Frankie Castanea FC: Hi, witchlings. Welcome back to my channel. It is me, your local Chaotic Witch Aunt, and today we have a very special guest with us, Dr Puca, please introduce yourself.

Dr Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca. I’m a PhD and religious studies scholar, and I also have a YouTube channel called Angela’s Symposium where I discuss and address the academic study of Witchcraft, Esotericism, Paganism, and all things occult.

FC: I have been a fan of Dr Angela Puca for a very long time. So I’m very excited that I finally get to interview her for my channel.

AP: Very excited to be here.

FC: To kind of start us off, can you talk a little about your academic background? Can you share any papers you have written or what specifically you have studied?

AP: Yes. So I did my undergrad and my masters in Italy because if you couldn’t tell by my accent, I’m Italian and my bachelors and my masters were in Philosophy, even though I always had – it’s difficult because in Italy don’t have, there are very few exceptions in more recent years, but usually you don’t have religious studies. So when you’re interested in the study of religion, you will take Philosophy and then you will add in your program some exams that pertain to the History of Religion or religions of specific places. So my degrees are in Philosophy with we could say, second major in English, they were geared towards the study of religions. And I also studied Buddhism and learned Sanskrit and Tibetan for a few years because originally, at first, I wanted to become a Buddhologist and focus on those texts, but my main interest has always been Magick and how Magick feeds religious practices.

So even when I was studying Buddhism, I was still studying the Magic practices in Buddhism, and more specifically, in Tibetan Buddhism. And you have texts that are both in Sanskrit and Tibetan, in that case. Then after, when I was reaching the end of my master’s degree, in Italy, both the bachelors and the masters are longer than in the UK and probably even in the US. And by the end of it, I realised that it was possible to study Magick and Witchcraft in the contemporary world. And in Italy, that is something that you would not be exposed to because the studies on the contemporary world are either non-existent or are in their infancy. It is something that is just starting to develop. But I came across a YouTube video. So see YouTube is really important, even for academics or future academics. I came across a talk by Dr Jenny Butler. She and I are now friends, which is amazing, years after that epiphany happened.

And I saw that she was giving a talk on her PhD and her PhD was on pagan Witchcraft in Ireland because she’s Irish and she still works at University College, Cork. And there was an epiphany for me because up until that point, I thought that the only way to study Magick and Witchcraft from an academic point of view was to study historical traditions. And I was interested in the Indian and Tibetan traditions because they had some resemblances with other things that I thought were fascinating. So then I decided well, if it is possible to study academically Witchcraft in the contemporary world, then I definitely want to do that, but I couldn’t find the chance to do that in Italy, of course, for a number of reasons.

Then I applied for two PhD programs in the UK and I was accepted in both cases I decided to come to Leeds because I was also offered a teaching contract. And so I thought, well, that’s great. I can start teaching at university and do my PhD at the same time. And I also have another postgraduate certificate that allows me to teach in higher education, which means university here in the UK.

Then I did my PhD on Italian Witchcraft and Italian Shamanism. So the title of my PhD is Indigenous and Transcultural Shamanism in Italy. But my PhD is a lot about Italian Witchcraft, so I have to change the title when it becomes a book because I’m working on the book version now, which will be published with Brill, but it’s gonna take… but I’m still undecided on the title yet because it is accurate, the title that I chose for my PhD, if you don’t know what my research is about, you may be confused because as I said, it is a lot about Italian Witchcraft, but I make an argument which lasts chapters and many pages as to why the vernacular healing tradition in Italy that I systematized and I was the first academic, first researcher ever to systematize all the different regional variations in Italy under the name the tradition of Segnature. And that is the name that I gave and it was peer-reviewed and it’s been published.

There’s an article that is free to access on the tradition of Segnature. That is the name that I gave to the Italian folk Witchcraft, basically. And then I go on to argue that that can be considered the indigenous Italian Shamanism. And of course, it is based on a very specific conceptualization of indigenous. I also have a video on my channel where I explain that indigenous religions and indigenous people are two different categories. It is important to keep them separate for both political and academic reasons, and also what is Shamanism, how can we define Shamanism? That was my PhD. And now I’m still working on that. And yes, I have published on the tradition of Segnature. There are a few papers that people can find, most of them are free, and when they aren’t free, I still post them on academia.edu. So if you go on my academia.edu page, you will find the pre-prints in a PDF format because lots of people don’t know that academics don’t earn anything from publications. And we are allowed to post the pre-print because we still have ownership of the intellectual material. You can find lots of papers on academia.edu, even though not all of them actually got published, but maybe it’s important to verify that they got published, but you will find lots of things on academia.edu if you’re interested in academic papers.

FC: I love academia.edu and I will be linking Dr Puca’s articles below. But today we are just, I’m gonna be asking Dr Puca some questions about Italian folk Magick, about Italian Witchcraft, about what she studied for her PhD.

To start off, I do wanna ask if you feel like Italian folk Magick is misrepresented in the media or even in the idea of it in America.

AP: Yes. The short answer is yes. I think it is misrepresented in many ways. I think the first way it is misrepresented is because it has been seen as a unitarian tradition, even though you could argue that it’s been unified by my research because up until – prior to my research, no scholar has ever conceded Italian Witchcraft as a unitarian religious or spiritual phenomenon. And it’s not because I was a genius or I was brilliant, but it is because, in more recent years, this uniformity emerged. So there’s a good reason as to why, in the past, scholars didn’t see that or didn’t study that as a unitarian tradition as Italian Witchcraft or the Italian Witchcraft, but more as the folk practices of the region Campania or the region Puglia or Calabria, especially the south. The south has been studied more than the north, for instance. Ernesto de Martino is quite famous in Italy and he studied in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, especially Witchcraft in the south. And of course, it’s been quite a few years, so things have changed now, but that is good reading for those who are interested.

So I think the first misrepresentation is the idea there is an Italian Witchcraft. And I think that only in recent years and thanks to social media and the fact that people started to create a community online and realize that, oh, really, this is something that is not just happening in my town, is it happening in your town too? Really? That is one of the very common, I get lots of emails after I publish my research both in an Italian peer-reviewed journal and in English and I have a video on my YouTube channel. I get a lot of emails from Italians who ask me, thank you so much because I thought that my town was the odd one that had the healer that would cure the, heal the sprains, or herpes, and we have specific mythic names for those things as well like you have St. Anthony’s Fire or so they are kind of embedded, these illnesses are way embedded into myth even in the way they are named and called. So and even now you have lots of Italians that have been exposed in one way or another to Italian folk Witchcraft, but they have no idea that this is going on all across the country. They just think, oh yeah, it’s just a thing that happens in my town. When you have something, they put oil and they make symbols on the affected part. But people don’t know that there is, because it’s kind of underground and secretive, but at the same time, everybody knows about it. Every time that I talk with an Italian about my research, every single time, either they have had a direct experience with a Segnature or a Segnatrici, which is the Italian term for these folk Healers, or they know somebody who has gone to one of those Healers or Witches.

So it was very evident even when I was doing my research or talking about my research in Italy, that everybody said, oh yeah, yeah, there was this person in my town. If you want, I can give you the number or the contact. So it’s like it’s a fake secret. We have an expression in Italian, but there isn’t an equivalent in English, to say a fake secret. It’s something that people pretend is a secret, but actually, everybody knows about it. It’s just that people don’t talk openly about it unless there is a reason to do that.

So I think the first misrepresentation is the idea that Italian Witchcraft was something unitarian, there was something called Italian Witchcraft. And I think that that kind of uniformity is being created in recent years. And perhaps my research will also help with that because we have even evidence in scholarship that academic research and anthropological research affects how practitioners think about their practices. So it is very possible that my research will affect that as well. But I think that social media was very important in that sense so that people could actually realize that what they had experienced in their small town was not just something that happened there, but it was happening all across the country.

Another misrepresentation is that I think that Italian-Americans have a perception of Italy that tends to be more linked to the south of Italy, first of all, because most of the immigrants that migrated to the US were from the south. And also it is based on how Italy and how Italians were and lived many years ago, like almost a century ago, in some cases, a century ago. So there is an element of re-imagination that comes into place because if you have limited information, and it’s not people’s fault, I’m just trying to reconstruct what might happen, if you have limited information and you are trying to fill the gaps, there is an element of reconstruction, of re-imagination, of what the Italian culture or the specific tradition was. And that’s understandable.

Another misrepresentation I think is when you have traditions that are an outright inaccurate representation of Italian Witchcraft, like Grimassi’s Stregheria. And again, I have a specific video on my YouTube channel on Stregheria where I show the research, the anthropological historical research, that has been done on Stregheria. And even though I have nothing against people that find value and meaning in practising Stregheria, as a scholar who is concerned with the accuracy of information and knowledge, I have to say that there is no evidence whatsoever that Stregheria is Italian Witchcraft. It is very clearly a Wiccan-inspired movement. It was created by Grimassi with an Italian flavour, but Stregheria is not even an Italian term. It doesn’t exist in Italian.

FC: Like chicken Parmesan. That’s what it reminds me of.

AP: I wanna try it now because I’ve never had it in Italy, of course, but.

FC: I think it was inspired by Italian immigrants not having a lot of access to certain foods. So you made something like chicken, you breaded it, and then you made a sauce and you do like cheese on top and it’s not bad. It’s not awful. It is very good. It fills you up very well and I think that’s the point. But yeah, off-topic, chicken Parmesan. In terms of Italian folk Magick or Italian Witchcraft, do you feel like there are core beliefs that influence the Italian folk Magick? I use examples like animism or the idea that land has a spirit or respect for the land or certain beliefs that structure the folk Magick in Italy in multiple regions.

AP: That’s a good question. So some core beliefs or core practice, core beliefs.

FC: Either, core beliefs or core practices.

AP: I will start from the practice because I think that’s the unitarian, the kind of core element that I found across regions. And that’s why I called it the tradition of Segnature because the core practice is the practice of the Segnature and the Segnature in Italian, that’s the Italian term, it means a mixture of symbols drawn by hand and words that are spoken, but they are spoken in a specific way. They are not uttered. So the person that you’re trying to heal or affect, they should not be able to listen to the words. So they are pronounced inwards. And a few of them also taught me how to do it. And you sound really weird when you do that. But the aim is to say the words, but not outwards, but inwards. And that is the core practice. Although there are other practices. In terms of core beliefs, I think that one core element is being in service of the community. That is something that I found, especially for the old tradition of Segnature.

So Segnature or Segnatrici is male and female, are the practitioners. I would call them just Witches or Healers for simplicity because I understand that people might not know Italian. So something that a lot of those Witches or Healers, especially those of the old tradition, and I distinguish between the old tradition of Segnature and the new tradition, because the old tradition tends to be more secretive, more Catholic, and they don’t want to share the practice. In the new tradition of Segnature, they tend to be more open to sharing the practice. They are more open to initiating people outside of the bloodline. They are not as linked to the tradition that was passed down from their grandparents, more often. The most common thing was that it was passed down from a grandparent, especially the grandmother.

And so the new tradition of Segnature tends to be a bit more, and they also sympathize more with Paganism, for instance, because as opposed to Catholicism. Whereas, the old tradition of Witches, they would not even call themselves Witches. They would just be Catholics, good Catholics, that just happens to cast the evil eye, what’s the problem with that? No problem whatsoever. And they will also use the Trinity as part of the Segnature and as part of the ritual.

There are many rituals that I come across in my research, but I think that lots of people in this tradition, in this Italian folk Witchcraft tradition, they always say that you should never be paid for the help that you give. So it is something that is offered for free as a service to the community. There was this healer from Sicily. She was well known. She passed away, she’s passed away. But she has a decent following of people that are really grateful towards her, either because she initiated them or because she was really helpful towards people. And one thing that she said was that we do this because we serve the community. We need to serve the community. And she wouldn’t even accept offers of food because in some cases, in I’d say 99% of the cases, they would not accept money for the kind of healing or Witchcraft that they do.

Some would accept an offering, a free offering on the part of the person that goes to them. And others would not even accept an offering. For instance, this Sicilian healer, when somebody would bring her an offering, she would just leave it there and then bring it to the nearest church. And also she claimed to have a spirit that would talk to her and give her the intuition as to what she had to do. So one thing that she finds is that many of these practitioners have a special connection to the saints.

However, the way they conceptualize the saints in their practice is very similar to what happens in Shamanism, hence the connection. There are many reasons as to why there’s a connection there between Shamanism and Italian Witchcraft, but they interact with the saints as if they were spirits like Shamans would do with spirits when they try to connect and get a light spirit so that they can heal somebody or gather knowledge and power. That is something that happens very similarly with Italian Witches or Italian Healers, that they have a special connection with saints or even with the Holy Mary or with the Trinity. And they gather power and knowledge through them. And it is an interaction that is very similar to how Shamans interact with the spirits. And in terms of the respect for the land, it’s not something that I saw as particularly prevalent, but there is the element of the alteration of the weather. So I have come across practitioners that would alter the weather, for instance, calm down the sea so that the sailors could basically arrive. I don’t know the technical terms, but to calm down the water so that it would be easier for sailors to get to the earth part of the land.

There is also another ritual that I came across in my research that is very similar to a soul retrieval that you find in Shamanism, but it was called the herb of fear. So it was removing the fear or the fright. And I know that this also happens in other folk European practices because one thing that I notice since I travelled and I go to conferences basically across the world, but especially in Europe, because it is where I am, and I notice that every time that I give a paper on Italian folk Magick, there are other scholars who study folk Witchcraft in other European countries that after my talk, after my conference, they come to me and they say, oh, I’m studying folk Witchcraft in this country and they do kind of the same thing. And we start to talk about it and there are many similarities.

So I think it will be amazing one day to have a large-scale research on Europe and see maybe whether there’s a common origin because from what I’ve gathered from other researchers, there are similar practices in Central and Eastern Europe. I haven’t found anything similar in Western Europe. I’ve had reports of very similar practices in Germany, Switzerland, the Republic of Moldova, and other Eastern European countries, Romania. So it makes me think, I wonder whether there is a specific origin and then it spread through Europe in one moment in time, probably over three, four hundred years ago, because I know for a fact, from my research, that those practices that I’ve studied date back at least 200 years. But since my research is anthropological and not historical, what I have is the data from informants and their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. So I can go as far back as 200 years, but not further back. But it would be interesting to see whether there has been a specific development in Central Eastern Europe and would the origin if there is an origin, or maybe it was just created in a patchy way across different countries. So I’m not sure about the historical origin, but I have definitely data from other scholars in the field that confirmed that there are similar practices in other European countries.

FC: So I wanna ask, you mentioned that within the newer Italian Witchcraft, the newer Italian folk Magick, it’s focused more on Paganism. And when I think of Paganism, I think of worship of deities from a Pantheon or worship of divine beings. When we look at Paganism in the newer Italian Witchcraft, is there a specific God, deity, or Pantheon that is primarily worshipped? Or would you say it is kind of spread out?

AP: So what I mean by the syncretism with Paganism is that, for instance, the initiation traditionally happens on Christmas Eve, either at midnight or between the sunset and sunrise, in some cases also the day before Easter, but in the large majority of cases, the initiation happens on Christmas Eve. So what happens with the new generation of Segnature is that they, since they are Pagans and they are trying to sort of make the practice their own and to have those practices in line with their belief system, they would do the initiation on the winter solstice.

FC: Oh, I see.

AP: So basically they are in a way altering the tradition so that it would fit better their belief system. And in terms of deities, yes, they would, instead of, for instance, employing the Trinity as part of the Segnature, as part of the practice, they would use the Triple Goddess, for instance.

FC: Interesting.

AP: I think that Wicca has been extremely influential, especially when it comes to eclectic Pagans in Italy. Probably not just in Italy, but in Italy definitely, Wicca has been extremely influential when it comes to eclectic Pagans. So you have deities that in some cases, especially for those that are just starting in Paganism, they might get connected to deities that they see associated in Wicca to the Goddess and God, like Cernunnos and I think also Diana.

But I think that another thing is that, especially in more recent years, Italian Pagans are trying to reconnect a lot, similarly to Americans. But in this case, they’re trying to reconnect with the cultural heritage that comes before the formation of Italy. So for instance, in the south, the main influence was Hellenistic, from ancient Greece and also from Egypt a little bit. And in the midlands, you have the influence of the Roman religion. And in the north, they feel more attuned to the Celtic religion. So you have that for instance, there are lots of Italian Pagans that in the south, they would try and recognise or they work with Greek gods and goddesses. And in the midlands, you will find a lot of Pagans that work with Roman gods and goddesses, even though one could argue that the Roman Gods and Goddesses that they work with are Hellenized Gods and Goddesses, because of the Hellenization of Rome, Gods and Goddesses, the Gods in Rome were seen as forces of nature. So they got anthropomorphised, they started to resemble human beings after the Hellenisation and it really depends on what the specific practitioner is doing.

So if I’m working with Hecate and my grandmother has passed down the Segnature to me, I might try and find a way to fit that with the kind of practice that I’m doing as a Pagan now. So this is something that some practitioners are doing, others, still, are keeping them parallel. So they would say, no, I’m not altering my grandmother’s tradition. I will just have this parallel. So on one hand, I will have my practice with Hecate, work with Hecate. And on the other hand, when I need to perform the Segnature, I perform it the way my grandmother taught me and the way it is supposed to be traditionally performed. So you have different ways of seeing how things should be done. I think that in the majority of cases, practitioners tend to want to stick as much as possible to the tradition unless it really affects negatively their belief system, or they feel it’s very easy in contrast with their belief system. In some cases, you also see that the two are seen as two parallel things, the Italian folk Witchcraft and the practice of the Segnature is very Catholic. And it is Catholic because one could argue it is Catholic because those practitioners were Catholic. And so others would say, well, it was Catholic because my grandmother was Catholic and in my case will become more pagan because I’m more pagan. So you have a different outlook on the matter.

FC: I think that’s so interesting because as an Italian-American folk Witch and folk practitioner, I also blend Paganism and Catholicism. I have an altar for saints, which to venerate them and for my ancestors, and I also am devoted to the goddess Diana and I worship the goddess Hades. And I find it interesting that depending on region, there are Roman or Hellenistic influences because when studying, I started off as a Pagan and worked with a lot of different deities from different pantheons. And when I moved into ancestor veneration and more looking at Italian folk Magick, I started looking at the Pantheons my ancestors would’ve worshipped.

So that parallel between what a lot of Italian-Americans are doing in keeping in line with the folk Catholicism but also including Paganism, as well as Italian folk Witches currently doing the same thing, I think is really interesting and definitely speaks to the way Witchcraft is beginning to be perceived and changed throughout the world. I also find it interesting because you mentioned the Hellenization of Rome, and that’s one of the things that I never hear anyone talk about, but I talk about a lot. I’m like, technically, they were anthropomorphised by the Hellenization, before then they were forces of nature. And Diana, we see her in the Hellenisation very much similar to Artemis, is before then was still worshipped as, from my research, this is like trying to find bits and pieces from my research, is possibly, from a couple of different Italic goddesses of the woodlands, a couple of different Italic goddesses certain types of birds. So when I worship Diana, I am worshipping her as nature, as the goddess of the forest of nature, of hunting, of all animals. Because to me that makes more sense in both the context of the Roman Hellenized and the pre-Hellenization of Diana.

I also worship Lupa, which is fully a Roman she-wolf goddess. But overall, I do find it very interesting that a lot of Italian-American practitioners I know, they mix what their grandparents taught them, the things that they have found reconnecting. So, for example, when we do malocchio cures and we have the secret prayers, they’re almost always Catholic, or I pray the rosary when I do certain spells for people. But when I pray the rosary, I am praying to St. Mary, Diana, different epithets of Diana, and different apparitions of Mary. It’s very interesting to me and very cool that there are similarities in what’s happening in the Italian-American Witchcraft sphere and also in the Italian Witchcraft sphere.

AP: If you work with Diana, something that might interest you from Italian Witchcraft is that, so another characteristic of Italian Witchcraft is that every region would have a specific name for their Witches. And in Campania, which is my home region, the name for the Witches is Ianara. And basically one of the possible etymologies of that is a follower of Diana. So Ianara, from Dianara, which would be a follower of Diana. Another etymology that has been postulated is from ianua, which means door in Latin. It’s probably more the case that it might be linked to followers of Diana. In that case, definitely, you do have the worship of Diana all over Italy, where it goes centuries and centuries back. When it comes to the Hellenization of Diana, you could say that it’s been, when you look at the history since the Hellenisation happened quite early on, you have that more of the worship of Diana has been done in an anthropomorphised form, as opposed to not.

So in some cases you also wonder, when you look at the history of a deity as a practitioner, how do you choose what aspect of the deity? Because for instance, even with Diana, we say Diana in Italian, so Diana. So even with Diana, you have that there are different Dianas across Italy. And that was something that was typical of the Roman religion. Similar to what happened later with Madonna, the Holy Mary. So you have different Madonnas. So you have, for instance, in my home region, which is Campania, as I said, when Naples, Napoli is, you have the Madonna of Pompeii and she performs very specific miracles and helps people in specific ways. And then you have the Madonna of another place and of another place, and they all have specific characteristics. And the same was for, for instance, Diana. So in Roman times, you would have different Dianas. There is a famous one, there is a pagan camp that was held in Nemi, which is near Rome.

FC: Diana Nemorensis.

AP: Yeah, Diana Nemorensis for instance. And there are other types of Diana or Diana.
So I think that it could be the case that when Catholicism took over, there was that perception of the Goddess that changes depending, that has a local element and the local element, the local characterization also influences what is that the Goddess does.

FC: Yes. The reason I almost consider Diana and Mary two sides of the same coin. I also consider a deity like Juno very similar to St. Mary or different Roman and Greek goddesses have at least some temples that were changed to saint temples or changed to St. Mary’s temples. But the similarities in goddess-worship and in Rome and Greece and Italy, and then the veneration of St. Mary is so similar that it’s incredibly hard to ignore. But in choosing the version of the Goddess that you work with, some practitioners choose a very specific epithet, which is the name for the different local goddesses. And some do call on different ones for different things. I work with ones that are less. I don’t call on say Diana Abnoba, which was Diana and Abnoba the Celtic goddess syncretised in a very specific region, or Diana Tifatina, which was Diana at Mount Tifata because I have never been there and I don’t have any connection to that. What I will call on is Diana Nemorensis and I call on her because a couple of miles or a little far away from Nemi, an apparition of Mary titled Our Lady of the Woods was found. And Diana, being a forest goddess, a goddess of the hunt, et cetera, and a couple of miles away an apparition of Mary referring to our Lady of the Woods appearing, that’s kind of Diana Nemorensis, and our Lady of the Woods to me are very similar or the same.

So that’s why I call on Diana of Nemi. And then the other ones are Diana Triformis or Diana in the triple form, Trivia, which is the earliest epithet of Diana found, which is Diana of the crossroads. And then the other one is possibly an early Latin name for Diana, possibly an early Latin name for Juno, which was Dea Cornesha or Deva Cornesha, which is Goddess, I think of something. I have information, I can, I’m gonna find it somewhere and send it to you. But it’s so little information that I can’t even be like this is for sure of, an epithet of an early Roman goddess. It could have just been writing on a wall that has to do with something else. But other than that, if I am working on opening a road, I call on St. Peter and I call on Trivia, the two crossroad spirits. If I am asking for protection, I call on Diana Nemorensis, Our Lady of the Woods, I call on Diana Triformis. Depending on the needs, I tend to call upon several epithets of Diana, because to me, they are all separate. They’re all different. They all rule over slightly different things, but they are all under the same umbrella of Diana.

AP: Yeah, I understand. That’s interesting. And for some reason, one thing that I was thinking about is the idea of the Italian Witches worshipping Diana and Lucifer. Sometimes I think maybe it’s because Leland didn’t quite know Italian or Latin because one of the epithets of Diana was Lucifera. So maybe if you hear Diana Lucifera, you think maybe it’s two entities, so maybe that’s Lucifer. This is not research-based. It’s my own speculation. I’m just trying to imagine Leland being exposed to things and sort of saying, hmm, maybe these are two entities, so maybe Italian Witches actually worship Diana and Lucifer.

FC: I did notice that too while researching Diana. I’m like, that’s really interesting that there was Diana Lucifera and someone else said Lucifer was the Goddess. And I’m like, did someone mess this up at one point?

AP: But you have lots of deities, God and Goddesses, that in Roman times were given the attribute of luciferus, which is the male, our lucifera, which is the female. It wasn’t just Diana, but definitely, Diana was one of the most popular that was given that epithet.

FC: So we already talked a little bit about how Italian folk Magick has changed from the past 30 to 50 years. I do wanna ask you if someone was interested in Italian folk Magick, either with Italian ancestors or Italian heritage, what is the best way to learn about it and what is the best and most respectful way to begin reconnecting, in your opinion, as an academic.

AP: I think that the best way to reconnect with Italia, Witchcraft would be, well, there are many ways. Unfortunately, I understand that if the person is not speaking Italian, it might be more limited in the sources they can access. So there are very few sources when it comes to the theoretical side of Italian Witchcraft. Of course, I mentioned my paper and my PhD, which will come up in a year, hopefully, and also Sabina Magliocco and Giovanna Parmigiani have written something in English about Italian Witchcraft. You find all of the sources linked in the info box of my video on Italian Witchcraft, the Tradition of Segnature, on my YouTube channel. Those are all the academic sources that are present in English when it comes to Italian Witchcraft. And there are not many. Apart from the theoretical side, I would say that you can go to Italy and get in contact with Italian Witches. That could be a good way to start, I’d say. And if you have a parent or a grandparent that is Italian and was a practitioner or is a practitioner, that’s also another good way. The way that you went about doing it, I think it’s very respectful. I think maybe it is a bit less respectful when the person… I just think about Grimassi when I think of disrespect. It’s just because.

FC: It’s so bad, he takes up so much space in the conversation and that’s why he’s an issue.

AP: I’m not trying to say that people that follow Grimassi are disrespectful. I just think that Grimassi was disrespectful. Let’s put it that way. And that is because I attended discussions where he was arguing with actual Italians. It was very presumptuous. I think that most people that have Italian heritage and want to research or practice Witchcraft generally are respectful because they want to reconnect with their heritage. So I think that starting with your family and information that you can gather within your family, looking at the papers and the research that has been done on Italian Witchcraft, and I mentioned the sources earlier, and also getting in contact with the community of Italian Witches, but again, this is a bit difficult if you don’t know Italian because even though Italians like to think that they are able to speak English, in most cases, they aren’t. And I can tell you because my Italian friends say that they cannot understand my videos because I have a British accent. And I know what they mean because, for Italians, it’s easier to understand American English than understand British English. And no British person would ever think that I have a British accent, but I know what they mean. They mean that the way I pronounce words is more condensed, which is how British English pronounces things, as opposed to Americans, like the difference between literature and literature. And that makes it more difficult for a non-native to understand. Sorry. I got sidetracked.

FC: That’s OK.

AP: It’s a bit more difficult if you don’t understand Italian. So maybe trying and learning some Italian could also be of benefit. I think that a lot of practitioners also find value in having a spiritual practice where they connect on the spiritual level perhaps with their ancestors so that they can get guidance on the spiritual realm. Maybe that could also help practitioners start into this kind of practice.

FC: We do love ancestor veneration on this channel. It’s very big, which is connecting with the people in your life who have passed on. Thank you so much for joining me today and letting me interview you. Do you have places where people can find you after this video?

AP: Yeah, people can find me. I’d say my main platform is YouTube, on Angela Symposium. Then I’m also on TikTok, Dr Angela Puca, and on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, either as Dr Angela Puca or Angela Symposium. So one or the other will work.

FC: All right. Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today. For my viewers, if you want, I will link everything, all the articles and Dr Puca’s links down below. I strongly urge you to go check them out and thank you so much for watching today. That is all I have for you guys. I always end by saying, I say sa benedica, which is supposedly what you say after you give someone a compliment. It means God bless.

FC: No, it’s supposed to be Italian.

AP: No. (laughing)

FC: Maybe it is Latin.

AP: Wait, what does it mean, may you be blessed?

FC: I believe so. Yes. That’s how you spell it.

AP: Oh, sa benedica. I think that it’s a dialect.

FC: Yeah.

AP: It sounds like either Sardinian, sounds like Sardinian dialect.

FC: I’ve been speaking Sardinian for a year without realizing, that’s crazy to me. That’s what I always say at the end of the video. But if I was going to say, be blessed, what is a better dialect than, or should I?

AP: In Italian, if you want to say, may you be blessed, it would be, I’m writing it in the chat and then saying it out loud. So it would be che tu sia benedetto if that’s a man or che tu sia benedetta, and we don’t have the they/them, unfortunately.

FC: I know I’ve heard. I’m like, I will just go with, I’ll just have people switch for me between male and female at a certain point.

AP: Yeah, this is better maybe.

FC: Use the plural.

AP: Siate benedetti.

FC: Siate benedetti.

AP: May you all be blessed.

FC: May you all be blessed. You know what? I will just start switching to that at the end of my YouTube channel, I can’t believe I’ve been speaking in Sardinian dialect for over a year.

AP: I think it was Sardinian, I’m not sure actually. It sounds Sardinian.

FC: It’s interesting. I’ll have to find the book that recorded it because it definitely was from a book that says, you say sa benedica after you compliment so you don’t send malocchio. But to viewers, we’ve all learned something new today.

Thank you so much for watching. Enjoy the rest of your day. Remember to drink water, siate benedetti.

AP: Bye, everyone. Thank you for inviting me.

Uploaded 28 Sep 2022