Gerald Gardner facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gerald Brosseau Gardner
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| Born | 13 June 1884 Blundellsands, Lancashire, England
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| Died | 12 February 1964 (aged 79) aboard ship, en route to Tunis
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| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Rosedale |
| Parent(s) | William Robert Gardner Louise Burguelew Ennis |
Gerald Brosseau Gardner (born June 13, 1884 – died February 12, 1964) was an English writer and explorer. He is often called the "Father of Modern Wicca". Wicca is a nature-based religion that honors both a Goddess and a God. Gardner helped bring this religion to public attention. He wrote important books about it and started a branch of Wicca called Gardnerian Wicca.
Born into a wealthy family in Blundellsands, England, Gerald spent much of his childhood traveling. He lived in places like Madeira because of his asthma. Later, he worked as a government officer in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Malaya. He became very interested in the local cultures and their magical practices.
After retiring in 1936, he returned to England. He joined a spiritual group and later said he found a secret group of witches. He believed this group was a leftover from ancient, pre-Christian times. Gardner decided to help revive this old religion. He added ideas from other traditions, like Freemasonry, to create what became Gardnerian Wicca.
In the 1940s, Gardner moved to London. He worked hard to share Wicca with the world. He got a lot of media attention and wrote books like Witchcraft Today. He also opened the Museum of Witchcraft on the Isle of Man. Through his efforts, Wicca began to spread across Britain and later to other countries.
Contents
Gerald Gardner's Early Life
Childhood Years: 1884–1899
Gerald Gardner came from a rich family. His family owned a very old company that imported wood. His father, William Robert Gardner, married an American woman named Louise Burguelew Ennis. They had three sons, and Gerald was the third. He was born on Friday, June 13, 1884.
Gerald had a nursemaid named Josephine McCombie, or "Com." She spent much more time with him than his parents did. Gerald suffered from asthma, especially in the cold English winters. So, Com took him to warmer places abroad. They traveled to Nice in France, the Canary Islands, and the Gold Coast (now Ghana). They spent most of nine years in Funchal, Madeira.
Because of his travels and illness, Gerald never went to school. He learned to read by himself from magazines. His writing always showed his lack of formal education, with unusual spelling and grammar. He loved to read, and one book that influenced him was about spiritualism. This book made him believe strongly in an afterlife. In Madeira, he also started collecting weapons, which became a lifelong hobby.
Life in Ceylon and Borneo: 1900–1911
In 1900, Com married a man who owned a tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Gerald went to live with them to learn about the tea business. He worked as a "creeper," which was a trainee planter. He didn't love the work, but he enjoyed being outdoors.
In 1904, Gerald started working on his own tea estate. He spent his free time hunting and exploring the forests. He became friends with the local Singhalese people and learned about their Buddhist beliefs. Later, his father asked him to manage a new rubber plantation.
In 1907, Gardner returned to Britain for a visit. He spent time with his relatives, the Sergenesons, who were Methodists. He said they talked about strange things, like fairies living in their garden. Gardner also claimed that his grandfather was a practicing witch. He also heard that a Scottish ancestor, Grissell Gairdner, was burned as a witch in 1610.
In 1910, Gardner became a Freemason in Ceylon. He was very excited about it at first, but he left the group the next year. This was probably because he planned to leave Ceylon. The rubber plantation wasn't doing well, so his father sold it in 1911.
That year, Gardner moved to British North Borneo. He worked as a rubber planter again. He didn't get along with his boss, who was racist. But Gardner made friends with many local people, like the Dayak and Dusun people. He was fascinated by their way of life, their weapons, and their tattoos. He also learned about their religious beliefs. He left Borneo after getting malaria and moved to Singapore.
Malaya and World War I: 1911–1926
In Singapore, Gardner decided to take a job on a rubber plantation in Perak, Malaya. He also bought his own rubber estate. He made friends with an American man who had converted to Islam. Through this friend, Gardner met many local people, including the Senoi and Malay peoples. Gardner even said the Muslim confession of faith to gain their trust, but he never became a practicing Muslim. He became very interested in their magical beliefs and their special knives called kris.
In 1915, Gardner joined a local volunteer army. Even though World War I was happening in Europe, Malaya was mostly peaceful. Gardner wanted to help more, so he went back to Britain in 1916. He tried to join the British Navy but was turned down because of his health. He then worked as a helper in a hospital, caring for soldiers injured in the Battle of the Somme. But his malaria returned, so he went back to Malaya in October 1916.
After the war, rubber prices dropped, and it was hard to make money. Gardner returned to Britain again, possibly to ask his father for money. When he came back to Malaya, he found he had lost his job. He then worked for the Public Works Department. In 1923, he became a government inspector of rubber plantations. This job involved a lot of travel, which he enjoyed. He was later promoted to Principal Officer of Customs.
Marriage and Archaeology: 1927–1936
Gardner's mother died in 1920, but he didn't go back to Britain then. However, in 1927, his father became very ill. Gardner decided to visit him. While in Britain, Gardner started exploring spiritualism and talking to mediums. He believed he had contact with spirits of his dead family members. He was critical of many mediums but found some he thought were real.
On July 28, 1927, after meeting a medium, he met the woman he would marry. Her name was Dorothea Frances Rosedale, known as Donna. He asked her to marry him the next day, and she said yes. They got married quickly on August 16 and then went to Malaya.
In Malaya, they settled into a home in Johor Bahru. Gardner joined the Freemasons again but left by 1931. He also returned to his interest in the local customs and magic. Gardner was also very interested in archaeology. He started digging at the ancient city of Johore Lama by himself. He found old tombs, pottery, and porcelain. He also dug at other royal sites. His discoveries were shown at the National Museum of Singapore. He even found beads that suggested trade between the Roman Empire and the Malays.
By the early 1930s, Gardner was seen more as a folklorist and archaeologist than just a civil servant. He became a member of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1936. On his way back to London in 1932, he stopped in Egypt. He joined a famous archaeologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, at a dig site in Palestine. In London, he attended a conference where he learned about the cult of the Mother Goddess. He also became friends with archaeologist Alexander Keiller, who encouraged him to join other digs.
Gardner continued his travels in East Asia. He visited Phnom Penh in French Indo-China and cities in China. In 1935, he attended a conference in the Philippines. His main interest was the Malay kris knife. He collected 400 of them and learned about their magical uses from locals. He wrote a book about them called Keris and Other Malay Weapons, published in 1936.
In 1935, Gardner's father died and left him £3,000. This money allowed him to retire early in January 1936. Gardner wanted to stay in Malaya, but his wife Donna wanted to return to England.
Return to Europe: 1936–1938
In 1936, Gardner and Donna left Malaya for Europe. Donna went straight to London. Gardner visited Palestine again, joining an archaeological dig. He was very interested in a temple that had statues of both the Abrahamic God and the pagan goddess Ashtoreth. From Palestine, Gardner traveled to Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Germany. He then reached England. He also visited Denmark for a conference on weapons, where he gave a talk about the kris.
Gardner feared the cold English winter, so he sailed to Cyprus in late 1936. He stayed there into the next year. He studied ancient swords at the museum in Nicosia and wrote a paper about them. Back in London in 1937, Gardner got a "Doctorate of Philosophy" from an organization that gave out degrees by mail for a fee. He used the title "Dr. Gardner," but real universities did not recognize it.
He planned to return to Palestine, but the archaeologist he worked with was murdered. So, he went back to Cyprus. Gardner believed he had lived on the island in a past life. He bought land there, hoping to build a house, but it never happened. His dreams inspired him to write his first novel, A Goddess Arrives. The book was about an Englishman who remembered a past life in ancient Cyprus. It featured a queen who used magic to protect her people. The book was published in late 1939.
Returning to London, Gardner helped dig shelter trenches in Hyde Park as war approached. He also volunteered for the Air Raid Wardens' Service. Fearing city bombings, Gardner and his wife moved to Highcliffe, near the New Forest in Hampshire. They bought a house there.
Gardner's Involvement in Wicca
The Rosicrucian Order: 1938–1939
In Highcliffe, Gardner found a building called the "First Rosicrucian Theatre in England." He was interested in Rosicrucianism, a spiritual tradition. In August 1939, he took his wife to a play there. She hated it, but Gardner was curious. He joined the group that ran the theater, called the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship.
Gardner soon became critical of some of the group's beliefs. For example, the leader's followers claimed he was immortal. Gardner found this amusing. He became even more doubtful when one of the leaders said war would not come in 1939. The very next day, Britain declared war on Germany.
Besides Rosicrucianism, Gardner also joined the Folklore Society in 1939. He wrote an article about witchcraft items he believed belonged to a "Witch-Finder General" from the 1600s. He later became a member of the society's council. Gardner also joined the Historical Association. He supported building a local museum in Christchurch.
He also helped prepare for the war. He joined the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) as a warden. His house became an ARP post. In 1940, he tried to join the Home Guard but was already an ARP warden. He found a way around this by joining as an armorer, helping to arm his fellow guards with his own weapon collection.
The New Forest Coven: 1939–1944
Even though Gardner was doubtful about the Rosicrucian Order, he got along well with a small group inside it. This group included Edith Woodford-Grimes, Susie Mason, Ernie Mason, and Rosetta Fudge. Gardner became very fond of them. He grew especially close to Woodford-Grimes, whom he called "Dafo." They helped each other with their writing.
According to Gardner, one night in September 1939, this group took him to a large house. There, he went through an initiation ceremony. During the ceremony, he heard the words "Wicca" and "Wicce," which he knew were old words for "witch." He already knew about Margaret Murray's idea that an ancient witch-cult had survived. He then believed that this group, the New Forest coven, was one of the last surviving covens of this old, pre-Christian religion. Later research suggests the New Forest coven was likely formed in the 1930s, based on folk magic and Murray's ideas.
Gardner only described one of their rituals in detail. He called it "Operation Cone of Power." He said it happened in 1940 in the New Forest. Its purpose was to magically stop the Nazis from invading Britain. Gardner claimed they formed a "Great Circle" at night. They raised a "great cone of power"—a type of magical energy—and sent it to Berlin. The command was "you cannot cross the sea, you cannot come."
Bricket Wood and Gardnerian Wicca: 1945–1950
While in the New Forest, Gardner often traveled to London. After the war, he decided to move back to London in late 1944 or early 1945. In 1945, he bought land near Bricket Wood in Hertfordshire.
Between 1936 and 1939, Gardner became friends with J.S.M. Ward. Ward owned an open-air museum that had a 16th-century "witch's cottage." Gardner traded his land in Cyprus for this cottage. The cottage was moved and rebuilt on Gardner's land at Bricket Wood. In 1947, he held a house-warming ceremony there, likely based on ceremonial magic rituals.
Gardner also explored other spiritual interests. In 1946, he became a priest in the Ancient British Church. He also joined the Ancient Druid Order and attended their rituals at Stonehenge. He continued to be part of the Folk-Lore Society, but many members didn't take his ideas seriously.
In 1947, Gardner met Aleister Crowley, a famous ceremonial magician. Before Crowley died, he allowed Gardner to admit people into a lower degree of his magical order. Gardner later considered himself the head of this order in Europe for a short time.
Gardner wanted to spread Wicca. He wrote about some of its practices in a fictional book called High Magic's Aid. It was published in 1949. He also started writing down Wiccan rituals and spells in a scrapbook. This became the first version of what he later called a Book of Shadows. He also initiated his first students into Wicca around this time.
Doreen Valiente and the Museum of Magic: 1950–1957
Gardner also met Cecil Williamson, who wanted to open a museum about witchcraft. This museum, the Folk-lore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft, opened on the Isle of Man in 1951. Gardner and his wife moved there, and he became the "resident witch." He told a newspaper, "Of course I'm a witch. And I get great fun out of it."
The museum didn't make much money, and Gardner and Williamson had disagreements. In 1954, Gardner bought the museum from Williamson. He renamed it the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft and ran it until he died. He also had a flat in London but often traveled to warmer places in winter because of his asthma. In London, he met other occultists at a bookshop.
In 1952, Gardner started writing to a young woman named Doreen Valiente. She wanted to be initiated into Wicca. Gardner agreed to meet her, and he initiated her in 1953. Valiente joined the Bricket Wood Coven and became its High Priestess. She helped Gardner improve his Book of Shadows.
In 1954, Gardner published a non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today. It had a foreword by Margaret Murray, who believed in a surviving witch-cult. In his book, Gardner not only supported this idea but also suggested that stories of faeries came from a secret pygmy race.
Gardner started seeking more publicity for Wicca. He invited the press to write articles about the religion. Many articles were negative, calling it "Devil-Worship." But Gardner believed that publicity was the only way to keep the "Old Religion," as he called it, from dying out.
Later Life and Death
In 1960, Gardner's official biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, was published. It was written by his friend Idries Shah but used the name of one of Gardner's High Priests, Jack L. Bracelin. In May 1960, Gardner attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace. This was to recognize his years of service to the British Empire.
Soon after, Gardner's wife Donna died. Gardner's asthma attacks became very bad again. The next year, he traveled to Majorca with friends. In 1963, Gardner decided to spend the winter in Lebanon. On February 12, 1964, while returning home on a ship, he had a fatal heart attack at breakfast. He was 79 years old.
He was buried in Tunisia, the ship's next stop. Only the ship's captain attended his funeral. Gardner left his museum, artifacts, and book copyrights to one of his High Priestesses, Monique Wilson. However, she and her husband later sold the collection to Ripley's Believe It or Not!.
Several years after Gardner's death, another Wiccan High Priestess, Eleanor Bone, found his grave. She learned that the cemetery was going to be redeveloped. She raised money to move his body to another cemetery in Tunis, where it is today. In 2007, a new plaque was placed on his grave, calling him the "Father of Modern Wicca."
Gardner's Personal Life
Gardner was married only once, to Donna. Many people who knew him said he was very devoted to her. After she died in 1960, his asthma attacks got worse. He was known to cuddle with his young High Priestess after rituals, as many coven members stayed at his cottage. Some historians believe he had a long-term relationship with Dafo.
Gardner enjoyed sunbathing. He also had several tattoos of magical symbols, like a snake, dragon, anchor, and dagger. In his later life, he wore a heavy bronze bracelet that showed the three levels of witchcraft. He also wore a large silver ring with signs that spelled his witch-name, "Scire."
One coven member said that Gardner styled his beard and hair to look "somewhat demonic." However, this member also thought Gardner "lacked charisma" for someone leading a new religion. Gardner supported the Conservative Party and was a member of a local Conservative group. He also read a pro-Conservative newspaper.
Criticisms of Gardner
In a 1951 interview, Gardner claimed he had doctorates from the University of Singapore and the University of Toulouse. However, later investigation by Doreen Valiente showed these claims were false. The University of Singapore didn't exist then, and the University of Toulouse had no record of him. Valiente thought he might have made these claims because he didn't have a formal education.
Valiente also criticized Gardner for seeking too much publicity. After many negative newspaper stories, some coven members wanted rules about what to tell non-members. Valiente said Gardner responded with his own set of Wiccan laws. Others suspected he just made them up. This disagreement led to Valiente and others leaving the coven.
Gardner's Legacy
A scholar named Ethan Doyle White said that few people in spiritual history are as important as Gerald Gardner in starting new Pagan movements.
In 2012, Philip Heselton published a two-volume biography of Gardner called Witchfather. This book was praised for being very detailed and thorough.
See also
In Spanish: Gerald Gardner para niños
- Ashrama Hall and Christchurch Garden Theatre
Images for kids
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Gardner with his Irish nursemaid, Com, during the 1880s
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While working in Borneo in 1911, Gardner became friends with members of the Dayak indigenous community. He was fascinated by their beliefs, tattoos, and weapons.
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A selection of kris knives; Gardner took a great interest in such items, even authoring the definitive text on the subject, Keris and Other Malay Weapons (1936).
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A plaque marks the house in Highcliffe where Gardner lived during World War II.
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The Temple of the Rose Cross, Teophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618.
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The Mill House in Highcliffe, where Gardner was supposedly initiated into the Craft.
