There is no history of witchcraft in the way that there is a history of Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. There is a history of Wicca, which we will explore shortly, but witchcraft is inseparable from human evolution. As such, the contemporary expression of witchcraft has mirrored the needs of the human communities throughout time, and is inclusive to each geography. Modern witchcraft cannot be separated from and traced via an unbroken lineage distinct from human spiritual development.

As described earlier those who sought to control the people, and things they were describing, wielded the title “witch” and the term “witchcraft” prior to the early 1900s. Starhawk explains in the appendix of Dreaming Of The Dark (1997), “In 1484, a papal bill by Pope Innocent VIII declared witchcraft heresy and extended the power of the inquisitors to hunt witches in southern Germany. In 1486, the Dominican inquisitors Kramer and Sprenger published the Malleus Maleficarum (called “The Hammer of the Witches”), which became the witchhunters manual for the next two and a half centuries.”

Historical reference to witchcraft gives few unbiased clues related to where in the process of evolution witchcraft may have been. Modern study of this field however provides relevant information from an array of practitioners and academicians to the questions: What is witchcraft and who are witches?

Prior to 1951, the year when England repealed its laws forbidding witchcraft students of the occult, did not openly embody the word witchcraft. Quoting Gerald Gardiner in The Witch Book (2002), Raymond Buckland writes, “Crowley knew of witchcraft but considered it ‘too tame’ and never practiced it.” In the 50 years prior to Gerald Gardiner, a renaissance of magickal study and practice occurred and became the foundation stones from which witchcraft as we know today was built. Gerald Gardiner was a well-known witch.

The choice to identify oneself as a witch and the decision to reclaim the power of the definers of witchcraft is modern. Wicca is the most popular modern outlet for witchcraft. Raymond Buckland writes in The Witch Book (2002), "Wicca is the preferred word for ‘Witchcraft’ with most Witches today, since it does not carry the negativity associated with the stereotypical witch promoted by Christianity. It denotes the positive, nature-oriented pagan religion derived from pre-Christian roots.”