Paganism · timeline

The pagan revival

Modern Paganism was built mostly in the last two centuries, from old sources and new ideas. This timeline puts the main landmarks in order, so you can see what is old, what is recent, and who made what.

9 min read · Updated 11 November 2026 · Last checked 11 November 2026

The timeline #

Every entry has a numbered note. A small label marks an entry that is a second-hand report, rests on an encyclopedia alone, or is someone’s own account. Where a date is not labelled, I checked it against a second source: the statute for 1951, a library catalogue or an author’s signed preface for the books, and reference articles for the rest. Several of those were read only as search extracts, and the notes say so. This is a selection, not a full history, and it follows the revival mainly in Britain, the United States, Iceland, Greece and the Kemetic movement; many movements are not here.

Ideas that came first
21 June 1792
Edward Williams, who wrote as Iolo Morganwg, holds the first Gorsedd of the Bards on Primrose Hill in London. The ceremonies were his own invention, presented as ancient.¹^,²
1835
Jacob Grimm publishes Deutsche Mythologie and argues for a Germanic goddess Ostara.³^,⁴
1871
Edward Tylor’s Primitive Culture popularises the word animism, which he treated as an early and mistaken stage of religion.⁵^,⁶ Animism
1890
James Frazer’s The Golden Bough gathers European seasonal fire festivals and presents them as relics of pagan religion.⁷^,⁸
1921
Margaret Murray argues that medieval witches belonged to a surviving pagan religion. Historians have long rejected the theory, but it shaped what early Wiccans thought a witch’s year should look like.⁹^,¹⁰
Wicca and the Wheel of the Year
22 June 1951
The Witchcraft Act 1735 is repealed in Britain by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, which replaced it with an offence aimed at fraudulent mediums. The Act did not extend to Northern Ireland.¹¹^,¹²
1954
Gerald Gardner publishes Witchcraft Today, the first public account of Wicca. Its claim of an ancient survival is not supported by historians.¹³^,¹⁴^,¹⁵
by about 1958
The solstices and equinoxes are added to the four Gaelic festivals by Gardner’s Bricket Wood coven, according to Frederic Lamond, who belonged to it.¹⁶ second-hand Where the wheel came from
1964
Ross Nichols founds the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, after a breakaway from the Ancient Druid Order.¹⁷
mid-1960s
The phrase ‘Wheel of the Year’ is in use.¹⁸
1972–1973
Ásatrúarfélagið is founded in Iceland in 1972 and recognised in 1973, an early public Heathen organisation.¹⁹^,²⁰
1974
Aidan Kelly proposes the names Litha, Ostara and Mabon for the summer solstice and the two equinoxes. There was no ancient festival called Mabon.²¹ his own account Mabon
1979
Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance and Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon both appear.²²^,²³
Spreading and settling
1988
Tamara Siuda founds Kemetic Orthodoxy in the United States.²⁴ encyclopedia source Kemetism
early 1990s
After communism collapses, small Pagan movements in Eastern Europe surface and gain momentum. Most are nationalist in politics, so their history needs scholarly care.²⁵
1997
YSEE, the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes, is founded in Greece.²⁶^,²⁷ Hellenism
1999
Ronald Hutton publishes The Triumph of the Moon, the standard history of Wicca, which tests the survival story against the evidence.²⁸
21 September 2010
The Charity Commission for England and Wales decides that Druidry is a religion in charity law, and registers the Druid Network.²⁹

What the timeline leaves out #

The Eastern European and Slavic native-faith movements get a single entry, because I have not yet read enough of the scholarship to date their early stages with confidence, and parts of their history are entangled with nationalist politics. Early dates for the Troth and other Heathen groups, and for the many Pagan organisations founded after 1980, are also left out until they have a source. The point is the same one the history of the wheel makes: knowing when something was made need not lessen it, but it should stop us repeating claims of unbroken ancient survival. See also ethics and cautions.

Notes

'Our own pageantry and peacockry': the Gorsedd of the Bards, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) blog. ↩
Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Yale University Press, 2009). Hutton’s history of the Druids covers the Romantic revival and its inventions. ↩
Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen, 1835), English trans. J. S. Stallybrass as Teutonic Mythology (1882). ↩
'Witch-cult hypothesis', Wikipedia. Checked for the 1835 date only. ↩
Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (John Murray, 1871). ↩
Encyclopædia Britannica, 'Sir Edward Burnett Tylor'. Checked for the 1871 date only. ↩
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (Macmillan, 1890). ↩
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 1 (Project Gutenberg eBook 41082), preface. The preface is signed 8 March 1890. ↩
Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 1921). ↩
HathiTrust catalogue record, Margaret Alice Murray, The witch-cult in western Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921). Checked for the publisher and date only. ↩
Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (14 & 15 Geo. 6, c. 33), section 2, on legislation.gov.uk, section 2. ↩
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999). ↩
Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Rider, 1954). ↩
'Witchcraft Today', Wikipedia. Checked for the publisher and the November 1954 publication only. ↩
Hutton 1999. ↩
Frederic Lamond, Fifty Years of Wicca (Green Magic, 2004), 16–17. As cited in standard summaries; I have not seen the book itself. ↩
Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, ‘Ross Nichols – The Founder’. ↩
'Wheel of the Year', Wikipedia. ↩
‘Ásatrúarfélagið’, Wikipedia. ↩
World Religions and Spirituality Project, 'Asatru Timeline'. ↩
Religion News Service, article on the name ‘Mabon’ (religionnews.com/?p=3993833; title and date not recorded here). Kelly’s own account, reported by Religion News Service. ↩
'Drawing Down the Moon (book)', Wikipedia. ↩
World Religions and Spirituality Project, 'Reclaiming Witchcraft Timeline'. Starhawk’s book is dated late October 1979 here; I have not seen either book. ↩
‘Kemetic Orthodoxy’, Wikipedia. ↩
Kaarina Aitamurto, 'More Russian than Orthodox Christianity: Russian Paganism as Nationalist Politics', e-International Relations (2015). ↩
Religions (MDPI) 14(6), article 754 (2023), an academic article on the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes. ↩
The Wild Hunt, ‘Greek Paganism legally recognized as “known religion” in Greece’, April 2017. ↩
Hutton 1999. ↩
Charity Commission for England and Wales, decision on the Druid Network, 21 September 2010. ↩

Ancient sources cited

Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Rider, 1954)
The founding public statement of Wicca. Its claims about an ancient survival are not supported by historians.
Charity Commission for England and Wales, decision on the Druid Network, 21 September 2010 — read online
The official decision page. It finds that Druidry is a religion in charity law.
Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (14 & 15 Geo. 6, c. 33), section 2, on legislation.gov.uk — read the Act
The statute itself. Royal assent is dated 22 June 1951, and section 2 repeals the Witchcraft Act 1735 so far as it was still in force. The Act did not extend to Northern Ireland.
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 1 (Project Gutenberg eBook 41082), preface — read the book
The preface is signed at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 8 March 1890. The Gutenberg title page is of a later New York printing (1894), so the signed preface is the evidence for 1890.

Modern works cited

James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (Macmillan, 1890)
Hugely influential, and now read as a product of its time. Its theories of fire festivals and dying gods are not accepted as history.
Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 1921)
Her thesis of a surviving pagan witch religion is rejected by historians, but it shaped early Wicca.
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)
The standard history of Wicca. I have used summaries of it and not checked page numbers.
Frederic Lamond, Fifty Years of Wicca (Green Magic, 2004)
A memoir by a member of the Bricket Wood coven. I know it only as cited by others.
'Wheel of the Year', Wikipedia — read online
A tertiary source, used here only for dates and for who coined which name. Check anything important against the books above.
'Our own pageantry and peacockry': the Gorsedd of the Bards, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) blog — read online
Dates the first Gorsedd to midsummer day, 21 June 1792, on Primrose Hill in London, and describes the Gorsedd as the invention of Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg). A museum blog, not a scholarly history.
Kaarina Aitamurto, 'More Russian than Orthodox Christianity: Russian Paganism as Nationalist Politics', e-International Relations (2015) — read online
An excerpt from a scholar of Eastern European Paganism. It says small Pagan movements surfaced after communism collapsed and gained momentum in ex-socialist countries in the early 1990s, and that most of them were nationalist in politics.
Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Yale University Press, 2009)
Covers the invention of the modern Druid tradition, including the forgeries of Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg). Page numbers are not given here.
Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (John Murray, 1871)
Where ‘animism’ became an anthropological term. Its theory of religious evolution is now rejected.
Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen, 1835), English trans. J. S. Stallybrass as Teutonic Mythology (1882)
The source of the name Ostara for a Germanic goddess, reasoned from Bede's Eostre. Not accepted as proof of such a goddess.
The Wild Hunt, ‘Greek Paganism legally recognized as “known religion” in Greece’, April 2017 — read online
A news report that quotes the Secretary General of YSEE. Read for this update in a search excerpt, not in full.
Religions (MDPI) 14(6), article 754 (2023), an academic article on the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes — read online
Peer-reviewed. The author is not recorded here. Read for this update in a search excerpt, not in full.
Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, ‘Ross Nichols – The Founder’ — read online
The order's own account of its founder, so not an independent source.
‘Ásatrúarfélagið’, Wikipedia — read online
An encyclopedia entry, used only to confirm dates. It agrees with other reports of 1972 and 1973.
‘Kemetic Orthodoxy’, Wikipedia — read online
An encyclopedia entry, used only to confirm the founding date and founder.
Religion News Service, article on the name ‘Mabon’ (religionnews.com/?p=3993833; title and date not recorded here) — read online
Reports Aidan Kelly's own account that he named Litha, Ostara and Mabon in 1974. Read for this update in a search excerpt.
'Witchcraft Today', Wikipedia — read online
An encyclopedia entry, used only for the publisher and date: Rider and Company, first published in hardback in November 1954. Only a search extract of the page was read.
'Drawing Down the Moon (book)', Wikipedia — read online
An encyclopedia entry, used only for the dates: Adler's book first published by Viking in 1979, and Starhawk's The Spiral Dance also dated 1979. Only a search extract of the page was read.
World Religions and Spirituality Project, 'Reclaiming Witchcraft Timeline' — read online
A university-hosted reference project. It gives late October 1979 for the release of The Spiral Dance, with the first Spiral Dance ritual on 31 October 1979. Only a search extract was read.
World Religions and Spirituality Project, 'Asatru Timeline' — read online
A university-hosted reference project. It gives 1972–1973 for the founding and recognition of Ásatrúarfélagið, and describes the group forming from the late 1960s. Only a search extract was read.
'Witch-cult hypothesis', Wikipedia — read online
An encyclopedia entry, used only for dates: Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie first published in 1835, and Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe in 1921. Only a search extract was read.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 'Sir Edward Burnett Tylor' — read online
A reference article, used for the 1871 date of Primitive Culture and for Tylor's definition of animism. Only a search extract was read.
HathiTrust catalogue record, Margaret Alice Murray, The witch-cult in western Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921) — see the record
A library catalogue record giving Clarendon Press, 1921.

Cite this page. The Garden, ‘The pagan revival: a timeline’, https://camelmaps.org/garden/timeline-pagan-revival.php, last updated 11 November 2026, last checked 11 November 2026. What has changed.

The pagan revival

The timeline #

Ideas that came first

Wicca and the Wheel of the Year

Spreading and settling

What the timeline leaves out #

Notes

Ancient sources cited

Modern works cited

More on Paganism #

Where to begin

Ethics and cautions

Where the Wheel of the Year came from

Wheel of the Year calendar

Maps: sacred places of Britain and Ireland

Maps: festival customs of Britain and Ireland

Glossary