2668519 Marguerite Rigoglioso Stregoneria

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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,

1

For this inquiry I set out to investigate the following questions: What is Italian witchcraft?

Has it

ever been a bona fide religious system, or merely an incoherent amalgam of magico-

religious

practices handed down from an earlier era? What are its origins and how has it manifested

throughout history? Was it, in fact, a demonic art? Is it practiced today? If so, in what

form? Has

Italian witchcraft been carried by Italian immigrants to the shores of America? If so, how

does

American stregoneria compare with Italian stregoneria?

The methodologies I have used in conducting this research include historical and

hermeneutical analysis, as well as narrative interviews. For the latter, I spoke with an

expert on

Sicilian folk magic as well as four Americans of Italian descent who call themselves

streghe

(witches) and, as such, claim to be practicing the old pre-Christian religion of Italy that

has been

passed down to them through their family lines. I also spoke with a contemporary

American

clairvoyant who is not of the strega tradition but has provided some general insights on

the

phenomenon. For historical and ethnographical background, I have turned mainly to thework of

scholars such as Carlo Ginzberg, Charles G. Leland, Frederick Elworthy, Gustav

Henningsen, Peter

Kingsley, and Elsa Guggino. The writings of two contemporary Italian-American

witches, Raven


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Grimassi and Leo Martello, have provided information on modern-day Italian witchcraft.

I should note here that the word for witchcraft in the modern Italian language is

stregoneria. However, various writers, including Charles Leland and Raven Grimassi,

refer to it

as stregheria (or even the misspelled stregeria,), claming that this is the term

historically used

by its practitioners. As at this point in my research I have not yet confirmed whether

witches in

Italy have in fact ever called their craft stregheria, I will use the term stregoneria. In

addition,

ethnologist Elsa Guggino maintains that in Sicily the word strega is used disparaginglyto

describe someone who practices malevolent magic; other words such as maga are used

instead

to denote practitioners of the healing and magical arts.

1

Nevertheless, for simplicitys sake I tend

use the word strega (and its plural, streghe) throughout this paper to mean witch in

all

1

Personal interview with Elsa Guggino, April 6, 2000.

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2

senses of the word. Also for simplicitys sake, I use the feminine form of the word in

Italian for

both men and women.


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Historical and Ethnographical Evidence for the Existence of Italian Witchcraft

In Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath, Carlo Ginzberg examines testimonies in

the

European witch trials from the 14th through 17th centuries and teases out a deepsubstratum of

popular beliefs and practices that amount to a hidden shamanic culture operating in Italy

during that

period. Arguing that diabolism was a projection on the part of Catholic inquisitors,

Ginzberg

determines from trial records that an ecstatic cult existed at the time, one centered on the

veneration

of a female deity or female spirits variously named Diana, Herodiana, Herodias, Abundia,

Richella,

Madonna Oriente, la Matrona, the Good Mistress, the Teacher, the Greek Mistress,

the

Wise Sibilla, the Queen of the Fairies, and so forth. She is a deity at times

surrounded by

animals, intent on teaching her followers the virtues of the earth.

2

Testimonies indicate that

men and women, but above all, women, would ritually meet with her in shamanic trance,

usually at

night. One group, the benandanti of the Friuli, fought during such episodes against

malevolent

witches who threatened the fertility of the fields. Sometimes shapeshifting into animals

or

insects, other times riding on animals backs, they would end their journey by joining an

otherworldly procession of the dead.

3


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Various references to toads and ointments in the trial

records, suggests Ginzburg, indicate that practitioners may have induced such trances by

ingesting

or topically applying hallucinogenic substances derived from toads skin or psychoactive

mushrooms.

We now move to the late 1800s. Self-styled folklorist Charles Leland, in poking around

the

Romagna region of Tuscany (between Forli and Ravenna), stumbled upon what people

there called

la Vecchia Religione, the Old Religion. This tradition, he claimed, is really not a mere

chance

survival of superstitions here and there. . .but a complete system.

4

Its practitioners venerated the

2

Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies:Deciphering the Witches Sabbath (New York: Random

House, 1991), p. 131.

3

Ibid., p. 155.

4

Charles G. Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains (Blaine, WA: Phoenix Publishing, Inc., No

date given), p. 9.

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3

goddess Diana and her daughter, Aradia (Herodias) the female Messiah.


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5

In several remarkable

volumes, most notably Etruscan Roman Remains and Aradia: Gospel of the Witches,

Leland

compiled as much as he could of the mythology, folklore, and spells still being utilized by

the

streghe in the last decades of the nineteenth century. In his works, he traces the origins of

stregoneria back to the Etruscan period, showing how the spirit entities still being

addressed by the

latter-day streghe preserved names and attributes of the old Etruscan gods, such as Tinia,

or Jupiter,

Faflon, or Bacchus, and Teramo (in Etruscan Turms) or Mercury. Lelands books are a

remarkable

compendium of lore, ceremonies, and incantations to effect cures, attract love, remove

evil

influences, bring certain things to pass, evoke spirits, insure good crops or a travelers

safe return,

divine events, cast harm upon enemies, and so forth. The practices, he notes, remained inthe hands

of mystic families, in which the occult art is preserved from generation to generation,

under

jealous fear of priests, cultured people, and all powers that be.

6

A tradition that was

predominantly the province of women, the rites and secrets were passed on in families to

younger

female members by female elders.

A century later, we find Italian American Leo Louis Martello in his 1991 book

Witchcraft:


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The Old Religion, confirming the notion that the Old Religion has been passed all the

way down

through family lines to the present day. He writes, The strege [sic] (Witches) in our

family go

back for centuries. My grandmother used to read the old Tarochi deck of cards, from

which we get

the modern Tarot. She was the village strega and both envied and hated by priests.

7

In 1951,

when Martello himself was 18, his extended Sicilian family in New York initiated him

into the

tradition as well. Italian stregoneria -- and Sicilian stregoneria in particular -- Martello

says, has

survived throughout the centuries by becoming an underground phenomenon during and

after the

Inquistion. That his relatives observed him from afar for years before initiating him to

make sure

that he would do justice to the tradition and could be trusted to maintain craft secrets, henotes, is

5

Charles G. Leland,Aradia: Or the Gospel of the Witches (New York: Samuel Weiser,

Inc., 1974), p. viii.

6

Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains, p. 4.

7

Leo Louis Martello, Witchcraft: The Old Religion (New York: Citadel Press, 1991), p. 33.

Page 5


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4

characteristic of strega families.

8

It is because of the secrecy enshrouding the tradition, he

maintains, that stregoneria is not more widely known than it is today.

Enter Raven Grimassi. An Italian American who also claims to come from a strega

family,

Grimassi has taken Italian stregoneria out of the broom closet, making certain aspects of

it available

to the wider public. In his several volumes, including the 1995 Ways of the Strega. Italian

Witchcraft: Its Lore, Magick and Spells, Grimassi presents what he calls the Aridian

Tradition,

originally established in North America as a branch of Tanarra [the form of stregoneria he

says was

traditionally practiced in central Italy].

9

The remarkably systematized religion he presents, a

purported blending of several northern and central Italian stregoneria practices, is, he

notes, an

attempt to restore the original Tradition.

10

As such, the stregoneria he describes has a coherent

cosmology, mythology, and set of specific practices. While some hereditary streghe

complain that

aspects of Grimassis stregoneria are inauthentic, borrow too heavily from Lelands

work,


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ignore the many regional varieties of stregoneria, and wrongly incorporate aspects of

American

New Age philosophy, many agree that at least some of the folklore and rituals he offers

are indeed

grounded in strega traditions.

11

A growing number of Americans interested in paganism are

turning to stregoneria la Grimissi to guide them in their work in covens or as individual

practitioners. Grimassi himself heads a coven in California.

And what of Italy today? Has the strega tradition survived in that country and are there

those who claim to still be practicing la Vecchia Religione? My preliminary research

indicates yes.

Fabrisia (who prefers that her last name not be used), a hereditary Italian-American strega

who now

lives in Tennessee, says that several male witches from the Bologna area have

corresponded with

her via the Internet since discovering her Web site on Italian witchcraft(www.Fabrisia.com).

8

Martello, What It Means to Be a Witch, Occult, January1974, p. 4, and private

interview with Martello, April

14, 2000.

9

Raven Grimassi, Ways of the Strega. Italian Witchcraft: Its Lore, Magick and Spells (Saint

Paul: Llewellyn

Publications, 1995), p. xviii.

10

Ibid., p. xviii.


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11

Information relayed during interviews with my informants, April 2000.

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5

They are hereditary witches and tell me that what they practice has been passed down to

them

through their families and hasnt changed since the 1500s, she says.

12

Farther south, in Sicily, we find that popular magic is still widely used. A very large

number of people from all classes believe in magic in Sicily, ethnologist Elsa Guggino

says.

13

However, as mentioned earlier, she notes that practitioners of magic there are generally

not called

streghe because that term is understood to signify the diabolical witch image that is

now

widely considered to have been creation of the Catholic church. Rather, they are known

by a

plethora of names, including maga, mago (the masculine version), magara, maara, and

so forth.

The maghi that Guggino has observed are generally hired by others to perform a variety

of rituals

that will assist in the physical and psychic healing or protecting of the clients themselves

or their

loved ones. The use of the malocchio, or evil eye, a spell intended to cause harm to

another


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person (as well as spells to counteract it), is also widespread and commonly conducted by

maghi at

their clients request. As her work abundantly demonstrates, contemporary Sicilian magic

is highly

syncretic, with many elements of Catholicism (prayers, names of saints) entering into the

spells and

rituals (something that was hardly present in the stregoneria of northern Italy during

Lelands

time). While the maghi that Guggino describes are not of the New Age variety (the

latter exist

but do not fall under the scope of her research), they have not stated to Guggino that they

are

practicing the Vecchia Religione, either. Interestingly, Guggino has not found evidence

for the

latter. Given that Leo Martello and other streghe of Siclian origin provide compelling

anecdotal

evidence that the Old Religion was still operating in Sicily at least as recently as 35 years

ago,

however, it may well be that Guggino has not been privy to the phenomenon because the

strega

families have maintained their iron curtain of secrecy. Clearly this remains an interesting

avenue for

further research.

The Roots of Stregoneria

12

Interview with Fabrisia, April 2000.

13

Interview with Elsa Gugguno, April 14, 2000.


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6

Having briefly established the existence of stregoneria as a form of pre-Christian religion

that has

survived into the present day in both Italy and the United States, I would like to explore in

a more

indepth fashion the various connections between stregoneria and its antecedents in the

Mediterranean, West Asia, and Africa.

Perhaps the most dramatic document providing clues in this regard is the so-calledGospel

of the Witches, which Leland claims to have obtained from a Romagnolo strega he

referred to as

Maddalena. He says of this document, I do not know definitely whether my informant

derived

part of these traditions from written sources or oral narration, but I believe it was chiefly

the

latter.

14

While its authenticity is disputed by some scholars, many contemporary hereditary

streghe embrace it, asserting that it contains lore and rituals that they were taught by their

families.

The Gospel (in English translation) begins like this:

Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the moon, the god of

light

(Splendor), who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from

Paradise.


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Diana had by her brother a daughter, to whom they gave the name of Aradia (i.e.

Herodias).

In those days . . .the rich made slaves of all the poor.

Diana said one day to her daughter Aradia. . . .

Tis true indeed that thou a spirit art,

But thou wert born but to become again

A mortal; thou must go to earth below

To be a teacher unto women and men

Who fain would study witchcraft in thy school. . . .

And thou shalt be the first of witches known. . . .

And when the priests or the nobility

Shall say to you that you should put your faith

In the Father, Son, and Mary, then reply:

Your God, the Father, and Maria are

Three devils. . .

For the true God the Father is not yours;

For I have come to sweep away the bad,

The men of evil, all will I destroy!. . . .

Now when Aradia had been taught, taught to work all witchcraft, how to destroy the evil

race

(of oppressors), she (imparted to her pupils) and said unto them:

When I shall have departed from this world,

Whenever ye have need of anything,

Once in the month, and when the moon is full,

14


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Leland,Aradia, pp. vii-viii.

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7

Ye shall assemble in some desert place,

Or in a forest all together join

To adore the potent spirit of your queen,

My mother, great Diana. . .

15

Votaries are thereafter enjoined to bake cakes of meal, wine, salt and honey in the shape

of a

crescent moon, to meet together and eat while naked, and to make love. Vervain and rue

are

mentioned as plants sacred to Diana.

Aradia, says Leland, is Herodias, who was regarded very early on in stregoneria folkloreas

being associated with Diana as chief of the witches. And, in fact, the carefully researched

scholarly

work of Ginzburg, mentioned earlier, confirms both the association between these two

figures as

well as their connection with Italian witchcraft, at least as far back as the 14th century.

Leland

further notes that Herodias is a name that comes from West Asia, where it denoted an

early form of

Lilith. Both figures, he says, had Isis as their precursor.

16


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The link between Diana and Isis is

further underscored by the fact that they shared many sacred attributes, including the

crescent moon

(also a symbol for horns) and the lotus.

17

Thus, from this chain of associations alone we can trace the origins of stregoneria to the

religion of ancient Egypt, which venerated Isis. Further links with Africa can be seen in

the fact that

the Roman statues of Diana of Ephesus are made of black marble, showing that they were

intended

to represent the queen of the witches in at least one of her aspects -- that of nurturing

mother --

as a black goddess.

18

As Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum has demonstrated in her forthcoming book,

Dark Mother, images of the black goddess reveal a deeply buried racial memory of

humankinds

origins in Africa and of our first deity as having been a dark African Mother.

19

Isis worship most likely served as a precursor to stregoneria in Italy more directly from

the

1st century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., when it was deliberately brought back into many

countries

15

Ibid., pp. 1-6.

16

Ibid., p. 103.

17


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Frederick Elworthy, The Evil Eye: The Origins and Practices of Superstition (London:

Collier Books, 1958), p.

355.

18

Ibid., p. 191.

19

See Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum,Dark Mother: African Origins, Godmothers, and the

Uncruel Revolution,

forthcoming.

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8

in Western Europe under the Roman empire. One of the temples to Isis was founded

during that

period in the Italian city of Benevento, a place mentioned numerous times in the witch

trials and in

Lelands Aradia as a locale where streghe met.

20

Whether these meetings occurred in the

phenomenal world or in the trance realm is unclear. Regardless, the multiple references to

Benevento in the lore indicate that it was a particularly important center for stregoneria.

In

Benevento and all over Italy, the focus on healing that was an important part of the Isis

religion

21

was carried into stregoneria, whose practitioners used herbs and magic to treat people for


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innumerable ills.

Stregoneria also obviously derived from other, earlier mystery religions of the

Mediterranean. As mentioned previously, Leland traces stregoneria in the Romagna

region to the

magico-religious practices of the Etruscans, a non-Indo-European people whose existence

in Italy

has been dated to somewhere around 1000 B.C.E. Many of these practices, including

occult

remedies for disorders, were carried into the early Roman period. Authors such as Cicero,

Tacitus,

Livy, and Virgil explicitly state that their divination and religious practices were drawnfrom

Etruscan sources. In fact, Etruscan books of magic were popular in Roman times, and the

information contained therein was not just reserved for the elite but shared by the

common

people.

22

It is significant to note that one of the attributes of Diana, as with her Greek precursor,

Artemis, was as protector of women in childbirth.

23

Streghe, her priestesses, thus also had an

important role as midwives, dispensing herbs to help usher along the birth process and

ease the pain

of labor. The two main herbs cited as being sacred to Diana are rue and vervain. The

cima di

ruta or sprig of rue, in fact is a symbol that was and is still popularly worn as an amulet

by

streghe. It consists of three main branches (symbolizing the triple nature of the goddess).


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At the

tips of each branch (which bifurcate into a total of eight small branches) are symbols such

as the

crescent moon, the lotus, the hand, and the key (each one of which alone can serve as aprophylactic

20

Martello, Witchcraft, p. 85.

21

Birnbaum,Dark Mother, p. 19.

22


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9

against the evil eye

24

). While much is written about the many healing uses of rue and vervain and

their connection with Diana, none of the sources I have found mention this interesting

fact, which I

discovered independently by consulting Gatto Trocchis Magia e medicina popolare in

Italia: both

were used as abortive agents.

25

Indeed, sometimes midwives inserted the root of the rue plant

directly into the uterus to induce abortion.

26


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Clearly this piece of information has been so taboo

that it has escaped the detection even of great strega sleuths such as Leland himself. In

discovering

it, I had the insight: Is the sprig of rue a symbol of womens power to take away life? Ifso, the

wearing of it by streghe as a sign of loyalty to their craft and to Diana could thus have

been as a

defiant, subversive statement indeed about womens power (particularly during the time

of the

Inquisition) -- and one that I suspect remains largely buried in the collective unconscious,

even in

the minds of most streghe today. This is not surprising. It is the awful, death-wielding

aspect of

the Goddess - and ourselves - that we are still trying to come to terms with on the

collective level. It

is, perhaps, the darkest aspect of the Dark Mother. The sprig of rue may thus well be a

signifier for

the chthonic mysteries, pointing to stregoneria as a practice ultimately chthonic in nature,itself.

Further evidence for this notion can be found in the fact that the lore and iconography

surrounding Diana in the classical Roman era is also connected to that of the Greek

goddesses

Demeter (herself considered a form of Isis

27

), Persephone, and Hecate, whose chthonic-based

religion was widely practiced in southern Italy and Sicily.

28

Diana was closely associated with


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Hecate as queen of the witches, and in this aspect was considered a deity whose realms

were

nocturnal (hence her association with the moon) and underworldly.

29

We can also see echoes of

the mother-daughter/descent myth of Demeter and Persephone in the story of Diana and

her

daughter Aradia, who descends to earth to help humankind. Further, one of the Roman

names

of Diana was Diana Triformis, indicating that she was considered a triple goddess who

communed

23

Elworthy, p. 350.

24

Ibid., p. 355.

25

Gatto Trocchi,Magia e medicina popolare in Italia (Rome: Newton Compton, 1982), pp.86, 106.

26

Ibid., p. 106.

27


28

Peter Kingsley, inAncient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic andIn the Dark Places of

Wisdom, characterizes the

Demeter/Persephone religion in this way.


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10

with heaven, earth, and hell. As such, she had three distinct names: in heaven . . .the

Moon; upon

the earth Diana; in hell Prosperpine [the Latin name for Persephone].

30

She was also considered in

another threefold form as Hecate/Diana/Prosperpine.

31

The Sicilian Difference

In Sicily, we find a number of possible cross-influences that have led to the particular

flavor of

stregoneria practiced there. First of all, some scholars speculate that the Sikels (I believe

this is the

English translation of the Italian Siculi), a people who settled in Sicily at least as far

back as

1500 B.C.E.,

32

may have been Etruscan migrants who arrived by sea.

33

The likelihood that these

migrating Etruscans would have brought their beliefs with them suggests that Sicily may

well have

been sprinkled with the same seeds from which northern Italian stregoneria derived. The

Greek

inhabitants of Sicily, who began establishing settlements on the island in the 8th century


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B.C.E.,

adopted one of the pre-existing sacred spots of the Sikels, namely the city of Enna and its

environs

(including Lake Pergusa), for their own religious purposes.

34

It is here that they brought their

legend of Demeter and Persephone and built a great temple to their grain goddess (the

latter in 480

B.C.E.

35

). It has been suggested that the religion was easily adopted by the indigenous people

because it closely resembled Sikelian beliefs and practices in which the nether-world

held first

place.

36

(Just how closely the latter resembled Etruscan practices remains to be investigated).

Frederick Elworthy even notes, it is very pertinently asked whether the Latin [names for

these

Greek goddesses,] Ceres, Libera, and Dis were approximations in sound to the names of

the

original deities of the hill of Enna.

37

29


30

Elworthy, p. 348.

31


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Ibid., p. 349.

32

Alta Macadam,Blue Guide: Sicily (New York: WW Norton, 1993), p. 11.

33


34

Elworthy, p. 335.

35

Macadam, p. 182.

36

Elworthy, p. 335.

37

Ibid., p. 336.

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11

The question of ancient names becomes quite relevant to our discussion of Sicilian

stregoneria. For Leo Martello claims that the name of the original Sikelian goddess prior

to

Demeter and Persephone (who themselves became blurred and sometimes

indistinguishable

38

) has

been preserved but is known only to Sicilian streghe. Sicilian witch covens, he writes,

descended from [the Sikelian] tradition, still use the name of the ancient Sikelian


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goddess, one that

has never been revealed or published.

39

If Martellos assertion is accurate, we can see that while

Sicilian stregoneria retains Dianic elements, it appears to be a specific outgrowth of the

Sikelian/Greek mystery religion that centered on Demeter and Persephone (and their

Sikelian

precursor). Martello underscores this idea in a description of his Sicilian strega

grandmother:

My grandmother was openly a witch but secretly a high priestess of the Old Religion.

Once a month, at the time of the full moon, she joined with others in worship of the

mother

goddess near the foothills of volcanic Mount Etna and the once-sacred Lake Pergusa

where

Persephone was kidnapped. Enna was her hometown, but she moved away when she got

married. At age 16, she was initiated into the ancient rights of la vecchia religione. Her

family were direct descendents of the Sikels who founded Sicily.

40

Mount Etna is another spot that is associated in mythology with various goddesses,

including

Demeter. As I have noted elsewhere,

41

Lake Pergusa was considered to be a sacred locale by

Sicilys ancient inhabitants - most likely because its periodic reddening was seen as a

great cosmic

blood mystery, one that symbolized the menstruation of the goddess herself. Thus in

Martellos strega grandmother we have evidence for the direct continuation of the mystery


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religions

from ancient times until at least the early 20th century.

Other evidence regarding the continuation of the Demeter/Persephone religion by streghe

in

the modern era centers on lore regarding two statues of the Madonna and Child in Enna

in which

the baby is female. Martello, who was told by streghe relatives to peek under the

swaddling clothes

of one of the statues located in a small Ennese church during his visit to Sicily in 1964,

relates what

he says is the true story his family told him about it:

38

Peter Kingsley,Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1995), p. 352.

39

Martello, What it Means to Be a Witch, p. 3.

40

Ibid. Given that Mount Etna is several hours away from Lake Pergusa by car, we can only

assume that Martellos

grandmother participated in rituals at these various locales at different times in her life

(not on the same night, for

example).

Page 13


12

The sculptor who made the Madonna with a female Jesus belonged to la vecchia religione

.


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. .and in this way paid tribute to his Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. Shrewdly he

realized that no one would look too closely under the swaddling clothes to determine if

their Jesus was male or female. Even the thought would have been considered

sacrilegious. He counted on their taking for granted that the Madonnas child was a male

Jesus. Old Religionists knew better and had many a laugh over it.

42

Of interest here is the story that Bellezza Squillace recounts

43

regarding her initiation into

the strega tradition of her own family, whose members felt a strong identification with

Sicily

although they hailed from the southern part of the Italian mainland. She recalls being

three or four

years old and climbing into the manger of the life-sized nativity scene in front of her

church in Saint

Paul, Minnesota at Christmas time. I picked up the baby Jesus and said, I knew it! Its a

girl!

she says. My streghe grandparents just laughed and laughed and laughed. It was shortly

after

that, Squillace believes, that they began to teach her the old ways. While Squillace notes

that the

story of Demeter and Persephone was one of the myths her family passed down to her,

she says

she was unaware of the existence of the female Jesus in Sicily until I brought it to her

attention.

Peter Kingsley, an expert on Sicilian pre-Christian religions, describes the

Demeter/Persephone/Hecate religion as one that was in the hands of women.

44


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Clearly it

retained that quality as it evolved into stregoneria, a tradition that was and is female

dominated in

Sicily just as it has been further north in Italy. Being, as mentioned, chthonic in nature, itsfocus

was on the Underworld, a shamanic realm of mystery and terror that was also a

paradoxical

place - one that had to do with both death and healing, darkness and light. Initiation into

this

religion, Kingsley notes, involved descent into a chamber,

45

a custom that has been continued

into contemporary times by Sicilian streghe. Martello tells the story of his own initiation:

[My Sicilian relatives] blindfolded me and took me by car, probably somewhere either on

Long Island or in New Jersey. We got out of the car and they lowered me down into

something. They told me I had to stay there until they came to get me. . . .Im down there

and I reach around and all of a sudden, what am I feeling: dirt!. . . .I was in an open

grave.

46

41

Marguerite Rigoglioso, The Rape of the Lake, Pandora, Spring 1999., pp. 30-33.

42


43

Interview with Bellezza Squillace, April 9, 2000.

44


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Kingsley,In the Dark Places of Wisdom (Inverness, CA: The Golden Sufi Center, 1999),

p. 97.

45

Kingley,Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic, p. 246.

46

Interview with Leo Martello, April 14, 2000.

Page 14


13

Sicilian-American strega Lori Bruno, 60, who now lives in Massachusetts, tells of a

similar

experience. When I was 18 and again when I was 51, I entered a cave in Canada, she

says.

During those nights I experienced visions and journeys in the darkness. That was my

initiation

into my familys tradition. It was a symbolic burial. And it was a going back to theMother.

47

It is interesting to note that the Sicilian-American streghe themselves whom I have met

seem to have

what could be considered a certain underworldy quality about them. By that I mean

they have a

no-nonsense intensity and an air of mystery and secretiveness about them, and theymaintain a

concern with combating negative spirit forces operating in their environment and in

society. The

fierceness of Sicilian streghe has also been noted by Martello and others. Unlike most

other


28/53

Witchcraft traditions, he writes,

the Sicilian and some Italian branches do not hesitate to threaten the deities. . . .This

Sicilian quality is not one of disrespect of blasphemy. It is one of positive self-assertion, a

recognition of our own inner divinity, and a sense of personal power in our own lives that

neither man nor God nor Goddess can undermine.

48

Perhaps even more compelling in this regard is Bellezza Squillaces out and out assertion

that her streghe relatives prepared her to become a death priestess.

49

I was taught to

understand the cemetery and the death rites, to be able to face the fear of death so that I

could go to

that realm over and over again, she says. Having been prepared for such a role, she notes,

I am

called to the deathbed of all of my relatives to annoint them. They will not die until I get

there. In

addition, Bellezza says she regularly journeys to the Underworld in shamanic trance and

works in

her nocturnal dream state for a variety of ends, including obtaining wisdom from the

divine realm,

effecting healings, and intervening to change events in the phenomenal world such that

they may

have a more positive outcome. In one of my dreams I saw a car accident that my brother

was

going to have, she recounts. I changed things so that the truck didnt hit him head on

but jack-

knifed so that they would both end up in a ditch and survive. The accident happened just

that way a


29/53

47

Interview with Lori Bruno, April 6, 2000.

48


49

Interview with Squillace.

Page 15


14

day later.

50

Clearly what we have here is a priestess of Persephone, the goddess who, more than

being just the maiden who picked flowers at the edge of the lake, was the Queen of the

Underworld,

the ruler of the dead. Bellezza is no doubt one in a long line of priestesses of Persephonewho have

operated in Italy, Sicily, and beyond as sacred mediators between this world and the one

beyond the

veil.

Historical evidence linking stregoneria in Sicily to the Demeter and Persephone religion

(or

its Sikelian antecedent) is not unequivocal but still suggestive. My main historical sourcethus far

has been a chapter by Gustav Henningsen entitled The Ladies from Outside: An

Archaic

Pattern of the Witches Sabbath. In it, Henningsen examines approximately 70 case

records of


30/53

trials of Sicilian witches held from 1547 to 1701 by the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition

in

Palermo. The trials involved donne di fuori (women from the outside), as they were

called, a title

that was alternately applied both to witches themselves and to supernatural, fairy-like

entities who

accompanied them on their nocturnal sojourns.

Henningsen determines from the trial records that a Sicilian fairy cult was thriving on

the

island at least during the time of the Inquisition, if not even earlier. It was led mainly by

women

who served as charismatic healers and cured ills caused by the fairies. Several nights a

week,

they would rush out in spirit. . .and take part in the meetings and nocturnal journeyings.

51

Interestingly, many of the names used to address the fairies were identical to those that

northern

Italian witches used for their deities (as cited earlier in Ginzberg), although Henningsendoes not

directly mention Diana or Herodias among them. The striking similarities point to the

strong ties

that must have existed between Sicilian and northern Italian witchcraft, strengthening the

notion that

the practices in both places originally derived from a common source (the Etruscans?).

And the fact

that two of the names used in both places are The Greek Lady and the Wise Sybil

becomes

particularly significant in the case of Sicily. I strongly suspect that the Greek Lady was

a


31/53

reference to the ancient goddesses Demeter and/or Persephone. I also suspect that the

mention of

50

Ibid.

Page 16


15

the Wise Sybil reflected an archaic memory of the sybil at Delphi, who Lucia Chiavola

Birnbaum demonstrates was associated with the Roman Diana of Ephesus.

52

An Underworld of a Different Sort: Stregoneria, the Mafia Connection, and

Malta

A discussion of Sicilian stregoneria would not be complete without an inclusion of Leo

Martellos

stunning but compelling assertion that the phenomenon of the Sicilian mafia has its

origins in la

Vecchia Religione. He writes:

Sicily, because of its constant conquest by other nations, became a country of secret

societies. . . .Because [Sicilians] could not achieve justice by the indifferent foreign rulers,

who kept changing, each new conqueror bringing in a whole new set of harsh laws and

religious ideas, secret societies with oaths of initiation, blood vows, and code words were

inaugurated. Centuries ago these were made up mainly of the Old Religionists. . . Their

joy

was given full reign only when they worshipped in the woods on moon-filled nights while

armed sentries guarded all passes to their mountain retreats. At first defenders of the

faith,


32/53

the poor, and the oppressed, some of them became power-mad and worked for the feudal

lords. They gradually dropped the worship of the Goddess and became an all-male

chauvinist society. They retained some of the rituals for initiation purposes, but dropped,

and eventually lost, both the worship and the origins of the rites. There were many

schisms,

splits, offshoots, and formations of rival societies.

53

In particular, Martello points to several important aspects of mafia initiation rituals -- the

kiss, the

blood oath, the vow never to reveal the secrets, and the use of the knife

54

as originating in

stregoneria rites.

To the many contemporary theories about where the word mafia comes from, Martello

adds two more, which also tie it to the Old Religion. According to some streghe, he says,

the

word itself is an anagram which means faithful adoration of the Mother. It stems from

the Latin

words mater, meaning mother, and fidelitas, faithfulness.

55

Even more interesting is the

second theory he posits: that the word mafia is a combination and elision of ma for

mother

51

Gustav Henningsen, The Ladies from the Outside: An Archaic Pattern of the Witches

Sabbath, in Bengt

Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, eds.,Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres &


33/53

Peripheries (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 195

52


53


54

Ibid., p. 153.

55

Ibid.

Page 17


16

(mater in Latin; madre or mamma in Italian) and filia for daughter.

56

The mother and daughter

in this case would be none other than Demeter and Persephone. While there may be no

conclusive

proof for either of these theories, certainly they provide an interesting dimension to our

discussion

of Sicilian stregoneria.

Another fascinating assertion Martello makes is that Malta, an archipelago just south of

Sicily, also has a living witchcraft tradition. The strege [sic] undergrounds of both

islands have

long maintained close ties,


34/53

57

he says. As in Sicily, witchcraft in Malta would have emerged from

its own the ancient Goddess religion, for which there is ample evidence in the

archeological record

as well as in the local lore. The fact that the Maltese language has no word for father,

notes

Martello, bespeaks to its longstanding tradition of matriarchy, which no doubt was part

and parcel

of the goddess culture.

58

One piece of contemporary lore in Malta that he relates is particularly

fascinating in this regard. The story concerns a number of grade-school children and their

teachers

who, as the August 1940 issue of National Geographic reports, descended into the

underground

maze of temples, tunnels, and catacombs in Malta and never returned. Of this incident,

Martello

writes:

Many Sicilian and Maltese Witches say that the true secrets of Hal Saflini [or the

Hypogeum, the large underground chamber in Malta that was used for ritual purposes in

ancient times,] have not been discovered and that those teachers and children are not dead

but are now part of a living race of people still surviving in their underground homes, still

worshipping the ancient deities, and protected from discovery by various booby-traps that

could initiate landslides should explorers get too close. The teachers and young children

who were lost insured the propagation of their race - new blood mingling with old -

providing a stronger stock for their Maltese underground matriarchy.

59


35/53

Whether this story has any phenomenological truth to it or not, it certainly suggests that

the

memory of matriarchy - and the hunger for it in present times -- remains strongly

embedded in the

psyche of both the Sicilians and the Maltese. At the very least, the possibility of the

existence of a

Maltese witchcraft tradition with ties to Sicilian stregoneria is an intriguing topic for

future research.

56

Ibid.

57

Ibid., p. 98.

58

Ibid., p. 100.

Page 18


17

Stregoneria Today

Contemporary Italian-American streghe echo Martellos claim that in Sicily, Italy, and

among

Italian Americans in the United States, the old religionists have survived to this day by

raising their

children publicly as Catholics, while privately and deliberately teaching them the old

beliefs and

practices. One of the more dramatic stories in this regard comes from Lori Bruno.

60


36/53

Significantly,

Bruno counts among her ancestors Giordano Bruno, the Italian heretic. Giordano himself

considered Diana an important deity, held that witches were the midwives of social

reform, and

maintained that the Egyptian religion as transmitted in the Hermetic literature was

superior to

Christianity.

61

As a result of his radical ideas, he was burned at the stake in Italy in 1400. Lori

Bruno also claims descendancy from Gawhar the Sicilian, who she says was a military

leader

sent by the caliph of Baghdad to conquer Egypt in 969 A.D. One of her distant great

grandmothers, she notes, also lived in Sicily in the 14th century and brought the wrath of

the

Church down upon herself for using the practical and magical healing knowledge she had

learned

from Sicilys Arab colonizers to treat sufferers of the bubonic plague. They hung herupside

down in the market place, says Bruno, because they said she was violating Gods will.

Thus,

along with stregoneria, the fear of authorities was handed all the way down to Brunos

own

generation. In our studies, we dont write anything down, she says. I was taught that

you

dont leave paper lying around or the Inquisition will get you.

Bruno, who grew up in Brooklyn, says that her familys practices involved regularly

calling

on the old gods, including Diana, Apollo, Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, and the ancient

Siculian


37/53

goddess, on occasions such as the full moon and other holidays. One of the rituals they

conducted was a puberty rite in which a girl or boy of 12 years old was passed through a

sapling

that had been split in two. Some of the childs hair, along with an image of a god orgoddess, was

inserted into the split and then the tree was tied back together to grow around and enclose

the

objects. I later found a photograph in Life magazine of people doing that very ritual in

Sicily,

59

Ibid., p. 101.

60

Interview with Bruno.

Page 19


18

she says. (In fact, I have that issue of Life in my files.) Other rites included burying red

eggs in

the east at sunrise on Easter morning, and burying silver coins with honey in the ground,

she says,

to honor the Earth Mother. Meanwhile, Bruno says with a chuckle, We were all good

Catholics. We played their game right in front of them.

For Bruno, the practice of stregoneria is, at core, one of service to humanity. The

ultimate

purpose of our craft is to make the world a better place to live in, to help people thrive

and not

destroy, she says. For example, she recalls her streghe relatives engaging in magical


38/53

interventions

to attempt to influence the outcome of World War II. I remember very distinctly that

something

secret was done in Sicily with one of our relatives to prevent Hitler from coming andhurting our

people. I also remember my mother reciting special prayers so that Hitler would be

stopped before

getting into England. Sicilian streghe, she says, joined the Resistance, as well,

participating in

activities such as forging baptismal records to help Jews. Today, Bruno herself offers her

services

as a psychic to her local police force in Massachusetts to assist them in finding

perpetrators and

victims of crime. Since turning 51 (the age at which she says a Sicilian strega may begin

to teach),

Bruno, now 60, has also headed a coven called the Lord and Lady of the Trinacrian

Rose

(Trinacria being the ancient Greek word for Sicily). By starting a non-family coven, shehas

become one of the few Sicilian streghe in the United States to go public. Through it,

she is

passing her teachings down to Sicilian- and non-Sicilian-descended people alike who

wish to

commit to the strega path. In the final analysis, she says, stregoneria is all about love.

You can

learn all the techniques you want, but without heart, the magic isnt going to flow.

For Minnesota resident Bellezza Squillace, 55, coming to consciouness about the fact that

her family practiced the Old Religion has been a long, ongoing process.

62


39/53

As I started

learning about paganism years ago, she said, I realized: This is what Ive been living all

my

life! Her familys own practices, she noticed, had a decidedly old-world, Italian flavorand had

always been carried out as a matter of course, without fanfare. Often the teachings were

enfolded in

61

Loretta Orion, Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revisited(Prospect Heights, IL:

Waveland Press,

Inc., 1995), p. 89.

62

Interview with Squillace.

Page 20


19

womens activities such as cooking or sewing. Rolling a ball of yarn for knitting, for

example, was

akin to entering and exiting the mythological labyrinth or maze - an activity that

allowed one to

problem-solve on a right-brained, intuitive level. One person had the skein of yarn on

either hand,

the other person was making the ball, she explains. A rhythm was created, like theswaying of

the ocean, as the arms went up and down and the hands spiraled. This was the entering

of the

maze, a time in which the two of you would talk about the issues at hand. By the time


40/53

you

finished, you had new insights into your life.

63

Squillace recalls how her relatives also told her stories about figures such as Medeusa, the

Sirens,

Hecate, Demeter, and Persephone, as well as the Italian witch Befana and Saint Lucia.

These stories

served as another method of instruction in problem resolution, she notes. I was taught

that the

Fatas, the fairies, were shapeshifters. They could take the form of a beautiful woman or

an old

bum on the street. That meant you always had to treat everyone you encountered with

respect,

because you never knew who might be a Fata. You certainly didnt want to offend one.

Squillace was also taught that the fierce female entities known as the Furies could be

called

upon for assistance, a practice she herself has used in extreme situations. They are called

in to

right an injustice perpetrated by someone in a position of authority or to avenge the

matriarchy,

she explains. Ive invoked them in two different rituals. Once I did it to help catch a man

who

was raping and killing women, and burning their bodies in a park. The next day the man

was

arrested.

Squillace recalls other old family practices, such as using fish for divination. You watch

a fish in

a pond or a tank and say, If it swims this way, the answer to my question is yes; if it

swims that


41/53

way, the answer is no, she explains, adding that she is now passing such practices onto

her

young granddaughters. Mirrors, she was also taught, must always be consecrated by being

buried

before theyre used. Furthermore, they must be turned or covered for a period of time

after a

person dies. I didnt put a lot of stock in this until after my father died and I kept seeing

his

63

This story is particularly intriguing because it points to the matriarchal underpinnings of

the Greek myth of

Theseus, who is aided in his journey into the labyrinth by Ariadnes ball of yarn.

Page 21


20

reflection in the mirror. Id turn around and he wouldnt be there. Now I dont look into a

mirror

unless its been consecrated, she says.

While Squillaces family considered these activities as natural as breathing, they did teach

their young charge that their members were different, somehow set apart from the

mainstream,

and that their differences should not be advertised to anyone. They told me, We believe

differently, but you still go to church. You go along, she recalls.

Fabrisia, 44, who grew up in a large Italian-American community in Massachusetts, also

remembers things being different for her family, as well.

64


42/53

We all went to church, but the old

Italian ladies said Ave Diana instead of Ave Maria, she says. Fabrisia also recalls her

grandmother turning the statue of Mary away from what she was doing when she was out

in her

herb garden harvesting plants for remedies and spells. Her paternal grandmother, great-

grandmother, and aunt, all of whom were born in northern Italy, identified themselves as

streghe

and told Fabrisia they were practicing their own religion. They began teaching her from

a

young age the family traditions, particularly the knowledge about herbs. Not surprisingly,

one of

their favorite plants was rue.

Fabrisia remembers that it was typical for her female relatives to hang wind chimes all

over

the yard. My aunt believed that when the chimes rang they announced the presence of a

fairy,

Fabrisia recalls. She also remembers her elders regularly leaving food out in the garden as

an

offering to the deities. One ritual they taught her, which Fabrisia uses regularly, invokes

protection

from a bad storm. You go to each door of the house, lay pennyroyal down as an offering,

and

recite: Winds of the East, winds of the West, I beg you give us rest. Winds of the North,

winds

of the South, I ask you please blow around me, she says. I did that ritual one day when

a

tornado swept through our town in Massachusetts. I saw my gas grill go up and down

without

tipping over, and we could feel the wind going around our house while on the house


43/53

across the

street the shutters and shingles came ripping off. We hardly had any damage at all. Now

any time

theres a storm my kids say, Ma, quick! Get the pennyroyal!

64

Interview with Fabrisia.

Page 22


21

It is interesting to note that all of my informants referred to a controversy currently raging

in

streghe circles over the use of nakedness in rituals. As mentioned earlier, the Gospel of

the

witches published by Leland enjoins participants to meet, greet, eat - and subsequently

make love -

in skyclad fashion. Several of the streghe told me that Raven Grimassis coven enacts theGreat

Rite during certain celebrations. That is, the high priest or high priestess has ritual

sexual

intercourse with another coven member in front of the entire coven. While Grimassi

apparently

claims that this ritual is a part of the original stregoneria tradition, my informants all tell

me they

were not taught that this was a part of the Vecchia Religione.

Several of them also mention a prophesy (which Grimassi also talks about in Ways of the

Strega) that has been handed down by streghe, stating that humanity would pass through

four ages:


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the age of the mother, the age of the father, the age of the son, and the age of the daughter.

Squillace and Fabrisia believe that we have now or will very soon be entering the age of

the

daughter, a time in which women and the Goddess will be honored again.

The Role of Negative Magic

Before I conclude this paper, I should mention that during the Italian Renaissance,

magic and

witchcraft were two strands of magical practice that sometimes ran independently of

one another

and sometimes wove together. Peter Burke, in his chapter Witchcraft and Magic in

Renaissance

Italy, points out that magic was an important part of the world views of major

Renaissance

figures such as the aforementioned Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico, and

others

during the 15th and 16th centuries. These intellectuals revived the magic that was praised

by the

ancient writers they so respected.

65

The Italian magician was generally considered to be

someone who used rituals and spells for good or evil, whereas the witch referred to

people -

mainly women - who did harm by supernatural means without rituals and spells, and

sometimes

without meaning to do so. While some would hold that magic belonged to the educated

and

witchcraft belonged to the common people, Burke argues that this distinction was, in

fact,


45/53

Page 23


22

blurred. Moreover, the distinction between magic and witchcraft was also frequently

blurred;

that is, magicians were often thought to be wicked, and witches to use spells and

rituals, he

notes.

66

What contributed to this blending was the work of Hugh of St. Victor, who in the 12th

century had divided magic into five parts. One of them was maleficium, which he

defined as evil

deeds done by the help of demons. Burke notes that in the witch trials of the 15th and

16th

centuries in northern Italy, maleficium was one of the most common accusations.

Interestingly, the revival of magical practices among the male elite in Italy also

corresponds

with the peak of the witch hunt there.

67

While men were not exempt from this purge (witness

Giordano Bruno), it was the women practitioners who were mainly targeted. Many

feminist authors

in recent years have rightly pointed to the fact that this was an attempt by the male power

structure

to further diminish womens power and role in the psychic arts, healing, and midwifery.

What is little discussed, however, is whether women witches actually engaged in negative

magic


46/53

designed to harm others, and, if so, what this means for women today as we attempt to

reclaim our

power.

Any scholar of witchcraft will soon discover that the use of magic to bring harm upon

another has indeed historically been widely practiced by streghe all over Italy and Sicily.

While it is

difficult to determine which admissions of evil-doing in witch trial records refer to

authentic

practices and which are the result of intimidation or torture on the part of the authorities,

we do have

a plethora of ethnographical evidence pointing to the use of malevolent spells on the partof streghe.

Charles Leland devotes a whole chapter of Etruscan Roman Remains to evil

incantations that he

states were commonly used among the Romagnolo people even in the late 1800s. Among

them are

spells to stop a man from loving another woman, to cause marital strife between a couple,

to bring

misfortune upon a household, and even to kill a person. While I am still gathering

evidence as to

the efficacy of such spells, I have thus far found at least one fairly contemporary story

that tells of a

witch in San Pancrazio (of the legendary Romagna region) at the turn of the 19th century

who is

65

Peter Burke, Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and his

Strix, in Sidney Anglo,

ed., The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft(London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1977), p. 33.


47/53

66

Ibid., p. 34.

Page 24


23

believed to have succeeded at killing a priest by use of a spell.

68

More recently, ethnographer Luisa

Del Giudice, in her paper Cursed Flesh: Faith Healers, Black Magic and (Re-

Membering) Death

in a Central Italian Town, discusses how a number of people in her ancestral town of

Terracina

maintained that the use of black magic was responsible for the death of her 37-year-old

brother-

in-law in 1988.

69

If we turn now to Sicily, we note that Gustav Henningsen has observed that no one there

was killed

by the Inquisition for being a witch, contrary to what happened in the rest of Europe from

the 14th

through 17th centuries. The reason, he says, is that the Inquisition and the Church were

for the

most part unsuccessful at persuading the local people to characterize the donne di fuori

as

demonic in nature.

70

At the same time, negative magic was regularly used by witches


48/53

71

and

remains widespread on the island even today. Elsa Gugginos books on Sicilian magic, in

fact, are

peppered with stories of witches who even call upon the devil, himself in their work.

They view him

as merely one of many entities they can invoke to both heal and harm.

Once we open the door to the understanding that streghe have regularly used negative

spirits

(including the devil) and harmful spells in their work, we begin to peek into a very

spooky room,

indeed. It is a room, in fact, that can start looking remarkably similar to the one painted

by the

Catholic church during the witch trials. For we must inevitably ask: If negative magic is

and has

been used, where does such a practice begin and end? Can we entirely dismiss some of

the more

sensationalistic accusations derived from the witch trials, such as that witches rituallysacrificed

children?

Looking at this issue of child sacrifice, history alone strongly suggests (and some scholars

would say clearly demonstrates) that human and child sacrifice may well have been

practiced in

many different cultures from very ancient times onward. Spiritual feminists balk at this,

particularly

67

Ibid., p. 33.

68


49/53

See Teresa Picarrazzi, ed.,Lus. The Light. Ermanna Montanari Performs Nevio Spadoni

(West Lafayette, IN:

Bordighera Press, 1999).

69

Luisa Del Giudice, Cursed Flesh: Faith Healers, Black Magic and (Re-Membering)

Death in a Central Italian

town, in Quaderni di Storia: Antropologia e Scienze del Linguaggio (forthcoming).

70

Henningsen, p. 205.

71

Ibid., p. 195.

Page 25


24

when such accusations are made against societies that were goddess-oriented and perhaps

women-

centered. We would rather think that such activities are the product of the male

imagination than

our own actions. However, a powerful clairvoyant I spoke with, who wishes to remain

anonymous,

makes the following remarkable statement:

72

As a clairvoyant, people come to me for many different reasons. Some people come to me

from their Christian perspective; other people come to me through their black magic

perspective. Through trance and psychic means, I have access to those lifetimes in which I

learned how to use both sides -- darker forces, lighter forces, whatever you want to call it.


50/53

I

have very clear and vivid memories of eating children and being in circles of people, men

and women, witches, warlocks, what have you. They were called by a number of different

names. I have very vivid experiences of snatching children. And I have very vivid

memories

of us killing one another if there was any breach of trust.

The purpose of eating the babies was to empower ourselves with life, to nourish

ourselves.

Just as many ancient and contemporary cultures have used the placenta as food, I think

these people came to the awareness, maybe as cannibals do, that eating the body andblood

of new babies provides one with life-giving force. It is similar to the practices of Native

Americans and others in which they ritually drink the blood or eat the flesh of certain

animals to incorporate the qualities of those animals into their own being. Even today,

many

people still participate in absorbing the life force of small children either by feeding off

their

energy, engaging with them sexually, or just by being around them. They simply want a

part of that new life force. Earlier in our history, there were people in what were

becoming

civilized communities who were still practicing those spiritual beliefs in a very embodied

way. And they were not in touch with the heart-chakra such that they could experience the

pain they were inflicting on others. They were just out there in that experience of power,or

force, or blood lust. . . .

When I go into trance, I get vivid images of practices that were very dark being

conducted


51/53

by women in witchcraft circles. Even to this day, I have a lot of clients for whom their

work

is based entirely on She cursed me, I curse her. And they become entirely engaged in the

exchange of punishment of one another. . . .A woman came to me and asked me to cursethe

boyfriend of her daughter, who got the girl pregnant at 17. I wouldnt get involved. My

practice is to get out of these games. But she wasnt happy with that and went to someone

else to take the boy out. And, lo and behold, that boy was killed in a car accident on the

spring equinox of the same year his son was born. She called up and said, Ive done

something horrible. But behind her remorse was a level of satisfaction that shed gotten

what she wanted.

I include the words of my clairvoyant informant here not to offer conclusive proof that

Italian streghe have engaged in child sacrifice. I do so merely to help us open our thinking

and not

close off possibilities about how women and men may have used and misused their

spiritual powers

in the past -- and may be continuing to do so today. I have brought up the discussion of

stregonerias negative side as a conclusion to this paper because as a scholar who hopes to

contribute to the evolution of humanity - and as a feminist engaged in helping women

come to true

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Interview with anonymous clairvoyant, April 29, 2000.

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empowerment -- I believe it would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise. While it is

important to

perpetuate, reclaim, and restore the strega tradition, as many of us are now doing, it is

also important

that we do so without naivete. In the world view that I and many others hold, magical

practices can

influence the phenomenal world. The strega, like any shamanic practitioner, encounters a

whole

range of powerful energies and entities and must navigate among them with wisdom and

maturity.

S/he must also make decisions regarding what s/he encounters - decisions that can have a

significant impact on the lives of others. Those who would engage with stregoneria,

either as clients

or practitioners, need to be aware of the fact that the tradition is a multifacted one that

deals in both

the light and the darkness.

Moreover, as women come to greater empowerment by adopting roles as streghe or

priestesses, it is important that we do not gloss over the damage, harm, and suffering that

may well

have been perpetrated by those who have gone before us or that we ourselves may have

engaged in

during previous incarnations. I am not suggesting that we revert to a blaming-the-

victim

mentality toward women, which would further oppress us. Nor am I suggesting that

women

become sickly sweet Glenda Goodwitches in compensation for real or imagined past

misconduct.

Rather, I am suggesting that we acknowledge our own Shadow - on both the individual

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collective level - and that we take care to manage it appropriately, as Carl Jung would

have us do.

For I believe that coming to true power as women means taking responsibility, without

excuses, for

both the good and the bad that we are capable of and that we have engaged in throughout

the ages.

By holding to the view that streghe of the past, however oppressed, had choices and

should be held

fully accountable if they used their powers for negative ends, we remind ourselves that

we, too,

however oppressed, have choices. In doing so, we challenge ourselves to reach a more

evolved level

of consciousness. From there, the road to true liberation opens up before us.

Documents

2668519 Marguerite Rigoglioso Stregoneria