Sun-Day

Gerald Gardner's Wicca, which originated in Britain, was brought to the United States in the 1960s. An American Pagan spiritual movement emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s that diverged from Gardner's magical practices. This movement was shaped by Second Wave feminism and environmental issues, which had a profound impact on Wicca.This study focuses on a nineteenth-century American literary work entitled The Veteran's Bride and Other Poems: Stories of the Late War, written by Alta Isadore Gould. A close reading of Gould's poetry uncovers latent pagan patterns that are similar to the pagan motifs that surfaced in America in the late twentieth century, suggesting an earlier dormant Goddess Spirituality unrelated to Gardner's Wicca.