Altar cloth with Wiccan symbols in soft velvet.

Wicca is a neo-pagan nature religion that was popularized in 1954 by Gerald Gardner. He called it "witchcraft" or "witch cult" and its adherents Wiccans. Wicca is a more or less organized form of witchcraft. However, this does not mean that the terms wicca and witchcraft are synonymous. Modern Wicca is not only a natural religion, but also an ecologically and feminist-inspired philosophy. Wicca followers base their ideas on pre-Christian sources, European folklore and mythology. They consider themselves priests and priestesses of a pre-Christian shamanic nature religion that worships a goddess related to the Mother Goddess in her three aspects of Virgin, Mother and Old Wise Woman. Many Wicca traditions also worship a Horned God who is derived from the ancient god of animals, hunting, death and forests. Many Wiccans see themselves as the modern heirs to ancient traditions from Egypt, Crete, and Eleusis, among others. Wicca is also referred to as the Old Religion, as Margaret Murray described in her 1933 God of the Witches.[1] In it she assumed that an older religion than Christianity had survived among the population despite the missionary work of the missionaries. However, it is highly doubtful whether there has ever been a specific 'Old Religion'. Modern Wicca does adopt this unscientific theory, thus presenting itself as a continuation of the Ancient Traditions, albeit almost entirely 20th-century itself.