Gerald Gardner

A British civil servant, occultist and anthropologist. Wrote the definitive 'guides' to neopaganism and popularised it with High Magic's Aid (1949) a book about Wicca in the form of a novel, Witchcraft Today (1954) in which he gave additional details about the faith, and The Meaning of Witchcraft which gave a detailed history of Wicca in Northern Europe.

Sources for his books are disputed, but there have been recent developments that show that very probably in the 1930s, Gardner came in contact with several different magical groups, among them being famtrad witches.

There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that Gardner drew upon Pagan texts guarded over the centuries by the Freemasons.