Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

186 Neopagan Witchcraft
Part of a Wiccan initiation: presenting the athame (ritual dagger). (Raymond Buckland/Fortean Pcture Library)
derive from pre-Christian paganism. The assertion
that these terms were so derived may have
been plausible in the midtwentieth century when
Gardner founded the Wiccan movement, but it is
now clear that there is no historical connection
between modern Wiccans and the “witches”
executed by the Inquisition—both because the
Inquisition’s victims were not pagans and because
Gardner’s claims to have inherited an ancient
lineage were false. Rather, these terms were derived
from the diabolical fantasies of medieval witchhunters
who believed they were rooting out and
destroying the Prince of Darkness’s minions—in
other words, “witch,” “coven,” and “sabbat” derive
from the literary Satanism created by officials of
the Church.
Vera further argues that the God of modern
Wiccans is derived more or less directly from the
Devil of this same literary Satanism. Among other
things, she points out that the very first paragraph
of one of Gardner’s principal source documents,
Charles Leland’s Arcadia: Gospel of the Witches
(1899), draws on traditional diabolical imagery:
“Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god
of the Sun and of the moon, the god of Light, who
was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride
was driven from Paradise” (Leland 1996, 1). And
while it is true that medieval Christian Devil
imagery incorporated aspects of certain ancient
gods, Wicca’s Horned God is derived directly from
witch-hunt literature and only indirectly from any
ancient, pre-Christian God. “Although they may
not be fully aware of these various connections,
Modern Satanists have long felt that the basis of
Wicca’s appeal lies in the paradoxical (some would
say hypocritical) combination of Wicca’s Satanic
connotations and the denial of same. Thus,
Satanists tend to regard Wicca as a ripoff of
Satanism” (Vera 1996). Some Satanists even go so
far as to assert that, while adopting a diabolical