LEO RUICKBIE

Dr Leo Ruickbie is an historian and sociologist of magic, witchcraft and Wicca.

Ruickbie is the author of Witchcraft Out of the Shadows: A Complete History, a 2004 publication outlining the history of witchcraft from ancient Greece until the modern day. On Samhain 2007 he launched Open Source Wicca, a project inspired by the Open Source software movement aimed at making the founding texts of Wicca more readily available by releasing them under a Creative Commons licence. His latest book is Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician (The History Press, 2009) about the real person behind the many legends of Faust/Faustus.

Ruickbie was born in Scotland and took a Master's degree in Sociology and Religion at the University of Lancaster. He then studied at King's College London and was awarded a PhD for his thesis entitled The Re-Enchanters: Theorising Re-Enchantment and Testing for its Presence in Modern Witchcraft.

In 2008 and 2009 he exhibited on the subject of witchcraft in France.

He also runs WICA, the Witchcraft Information Centre and Archive, an educational website. WICA was founded on 9 September 1999 (09/09/09) and has been online continuously since 2000.