Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca, and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a Religious Studies scholar, and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, Witchcraft and all things occult. If you’re familiar with my content, you will know that I usually have content based on peer-reviewed material or interviews with other academics, Professors and PhD researchers. But I have started a new series where I also interview Practitioners. And so this series is kind of academic and Practitioner in conversation. It is shaped similarly to how I conduct my interviews with my informants when I do anthropological research, with the exception that, of course, I interact much more. Usually, I would interact much less than I do in these kinds of interviews. But I thought seeing an academic and a Practitioner in conversation would also be interesting. And today, we have a special guest, Chaotic Witch Aunt, and we will allow them to introduce themselves. So help me welcome Frankie to the Symposium.

Hello Frankie, how are you today? Thank you so much for accepting the invitation to be on Angela’s Symposium.

Frankie Castanea FC: I am doing very well; I’m very happy to be here.

AP: So, for those of you who don’t know you, would you mind introducing yourself and letting us know anything that you feel comfortable sharing about your background?

FC: Yeah, my name is Frankie. I’m most commonly known by the name Chaotic Witch Aunt. I make content on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram pertaining to Witchcraft. As well as that, I am an Italian-American Folk Practitioner, Practitioner of Folk Magic, and yeah, I’ve also authored a book in the past called “Spells for Change,” and I think it’s about everything important about me.

AP: And what is your book about?

FC: I wrote it as a beginner’s manual for starting Witchcraft. So if you’re looking within the realm of Italian Folk Magick, you won’t find a lot in there, but if you are interested in Witchcraft and starting it from kind of a ‘no tradition,’ ‘no religion’ point of view and looking for something that you can format to your own practice, “Spells for Change” is a great book to get started with.

AP: So that makes me wonder, what is your definition of Witchcraft now?

FC: Oh that’s a good question, I would love to answer that.

AP: Yeah, go on.

FC: My definition of Witchcraft, I think, is ever-changing. It’s very different now than it was at the beginning, and it’s more formatted by the historical perception of Witchcraft. The term of a Witch, kind of, has always been and always had a negative connotation. So I see Witchcraft as the craft of those who are othered, whether that is by way of identity, by way of religion or by way of really anything. I also think Witchcraft is inherently activism because… I know I saw your eyes on your head tilt… I think Witchcraft is inherently activism and that is because Witchcraft historically has always been posed against oppressors, even, kind of like, later contexts. But in a very basic way, Witchcraft is using spells to get the outcome you desire. Once we get past that kind of baseline, my opinion or my like, Unverified Gnosis of Witchcraft starts coming in. But yeah.

AP: You know, my reaction when you said that you think that Witchcraft is inherently…. what was the term that you used again?

FC: Activism.

AP: Activism. Yeah, I think that that’s very linked to the history of Witchcraft in the US, especially from the 1970s.

FC: Oh yeah.

AP: So, especially the history of how Wicca was received in the US.

FC: I agree with that.

AP: It was highly linked to the gay and feminist liberation movements and became strictly linked to activism. I think that is different in Europe in how Witchcraft is perceived. But I think it makes sense to make an argument for linking the two in terms of, as you said, Witchcraft has been used quite often since antiquity as a term of othering. This is something that I also wrote a chapter in a peer-reviewed, edited book that has just come out lately, and I talk about the conceptualisation of Magick as a way of othering. So, it is something that I also found as an academic in my research. But yeah, I find it interesting – your definition. And now, I’d like you to tell my audience because they might not be familiar with that expression. Although I know what you mean, I think that my audience is perhaps more interested in Ceremonial Magick, but perhaps in the theoretical aspects of Witchcraft, Ceremonial Magick, and similar topics. So, would you mind elaborating more on the term ‘Unverified Personal Gnosis?’

FC: Oh, of course. So, Unverified Personal Gnosis is a very fancy way of saying your opinion. And there’s, you know, Unverified Personal Gnosis, Shared Personal Gnosis – the idea is that Unverified Personal Gnosis is categorised by your experiences or your quote-unquote ‘Gnosis.’ And it can then reflect how you conduct your Magick or your Witchcraft. So, for example, my Unverified Personal Gnosis is that Saint Mary and Diana are two sides of the same coin, and they were syncretised throughout history. However, another practitioner may not agree with that whatsoever. However, I conduct most of my practice through the idea that Saint Mary and Diana are similar or two sides of the same coin. I hope that makes sense.

AP: So it is more based on your personal experience as opposed to, for instance, history or something that is linked to a specific tradition or linked to a specific historical development?

FC: You can have a UPG or Unverified Personal Gnosis with historical backing. A lot of times, when I’m looking at my Unverified Personal Gnosis or formulating my opinions, I tend to do a lot of research about it because, you know, I don’t like being historically inaccurate, I don’t like taking something and saying well this is my experience and that means it’s, you know, true. And I did find some historical representations of Diana and Saint Mary being syncretised with this specific apparition of Mary. Still, past that, you know, I’ve seen people with Unverified Personal Gnosis that, you know, very much lean into the unverified part. I try to lean in more with the Verified Personal Gnosis of this, which, you know, has historical backing. I say unverified regarding Saint Mary and Diana because the research is so shaky, and it’s me conducting my research without a methodology and coming to a conclusion. Suppose I were going to go for verified. In that case, I’d probably have to take the approach of an anthropology or a sociology paper and conduct something analytically with a hypothesis, a format, and everything.

AP: Yeah, perhaps in that specific case, it would be more a case of studying the History of Religion, considering the kind of syncretism that may or may not have occurred. So would you say that if you have a certain experience, an Unverified Personal Gnosis, a spiritual experience of a specific source and then realize or find out that it is not historically accurate, will it change or affect your experience in any way?

FC: I think for me, yes. If I have an experience or a belief, let’s say it’s not necessarily like a spiritual belief but a similar one; using my past example, Saint Mary and Diana are syncretised. If I can’t or cannot find anything on that syncretisation, on anything occurring throughout history, I may lean away from that belief – possibly because it makes me uncomfortable when I am sitting here saying this is my experience. Still, no one else throughout history has had the same experience as me or the same opinion. And a lot of synchronisation, too, is you can typically find some historical information on it throughout different journals and research papers. Without that, it’s difficult for me to continue leaning on a belief.

FC: I do think that there is a difference, and the reason I say that is based on my understanding of Folk Magic. Folk Magic is the Magic of the people, and the culture and the people within America versus Italy are so different that it’s impossible to say they are the same. In addition, we have a mix of people within the Italian-American folk magick, some of whom grew up with grandmothers teaching them the tradition. Some, like me, are trying to reconnect, but all of them are parents of immigrants who came from Italy 50 years ago, 30 years ago, however many years ago, some more recently, some further away. And because of not only the changes that have to happen for someone to assimilate into the US and as an immigrant but also the way that the needs of American people and the needs of people, even in the Western world, even in Canada. I would say that Canada and America are not 100% similar. Still, when I talk to Italian-Canadian individuals and Folk practitioners, we have more similarities than Italian-Australians. I have also talked to an Italian-Australian, and it’s completely different from Italian-American. But within America, the needs of the people, of the folk, have changed so drastically from a lot of the information that our grandparents had, that our great grandparents had, that it’s impossible to say that they are the same. Folk Magic is and always will be the survival of the people and what the people need to survive. And 50 years ago in Italy, that was making sure your breast milk wasn’t stolen, but now in America, it’s okay; our government isn’t doing so great, so what kind of Magick or what kind of services can we provide to the people as Folk Witches, as Folk Practitioners. Does that make sense?

AP: Yeah, and perhaps, do you think it is also linked to the Italian-American culture as opposed to the Italian culture?

FC: I think, yes.

AP: Do you think that there is an Italian-American culture? Now that I think about it. Is it like a subculture, a subculture in the US?

FC: So, I wasn’t raised particularly within a pocket of Italian Americans, and I think whenever there are pockets of Italian Americans, there is a more present Italian-American culture. Things that I know to be present in Italian-American culture that I get asked about are like ‘sauce day’, where you make sauce on Sundays. That’s one example, but I think it is more present within those kinds of pockets. Depending on where you are, you will have more presence of Italian Americans, in general. I would say that the East Coast, including New York and Philadelphia, has a very large presence of Italian Americans. I’m in Colorado, and I wear the Cornicello from my grandma, and I’ve been told at least five times, people look at me, and they’re like, I haven’t seen one of those in ages, and I’m like, what do you mean? Did people stop wearing them, or are there just no Italian Americans here? And so, in certain areas of the US, there are not many Italian-Americans or Italian-American communities within New York and Philadelphia, which is different. I met so many people who were Italian-American when I was in Massachusetts as well as in Connecticut. As for Italian-American culture, I think that since culture is continually changing and thriving, traditions, rituals, ideas, or beliefs are present within Italian-American populations.

I don’t know if I would… culture is such an interesting word because, in America, culture is very much associated with those who are black, who are people of colour. Culture isn’t for white people in America. And I say that as white people who have forfeited their culture by way of immigration or assimilation. So, within that context, Italian-American people do have culture; I’m just unsure of what it looks like because I was raised in an Italian-American family. However, that kind of changed as I got older. We had things like the Feast of The Seven Fishes, which is a purely Italian American thing. I know. I can see your face. It is…

AP: I’ve never… I can understand the sauce Sunday or the sauce day, and yeah, you know, because it is something, that is… we don’t have a sauce day in Italy. Still, I can see the connection because in the South, especially in certain regions of the South, during Sunday usually, especially in the past. So I’m trying to connect things because most Italians that immigrated to the US did so, I think, in the early 20th century before or right after the Second World War. So during Sunday, in certain southern regions, they would cook something called ragù, which is a specific kind of sauce, and basically, it would stay, you know, piping-hot for hours and hours. So that is traditional, but we don’t have sauce day. I can see the connection. As with the seven fish thing, I have no idea.

FC: The Feast of the Seven Fishes is a purely Italian-American tradition where, on Christmas Eve, you get together with your family and prepare seven dishes of fish to eat. So when I was young, we would go to Christmas Eve dinner with my family, who were Italian American, and we would have a huge Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas is still among Italian Americans, especially Catholic ones; Christmas is still a very big thing. Christmas Eve has importance and the Feast of The Seven Fishes kind of marks that it’s an important holiday. Christmas is also still important. What we don’t have is that more Catholic families may have this. Still, the Epiphany is not translated as much into Italian-American, at least in my family. Of course, I’m speaking from one family in a huge country where everyone has had different experiences. So it’s difficult for me to say for sure this is a thing; this is not a thing because although I grew up with an Italian-American family and my mom left the Catholic church, I haven’t seen that side of the family in years. And it kind of becomes… more separate, I think, for me than it is to others.

AP: Yeah, I get it. In Italy, there is a tradition to eat fish on Christmas Eve because there’s this big dinner on Christmas Eve and usually people eat fish. But this is one specific fish, it’s not seven different types.

FC: So seven fishes, seven. My Mom always makes calamari which is a little circle on Christmas Eve.

AP: Yeah, we do that too. We do that, too, in Italy. Yeah, let me count, maybe it is seven. I’ve never heard of seven fish, but there is a lot of fish at Christmas dinner. Yeah, like there’s the fried fish and then because in Italy we have the first course, the second… but no, I don’t think it’s seven.

FC: We haven’t been able to make seven for a while because it’s just my Mom, my Dad and the rest of my immediate family cooking. So we just go for spaghetti and calamari, and that’s our Christmas Eve. It’s the only time of year when we all eat calamari, which is great. But yeah, I’m trying to think of anything else. Sometimes I’ve heard, you know, eating lentils on New Year’s Eve to bring good luck.

AP: Yeah, we do that in Italy. That’s usually linked to prosperity, the idea to bring prosperity. Yeah, yeah this is an Italian thing.

FC: Some things are like Italian that trickle down, and some are purely Italian-American. So it’s hard for me to say, oh, it’s okay; it’s pieces of Italian culture mixed with purely Italian American things, like chicken parmesano, something that Italian Americans came up with. Like, yeah, it’s delicious, but it’s not Italian.

AP: No, and if you come to Italy and ask for pepperoni pizza or chicken Alfredo or spaghetti and meatballs, people will look at you, you know, very confused. If you ask for pepperoni pizza in Italy, you would likely get a pizza with peppers because pepperoni is a vegetable in Italian. Yeah, but I think that since I’m divulging my research mainly in English, I’ve also published in a peer-reviewed journal in Italian, which was great so that my research could also be accessed by, you know, by Italians. But since my research and my talks and at conferences, I mainly speak in English because I’m working for a university here in the UK. I get a lot of attention from Italian Americans. I never studied as a researcher, as an academic Italian-American Witchcraft per se or the perception that Italian Americans have of Italian Witchcraft. However, you know, I got interested in that because so many Italian-Americans have reached out either because they are interested in reconnecting with their Italian Heritage or because they have very specific ideas or they seem to think that they know what Italian Witchcraft is, which is something they find fascinating since you know you know even for Italians it’s pretty difficult to figure out. It is a process that is still ongoing. But again, we will talk about that on your channel. But yeah, I think my interest is – what do you think is Italian-Americans’ perception of Italian Witchcraft? Do you think you know if in case there are some main traditions or some main ideas that Italian Americans have regarding what Italian Witchcraft is? I know about Stregheria and Grimassi, and I have a video on that, and some people know what my take and the take of other scholars is because I never present my, you know, only my take but what the research says. But other than that, you can also include that, what are the main ideas that Italian Americans have when it comes to Italian Witchcraft. What do they think Italian Witchcraft is?

FC: So, I’m going to split this into three groups. Some people believe that the Grimassi tradition is accurate and is what Italian Witchcraft is like. It doesn’t necessarily look like now, but it looked like ages ago when Grimassi and the Grimassi tradition were reviving it. There are people like me, who I think are reconstructing and reconnecting with Italian heritage and are paying attention to the full Catholic elements of it, the synchronisation of it as well as the kind of healing aspects of it and using papers like yours and papers like Sabina Magliocco, anthropology papers to reconnect and look at tradition and then taking that tradition and reconstructing it within a contemporary like modern way. And then I think there are plenty of people who do not consider what they do Witchcraft whatsoever, that were raised in Italian Folk Magic by way of grandparents, by way of mothers, by way of great grandparents that they just are continuing to pass the tradition down and they consider themselves good Catholic Italian-Americans. Within that kind of sphere, I know of a few people raised in this tradition and then started moving towards Witchcraft as a term and Witchcraft as an idea. But I think some people are not on the internet, who will never see this video, doing Italian American Folk Magick every day, and never thinking of it as Witchcraft. And they just know this is what their Grandma did in the old country; they just know this is what my Great-Grandma taught me, and she is Italian, so this is Italian Folk Magic. And so, within those three pockets, we have one that’s completely historically inaccurate: Grimassi. Then we have two that are doing their best with the information that is given to them, either passed down orally or the information that is available through other Italian-American Folk practitioners, through the community, as well as through research, to kind of take what they can and bring it back into their lives.

AP: That seems to be a very good way of explaining the different perceptions. So, apart from Grimassi, do you think there is any other person or any other – I don’t want to use the word guru? Why is that the word that is coming to mind, you know, any other person that claims to know what Italian Witchcraft is, a book that has been particularly influential or any other tradition apart from the other two classifications that you’ve given me that are more based, as you said, on heritage and research both a personal and research on papers?

FC: That’s a good question, none come to the top, like off the top of my head we have of course kind of Charles Leland who wrote the Aradia and he very much influenced Grimassi’s work. So Leland is another one, that the Aradia is very popular, it’s become folkloric in origin. Meaning like, people have started centring religions, beliefs, and practices around it, giving a certain element of… I mean my friend who is a folklorist always says, with Folklore it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it just matters if people believe in it. And since people believe in the Aradia it’s become a folkloric text even though its historical accuracy of it is highly debated. He’s just… you’re shaking your head…

AP: Yes, because by debate, we can say quite openly that there is no historical evidence of what Leland said because there are no reports. If you look at the Italian Ethnography of the time or around that time, there is nothing that resembles, in any way, what Leland said. So either he actually met Maddalena, and it was a personal experience and a personal tradition that had nothing to do with Italian Witchcraft, or it just made it up. So, if we want to be very generous towards him, it could be that what he says happened. But it is still not, it doesn’t reflect what was happening in Italy at the time because there is no other ethnographic report or historical evidence that anything of that sort was happening. And that was in Tuscany, that he was…

FC: Yeah, so within that, I know of people who say that their grandma taught them the Witchcraft that came from the Aradia and that it was within the family, and I’m like, okay, cool. I’m not here to debate what your family does. I am, however, going to start telling people that Leland is historically inaccurate because I have been saying ‘highly debated’ for so long. I’m very happy that I can say it is historically inaccurate now. But within that, Grimassi is the big one. So much so that I had a conversation with another friend, another content creator, an American Witch who is Irish American because I said to this person someone asked me for resources on Stregheria. I said that’s not what I study; I’m not going to be able to provide you with a lot in that area, and my friend was like, wait, I’m confused; I thought Stregheria was the term for Italian Witchcraft. I go, okay, hold on, and I rattle off, this is what Stregheria is; it’s been used for ages, but it’s not historically accurate.

No one in Italy uses it. Italian-American Folk practitioners, for the most part, don’t use it. They would use terms like Stregoneria or Benedicaria, and Benedicaria is a newer term coined by Agostino Taumaturgo to describe the Folk Catholic practices of Italian American and Italian Folk Magick. But I had to explain this to someone because in the past, however long it’s been since Grimassi published “Italian Witchcraft,” most people within the Witchcraft community have just seen Stregheria and immediately said that it is Italian Witchcraft. And that’s the damage Grimassi had done because when I first started looking into what my family did, I read “Italian Witchcraft” by Grimassi. My Mom looked at it and said, “Your grandma, this is not us. We never did anything like this. It is not like anything like this. I picked up another book called “Italian Folk Magic” by Mary-Grace Fahrun; I read it, I read things out to my mother, and my Mom goes, yeah, I remember your grandma doing that, I remember my grandma doing this, I remember all of these things, that this seems more accurate to what our family did. So even within the Italian-American sphere and the reconstructionist sphere, if you’re looking at what your family did and what was carried over with immigration, you won’t find anything resembling Grimassi. And if someone who is Italian-American…

AP: How shocking. I’m sorry.

FC: It was okay. If someone wants to go into the Grimassi tradition as a new tradition, as an Italian-American, that is their prerogative; that is their choice. I understand that because it’s more Pagan and packaged as more Pagan, more Neopagan, I will say, than what we see, which is Folk Catholicism blended with kind of older beliefs and older healing methods, then that’s their choice. I won’t stop them from doing that, but it will never be Italian Folk Magick or Italian-American Folk Magic.

AP: Yeah, that makes sense, which I also mentioned on other occasions on my channel. As you said, there is a difference when you mentioned your friend who’s a Folklorist, and he said that in Folklore, it doesn’t matter if something is historically accurate; what matters is that people do that.

FC: Yeah.

AP: And that is a different perspective on specific phenomena, on a specific religious phenomenon. So, the problem, as an academic, I’m concerned with is the accuracy of knowledge.

FC: Yes.

So the problem is not that there are people that practice Stregheria and find meaning and purpose, and it enriches their lives; the problem comes for me, as an academic, when there is a claim, as Grimassi did because I mentioned this before on my channel. But I participated; I was present when he was arguing with actual Italians who can speak Italian and were born and raised in Italy, and he was arguing what Italian Witchcraft was. And that he was claiming that his tradition was authentic Italian Witchcraft. So, in that case, for me as a scholar, there’s a problem of inaccuracy. So, one thing is to say I follow this tradition called Stregheria, a term that doesn’t exist in Italian. I follow this tradition; it enriches my life; it makes me feel in connection with the spirits, the spiritual world, nature, whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve with your religious and spiritual practice, that is one thing. The other thing is that I’m practising this tradition, ‘authentic Italian Witchcraft.’ So these two are very different statements and are very different ways of, you know, talking about what it is that you’re doing. 

So, in a way, the concept of Unverified Personal Gnosis is, perhaps, helpful in that sense, you know, when people want to say, I had this experience; it was extremely important to me. However, I have no idea, nor have I even confirmed the fact that it’s not historically accurate. So I’d say that an Anthropologist or Folklorist wouldn’t debate the validity of someone’s spiritual religious experience, absolutely not. The problem is the accuracy when there is a claim associated with that experience that goes beyond the personal experience and enters the realm of culture, history, and the religious development of a specific tradition. In that case, a scholar would say there is no evidence of that. So that’s the issue, but I always say since, as an Anthropologist, I get my hands dirty, I participate in rituals, and I stay with practitioners, I know how important things, you know, practices are to people. So, I would never try to insult or denigrate anyone’s experience. So that’s why I always premise I have nothing against people that find any spiritual-religious benefit from practising Stregheria; it is just that, as a scholar who has studied Italian Witchcraft, I can confirm that, you know, there is no evidence or grounds to say that that is the authentic Italian Witchcraft – it is a new religious movement. Yeah, so that’s the matter. But I always want to empathise with practitioners; that’s my point.

FC: I do agree with you, too. The issue is when someone says this is authentic Italian Witchcraft and it’s not historically accurate. I think Grimassi’s saying has caused the ripple effect of everyone thinking that Stregheria is historically accurate, or at least is what Italian Witches do. And that’s my, kind of, problem as well – as within, kind of, my reconnection and bringing back certain traditions into my life that my great grandparents did, that my grandma did and seeing someone still read Grimassi’s work, it’s difficult for me and reading Grimassi as you said, is not a big deal if that’s the Personal Gnosis is that it enriches their life. However, for someone to say that Grimassi is still historically accurate is a problem in and of itself.

AP: Yeah, also, I know that you touched on it a bit earlier, but I was wondering, what methodology do you use to inform and construct your practice? Do you base it on sources, your direct experience, or a mix? Do you give more importance to one as opposed to the other? I’m curious how you inform your practice as a Practitioner of Italian-American Folk Witchcraft.

FC: c I would say it’s a mix of both, although I tend to rely more heavily on sources. I tend to read a lot of academic journals because there aren’t many non-academic books published on Italian Folk Magick, which I’m okay with. I like reading academic sources. But I tend to do much more research than I like; I’m vibing with this, which is correct. I think I’ve had a couple of experiences where we’ll say, like, call it intuition, intuition told me to do a particular spell when I was doing workings with my ancestors, and I later got confirmation that that spell is present in certain families of Italian Folk Magick because my friend who is Italian Canadian was like, we have almost the same spell in our family with this stuff. So that’s kind of where my direct experiences happen. Sometimes, I do things out of intuition, and later, I will get confirmation that that is something that is done or was done in Italian Folk Magic or maybe is present in Italian-American or Italian-Canadian Folk Magick. I tend not to have as many of those experiences as my platform thinks. I’m very logical and research-driven, and that’s how I love learning. I don’t necessarily want to do something from my intuition and then discover it’s me. No, it’s not at all historically accurate or gets wrong information, historically inaccurate information. I think being friends with a Folklorist and people who are driven by reconstructing old traditions has influenced how I interact with reconnection. I try to find things with historical backing or traditions that existed at one point, either close to or in the region my ancestors were from, and I work based on that to reconstruct. I will never be able to be 100% an Italian folk practitioner because I am not just Italian; I’m also American. And even then, it’s going to take years for me to be fully within a practice that feels like it’s, you know, natural and completely reconnected and working within the basis and understanding of both the traditions of Italian folk magic that my great-grandmother did and my current practice.

AP: Yeah, thank you, that was a very exhaustive answer. And why is it important for you to reconnect with your Italian Heritage since you were born and raised in the US?

FC: I think it’s important to me. I’ll work on why it’s important to me and why I think it’s general. I think it’s important to me because there’s always… I mean, everyone wants that sense of belonging somewhere and working within a framework of reconnecting to something that has been lost or that existed in my family at some point and over generations was forgotten about is important to me; I say it’s important in general because when we look at America, as a whole, American culture is white supremacy for the most part. As people assimilate into America, they shed their culture, language, and heritage to fit in as Americans and the American dream. And I think part of de-settling or decolonizing is reconnecting with what has been lost and moving past the American culture that focuses on whiteness and able-bodiedness and thinness and heteronormativity and moving into something older that was lost through assimilation or immigration.

AP: And is this also what drives you personally?

FC: That’s a really good question. I think a lot of things drive me personally. Mostly love for coffee. But yeah, I think that I’m a very morally bound person. I hold my morals and my ethics very close to my practice, which is not what every Witch does, that is not every Practitioner and there are lots of practitioners who have completely different sets of morals and ethics than I do. And I think because of the current climate in America and the way that our country is behaving and the way we are heading with the exhaustive list of people of colour who are, you know, being killed every single day or disappearing. It is impossible for me to exist in a place of privilege with a platform and not be very driven by the want and the need for everyone to receive, to not be existing in, like a hellscape. And I think that’s, you know, the by-product of being raised by like, parents who were more liberal-leaning, who told me I could believe whatever I want and has continued to be the by-product of existing on the internet and seeing all of the things that have happened in the past two years that are horrible in America and it’s hard for me to not focus on that as part of my practice and as part of my existence as a person on TikTok or on YouTube.

AP: Yeah, I appreciate that kind of sentiment; it resonates with me. So I agree, and I think that I’m something that I noticed when I try to look at… because this is something that I think is very specific to America and perhaps also Canada, but now I’m thinking about the US and how there is… I hear so many Americans that say, oh, I’m Italian, or I’m German, or I’m something else, and what I noticed is just anecdotal. It’s not like I’ve researched it, but I noticed that nobody says I’m English, for instance. So sometimes my thought is it possibly connected to the fact that they want to distance themselves from the settlers, you know, the people that have colonised the country, and so they’re trying to set themselves apart and say I’m not one of those. Still, I am one of those migrants who arrived afterwards. So that was one of the thoughts that came to my mind just because I never really hear people, you know, Americans say I’m English because they have; I’m sure that many will have an English heritage. But it’s not something you hear, or maybe it’s just my perception because I don’t live in the US. Can you tell me whether I’m wrong?

FC: I think you’re correct. I don’t know if it’s so much… that there is an element I think of distancing from settlers, distancing from whiteness because of, you know, we can get into like I could recommend so many books that talk about racial dynamics in the US and white guilt and white fragility. I also think part of it is that many English migrants came over so long ago that it is so diluted that there’s… I mean, there’s part of my part of me that’s English; there is part of me way back when that was English.

AP: That’s also interesting. I mean, why, for instance, do you connect with the Italian Heritage and not the English one?

FC: Great question. It’s because the most recently immigrated part of my family was Italian. I was raised with certain Italian-American customs and certain Italian-American superstitions and beliefs. In contrast, my English heritage is so far back that anything that came over is gone. And I’m talking about the first colonisers of the US who came over, like the English heritage. The other part of it is Hungarian and Austrian. Austrian Hungarian is my grandfather’s heritage, but at the same time, that culture was further back, and I didn’t have anything of it growing up; I didn’t have my grandma making Austrian-Hungarian food because the immigration of my Italian family so close like, I think one, two or three generations back versus Austrian Hungarian is about six, five, six back, it’s further back. I feel more connected to my Italian-American side because I’m closer to it. I grew up with elements of it, and with fragments, I don’t have the other parts I am, supposedly. This is why I’m not going to go around saying I’m Austrian-Hungarian because I got absolutely nothing; I have no remnants of culture, I have no language, I had none of the customs or anything come down. None of it was transferred, whereas I was raised attending the Feast of The Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. I know some elements of Italian-American culture I grew up with.

AP: cc

FC: It was wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah and all of you guys watching this video, go over to Frankie’s Channel I will put a link somewhere here so that you can also watch the interview where I’m the one who’s getting interviewed on Italian Witchcraft, so hope you watch that one as well. And thank you for sticking up until the end, watching this video.

FC: Sounds great, bye.

AP: I hope you enjoyed this interview and if you did enjoy this interview and my other content on the academic study of all things esoteric, please consider supporting my work with the one-off PayPal donation, by joining memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon where you will get access to our Discord server, monthly lectures and lots of other perks depending on your chosen tier. Also please, if you like this video, don’t forget to SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bell so you will never miss a new upload from me and share the video with your friends and leave me a comment, I really want to know what you thought about this conversation and as always, stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.

Bye for now.

WATCH DR PUCA BEING INTERVIEWED ON FRANKIE’S CHANNEL https://youtu.be/rSs4Mr8lxa0

FRANKIE’S BOOK https://amzn.to/3eXxMGh

Uploaded 20 Sep 2020