Gerald Gardner
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Gerald Brousseau Gardner (June 13 1884 - February 12 1964), who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an English civil servant, amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist who published some of the definitive texts for the religion of Wicca, which he was instrumental in bringing to public attention through his 1954 book, Witchcraft Today.
Gardner claimed that Wicca was the survival of a pre-Christian pagan Witch cult that he had been initiated into by a New Forest coven. The tradition as he subsequently popularised it through the Bricket Wood coven (of which he acted as High Priest) became known as Gardnerian Wicca, and this in turn spawned or inspired numerous other branches and traditions of Wicca. For this, he has sometimes been referred to as "the father of Wicca".
