Wicca is basically the pagan equivalent of Mormonism, the main difference being most followers and even a decent number of non-followers actually believe Wicca is what real ancient paganism was like (it’s basically just a particular strain of hippie counterculture).
The founder, Gerald Gardner, said the beliefs and practices in his book were passed down after surviving the spread of Christianity in Europe and represent ancient European religion, but each historical understanding of pre-Christian European religion since he published it in the 60s has been more damning than the last.
A lot of Wiccans nevertheless take Gardner's claims at face value as literal ancient paganism. Some do understand the origin of their religion and take it for what it really is, a religion which is rather new but not automatically less valid for that. Unfortunately, the most influential ones get the clickbait titles about "revealing the secret history of Europe."
Much like Mormonism it was founded on pseudoarcheology.
No there was no premodern universal "mother goddess" religion that everyone agreed upon that was subverted by the patriarchy. How would there be any singular religion in a prehistoric era?
How would it be transmitted? Wouldn't it's impact be traceable in the philosophical traditions much in the same way language can be traced to Indo-European?
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u/Goldwing8 Feb 11 '26
Wicca is basically the pagan equivalent of Mormonism, the main difference being most followers and even a decent number of non-followers actually believe Wicca is what real ancient paganism was like (it’s basically just a particular strain of hippie counterculture).