Editing Wiccan Rede (section)

===The Long Rede===
A complete twenty-six line poem entitled "The Wiccan Rede" was published in the Spring 1974 issue of <ref name="Mankey_blog">{{cite web |last1=Mankey |first1=Jason |title=The Rede of the Wicca |url=https://www.patheos.com/blogs/panmankey/2013/10/redeofthewicca/ |website=Raise the Horns |date=3 October 2013 |publisher=Patheos |access-date=13 June 2023 |ref=OCTOBER 3, 2013}}</ref> neopagan magazine ''Earth Religion News''. Each line contained a rhymed couplet laid out as a single line, the last line being the familiar "short rede" couplet beginning "Eight words...".

This poem was shortly followed by another, slightly different, version, entitled the "Rede of the Wiccae", which was published in ''[[Green Egg]]'' magazine by [[Lady Gwen Thompson]]. She ascribed it to her grandmother Adriana Porter, and claimed that the earlier published text was distorted from "its original form". The poem has since been very widely circulated and has appeared in other versions and layouts, with additional or variant passages. It is commonly known as the "Long Rede".

Although Thompson wrote that this version of the Rede was in its original form, this declaration is disputed for several reasons, but primarily as the language of the poem refers to Wiccan concepts that are not known to have existed in her grandmother's lifetime. It is sometime ascribed to Thompson herself. Mathiesen and Theitic concluded that 18 to 20 of the verses are lore which would be common to the area of rural 17th to 19th century New England and compiled by the hand of someone who would have been born no later that the late 19th century, and that at least six of the verses which are deemed "The Wiccan Verses" were compiled and added by a second and later hand. Since Thompson was dispensing these 26 as a whole from around 1969 it is a reasonable assumption that hers was that second hand. Another claim is that it is adapted from a speech given by [[Doreen Valiente]] at a dinner sponsored by the Witchcraft Research Association and mentioned in volume one (1964) of the Pentagram, a United Kingdom pagan newsletter then being published. Valiente did publish a poem ''The Witches Creed'' in her 1978 book, "Witchcraft for Tomorrow", which contains some similar concepts.<ref>Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow, 1978, pages 41, 72-74 (also as noted at The Wiccan Rede: A Historical Journey)</ref>