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these secret, in order that they remain safe from the grasp of those who would misuse them? And is it any wonder that those who have sworn to keep the mysteries secret and undespoiled look upon those who proliferate them for personal gain - or out of prophetic vision - with scorn? No twentieth century magus was more despised among his peers than Aleister Crowley. His crime was not that he was bisexual or that he was a heroin addict. It was not that he had a flamboyant, perhaps arrogant personality. His crime was that he published the secrets of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - and his insistence that it was the birthright of every man, woman, and child to have access to this knowledge.

Crowley was one of Gardner's chief influences. In fact, Gardner was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O., a fraternal organization born of English John Yarker Masonic Rites of Memphis-Misram and founded by Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss in 1906. After the death of Reuss, Crowley became chief of the order until his own death in 1947. Gardner is said to have attained the fourth degree, and he published his novel High Magicks Aid under the pseudonym "Scire 4=7," the numbers being an indication of his degree.

Gardner's original Book of Shadows draws strongly from the mystery traditions of the West, primarily from the O.T.O. and the Golden Dawn. Certain Gardnerian liturgies, such as The Great Rite, have been lifted right out of O.T.O. ritual, while others, such as The Charge of the Goddess, are close paraphrases of O.T.O and related material. These organizations, in turn, lay claim to sacred knowledge that reaches back to the wisdom of Ancient Egypt and, perhaps, still further in the past.

"Amongst the Egyptians Hermes Trismegistus holds the highest place; then come Chaldaeans, Greeks, Arabs, Italians, Gauls, Englishmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Hebrews, and many others," writes the anonymous author of that alchemical treatise "The Golden Tract."

In the brief space allotted, I will attempt to establish these points: that there are significant spiritual and ideological commonalities between Wicca and Gnosticism, that an examination of Wiccan key liturgies establishes this religion's roots in the Hermetic societies which continued Gnostic thought from antiquity throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the French Occult Revival and from there to the present, and finally, that Wicca is simply a new incarnation of a very old tradition.

Gnosticism

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