Etymology of Wicca Weekly Scotsman", in response to the popularisation of Margaret Murray's witch-cult hypothesis in Scotland, that "the Saxon word 'wicca', a witch" was "of immemorial usage" in the Scottish Lowlands. Doyle White suggests that the early Wiccans adopted the term "wicca" as the basis for the name of their burgeoning faith because theirs was a new religious movement that took "iconography and inspiration" from the polytheistic cults of pre-Christian Britain. Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), the man largely responsible for propagating the Wiccan religion in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s and the founder of the Gardnerian tradition, never used the term "Wicca"
Wicca have referred to it as a "magico-religion". Wicca is also a form of Western esotericism, and more specifically a part of the esoteric current known as occultism. Although recognised as a religion by academics, some evangelical Christians have attempted to deny it legal recognition as such, while some Wiccan practitioners themselves eschew the term "religion" – associating the latter purely with organised religion – instead favouring "spirituality" or "way of life". Although Wicca as a religion is distinct from other forms of contemporary Paganism, there has been much "cross-fertilization" between these different Pagan faiths; accordingly, Wicca has both influenced and