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
Chthonioi Alexandrian Wicca traditional Alexandrian Wicca worship of the Gods and Goddesses of Britain, and changes in rituals to suit this change in mythology. As in Traditional Wicca, the standard initiation practice is cross-sex initiation (female to male; male to female) but Chthonioi Alexandrian Wicca also accepts as valid same-sex initiations. As quoted from their statement of identity: "Some branches of the Chthonioi-Alexandrian have incorporated Same-Sex Initiations (SSI) as a way of acknowledging the importance and validity of inner contacts and true connection to the divine regardless of physical sex. Although not universally practiced by all within our Tradition, we nonetheless acknowledge SSIs