Witchcraft symbols are many and varied, and just as there is no agreement about the definition of witchcraft, there is no agreed lexicon of witchcraft symbols. This is a listing of some of the more common witchcraft symbols, and their more generally-accepted meanings.

The Pentagram

The Pentagram has a long and complex history. Found scrawled in caves near ancient Babylon, the five pointed star was copied from the star shaped pattern formed by the travels of the planet Venus in the sky. The emblem remained popular through many cultures and time periods - for example, it was called the pentalpha by the Greeks, who believed it had magical properties.

Among witchcraft symbols, the pentagram symbolizes the five elements - earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. The Wiccan emblematic pentagram faces point upward to symbolize the triumph of spirit over matter.

The Zodiac

The Zodiac plays an important role in the timing of rituals, and the witchcraft symbols for the signs of the Zodiac are often used to refer to related properties of person or spirit.

The Elements

The elements represented by the Pentagram each have their own witchcraft symbols. The witchcraft symbols for air, fire, and earth are based on triangles, while the symbol for water is, unsurprisingly, the Zodiac symbol for Aquarius.

For more about witchcraft symbols, read the full Witchcraft Symbols article.

Were there self-professed Witches in the Western world prior to the Gardnerian coming out party in the middle of the century? Absolutely. Folklore was enjoying a boom, Frazer’s The Golden Bough (three editions of various sizes from 1890 to 1915) was being widely devoured, and Theosophy, Spiritualism, the Society for Psychical Research, and dozens of esoteric societies and orders were thriving.

It’s hard to imagine that in such a climate no one was embracing a form of Witchcraft. On top of that, the tradition of cunning men and women (often old-school Witches by any other name) was still hanging in there. There may well have been numerous examples of what would today be called Family Traditions (or Famtrads, if you go to far too many SF conventions), though there’s regrettably little evidence for these.

What has not been established, though, is whether there was a Witchcraft movement, a network of Witches bound by a reasonably uniform collection of traditional practices and beliefs. Some authors, Gardner among them, have been deeply attached to the idea of such a network, but proportionately ineffectual at establishing its reality.

Advocates of this Murray-ish take on the Craft (such as those who credit the rather ill-reputed cunning man George Pickingill with everything from the rulership of nine Covens to being where Crowley nicked his best magical moves) still fly the flag, but since all attempts to substantiate such claims invariably lead to (a) impenetrable oaths of secrecy and (b) severe migraines, they have trouble getting anyone much to salute. Of course, a lack of proof is often accompanied by a lack of refutation, but all we have then are matters of faith.

The good news for the status of Witchcraft and Wicca, however, is that this couldn’t really matter less. Darwin might have called the Biblical account of our origins into question, but he certainly didn’t make a little girl’s Bat Mitzvah any less meaningful or Salisbury Cathedral any less inspiring. Magic is not reliant on history but on the state of the spirit.

To find out more of the little-known truths about modern witchcraft, read The Inner Circle.

Wicca, many authorities confidently state, is the religious aspect of Witchcraft. It’s actually not. It may be a religious aspect of Witchcraft, but as Witchcraft is an umbrella term, encompassing a very wide spectrum of beliefs and metaphysical models, it can’t be said to have anything resembling an homogeneous theology.

It is generally agreed that “Wicca” is properly considered a subcategory of Witchcraft. This allows African tribal Witches, Broom-Hilda, certain Satanists, Hermione Granger and so on to get on with their lives without being accused of being inauthentic Wiccans. Wicca in this usage is taken to have a specific set of qualities which are, much more often than not, believed to derive substantially from Gardnerian Witchcraft.

A decade or two ago, acceptance of “the” Goddess – with an option on “the” God – would most probably have been requisites for inclusion in Wicca. Time changes things. The magical and religious aspects of Wicca but just as there has been a massive growth in religions based on Paganism and Pantheism that don’t involve magic per se, there has also been a resurgence of a sort of eclectic, religiously-neutral, spell-based Witchcraft that many consider to have more in common with pre-20th century Craft than with the Gardnerian version.

The more intriguing question is whether one can be said to be Wiccan without some degree of belief in deities. Is a degree of religiosity necessary for the terms to have meaning or are the Goddess and God of Gardnerian-derived Craft one of the optional extras of the path, to be embraced or rejected as one might skyclad working, strict male-to-female polarity work, or the ban on “being a Witch alone”?

Given this background, one has to was whether one can talk sensibly about the gods and goddess of witchcraft and Wicca at all!

To find more detail about the gods and Goddess in witchcraft and Wicca, read The Inner Circle.