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Traditions and Paths

Witches organise themselves into traditions the way musicians organise themselves into genres: loosely, with constant borrowing, and with occasional fierce arguments about who is really playing the blues. Here are the names you will meet.

Initiatory Wicca

Gardnerian

The tradition descended from Gerald Gardner's covens in 1950s England. Initiatory, with three degrees, a High Priestess and High Priest, oathbound material, and a liturgy shaped largely by Doreen Valiente. Lineage matters: a Gardnerian can tell you who initiated whom back to the first covens. Often called, with Alexandrian, "British Traditional Wicca" or BTW, especially in America.

Alexandrian

Founded by Alex and Maxine Sanders in the 1960s, built on Gardnerian ritual with more ceremonial magic and Qabalah woven in. Structurally very similar; temperamentally a little more theatrical. The two traditions intermarried early and often.

Other lineaged traditions

Mohsian, Central Valley Wicca, Blue Star, Georgian, Algard, Seax-Wica and others, each with its own founder and flavour, mostly North American and mostly descended from or in conversation with the British root.

Traditional witchcraft

Cochrane's Craft and its heirs

Robert Cochrane led a coven in 1960s England that rejected Gardner's forms in favour of something earthier: the stang, the cord, the working of the compass rather than the circle, the mystery of the land. The Clan of Tubal Cain and the 1734 tradition descend from him.

Regional and cunning traditions

Cornish, Welsh, East Anglian and other local crafts, often reconstructed from folklore and court records, emphasising spirit work, the hedge, the Devil-as-horned-initiator (who is not the Christian one), and the practical charms of the cunning folk. Often skeptical of the Rede and of Wicca's politeness.

Hereditary and family traditions

Practices passed down within families. Some are exactly what they say. Some are a grandmother's folk remedies dignified with a name. Either way, be gentle: this is where many of us actually started.

Goddess and feminist traditions

Dianic

Founded in 1971 by Zsuzsanna Budapest, honouring the Goddess alone, historically women-only, and closely tied to feminist spirituality. Some Dianic lines now welcome all women including trans women; others do not, and that disagreement has been painful and public. The Hearth stands with inclusion.

Reclaiming

Begun in San Francisco in 1979 by Starhawk and Diane Baker, blending Feri roots, Goddess spirituality, political activism and consensus process. Famous for its Witchcamps and for the idea that magic and justice are the same work.

Other named paths

Feri (or Faery)

An ecstatic, initiatory tradition from Victor and Cora Anderson, emphasising the three souls, the Iron and Pearl Pentacles, and direct experience of the gods. Small, intense, influential.

Hedge witchcraft

The solitary path of the "hedge-rider," one who crosses the boundary between this world and the other, usually through trance. Rae Beth's 1990 book gave it a name and a generation of practitioners.

Kitchen, cottage and green witchcraft

Practical, domestic, herbal. The magic is in the soup, the garden, the swept doorstep and the jar of salt on the sill. If you think this sounds humble, you have not met a kitchen witch defending her thyme.

Eclectic and solitary

The largest "tradition" of all: witches who read widely, practise alone or in informal circles, and build a path from what works. Scott Cunningham made this respectable; the internet made it universal. It is not lesser. It is simply self-taught, and so, in the end, is everyone.

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