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 to modern times.

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, an open-source software project to make the founding texts of Wicca availableunder a Creative Commons licence. In 2008 and 2009 he exhibited on the subject of witchcraft in France. He is a council member of the Society for Psychical Research

In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2022 a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is the editor of the Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research.