 In the 1960s , the Gardnerian initiate Alex Sanders founded his own tradition , which became known as Alexandrian Wicca ; he used the terms Wicca and the Wicca in reference to the entire Pagan Witchcraft religion . One of Sanders ' initiates , Stewart Farrar , describes Wicca as " the witches ' name for their Craft " in his book What Witches Do ( 1971 ) . The widespread adoption of Wicca in reference to Pagan Witchcraft would have brought benefits to its practitioners , who were widely maligned and faced persecution for their practice of witchcraft ; an emotive term often associated with <unk> that had negative connotations in the Western imagination . Doyle White argued that the practitioners ' presentation of themselves as <unk> rather than witches removed some of the social stigma that they faced . 
