The publication from 1954 of Gerald Gardner's non-fiction works on witchcraft has led to the current public existence of two different trends of religious and magical belief and practice, both which identify themselves as "Wicca". One form places a strong emphasis upon the transmission of traditional practices and a form of initiatory lineage similar to that practised by Gardner himself. The other covers a wider range of views on each of these aspects, but with the most common position being a strong distance between the traditional practices-giving a greater importance to innovation-and a complete or near-complete abandon­ment of the concept of initiatory lineage.

Both trends often see themselves and each other as being within a wider religio-magical stream of Post-Gardnerian Pagan Witchcraft of which the innovative form is a larger part, though in different ways. The traditional view of the innovative form typically labels that form "Eclectic" even in cases where the practitioners would understand "Eclectic" differently, and considers it to be something outside of what it terms "Wicca". The innovative form generally labels all Post-Gardnerian Pagan Witchcraft, or beyond, as "Wicca", and as such recognizes all traditional practitioners as Wiccan but does not generally make more signi­fi­cant distinctions between the various schools.

The traditional stream considers the differences between the two streams as significant to the point of typicality while the innovative stream considers the differences as much less important. This book examines the differences and offers insights into both.