Toward Ecosophy

That's a complex story. Until the 1970s Wicca was a small and fairly quiet initiatory tradition that required a great deal of work from prospective members. What happened in the 1970s is that a number of people figured out how to create a Wicca Lite that involved a lot less hard work and would be much more appealing to the pop culture of the time. That launched the modern Neopagan movement on its way. Like every form of pop-culture occultism -- Theosophy and Spiritualism are two good examples -- it attracted a lot of people, ballooned in size and influence, got watered down even further, and finally got supplanted by other fads. Now it's on its way back down to small subcultures; it's not quite there yet but the writing's on the wall. If things follow the usual pattern, we'll go through thirty or forty years in which political fads are more popular than spiritual fads before the next pop-culture occultism gets going.