Do you believe Wicca was originally an attempt at Reconstruction of a Celtic religion?
Gardner was attempting to revive what he believed was an ancient English Religion, not a Celtic one. This ancient religion was something he believed had existed because of people like Margaret Murray’s disreputable research, which would never fly in the days of the internet. Her “sources” included things like the confessions of Christians under torture for Witchcraft and lumping together artifacts of (then) unknown origin and saying unknown culture=a singular culture that was well hidden. Murray is fairly dismissive of Celtic cultures, and Gardner is fairly dismissive of non-Brythonic Celtic culture, although his grudging respect for the Brythonic Celts is based on a view that everything good about them came from something outside their culture. It’s Nichol’s influence that adds Celtic flavor after Gardner’s already established the liturgy, but it’s an English Victorian view of Celtic culture, not anything based on linguistics, history or archaeology. I think the confusion largely stem
