Gerald Gardner is ofte called the father of modrn witchcraft. His life ad works were groundbreaking in opening the door for the modern revival of Wicca and Neopaganism. The Meaning of Witchcraft (originally published in 1959) was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch.
"The foundation of magical beliefs", Gardner wrote, "of which witchcraft is a form, is that of unseed Powers exist, and that by performing the right sort of ritual, these Powers can be contacted and either forced or persuaded to assist one in some way. People believed this in the Stone Age, and they believe it, consciously or not, today. It is well known that most superstition is, in fact, a broken-down ritual. The meaning of witchcraft is to be found not in strange religious theories about God and Satan, but in the deepest levels of the human mind, the collective unconscious, and the earliest developments of human society."
The Meaning of Witchcraft is an enduring and invaluable sourcebook for witches today. This Weiser Classics edition includes a new forward by Pam Grossman, author of Waking the Witch. In it, Grossman revisits Gardner's historical role and mixed legacy in the revival of witchcraft and magic in modern times.