by Charles G. Leland
But the Italian strega or sorceress is in certain respects a different character from these. In most cases she comes of a family
in which her calling or art has been practiced for many generations. I have no
doubt that there are in stances in which the ancestry remounts to medieval,
Roman, or it may be Etruscan times. The result has naturally been the
accumulation in such families of much tradition. But in Northern Italy, as its literature
indicates, though there has been some slight gathering of fairy tales and
popular superstitions by scholars, there has never existed the least interest
as regarded the strange lore of the witches, nor any suspicion that it embraced
an incredible quantity of old Roman minor myths and legends, such as Ovid has
recorded, but of which much escaped him and all other Latin writers.
This ignorance was greatly aided by the wizards themselves,
in making a profound secret of all their traditions, urged thereto by fear of
the priests. In fact, the latter all unconsciously actually contributed immensely
to the preservation of such lore, since the charm of the forbidden is very
great, and witchcraft, like the truffle, grows best and has its raciest flavor
when most deeply hidden. However this may be, both priest and wizard are
vanishing now with incredible rapidity-it has even struck a French writer that
a Franciscan in a railway carriage is a strange anomaly-and a few more years of
newspapers and bicycles (Heaven knows what it will be when flying-machines appear!)
will probably cause an evanishment of all.
For brief explanation I may say that witch craft is known
to its votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which
Diana is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodias) the female Messiah, and
that this little work sets forth how the latter was born, came down to earth,
established witches and witchcraft, and then returned to heaven. With it are
given the ceremonies and invocations or incantations to be addressed to Diana
and Aradia, the exorcism of Cain, and the spells of the holy-stone, rue, and
verbena, constituting, as the text declares, the regular church-service, so to
speak, which is to be chanted or pronounced at the witch-meetings. There are
also included the very curious incantations or benedictions of the honey, meal,
and salt, or cakes of the witch-supper, which is curiously classical, and
evidently a relic of the Roman
Since writing the foregoing I have met with and read a very clever and entertaining work entitled Il Romanzo dei Settimani, G. Cavagnari, 1889, in which the author, in the form of a novel, vividly depicts the manners, habits of thought, and especially the nature of witchcraft, and the many superstitions current among the peasants in Lombardy. Unfortunately, notwithstanding his extensive knowledge of the subject, it never seems to have once occurred to the narrator that these traditions were anything but noxious nonsense or folly.
That there exists in them marvelous relics of ancient mythology and valuable folklore, is as uncared for by him as it would be by a common Zoccolone. One would think it might have been suspected by a man who knew that a witch really endeavored to kill seven people as a ceremony or rite, in order to get the secret of endless wealth, that such a sorceress must have had a store of wondrous legends; but of all this there is no trace, and it is very evident that nothing could be further from his mind than that there was anything interesting from a higher or more genial point of view in it all.
His book, in fine, belongs to the very great number of those written on ghosts and superstition since the latter has fallen into discredit, in which the authors indulge in much satirical and very safe but cheap ridicule of what to them is merely vulgar and false. Like Sir Charles Coldstream, they have peeped into the crater of Vesuvius after it had ceased to "erupt," and found "nothing in it." But there was something in it once; and the man of science, which Sir Charles was not, still finds a great deal in the remains, and the antiquarian a Pompeii or a Herculaneum - it is said there are still seven buried cities to unearth. I have done what little (it is really very little) I could, to disinter something from the dead volcano of Italian sorcery.
If this be the manner in which Italian witchcraft is treated by the most
intelligent writer who has depicted it, it will not be deemed remarkable that
there are few indeed who will care whether there is a veritable Gospel of
Witches, apparently of extreme antiquity, embodying the belief in a strange
counter-religion which has held its own from prehistoric time to the present
day. "Witchcraft is all rubbish, or something worse," said old writers, "and
therefore all books about it are nothing better." I sincerely trust, however,
that these pages may fall into the hands of at least a few who will think better
of them.
Original text by Charles G Leland [1899], edited and revised by D. J. McAdam - this revised text © 2005. Please note: all applicable material on this website is protected by law and may not be copied without express written permission.
