Be credible

This is typical of a witch's bookshelf: the books are a rather eclectic mixture just as witchcraft is a rather eclectic mixture

There is a problem in the history of witchcraft which I want to address today, namely the ridiculous fable that witchcraft is an ancient Pagan religion, and that anyone can claim to have had initiation passed down from ancient times.
You will notice one thing about the stories told by those who claim to come from an ancient tradition: the stories are never backed up by any evidence other than their own word, and usually the word of a number of people who are dead, otherwise unavailable, and who wouldn't tell you about it anyway because it's oathbound.
This level of historical evidence is very low indeed. To use another example: we know that the second world war happened because of the vast quantities of evidence, documentary, artefactual, etc, that exists. At the time of writing there are people alive who remember it. Because the ancient lineage of modern witchcraft does not have this sort of evidence it will always be very doubtful.
In fact before Gerald Gardner the only evidence for a religion which incorporated the witch figure is Leland's Aradia. That in itself is suspect as historical evidence: it is the only evidence of its kind, and was obtained in the suspicious circumstances that Leland, who may or may not have been sleeping with Maddalena, told her what he thought was happening and then she produced the exact evidence to back it up. It has the feel of authenticity because of its incorporation of Italian folklore.
I think the real history is this: from the 18th century onwards there were a number of movements towards ancient deities and back to nature. Parallel to this there grew up the theory (which nobody believed before the 1820s and which is now completely discredited by respectable historians of the witch trial period) that what was being persecuted was an ancient religion. The inner group of the Rosicrucian theatre to which Gerald Gardner belonged may or may not have believed that what they were doing was an ancient tradition, but their mixture of co-masonry, ritual magic and rosicrucianism (none of which could date from before the nineteenth century) attracted the witch label. They may even have believed Murray's hypothesis literally and been sincere in thinking that they had inherited an ancient tradition indirectly. Gardner got initiated into this, publicised it, and the rest is history.
So it's necessary to be a bit canny about claims for initiations. Ask to see evidence. Seriously. For the ancient religion hypothesis to be true, a whole religion has to have vanished leaving only one piece of evidence (I discount Murray because what she is talking about is plainly different from modern Wicca; I discount the witch trials for the same reason and because the evidence was obtained in circumstances that amounted to torture). This is just not credible. Treat suspiciously someone who claims to have secret knowledge, unprovable lineages, and so on. This is not lacking in trust. The Goddess gives us brains and it is a slap in her face not to use them to recognise charlatans, psychopaths, sexual predators, Walter Mittys and the just plain mistaken sincere, for what they are.
As for creating an artificial history: we as magical people are in a much stronger position to change the future. That is what we should be visualising and making how we want it to be. Better for all.