Toward Ecosophy

Careful study of Gardner's oldest surviving handwritten book of texts of "The Wica" (as he called the Witches he encountered) shows that parts--including the three degree rituals--of it were carefully copied by him from a somewhat earlier manuscript in another person's (Dafo's) calligraphic handwriting. This manuscript has the title "Ye Bok of ye Art Magical," and Gardenr seems to have begun his work on it sometime in the middle 1940s. "Inanna's Descent" was available in modern translations (in fragments) from Assyrian and Sumerian from 1914 onward, so Gardner's text could easily have been inspired by the ancient text.