From Oath-Bound Coven Text to Bestselling Books

Wicca's relationship to its own liturgical secrecy has shifted considerably since Gardner's time, and numerous authors have since published widely available books presenting Wiccan ritual structure and sample invocations, including material sometimes closely resembling or directly excerpting historically oath-bound Book of Shadows content, a publication history that has generated ongoing internal debate among Wiccan practitioners about the proper boundary between public teaching, appropriate for newcomers and general readers, and initiatory material still understood by many traditional lineages as belonging specifically to sworn initiates. Because published Wiccan liturgical material varies enormously in its accuracy, its specific tradition of origin, and whether its use by the original publishing author was itself considered appropriate by the tradition it drew from, and because Wicca's copyright and intellectual property status for such material has been the subject of actual legal dispute in some cases, this entry limits itself to describing Wicca's general approach to prayer and invocation rather than presenting or endorsing any specific published or traditional text as authoritative or representative of Wiccan practice as a whole.