Wiccan Traditions

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• Types of Wicca

Like many other religions, Wicca contains a variety of sects, AKA denominations.

Within Wicca, there is a common deceptive meme of calling wiccan sects "traditions".
That serves to give the false impression that the practices of those sects are older than they are,
and derived from a more primitive time.

Wiccan sects can be grouped into emerging sects and established sects, with either having a lineage or not. An emerging sect is considered to be one in which the group is younger than 5 years, and may not yet be a parent coven. An established sect is one which is older than 5 years, may have published works by it's founder, and has members who have passed through all of the levels of training in order to move on and establish their own coven.

Alexandrian Wicca

This sect was established by Alex and Maxine Sanders in approximately 1960 and is also an initiatory mystery tradition and considered a British Traditional form as well.

African Wicca

Although it has yet to become a widely recognized term, some authors have published books making the arguement for the importance of incorporating local culture into Wiccan practice. Some authors are of the opinion that Wiccans who live and practice in Africa should become more comfortable with traditional African rituals, such as the slaughter of cattle as part of their rites.

Algard Wicca

This sect, although established in America, is based upon a fusion of Gardnerian Wicca and Alexandrian Wicca. It is therefore still considered to be British Traditional and an initiatory mystery tradition.

American Traditional Wicca

This is a general term to describe early forms of Wicca which started in about the 1970s but have no direct links to Gardnerian or Alexandrian Wicca.

American Welsh Wicca

Founded by Ed Buczynski, an initiate of a coven in New York, who fell out with his coven and went on to form his own. He met his partner, Herman Slater, and together they ran an occult bookshop and ran the first coven. It is loosely based on Gardnerian practises. It is considered to be American Traditional.

Aquarian Tabernacle Church

This sect was founded in around 1979, although it was only considered to have offically been recognized in 1985. It was created on the popularity of Wicca in the 1970s, but is not based upon any previous wiccan sects. It is entirely self-styled, but is still self-proclaimed to be Wiccan. It does away with many of the basic practices of Wicca, such as initiation, and is instead based upon what could be described as a "romanticized" version of the founder's conception of what Wicca was.

Celtic Wicca

Celtic Wicca is a broader term which applies to a number of unrelated groups, but who have similar practises. The earliest progenitor of this sect is Jessie Bell in the 1970s, but more recently Gavin and Yvonne Frost of the Church and School of Wicca have referred to their practises as "Celtic Wicca". This sect is often frowned upon, and often completely disregarded, by other wiccan sects, due to it's highly romanticized conception of Celtic beliefs and practises, and is often in direct conflict with historical fact.

Ceremonial Wicca

Some sources purpose a sect called Ceremonial Wicca where there is a huge influence of ceremonial, or high, magick infused with the more folk-based practices of Wicca.

Correllian-Nativist Wicca

This sect is the only American group that claims a family tradition that can be traced back to Scotish Ancestors, while at the same time arguing for Native American influences that were brought into the family tradition through inter-marriage when the family moved to America. These claims are hotly disputed by the Wiccan community at large, as the sect claims that it was founded in the 1800s. In 2006, following internal pollitics, the sect split into two groups - Correllian Nativist Church International (Nativist Wicca) and Correll Mother Temple (Correllian Wicca).

Church and School of Wicca

(see Celtic Wicca)

Dianic Wicca

Dianic Wicca was founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the United States, in the 1970s. Dianic wiccans focus upon the worship of the goddess, and upon feminine aspects. Originally, the majority of dianic wiccans were lesbians. However, modern dianic groups may be all-lesbian, all-heterosexual, or mixed. Generally, if they worship the god, then it is as a consort to the goddess, rather than as an equal to the goddess.

The three main branches of Dianic neopaganism are:

• Dianic Wicca, a feminine sect of Wicca.

• McFarland Dianic, a neopagan Fairy lineage sect.

• The Living Temple of Diana, an emerging shamanic witchcraft sect.

Draconian Wicca

Draconian Wicca is a branch of Wicca that utilizes what is believed to be the power of dragons or dragon spirits.

Eclectic Wicca

This is a term that is used to describe practitioners of Wicca, either solitary or in groups, who take inspiration from various sources which they mold into their own form of "Wicca".

Faery Wicca

Faery Wicca (not to be confused with the Feri Tradition, which is not Wiccan) was founded by Kisma Stepanich in 1994. She is an American with distant links to Ireland on her mother's side. Her inspiration for Faery Wicca came from her claim that she was visited by the Fae as a child. There is no information regarding her introduction to Wicca, other than through the sudden explosion of material on the subject that became popular online in the 1990s.

Gardnerian Wicca

Gardnerian Wicca is named after Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964), a British civil servant who studied magic and many other things over the course of a long life. He knew and worked with many famous occultists, not the least of which was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Gardner agreed with Margaret Murray's (1865-1965) premise that what was considered folk magick in Great Britain and Celtic Europe was actually the battered remnants of the original pre-Roman and possibly pre-Celtic religion of western Europe. He was probably encouraged, and possibly inspired by the publication, by Charles G. Leland, of his work on reclaiming similar survivals in Tuscany and from within the culture of the Rom. Certain traditional practices had survived in Gardner's family, and he found others who had preserved similar survivals, and shared his beliefs in the ancientry of this knowledge.

Green Wicca

The Green Wicca was first named by Ann Moura in her book "Green Witchcraft" (1996), where she claims it is more a sect of solitary Wiccans who put a heavy emphasis upon herbalism for spells and healing.

Minonian Brotherhood

A sect that was formed for gay males to explore their spirituality without the historical inclusion of women

Progressive Witchcraft

While not a formal sect, it is still an important part of Wiccan movements to be included here. The first book to be written on the subject was "Magick without Peers: A Course in Progressive Witchcraft for the Solitary Practioner" by David Rankine and Ariadne Rainbird. It is described as an approach which is more universal than the sects of Garnerian and Alexandrian Wicca. It draws upon each of these sects, but is a system that is suited to solitary practitioners who wish to incorporate a wider variety of influences into their beliefs and practices.

Seax-Wica

Seax-Wica was the invention of Raymond Buckland who was also the first person in the US to openly admit to being Wiccan. He was initiated in the Garderian sect, and Gerald Gardner was present at his initiation. He eventually went on to found this, his own sect, with a heavily Anglo-Saxon influence.

Thelemic Wicca

A path of Wicca that was influenced by the religious philosophy of Thelema ("Will").

Trinitarian Wicca

This is an American sect which uses primarily a Christian pantheon within a Wiccan form of pactice.

Welsh Faerie Wicca

This is a family tradition of witches and bards that had an ancestor who was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca, and thus combined the two to form their own sect of Wicca.

Y Tylwyth Teg

See Welsh Faerie Wicca