Britain has a hugely diverse religious society.
But of all the faiths practised here, only one is truly British.
Modern Pagan witchcraft, otherwise known as Wicca.
Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.
Its followers call themselves witches,
worship a goddess of nature, and believe in the power to cast spells.
This programme contains some scenes of nudity.
Witches are among us. There is no doubt about it.
A long-held presumption about us is that we worship the devil.
Oh, no we don't.
But the most extraordinary thing about Wicca
is the story of how it was born,
because while it looks like an ancient folk religion,
Wicca was actually developed in the 1940s
by a middle-aged nudist from the New Forest, called Gerald Gardner.
In one sense, he was highly devious.
He wasn't a typical founder of a religion.
King of the witches, his hair goes this way,
his beard goes that way.
He was witchcraft.
I'm Professor Ronald Hutton. As a historian of British paganism,
I've been studying Wicca for over 20 years.
In this film, I'm going in search of the truth
about this secretive, magical faith.
I want to find out how this extraordinary Englishman
reinvented witchcraft, became Britain's first celebrity witch,
and in the process, created a new world religion.
Is it not a fact that these meetings are really,
very largely, sexual orgies?
They're not, not in the least.
You might not realise it,
but in modern Britain, you are never far from a witch.
They don't wear pointy hats, and they don't ride on broomsticks,
but they do cast spells, and they definitely believe in magic.
And unless we're talking about Harry Potter,
a lot of people find that problematic.
To the public, Wicca is often seen as mysterious, secretive,
maybe even dangerous, but is this fair?
I've been studying Wicca for two decades,
and I have yet to be turned into a frog.
But if I'm really going to understand Wicca,
I need to get beyond the textbooks,
and get under the skin of this religion.
But first, I need to find them,
and as Wiccans are notoriously secretive, even that's a challenge.
Unlike other faiths, when Wiccans go to worship,
they don't go to a church or a temple,
they go somewhere altogether different.
Modern witches are often urban creatures,
but as a reverence for nature lies at the heart of their faith,
they conduct their rituals in parks and woods,
right in the heart of the city.
This is a gorgeous looking place.
Why have you chosen it, and what are we going to do here?
Well, we're in Queen's Wood,
which has been used by pagans for ceremonies for decades
and decades, and what we're here to do
is to have a Wiccan-based ceremony, to remember what's sacred about us,
and about our connection, our connection with the land,
and the place that we live.
And it's customary in Wicca that there aren't observers,
there are only participants.
So, I would like to invite you to join us, if you are willing to?
I'd be honoured. I'm a bit nervous.
When doing a Wiccan ritual, one feels in connection
with something very old, and connected to the Earth,
and those things that we find deeply moving and beautiful,
the moon, the sunsets, those parts of nature that we don't understand,
that give us a sense of mystery and awe.
We make a Wiccan ceremony by casting a circle.
What it's like to cast a circle is to make a space
that's completely within nature,
in order that we can leave aside those things
that we have to deal with every day, but this is a place of rest.
THEY INTONE
There's a part of the ceremony in which we consecrate one another,
and in that moment, we are doing the balancing act,
which is remembering the divinity that dwells within.
We are remembering, "Ah, you know, you are a human being in front of me,
"but you, too, are divine."
Blessed be...
When doing a Wiccan ritual, one feels in connection
with something very, very old,
and very beautiful, and very connected to the Earth.
And all the tension of all the duties,
and all the things that we have to carry, I just feel it draining away.
Well, I thought that was a lovely ritual.
There is clearly more going on here than just a bunch of people
having a good time in a wood.
There's something quite deep,
but does it bring me any closer to understanding
what Wicca actually is?
Rituals like this, with their reverence for nature,
feel like the continuation of a very ancient tradition,
but in fact, nothing could be further from the truth,
because Wicca does not have its origins in the mists of time,
but in 1930s Dorset.
In 1938, a 52-year-old ex-colonial gent, called Gerald Gardner,
retired with his wife to the south coast of England.
This is Highcliffe, an archetypal conservative English community,
with its village church, Rotary Club, and Tory MP.
But hidden just beneath the surface, 75 years ago,
was something a lot stranger, and Gerald wasn't long in finding it.
For one thing, Highcliffe was a hotspot for naturists.
And despite his eminently respectable appearance,
Gerald liked nothing more than taking his clothes off.
'When there's no sun to worship,
'their conscience permits a compromise with a sun lamp.'
When Gardner moved to this area in 1938,
this is the house that he bought.
Wow.
And this is where Gerald
and his naturist friends would have enjoyed the sunshine.
It's almost the perfect private nudist paradise.
It is.
It's large, it's sunny, it's open, yet it's well hidden.
'But not to worry, everyone's equipped
'with this sort of clothes from birth.'
Gerald had found the perfect retirement spot,
and he wasn't alone.
Bankers, accountants, teachers, and a host of
tea and scones types seemed to be keen on retiring disgracefully.
We've got extraordinary evidence of this from a rather
jokey piece which appeared in the Christchurch Times, in 1939.
The instant success with the neighbours
of the Elphinstone Road nudist colony has been marked.
One old gentleman, who has rented a second-floor back,
says his outlook on life generally
has entirely changed in the last few weeks.
He has now no use for his car or fishing tackle,
and wishes to exchange them for anything useful,
such as telescopes, binoculars or camera.
And also, Gardner had a dark room built.
And I think he was going to develop and print his own photographs,
but it may be that they were of a naturist nature,
and it's not the sort of thing you want to take to your local
chemist, because even more rumours would have spread then.
He would stand out when he arrived, because he would look so different.
He had this shock of white hair, and also, what I remember,
was that he had tattoos on his arm.
And I know the boys, they would cross the road,
because he was a bit odd looking.
So, even with his clothes on, Gerald seemed different.
It was rumoured that his racy photo sessions went along with affairs,
and a taste for flagellation, but Gerald wasn't satisfied.
He was seeking something stranger, and in 1939, he found it.
Gerald was about to become a witch.
This old house in Hampshire has a remarkable claim to fame.
It was here on a night in 1939
that a middle-aged man called Gerald Gardner
was apparently initiated into witchcraft.
"I was blindfolded, clasped from behind and told,
"I give you the password."
Gerald claims that he was stripped naked,
brought into a roomful of witches, all similarly nude,
and then given the secrets of an ancient, magical religion.
"I was then pushed through a doorway and into the circle."
Then that the word, Wicca, was mentioned.
Wicca.
Witch.
They're witches.
Witches still exist!
From that night until his death nearly 30 years later,
Gerald Gardner devoted his life to witchcraft.
He appeared in the papers and on TV, he wrote books and crucially,
he initiated others into Wicca so it would not die with him.
The question is, what kind of man in 1930s England
decides to become a witch?
For clues about Gerald's journey to become Britain's most famous witch,
we need to delve into his earlier life.
Gerald Gardner came from a family
that had made a fortune in the timber trade.
He grew up in Lancashire but at the age of six,
he was packed off abroad with his nanny because of ill health
and he never went to school.
Gerald Gardner was essentially an unwanted child, I think really,
because he was asthmatic and bronchitic
and he was sent out to the Far East for his health
but the family never really reclaimed him.
Gerald was more or less sort of left on his own to learn, and he did.
Country of sunshine and shadow,
where the ancient mingles with the modern in the busy streets.
Gerald became very well travelled very quickly
and as a colonial, it was natural for him to seek his fortune
among the tea and rubber plantations of the Far East.
This is not the driver's usual attitude,
he's just posing for our cameraman.
But while most colonials were content to sit back and drink G&T,
Gerald went out and studied the tribal cultures
of the places where he was living.
In particular, he became fascinated by tribal ritual magic.
It is not uncommon for some to go into a trance,
as if hypnotised by the drug.
One of the rituals that he attended
was putting a young girl into trance.
Disease was driven out of their bodies by spells.
Magic, to these tribal people, was a matter of fact affair, it was real.
Gerald said it was quite unlike anything that he had seen before.
Gardner's fascination with tribal magic
went along with a deep interest in Western occultism.
He was inspired by pioneers like Sherlock Holmes' author, Arthur Conan Doyle,
who was heavily involved in spiritualism
and had become one of the most prominent public figures
in magic and the supernatural.
Gerald picked up on Conan Doyle's magical world
and it wasn't long before he was following in his footsteps,
experimenting with seances and spiritualism.
The tribal rituals he then witnessed in Malaya
only cemented this belief that magic was a powerful and very real thing.
So, by the time he retired to Highcliffe,
Gerald had been studying magic for decades.
He soon made contact with local occultists,
in particular a large group of Freemasons who were based nearby.
He found a people who were, if not exactly like minded,
then similarly minded.
There were some people very interested in esoteric things
and others that we are interested in nature and nature spirits.
They were people who knew the local folklore.
They knew the lie of the land.
Those people, as he got to know,
were interested in something else as well.
This something else turned out to be a kind of native English version
of the ritual magic Gerald had experienced in the Far East.
It was real English witchcraft and Gerald wanted in.
Imagine, if you can, how this sort of thing would have seemed to most people in 1939.
To most residents of Highcliffe, had they but known the truth,
Gerald would have seemed little short of insane.
But was this all madness?
Or was Gerald simply following tradition?
In Britain, there is a long history of useful witchcraft,
dating back to the Middle Ages.
Known as the Coming Folk,
these witches would cast spells to heal the sick, or bring good luck.
Research has shown that Gerald essentially used
these spells in his New Forest rituals.
But it was his ambition that set Gerald apart
from the cunning folk of old.
For him, these English folklore spells held much greater power.
Gerald had ambitions to use magic on a much grander scale,
to change not just your health, but the entire world.
He was about to test his newfound magical powers
against something truly dangerous.
As just across the sea, Hitler began to threaten invasion.
When he wasn't casting spells,
Gerald was also a prominent member of the local Home Guard.
And so, it made sense to Gerald to prepare to repel the Nazis,
not just with rusty bayonets, but with magic.
And on one night in 1940,
that's exactly what he and his coven are said to have done.
'We were taken at night to a place in the forest,
where the great circle was erected.'
I've come to the depths
of the New Forest, in search of the exact location
of this famous magical encounter.
And here to talk me through it is Gerald's biographer,
Philip Hasleton.
Yes, hello Robert. Glad you found it all right.
We're here because Gerald Gardner said,
"we were taken at night to a place in the forest,
"and there we created the largest cone of power
"that we had ever attempted."
What's a cone of power?
Well, it's not a physical cone, it is something magical,
something, a thought form, if you like.
This was to be directed towards
the High Command of the German army,
and indeed, to Hitler himself.
For Gerald, the threat of German invasion
was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate
the true power of Wiccan magic.
'And the great cone of power was raised,
'and slowly directed in the direction of Hitler.'
They built up power, dancing quickly round.
And the when that power had reached its climax,
and there was this cone of power,
which could be seen by those that were sensitive to things.
'The command was given.
'You cannot cross the sea.
'You cannot cross the sea.'
They rushed towards the fire,
at the same time raising this cone of power,
and sending it over to the German High Command,
and indeed, to Hitler himself.
I have to confess, although the night is not particularly cold,
I'm shivering a bit here.
I've got wet feet, it's pretty uncomfortable.
Would it have been similarly physically exhausting for them?
Well, yes, because they weren't in the first flush of youth,
most of them. It was something which exerted them.
It exerted them greatly.
And Gardner says several of them died shortly after that ritual.
'You cannot cross the sea.
'You cannot come. You cannot come'
This was, if you like, the life force of the individuals coming out.
This is important,
and they were prepared to sacrifice themselves
if necessary in order to achieve this objective.
This was not just doing it for fun.
These were people that were too old to join up.
And, all right, Gardner was in the Home Guard,
but they felt they wanted to do something,
so they used the skills that they believed that they had,
which were the magical ones.
And so, I say, it would be surprising if they hadn't done it.
And we know of various other groups throughout the country
that were doing similar things.
Now, from the perspective of the present-day,
this story might seem utterly preposterous.
Which is, effectively sacrificing their lives
in order to create a spell to ward off the Nazis.
But Hitler didn't come, and even the British government
seemed to feel threatened by the power of magic.
Shortly after Gerald's cone of power ritual, a spiritualist called
Helen Duncan was actually prosecuted for her occult activities.
Duncan had rattled twitchy naval officers,
and attracted the attention of the authorities in 1944,
when she held seances in Portsmouth,
and began answering questions about people's relatives
who have been killed in action.
She had been too good at her prophecies,
and had alarmed the security forces, and in fact,
she was imprisoned for a while.
But Gerald's passion for the occult was unwavering,
and crucially he wasn't alone.
He was drawing closer to the most notorious magician
in the entire world, Aleister Crowley, known as The Great Beast.
Crowley was an infamous magician, whose alleged black magic
had earned him the title, "wickedest man in the world."
Never far from controversy,
Crowley could have a distinct dark take on the occult.
I simply went over to Satan's side.
I found myself as passionately eager to serve my new master
as I had been to serve the old.
Gerald knew Crowley's work, and actually appropriated many of his
magical writings in his early Wiccan rituals,
but Gerald and Aleister were buried different men.
Where Crowley's brand of magic could be dark,
Gardner was interested in the positive side of the occult.
And these colourful characters gathered here,
at the Atlantis bookshop, which had a temple in the basement,
and sold rare texts, with instructions
on how to summon the dead,
talk to Angels and wield supernatural power.
It became a safe haven for like-minded people to come meet,
and discuss things, without prejudice,
and it gave them the protective colouring,
that at the time, they needed.
What sort of things happened at the shop,
and why do they matter to history?
They matter because there were
so few places that people who were interested
in this sort of thing could meet their fellows,
where you could talk as equals, whether you were a witch
or a high ceremony magician, or an astrologer, or a numerologist,
you were always treated as equals here.
And people would have enjoyed each other's company,
because they could talk honestly.
What do you think of Gerald Gardner?
My father used to come home and say,
"he was in again today, kids. King of the witches.
"His hair goes this way, his beard goes that way."
And he had style, he had presence,
and he had a great, cracking wit, as well.
That charismatic person is exactly what you need to create a movement.
And this gave him a platform,
not exactly as a recruiting platform,
but it was a place where people could come,
meet each other, be gently vetted to see if they were suitable.
Crowley was nearing the end of his life,
and he wanted Gardner as heir to his secret occult society.
But Gerald was not content
with a secretive underground subculture,
he wanted to take Wicca to the masses.
So, that's exactly what he was about to do, with a bang.
Is it not a fact that these meetings are really,
very largely, sexual orgies?
They're not. Not in the least.
Dr Gerald Brousseau Gardner is a qualified scientist.
He is also...a witch.
This is Gerald Gardner
appearing on the BBC's Panorama programme in 1958.
Most witches are initiated quite young,
and of course...some of them are young, some of them are middle-aged,
some of them are old.
Just a few years previously,
Gardner had been performing spells in the New Forest
with a small coven of witches.
So, how on earth did Gerald make the transition
from local eccentric to celebrity
on the BBC's flagship current affairs programme?
Gerald had come back to London in the mid-1940s
full of enthusiasm about Wicca, but he had to be careful.
It might be OK to discuss this in the safety of the Atlantis bookshop
but the Witchcraft Act was still in force.
In those days, to proclaim yourself a public witch was illegal,
and to be involved in the occult made you a social pariah.
In the 1940s, the core beliefs of Wicca were so radical
it was a very risky religion indeed.
Britain was still a very orthodox society
and anything other than Christianity was treated with suspicion.
Gerald was desperate to spread the Wiccan word
and so in 1949, he found a compromise.
He adopted a pseudonym and he published a novel, and this is it.
High Magic's Aid.
Although it had to be disguised as a work of fiction,
it is actually the first published account of Wiccan magic.
This passage, one of many,
describes how to conduct a classic Wiccan ritual.
"Upon the altar lay the remaining pentacle.
"Also cords, black cloth,
"and other things which you would want for the operation.
"Taking this pentacle, he bound it with a cord
"and shrouded it with a cloth."
It could be seen just as a story,
but for those in the know, it was quite revealing.
It included quite a lot of witchcraft rituals
that are fairly familiar today.
In some ways it's a terrible novel.
It's too many ye's and prithees and thous,
but in essence it's witchcraft writ large there.
High Magic's Aid wasn't exactly a bestseller,
but it did sow the first seeds of Wicca out in the wider world.
Then, in 1951, after a campaign by a group of spiritualist MPs
supported by Winston Churchill,
who himself had become interested in the occult,
the Witchcraft Act was finally repealed.
Gerald was now free to out himself as a witch,
and to tell the world all about Wicca,
which was by now developing into a fully fledged religious system.
Since his New Forest initiation,
Gerald had become something of a magpie,
building his new religion from many sources.
He borrowed heavily from both English folklore witchcraft
and modern shamanic magic for his spells and rituals,
whilst the iconic symbols that would become synonymous with Wicca,
most notably the pentagram,
were in fact ancient symbols that had been adopted by the Freemasons.
This blend of influences found expression
in Gerald's collection of magical objects.
But to see some of these, you have to go to a rather unlikely location.
I've come here in pursuit of one of the most significant collections
of Wiccan artefacts in the world.
And among them is one of the most important Wiccan manuscripts of all.
The owner is John Belham-Payne,
a property developer now living in Spain.
Please come in.
Thank you.
He is also one of Wicca's senior priests
and, in the great tradition of the faith,
has had many of Gerald's most prized magical possessions handed down to him.
Wow.
Can you talk me through some of Gerald's objects
and explain what they are for?
OK. This was Gerald Gardner's wand or at least one of them
and he would have used that to cast a circle.
The other items here that we have from Gerald
is one of his athames.
What is an athame?
It's a ritual knife.
We only use an athame for magical purposes.
Oh, my!
Obviously it's phallic
so it would be used for some sort of recreational purpose, I think.
Other items of Gerald's are these two crowns.
The priestess would wear this one
representing the triple aspects of the loom,
and this would be what he would have worn...
..which was representative of the Horned God.
It's the representing Goddess and God.
Goddess and God, absolutely right.
Well, I actually think that's your size. Would you like to try it on?
If you would like me to do so, yes, by all means.
Absolutely.
OK.
It's remarkably comfortable. Gerald was a practical sort of chap.
But the real prize is too valuable to be kept in John's basement.
Worth more than $1 million,
it's locked away in a much more secure location.
Now, I'm being granted a remarkable privilege.
I'm about to see a Wiccan Holy Grail.
Here, in a secure vault in this bank
is one of the most significant and valuable religious documents
of the 20th century.
This is the foundation text,
the closest thing to a Bible of modern Pagan witchcraft.
"And never reveal the secrets of the art."
It's called the Book Of Shadows.
It is Gerald's own magical workbook,
his experimental notes for what Wicca would become.
Here, Gerald wrote down the original rituals and spells
that Wiccans have been using ever since.
It's a manual, and like Wicca itself it remained a work in progress
rather than a fixed set of doctrines.
So, this is it.
This is Gerald Gardner's first and original Book Of Shadows.
First of all, it's probably the most famous book there is in the craft.
And as far as that is concerned,
my take on this book
is I think it's as important as owning the original Bible
because it's full of just everything that Gardner learned at that stage,
from a whole load of different sources.
"First, draw a circle with an athame and sprinkle with exorcised water.
"Light candles."
And this is the important part, is this is a book of experiences.
This is a book about things that have gone right
and some things that have gone wrong.
This is wonderful.
It's certainly the oldest Wiccan book surviving in Europe.
It's a strange mixture, which I think is classic of Gerald.
It's a mixture of a book of actual rituals to be used in the temple
and read from. It's also a kind of notebook
with odds and ends taken from all sorts of sources.
"I call upon the Goddess
"to enlighten the hearts of all whom I call into this circle."
Looking at this gives me two further insights into Gerald.
The first is just his love of beautiful things,
his artistry, his love of scripts,
like his love of wands, like his love of crowns.
And also his willingness to adapt, to go on from one thing to another.
This is somebody who's creating a work in progress
which other people can pick up and with which they can do things.
And move on from.
Yes.
That's the exciting thing about the craft, is it never stays still.
In the Book Of Shadows,
Gerald had written not just a guidebook to the spells
and rituals of Wicca,
he'd produced a manifesto for a new religion.
Wicca had truly been born
and now he was desperate to take it to the masses.
Gerald was now a man in a hurry,
desperate to ensure that Wicca didn't die with him.
He'd devote the next 10 years to spreading word of it
throughout the land, whatever the consequences.
In 1954, Gerald published his essential guide to Wicca -
Witchcraft Today.
He also opened Britain's first museum of witchcraft
on the Isle of Man and he started to be featured
in newspapers looking for a sensational story.
"Today The People prints a report that discloses their existence..."
"I saw a nude priestess go wild..."
It was after a series of muckraking tabloid features
accusing Gerald of practising black magic and devil worship
that he really got his big break.
Gerald was invited to defend himself on Panorama.
This would become a definitive TV moment, watched by millions,
that gave the British public their first sight of a real live witch.
Is it true that the dancing takes place, as a rule, naked?
Yes.
Now, why is that?
It's the tradition.
It's the order of the Goddess.
We should all be naked at my rite.
And of course, to work magic, you must be naked.
Gerald couldn't have hoped for a bigger audience,
and even in the face of some provocative questioning
he kept his dignity...just.
I want to put this to you very frankly.
I've been reading your book and I'm tempted to ask you,
is it not a fact that these meetings are very largely sexual orgies?
They're not, not in the least.
Gerald might have faced derision from the BBC,
but 12 million people had just heard about Wicca for the first time.
And what then happens when the circle is drawn?
Well, then of course, we generally start to dance,
then there is the worship of the gods,
then it depends what they want to do.
If they want to work magic, they work magic.
I think Gerald felt he was on nothing less than a sacred mission,
and now he had found his audience.
What he was about was getting this thing planted
in as many places as he could possibly bloody well plant it
because he reckoned it was great stuff and he wanted it to survive.
I would never have come to Wicca and Pagan witchcraft
if he hadn't done that.
If he hadn't published a book
when some people maybe thought that maybe wasn't the best idea,
I would never be where I am now.
He's the one who put it out there and said,
"No, people should know about this, this is amazing."
Thank you very much. Broomsticks I think are all waiting.
And through all this, Gerald got his wish.
He had become Britain's first modern celebrity witch.
It's like turning the crank handle of an old car, you know.
Nothing happens, and then suddenly it sparks into life.
That's what happened in about the mid-50s
and a coven was formed, which kept going,
and in fact is still going today.
As Gardner's fame grew, so too did his following.
People were writing to him in their hundreds, wanting to become witches.
One of his converts who joined him on Panorama was Lois Bourne.
How old are you?
I'm 29.
And are you a hereditary witch?
I do have witch ancestry but it's only within the last few years
that I've been practising witchcraft.
How did you find out about Wicca?
I had all these spiritual gifts
and I didn't know what to do with them,
and eventually I read a book by Gerald Gardner,
I think it was called Witchcraft Today,
and I wrote to him and I asked him if he could explain
these strange things which had happened to me throughout my life.
And he said, "Well, it's very clear to me, my dear,
"that you are a witch."
And of course I burst out laughing.
And I said, "But do witches really exist
"except in fairy stories and in mythology?"
And he said, "Well, about one person in every thousand has the gift
"so strongly emphasised the way you have it,"
and he offered to introduce me to a group of witches
who would help me and train me.
What makes people take up witchcraft?
Well, it seems to me that we live in a highly mechanised age
in which many people have lost their sense of belonging.
Witchcraft brings them back to living in harmony
with the rhythm and the seasons of the earth...
Why did Gerald value publicity so much?
If he didn't indulge in a bit of publicity,
apart from his books, how was he going to present this to the world?
How was he going to introduce these gods to them?
I think he was driven by something outside himself.
I think this was his purpose in life,
but I am convinced that we all come to earth with a purpose,
that there is something that we have to do.
And I think this is what Gerald's purpose was.
Dr GB Gardner,
sweeping the crossroads near his home in Castledown,
placing the dust in a shoe, and which is taken indoors,
is done to simulate sweeping away continuous bad luck.
And it wasn't just women who were drawn to Wicca.
Several young men joined Gerald's original coven,
one of them was Zachary Cox.
His eyes were bright blue and incredibly glittery eyes.
He didn't look mad, not in a destructive sense,
but he looked kind of nicely mad, if you know what I mean.
These were the eyes of someone
who had only one foot in the world of the commonplace.
I don't know how a guy gets into that state, I'm sure,
but he'd got into it somehow.
He was witchcraft, if you like.
The time had come to let this thing go loose,
and play its part in what was going to happen next.
The really weird thing is it worked.
# Tell me how you feel...#
And at the dawn of a new decade, there was something else in the air
that would work in Wicca's favour - social revolution.
Social rebels have taken over
in what seems more like an invasion than a revolution.
Because they've got their own new language...
As the 60s began to swing, Wicca's emphasis on gender equality,
nature worship,
and sacred sexuality made a perfect fit for the historical moment.
It was almost as if Gerald had predicted
how the world was about to change.
He was a conduit for something
that was the right time for that to happen.
By the time that Gerald died in 1964,
Wicca was on its way to becoming a global faith.
And in America,
where the counterculture was really rocking society to its core,
Gerald's radical new religion exploded into a phenomenon.
Throughout the '70s and '80s,
Wicca continued its march into the mainstream,
helped in no small part by hugely successful cult movies
like The Wicker Man, which provided a tantalising, if inaccurate,
glimpse of the Pagan faith to cinemagoers throughout the world.
Oh, God! Oh, Jesus Christ!
But as Wicca expanded across the globe,
without its eccentric leader,
would this very British religion flourish or perish?
In Britain today, Gerald Gardner's radical religion,
his feminist, eco-friendly, magical faith
has taken its place at the heart of our culture.
Where once witches were persecuted and driven underground,
today they can be out and proud.
21st-century Wicca is a far cry from its roots in the New Forest.
The forthcoming census results are expected to show it well up
among the top 10 religions in the United Kingdom.
And, as the faith has grown, Wiccans have formed campaign groups.
These organisations lobby the Government
about the ongoing recognition of Wicca and its followers' rights.
One of the most prominent and active of these groups
is to be found in the modern police service.
I want to find out how Gerald's legacy is influencing policy
and changing attitudes within some of our most respected professions.
Andrew Pardy, a spokesman for the Police Pagan Association.
Border officer Adam Pamment
represents pagans in the Home Office.
The format we use, the way things are laid out,
was brought to us by Gerald Gardner.
I don't think we would be doing the same type of thing, casting a circle,
calling the quarters, had not Gerald Gardner given to us what he did give.
And when we look at it, if I look at Wicca,
it's probably the only religion that England has ever given to the world.
Police officers may go in and they may see an altar set up
and they may not know whether the possession of a ritual knife
falls underneath defences in law or not.
And it's simple things like that that make the police more reassured
with how they're dealing with people, but allows that Pagan community to know they will be
dealt with fairly, just as any other person.
And, if Gerald's legacy is becoming influential in the UK,
in America his radical English faith has infiltrated
the very heart of the establishment - the US military.
Roberta Stewart and Reverend Selina Fox are on a mission.
Stewart's husband, Sergeant Patrick Stewart was killed in combat
last September in Afghanistan.
The Nevada native was a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient.
He was also a member of the Wiccan religion
whose symbol is the pentacle.
Stewart was refused a Wiccan memorial because the authorities
viewed his faith as a cult and not as a true religion.
I said, "Where is my husband's plaque?" and they indicated
that the emblem of our chosen faith was not allowed to be on there.
Since this test case in 2007,
the Wiccan pentagram has been a religious symbol
officially recognised by the US military
and can be carved on the gravestones of servicemen and women
who were killed in the line of duty.
Back in the UK, Wicca's evolution shows no sign of slowing down.
It's almost certainly the fastest-growing religion in the country.
'And what's interesting to me
'is that it's the younger generation that's leading the march.'
This is Croydon, south London.
Not, perhaps, the most magical place on the planet.
This weekend,
Croydon is hosting the biggest gathering of witches in the world.
I've come to Witchfest.
When Gerald Gardner wanted to find witchcraft,
he had to do so by getting into a secret coven.
Today's would-be witches do so at the click of a mouse
but do these young people know who Gerald Gardner was?
To me, Gerald is a trailblazer and a revolutionary.
He was so brave and courageous in embracing a religion
that was so outside of the norm
and finding other people that could join him in that, I...
That's, for me, what I respect about Wicca.
The opportunity to be revolutionary
and passionate about spirituality with an absence of orthodoxy.
He inspires me because he was so alive in his own lifetime.
I appreciate how he helped make it more public and, you know,
we're all interested in it probably because his influence
within the witchcraft world.
Gardener's legacy clearly lives on
amongst this new generation of witches,
but have modern Wiccan beliefs
stayed true to the original vision of its eccentric creator?
What does paganism mean to you?
To me, paganism is a spiritual path and it involves reverence for nature.
Wicca means to me finding my spirituality
embodied in a religion that is incorporating a feminine divine.
What would you call it? Is it a religion to you?
Is it a spirituality? Is it a craft?
All three.
Yeah.
Wow!
It's a craft because we practise witchcraft
and it's a spirituality because it's independent
to how we are as individuals and how we explore it within ourselves.
Whether it's nature, feminism or spirituality
that inspires Gardner's young followers,
Wicca is about the power of magic.
Magic changed Gerald's life.
It gave him a vision of a new type of religion,
and it drove him to push back the boundaries of the possible.
Magic does work.
The fact the sun rises every morning and we're here to see it is magic.
The fact that the moon glows big and bright,
and lights the way in the darkness is magic.
And we have that, and we celebrate that,
and we hold it very, very dear to our hearts.
It's very difficult to define, but it's so powerful.
A witch on their own can't do that much
but when they get together they're so powerful.
In the course of making this film,
I've encountered many people who practise a religion
called Pagan witchcraft which to them is clearly as beautiful,
transcendental and effective as other faiths are to their believers.
And it was brought into the world by a classic English eccentric
who managed to publicise a religion of lasting power.
It's feminist, it's nature-centred,
it seems to give people a great deal of choice.
But the single most powerful idea I take away from Wicca is this -
whereas other faiths say,
"This is what you should feel about the divine,"
this one says, "This is how you can feel divine."
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd