2668519 marguerite rigoglioso stregoneria
TRANSCRIPT
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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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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
Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains, p. 11.
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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
Birnbaum,Dark Mother, p. 14.
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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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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
Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains, p. 151.
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
Martello, Witchcraft, p. 146.
34
Elworthy, p. 335.
35
Macadam, p. 182.
36
Elworthy, p. 335.
37
Ibid., p. 336.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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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
Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
Martello, Witchcraft, p. 138.
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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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47
Interview with Lori Bruno, April 6, 2000.
48
Martello, Witchcraft, p. 145.
49
Interview with Squillace.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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reference to the ancient goddesses Demeter and/or Persephone. I also suspect that the
mention of
50
Ibid.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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,
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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 &
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Peripheries (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 195
52
Birnbaum,Dark Mother, p. 105.
53
Martello, Witchcraft, p. 151.
54
Ibid., p. 153.
55
Ibid.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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,
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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
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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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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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
Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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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
Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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,
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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.
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66
Ibid., p. 34.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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
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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
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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.
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Marguerite Rigoglioso, Stregoneria,
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.
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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
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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
72
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
and
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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.