryan invasions of Europe, patriarchal ideas, and descent through the male line, were imposed upon
society by the invaders. Male priesthoods grew up, and mythologies were altered to accord with the
new ideas; though the old female powers were still feared and venerated among the common
people, and had to a certain extent to be compromised with.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 63
They think that they were not Druids, but representatives of an older faith; that the Druids
were a good and strong male priesthood who worshipped the sun in the daytime, and were inclined
to mix in politics, while the witches worshipped the moon by night.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 17
Now, there is a tradition in the witch cult that a priestess may impersonate either the God or
the Goddess (in an emergency when no high priest is to be found – seek context in Gardners other work), but that a male priest may only impersonate the God.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 105
In a sense, the witch religion recognises all women as an incarnation of the Goddess, and all men as an incarnation of the God; and for this reason every woman is potentially a priestess, and every man potentially a priest; because to the witch the God and the Goddess are the Male and Female, the Right and the Left, the Two Pillars which support the Universe and every manifestation of male and female is a
manifestation of Them.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 112
However, in the old India of pre-Aryan times, as modern archaeologists have found by research at
the old buried cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the people worshipped the very same horned
god and mother goddess as they did in Europe. Many pottery figures of a goddess have been found
at Mohenjo-daro, identical in appearance with those of the Great Mother in the ancient Near East. In
both these old cities, too, just as in our own country, have been found upright conical stones, and
large stone rings, symbolising the male and female principles respectively. Seal impressions from
Mohenjo-daro show a male horned god, sometimes depicted with three faces, and with the very
characteristic of the “Devil” of the witch sabbats; a flaming torch between the horns, which are
sometimes those of a bull and sometimes those of a stag. He is naked except for ritual ornaments.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 64
The avenue at Avebury consists of stones in pairs, which have been roughly dressed on the sides which face one another. One stone is always long and thin, and the other short and almond shaped, obviously the male and female principles.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 39
Contrary to the reports of the Church, witches do not believe in or encourage promiscuity. To them sex is something sacred and beautiful, which should not be allowed to become sordid or cheap. (They also recognise a fact which many Christians seem to have forgotten, namely that there are six other Deadly Sins beside Lust.) In a rare old book in my possession, Receuil de Lettres au Sujet des Male fices et du Sortilege… par le Sieur Boissier (Paris 1731), there is quoted much valuable evidence from a big witchcraft trial at La Haye Dupuis in 1669, which illustrates the attitude of the witch cult in this respect. One witness, Margeurite Marguerie, said that when a male witch was not at the Sabbat his partner did not join in the dance, and it is said further, “As for the dance, it is done… back to back and two by two, each witch having his wife of the Sabbat, which sometimes is his own wife, and these wives having been given to them when they were marked (i.e. initiated: my note) they do not change them; this kind of dance being finished, they dance also hand in hand, like our villagers. . .
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 125-126
As people always speak of a witch as she, I do the same; though, of course, I mean by the term both
male and female.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 139
Women, they thought, should breed numbers of children to be monks and nuns, with enough married ones to carry the breed on, or they should be nuns and give up everything. […] And, of course, since woman remains always ‘the Other’, it is not held that reciprocally male and female are both flesh; flesh is for the Christian, the hostile ‘Other’ is — precisely Woman.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 130
They copulated with other witches in male or female form, whom they took to be incubi or succubi; they committed abuses with domestic animals.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 25
They said that witches existed everywhere, and they were both male and female.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 2
The finger-tip rays [of the personal electric field] of several persons at Cornell killed yeast readily. […] The sex organs in both sexes and breasts in women emit these rays quite strongly.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 9
To this day, in the witch ritual, the Priestess first stands with her arms crossed on her breast and her feet together, to represent the God of Death, and then opens out her arms and stands with feet apart to represent the Goddess of Resurrection.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 103
I suppose because those whom they were seeking to destroy, the priestesses who worshipped the Queen of Heaven. […] They spoke of the dangerous enemies of good Christians, who lay in wait in the dark to seize their souls for the Devil, and they proceeded to describe these enemies as wood nymphs, loreleis, and witches, as in the legend of Tannhauser, with eyes like stars and teeth like pearls, their lovely white shoulders and breasts gleaming in the starlight (the stories of the hideous, foul old witch came much later).
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 116
The fertilising power of the moon was thought to lie in her light, so this was reinforced at times by torches, candles and fires burned in her honour, which were used as fertilising magic, being carried round newly-planted fields in modern times, as torches were carried in Hecate’s honour in ancient times. Diana the Huntress was also the mother of all animals and humans, and was depicted with many breasts, like Diana of Ephesus.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 119
In Ancient Britain the women and girls went completely naked after having stained themselves all over with a brownish sun-tan lotion. These considerations may justify the view that every little naked Mesopotamian terracotta does not necessarily represent Ishtar, but is rather a permanent substitute for the female votary. The figurine would thus represent the woman in the act of worship, all clothes discarded and with her hands pressing or supporting the breasts. Periodically fertility rites were practised by the women of Mesopotamia and all Hither Asia and the borderlands of the Midland Sea (Mediterranean). Writers equipped with quite another set of morals have often assumed that women were in some sense “stained ” by such orgiastic rites, but we now perceive things more clearly and must concede that the women, like the later Thyiads at Athens and Delphi, thoroughly and passionately enjoyed the fertility rites and felt sanctified by them. Indeed it is evident that such were the distinctions and privileges of the women in Babylon that we cannot fail to be astonished at the contrast of their lot with the grim lot which was to befall human females three millenia later.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 123-124
(On the accusation of the Catholic Priests being involved in witchcraft…) It was a requirement of this particular ritual that the woman on whose behalf it was being said had to lie on the altar naked. […] A cross was placed between her breasts, and the chalice between her thighs. […] The dominant features of the two-faced Satan of the 17th century are those of the mother-goddess.
The Meaning of Witchcraft, pp 189
High Magic’s Aid is the Godolphin House edition printed in 1996
Here we see Gerald Gardner with artistic license to publish anything he wants under the protection of Britain’s legal guidance on fiction. Consulting 1889’s Dictionary of Law consisting of Judicial Definitions and Explanations of Words, Phrases and Maxims we see “no fiction extends to work an injury”. In other words, Gardner can publish anything he wants so long as he avoids naming actual people or claiming anything is true. His choice of words and themes is entirely deliberate. Gardner’s other work of fiction – A Goddess Arrives – covers similar tones and language.
Because their god, whom they call Janicot, is the god of all crops and cattle, and the god of fertility, demanding that all perform this act of worship before him. Women oft use a broomstick because it is the handiest, though any pole will serve, even an axe-handle or stick at a pinch.
High Magic’s Aid, pp 20
We witches have our gods also, and they are good, at least, to us, but they are not all-powerful, and so they need our aid. They desire fertility, for man, beasts, and crops, but they need our help to bring it about, and by our dances and other means they get that help.
High Magics Aid, pp 50
To us it is the most sacred and holy mystery, proof of the God within us whose command is: ‘Go forth and multiply‘.
“‘Tis a phallic religion,” said Thur, “and the broomstick symbolises the phallus.”
High Magics Aid, pp 74
Suddenly he was pulled to a stop, at the south side of the altar, where he stood swaying, his head reeling. Morven struck eleven strokes on a little bell, then knelt at his feet, saying: “In other religions, the postulant kneels as the priests claim supreme power. But in the art magical, we are taught to be humble, so we say:
(kissing his feet): Blessed be thy feet that have brought thee in these ways.
(kissing knees) Blessed be thy knees that shall kneel at the sacred altar.
(kissing phallus) Blessed be the organ of generation, without which we would not be.
(kissing breasts) Blessed be thy breasts, formed in beauty and in strength.
(kissing lips) Blessed be thy lips, which shall utter the sacred names.
[…] He felt the touches, first the phallus and then right breast, then phallus again,
forming a triangle.
High Magics Aid, pp 182-184
I, Janicot, swear upon my mother’s womb and by my honour among men… […] She then with her thumb wet with oil, touched his phallus, then right breast, across to left hip, across to right hip, up to left breast, and down to phallus again (thus marking him with a reversed pentacle) saying; I consecrate thee with oil.
High Magics Aid, pp 188
Gerald Gardner: Witch
Written by Indries Shah under the pen-name Jack Bracelin, Shah was Gerald Gardners secretary and personal friend. This work represents an account of conversations Shah had with Gardner.
Here, for the first time, Gardner was allowed to be really alone. Something about the jungle, the fertility of vegetation and fauna, spoke to him, gave him a nearness to a reality which he had long sought.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 26
The fertility cult represented by the group in which Gardner had now been enrolled is one of these religions, claims to be the oldest, is called by its members the Wica. These, then, are the witches of today.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 166
There was a good deal of African magic in Voodoo, he concluded, and any connection with the fertility principle that was worshipped by the witches could have taken place very far back in time.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 174
The fertility-cult that calls itself witchcraft, as outlined by such scholars as Dr. Margaret Murray of London University was not juicy enough for the more excitable sections of the Press.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 185
I read the attack upon Gardner on that Sunday afternoon with mounting incredulity. If something as unfair as I realised this to be was being projected with such unbelievable force, this man Gardner might be someone worth contacting. I had for several years been reading about fertility religions and the ancient mysteries. Ploughing through book after book, I realised that people with the academic background of Sir James Frazer and Professor Murray do not spend a lifetime in research for nothing. Their conclusions at the very least, bore as close examination as those of a feature-writer. Gardner would be the man who could give me some sort of guidance on this point. I had no time (unlike the reporters) for the reputed devil-worshippers who were said to lurk on almost every hand. But I had all the time he would give me for a man whose erudition and straightforwardness stood out in almost every word of his books.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 186-187 [emphasis mine]
Literally hundreds of people wanted more information; hundreds wrote that they were attracted by the idea of a fertility religion: dozens more that they deplored any attack upon a man who wanted to worship in his own way.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 186
These people lived close to the earth and their livelihood depended on the fertility of animals and crops. Hence they continued to do what they had been doing from time immemorial – namely, to follow a religion of nature and the fertility thereof, and to hold regular festivals at which the concept of cosmic fertility was worshipped, and the attempt was made to induce it by ritual to manifest upon earth.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 201
As far as his mission to enrol others into the fold of the deities of fertility is concerned, one cannot say that there is one Craft member who does not feel that his or her membership of the Cult is anything but a fulfilment: a “coming home”. Speaking for the present generation of witches, at least, this is perhaps enough coming from one who has been through this experience.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 214
The only recorded execution of a witch on the Isle of Man took place in Castletown near the mill. In 1619, Margaret Ine Quane and her son were burnt alive at the stake, as a result of her being caught performing a crop fertility rite.
Gerald Gardner: Witch, pp 218
Ceremonial Magick Musings 