"I foresee that a day will come, and that perhaps not so
very far distant, that the world of scholars will be amazed
to consider to what a late period an immense body of
antique tradition survived in northern Italy, and how
indifferent the learned were regarding it; there having seen
in truth, only one man, and he a foreigner, who earnestly
occupied himself with collecting and preserving it."
Charles Godfrey Leland - 1899
Welcome to the home of
Stregheria (Italian Witchcraft)
on the Web
This site is operated by
initiates of Italian witchcraft in conjunction with author
Raven Grimassi.
Our site is
dedicated to the preservation of the Pagan roots of Italian
Witchcraft. Its primary goal is to present material
that supports the existence of a pre-Christian sect of
Witches and to trace the history of its evolvement over the
centuries. A secondary goal is to dispel the
erroneous association and conflation of common folk magic elements in
popular lore with the authentic forms of Italian Witchcraft.
By doing so we hope to reduce the misinformation and
misrepresentation found on websites such as Stregoneria Italiana, Rue's Kitchen, and on various Internet forums.
Italian Witchcraft
is often referred to as The Old Religion (La Vecchia
Religione). In 1890,
folklorist Charles Leland published a book titled Aradia:
Gospel of the Witches. Although it was typical in many ways
of the distorted Christian image of Witchcraft of this
period, we do find several things of interest. In Leland's
book, the Witches of Italy worship a goddess and a god, meet for
full moon rituals and celebrate with singing, dancing and
making love. Their celebration also includes a feast
containing cakes and wine. In 1609, Francesco Guazzo (an
Italian Witch Hunter)
published several woodcuts in his book Compendium
Maleficarum. One of these Italian woodcuts depicts Witches
gathered inside a circle drawn upon the ground. He
also states that Witches work with spirits of earth, air,
fire and water. In 1954,
Gerald Gardner describes English Witchcraft as something
very similar.
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We invite you to take a look at some of the topics on
our
website for interesting similarities between the Strega Path
and modern Wicca. For your enjoyment we also have a
collection of
images on this site. Please note that the articles on this
page are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without
written permission.
Other Recommended Sites: We have searched the Internet and
seen many web pages that contain material on
Italian
Witchcraft (or purport to do so). We cannot recommend many of
these sites because of misinformation and misrepresentation. Unfortunately, at this time, we have
not found
websites in Italy that we feel portray authentic Italian
Witchcraft traditions as they appear to lack accurate historical or
cultural material related to the Old Religion of Italy.
Instead they appear to contain reconstructions of Egyptian
and Hermetic traditions reworked into a newly constructed system
that is passed off as
Witchcraft. Other sites feature a modified form of
Stregoneria
that is Catholic-rooted in nature and conflated with folk
magic traditions having little if anything to do with
authentic forms of Italian Witchcraft (despite claims to the
contrary).
LINKS TO
INTERESTING MATERIAL
1. Suppressed
History
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/index.html
2. The
Indigenous Healing Tradition in Calabria, Italy
http://stanleykrippner.com/papers/Calabria2004Rev_1B_.htm
3.
The Roman Farmer and the Moon
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/journals/TAPA/49/Roman_Farmer_and_Moon*.html
4. Folk Veterinary Medicine in Italy
http://www.andreapieroni.eu/Viegi et
al., 2003.pdf
5. Folk Pharmaceutical Knowledge
http://www.stregheria.com/Italian-Folk-Herbs.pdf
6. Paganism in
Provence: How the Mother-Goddess became the Mother of God
http://www.jwmt.org/v1n6/provence.html
If you would like to submit a website for consideration for our
Links page, please email the
Webmaster .
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