Britain's Wicca Man - a documentary

A few days ago, I came across the trailer for a new documentary entitled Britain's Wicca Man which talks about Gerald Gardner and the basics of Wicca. It really intrigued me and even more so when I realized that I couldn't find it anywhere! The problem was that it was shows on Australia's ABC and was automatically available only for Australian viewers. I searched all over the Internet but without success...until today! :D It looks like someone uploaded the video on Youtube as soon as it was released in Great Britain. I believe we're all very grateful for this ;)

You can have a look at the trailer just below and if that catches your attention, then I recommend you watch the whole documentary which you can also find in this post.

You can watch the trailer for Britain's Wicca Man on Vimeo.

The documentary Britain's Wicca Man

As you can see, prof. Ronald Hutton is the presenter. You may know him by his many books on various historical and religious topics, although his field of expertise is definitely history of British Paganism. Other important personas of modern occultism are in the film, for example Christina Oakley-Harrington (a High Priestess), Gardner's biographer Philip Heselton, John Belham-Payne (a High Priest) and others.

Even if it is quite short, this documentary amazed me mainly because it showed what Wicca really is like. Even the clips of Gerald Gardner weren't altered or taken out of context to make them leave the wrong impression. I am especially glad that they put the clip of him denying Wiccan rituals to be orgies, that they constantly emphasized that Wicca is nature-based and that it is very simply said that Wiccans do not worship the Devil. Even though all of this has been said a million times up to now, some people still don't seem to understand it. 

I also find it interesting that they mentioned the popular movie The Wicker Man (which is a pun since "wicker" and "wicca" have the same pronunciation in British English) saying that Wicca isn't anything like what it is depicted as in that film. This falls under the category of popular Witchcraft culture about which I plan to talk more, but all in due time. It really is interesting how Witchcraft can be (and has been) interpreted in media such as movies or books.

Some other fascinating topics were touched upon, some of which people don't normally pay any attention to like the attitude of the army and police force towards Pagan religions. I have already talked with a few people about how hard it is to incorporate the Wiccan Rede (harm none) into your everyday life if you're a policeman, or even harder if you're in the army.

This is an excellent opportunity to announce the topic of my next post. The famous year 1951 show up in the movie. This year marked the end of the prosecution of Witches since it was precisely then that the Witchcraft acts were repealed. The exact date would be June 22, 1951 and as you can see, its anniversary will be in a few days. But I won't talk about that anymore here since I'll be writing about it soon enough.

All in all, I recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in Witchcraft and Wicca, and I would also like to mention that the conclusion of the movie could easily be one of the best "definitions" of Wicca I have ever heard!

"Whereas other faiths say 'This is what you should feel about the Divine', this one says 'This is how you can feel divine'." 

I hope that you'll enjoy the movie as much as I did! :)
Until next time. Yours,
Witch's Cat