What is the genuine Italian witchcraft tradition? I have to answer there are lots of them but Stregheria is not one of them. Stregheria is a Wiccan-based American-Italian religion. As such it is valid and brings meaning to many practitioners but it has nothing to do with witchcraft in Italy present or past. Italian practice, up to the current day, has been largely hidden and varied by town and village. Only recently a new generation of traditional healers arisen who are initiating each other online and I have systematised the merged practices as Segnature in my PhD dissertation. And yes, there is a peer-reviewed book coming out.

Summary

As a scholar specialising in Italian Witchcraft, I am often asked about Stregheria, Aradia, Grimassi, and Leland. Some assume Stregheria or Strega denote Italian folk magic, while others wonder whether this is indeed Italian magic.

And…sighs… the time has come for me to answer these questions.
Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer, and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, Italian Witchcraft, and all things occult.
If you have followed my work for any length of time, you’ll probably know that I extensively researched Italian Witchcraft for my doctorate. So much so that I systematised the Italian vernacular-magic tradition under the label ‘The tradition of Segnature’, published my study in peer-reviewed journals and gave lectures, talks and research seminars on the topic at different universities, the latest being Stockholm University and University College Cork.

So, why has it taken me so long to cover Stregheria on my platform of public dissemination on social media? The short answer is that I feared this video would be disappointing to many of you and I, therefore, wanted to find the best way to address the matter in the most respectful way possible.

If you are a practitioner of Stregheria and it has added value and meaning to your life or indeed has helped you reconnect with your Italian heritage, please don’t take what I’m going to say as something undermining your religious or spiritual experience. As a scholar, I’m concerned with accurate knowledge based on historical evidence, ethnographic reports and anthropological data but I don’t intend to police nor do I judge the processes of meaning-making on the part of believers.

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s go into the topic.

Let’s put it out there and upfront: Stregheria has very, very little, NOTHING to do with Italian folk Witchcraft. If you watched my video on the latter, you would have noticed that you find barely any of the elements and traits distinctive of the Tradition of Segnature in Stregheria.

‘Stregheria is an Italian-American tradition based as a whole on Wicca; the works by Charles Leland and recollections of Italian traditions reimagined in a new perspective.

As Sabina Magliocco explains, Stregheria was helpful to Italian Americans, who had a distinctive cultural identity often scorned in the past as ignorant and backward.

‘Stregheria – in Magliocco’s words – represents a reclamation and a re-valuation of the spiritual traditions that were disdained by the dominant culture in the past. It provides a way for Italian Americans to reconnect with the spiritual practices of their grandparents and great-grandparents. When these traditions of religious ecstasy and vernacular healing have been lost or forgotten, Stregheria provides new traditions to replace them and a new framework in which to understand them. Instead of being evidence of ignorance, they become links to a complex system of occult philosophy and ancient learning; rather than being irrational superstitions, they are then regarded as a form of peasant resistance.’ (Magliocco, 2006)

Stregheria –a term that doesn’t exist in Italian – also referred to as Strega – the Italian term for female Witch – is a neopagan tradition that emerged in the United States in the 20th Century. Like other forms of contemporary Paganism, the Streghe – a term used to denote its followers – sees nature as sacred, the divine as immanent in the natural world, and its cycles as metaphors for spiritual progress. It also shares the premise that Witchcraft is a pre-Christian religion that survived in the folklore of European peasants, based on the natural seasonal cycles and the worship of the Goddess.

The structure of Stregheria is similar to Wicca and other Wiccan-based traditions. You find here that practitioners work in small groups led by a priestess and a priest, the divine is seen in its female and male forms, working with deities has the meaning of attaining ecstatic union and celebrations occur on full moons, solstices, equinoxes and their mid-points.

The roots of Stregheria are entangled with those of Wicca, not only in the religious beliefs and structure but also in a key text that was influential and foundational to both traditions. That is “Aradia”, or the “Gospel of the Witches”, authored by Charles G. Leland (1889). This work is a collection of spells and legends that Leland claimed to have learned from a Florentine fortune-teller called Maddalena, who he portrayed as belonging to a family practising a Pagan religion centred around the worship of a Moon Goddess called Diana and her brother/lover Lucifer, the ‘bearer of light’. They have a daughter called Aradia, who instructs the peasants to resist the tyranny of their oppressors through sorcery. Also, Diana bestows teachings to the Witches through her daughter, including gathering in the woods when the moon is full and holding a Witches’ supper of moon-shaped cakes made of meal, salt and honey. On these occasions, they feast, sing, and dance naked in the name of Diana as a sign of freedom from the restrictions of social class.

According to Leland’s theory, the 19th-century Italian Witches kept practising a form of paganism that he called la Vecchia Religione – Italian for the old religion. Leland’s work has been controversial since its publication, and given that Italian ethnologists have never documented anything of what he recounts, it was widely believed to be fabricated. That said, his work has still been significantly influential in the birth of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft and Wicca, more specifically, with the adoption of full moon meetings, the goddess name of Aradia, the practice of naked worship, adopted by Gardnerian and other British Traditional Craft; and the Charge of the Goddess, later rewritten by Doreen Valiente.

For Italian American Pagans, what was of particular significance was the location of this tradition in the heart of Italy and the inclusion of practices from the Italian folk magic traditions that they could relate to what their relatives might have practised.

One of the first to identify as an Italian-American Witch was Leo Louis Martello (1932? – 2000) who, along with Lori Bruno, founded the earliest known Italian-American coven in the United States: the Trinacrian Rose Coven of New York City. In this group, Wiccan traditions are given an Italian flavour through the use of Mediterranean deities and Sabbath names.

Yet, the founder of what we today know as Stregheria is Raven Grimassi. Raven Grimassi, a pen name, was born in the United States to an American father and an Italian mother from Campania, outside of Naples. It appears she belonged to a family, like many Neapolitan families, who removed the evil eye, made medicinal liquors and oils and practised divination.

However, these are not foundational elements in Grimassi’s Stregheria as he constructed it more to resemble Wicca with an Italian flavour given through the names of deities, Sabbaths, and spirits.

As Magliocco explains, Stregheria is allegedly based on the teachings of Aradia, who, according to Grimassi’s expansion of Leland’s legend, was born in Volterra, Italy, sometime during the 13th century. A family of Witches raised her and began to spread her gospel of peasant resistance through the practice of the Old Religion. He presents Italian Witchcraft as divided into three clans: the Fanarra of northern Italy and the Janarra and Tanarra of central Italy. Interestingly, no mention is made of southern Italy, even though most Italian Americans, including Grimassi’s mother, are from the South.
Grimassi claims that this tripartite structure results from the travels of Aradia’s twelve disciples, who, after her departure, dispersed into groups to spread her teachings through Italy. Each tradition is directed by a leader known as a Grimas. Similarly to the names of the three Strega clans, “Grimas” does not occur in Italian or any of its dialects.

To conclude, as you can see, the tradition of Stregheria is not at all representative of Witchcraft, folk magic, vernacular healing or the cunning tradition in Italy. Up until recently, before my doctoral research, it was not even considered a uniform tradition across the country and I systematised it in my research due to its most recent developments and the emergence of a shared label across the different regions due to the increasing use of social media on the part of practitioners (Magliocco, 2009a; Magliocco, 2009b; Puca, 2019).(Puca, 2020a; Puca, 2020b)

I truly hope this video did not offend the religious sensibilities of anyone. I do reiterate my respect towards what provides value and meaning in your life as well as a sense of belonging to your roots and heritage and I sincerely wish for my contribution to be of help, however, you wish to take it.

And what are your thoughts on the matter? Are you an Italian Witch or do you have Italian heritage? Please, share with me your thoughts, experiences and ideas in the comments. I’d love to know what you think about the matter.

This is it for today’s video.

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Bye for now.

REFERENCES
Magliocco, S. 2009a. In search of the roots of Stregheria: Preliminary Observations on the History of a Reclaimed Tradition In: L. Del Giudice, ed. Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans. Springer.

Magliocco, S. 2006. Italian American Stregheria and Wicca: Ethnic Ambivalence in American Neopaganism In: M. Strmiska, ed. Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, pp.55–86.

Magliocco, S. 2009b. Italian Cunning Craft: Some Preliminary Observations. Journal of the Academic Study of Magic. (5), pp.103–133.

Puca, A. 2020a. Indigenous and trans-cultural Shamanism in Italy.[Online] Ph.D., University of Leeds. [Accessed 26 February 2022]. Available from: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/28331/.

Puca, A. 2020b. The Impact of Social Media on Italian Shamanism and Folk Magic. Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR). 22, pp.55–70.

Puca, A. 2019. The Tradition of Segnature: Underground Indigenous Practices in Italy. The Journal of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions. (7), pp.104–123.

First uploaded 28 Feb 2022