Leo Ruickbie

Leo Ruickbie is a British historian and sociologist of religion, specializing in paranormal beliefs, magic, witchcraft and Wicca. He is the author of several books, beginning with Witchcraft Out of the Shadows, a 2004 publication outlining the history of witchcraft from ancient Greece until the modern day. 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 an awarded a PhD for his thesis entitled The Re-Enchanters: Theorising Re-Enchantment and Testing for its Presence in Modern Witchcraft. 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. In 2008 and 2009 he exhibited on the subject of witchcraft in France. He is also a council member of the Society for Psychical Research, a professional member of the Parapsychological Association, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, is on the committee of the Gesellschaft für Anomalistik and is an elected member of the Royal Historical Society. He is the current editor of the Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research.