A lot of people use the phrase "traditional witchcraft" to refer to forms of witchcraft that are practiced as formalized systems regardless of how old they are or whether any of the ideas in the system are brand new or of pre-Christian origin. I tend to think it would be better to call it either "sectarian witchcraft" or "denominational witchcraft" rather than "traditional."

And while there have been many people claiming to practice pre-Gardnerian forms of denominational or sectarian witchcraft, the historical evidence so far is pretty overwhelming that Gerald Gardner's Wicca was the first of these. Raven Grimassi is one of the most prolific authors attempting to uncover and prove the existence of pre-Gardnerian sectarian witchcraft, but his evidence is currently still considered highly controversial. (I highly respect and admire Raven, but I have to be honest in admitting his work proving pre-Gardnerian sectarian witchcraft has not been vindicated... yet!)  Please note too that this does not mean there were no witches prior to Gardner -- just that there doesn't seem to be much evidence of any groups that practiced an organized form of witchcraft as the basis for a religion.

So in evaluating any source of info on witchcraft, regardless whether it claims to be "traditional" or not, we need to look at the claims critically and decide what is fact, what is opinion, and which opinions are supported by the evidence (or are at least more likely to be true based on what we know and what the evidence suggests.) It's certainly romantic thinking that we might be carrying on an intact ancient lineage of magickal spirituality, but we need to be honest too and realize that deceiving ourselves about the facts is not necessarily going to encourage us to grow in positive ways.