History of Wicca the Gospel of the Witches" by Charles Godfrey Leland and the practices of ceremonial magic. The original material in the rituals brought to light by Gardner is not cohesive, and mostly takes the form of substitutions or expansions within unoriginal material. Roger Dearnaley, in "An Annotated Chronology and Bibliography of the Early Gardnerian Craft", describes it as a "patchwork". One element that is apparently distinctive is the use of ritual scourging and binding as a method of attaining an ecstatic trance for magical working. Hutton argues strongly that this practice in Wicca does not reflect sado-masochistic sexuality (he refers in
Wicca and LGBT people conventional practice appears to be exclusively heterosexual. When performed 'in token' this involves the athame (representing the masculine principle) descending into the chalice (representing the feminine). However, there is no evidence to suggest that a gay priest or lesbian priestess could not carry out this ritual for the sake of what it represents. According to Ann-Marie Gallagher, a professor of women's studies and long-time author of many books related to Wicca, "there is a moralistic doctrine or dogma other than the advice offered in the Wiccan Rede... The only 'law' here is love... It matters that we are gay, straight,