Aradia or the Gospel of The Witches

PREFACE

   If  the reader has ever met with the works of the learned 
folk-lorist G. Pitre, or the articles contributed by 
"Lady Vere de Vere" to the Italian Rivista or that of 
J. H. Andrews to Folk-Lore, he will be aware that there are 
in Italy great numbers of Strege, fortune-tellers or witches, 
who divine by cards, perform strange ceremonies in which 
spirits are supposed to be invoked, make and sell amulets, 
and, in fact, comport themselves generally as their reputed 
kind are wont to do, be they Black Voodoos in America or 
sorceresses anywhere.

     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 instances in which 
the ancestry remounts to mediaeval, 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
indicated, 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 and witches 
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 flavour 
when most deeply hidden. Hopiter, and Venus and Mercury, and the Lares
or ancestral spirits, and in the cities are women who prepare strange
amulets, over which they mutter spells, all known in the old Roman time,
and who can astonish even the learned by their legends of Latin gods,
mingled with lore which may be found in CATO or THEOCRITUS.  With one of
these I became intimately acquainted in 1886, and have ever since employed
her specially to collect among her sisters of the hidden spell in many
places all the traditions of the olden time known to them.  It is true 
that I have drawn from other sources, but this woman by long practice has
perfectly learned what few understand, or just what I want, and how to
extract it from those of her kind.

     Among other strange relics, she succeeded, after many years, in 
obtaining the following "Gospel", which I have in her handwriting.
A full account of its nature with many details will be found in an
Appendix.  I do not know definitely whether my informant derived a part
of these traditions from written sources or oral narration, but believe 
it was chiefly the latter.  However, there are a few wizards who copy or
preserve documents relative to their art.  I have not seen my collector
since the "Gospel" was sent to me.  I hope at some future time to be
better informed.

     For brief explanation I may say the witchcraft is known to its 
votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which DIANA 
is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodius) 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 Mysteries.

     The work could have been extended ad infinitum by adding to it the
ceremonies and incantations which actually form a part of the Scripture 
of Witchcraft, but as these are nearly all - or at least in great number -
to be found in my works entitled Etruscan-Roman Remains and Legends of
Florence, I have hesitated to compile such a volume before ascertaining
whether there is a sufficiently large number of the public who would buy
such a work.

     Since writing the foregoing I have met with and read a very clever 
and entertaining work entitled 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 occurred to the narrator that these traditions were anything but
noxious nonsense or abominably un-Christian folly.  That there exist
in them marvelous relics of ancient mythology and valuable folklore, which
is the very cor cordium of history, is as uncared for by him as it would 
be by a common Zoccolone or tramping Franciscan.  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 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 in the crater of Vesuvius after is 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 - 'tis 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 the Witches, apparently of extreme antiquity, embodying
the belief in a strange counter-religion which has held its own from 
pre-historic 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.

     I should, however, in justice to those who do care to explore dark 
and bewildering paths, explain clearly that witch-lore is hidden with most
scrupulous care from all save a very few in Italy, just as it is among the
Chippeway Medas or the Black Voodoo.  In the novel to the life of I
Settimani an aspirant is represented as living with a witch and
acquiring or picking up with pain, scrap by scrap, her spells and
incantations, giving years to it.  So my friend the late M. DRAGOMANOFF
told me how a certain man in Hungary, having learned that he had collected
many spells (which were indeed subsequently published in folklore
journals), stole into the scholar's room and surreptitiously copied them,
so that the next year when DRAGOMANOFF returned, he found the thief in full
practice as a blooming magician. Truly he had not got many incantations,
only a dozen or so, but a very little will go a great way in the business,
and I venture to say there is perhaps hardly a single witch in Italy who
knows as many as I have published, mine having been assiduously collected
from many, far and wide. Everything of the kind which is written is,
moreover, often destroyed with scrupulous care by priests or penitents,
or the vast number who have a superstitious fear of even being in the same
house with such documents, so that I regard the rescue of the Vangelo as 
something which is to say the least remarkable.

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