Etymology of Wicca Stewart Farrar, describes "Wicca" as "the witches' name for their Craft" in his book "What Witches Do" (1971). The widespread adoption of "Wicca" in reference to Pagan Witchcraft would have brought benefits to its practitioners, who were widely maligned and faced persecution for their practice of "witchcraft"; an emotive term often associated with Satanism that had negative connotations in the Western imagination. Doyle White argued that the practitioners' presentation of themselves as Wiccans rather than witches removed some of the social stigma that they faced. From 1970 onward, increasing numbers of books teaching readers how to become Pagan Witches were
History of Wicca this was a form of "minority empowerment". For a long time, Wicca was seen as being simply a minor sect, or cult. However, with the rise of solitary practitioners describing themselves as Wiccans, the faith went from becoming simply a mystery cult to becoming a public religion. Groups were formed to represent the Wiccan community, such as the Covenant of the Goddess, which was founded in 1975. Wiccans began to appear on various British television documentaries, including "The Heaven & Earth Show" and "Desperately Seeking Something". In the USA, the court case of Dettmer v. Landon in 1986 established that