Stregheria is a modern form of religious witchcraft that draws on Italian and Italian American folklore. One way to understand it is to follow three parts of its history: household customs carried across the Atlantic, Charles Godfrey Leland’s 1899 book about Diana and Aradia, and the ritual traditions that Italian American practitioners developed in the twentieth century. Each tells us something different about where the movement came from.
Household practices and the meaning of strega
Folklorist Sabina Magliocco describes southern Italian immigrants bringing devotion to local saints and household practices such as protection against the malocchio, or evil eye. Some families remembered a grandmother or other relative who knew prayers, charms or ways to protect a home. Those practices could exist alongside Catholic devotion. Their place in everyday life helps explain what later readers could recognize when writers on Italian American witchcraft began to discuss family customs in public. Magliocco’s study of Italian American folklore, pp. 188–191
The Italian word strega means witch. In the settings Magliocco discusses, it could be an accusation or an insult, including when applied to a person known for charms or healing. In modern religious witchcraft, some people adopted the term as a name for themselves. That change matters because a person’s choice to identify as a witch carries a different meaning from the label assigned to someone by neighbors or relatives. Magliocco on how the label was used, pp. 189–191
What Leland’s Aradia brought into print
In Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, Leland presents Diana as a goddess and her daughter Aradia as a teacher who comes to earth and establishes witchcraft. In the preface, Leland says that a woman collecting folklore for him sent him the text in her own handwriting. He also says he was unsure whether she obtained material from written sources or oral accounts. His book documents what he chose to publish at the end of the nineteenth century. His own uncertainty limits how confidently readers can trace the material to an earlier period. Leland’s preface to Aradia
The book’s influence is easier to trace in the twentieth century. Magliocco describes how themes from it entered modern witchcraft, including the image of witches gathering at the full moon and language that fed into the ritual address known as the Charge of the Goddess. For Italian American readers, the book gave some familiar folklore a new setting. Readers could bring household practices into conversation with a published story about Diana and a religious community. That later use has a history of its own. Magliocco on the reception of Aradia, pp. 193–194
How modern practitioners developed different traditions
Magliocco describes Leo Louis Martello and Lori Bruno as early public figures in Italian American witchcraft. In her account, Martello described some Sicilian practices as family traditions. He and Bruno also established the Trinacrian Rose coven, a group that combined Sicilian material with forms shared by other modern witches, including worship in a circle and a calendar of seasonal observances. The difference between family practice and a coven becomes visible in how people learned the rites and took part in them. Magliocco’s account of Martello and Bruno, pp. 194–196
Raven Grimassi reached readers with Ways of the Strega, published in 1995. In the system Magliocco describes from his work, practitioners honor Diana and Dianus and observe seasonal festivals, including the spring equinox and a festival of Diana in May. She traces the system to several sources, among them Grimassi’s family knowledge, Leland’s books, folklore research and elements of modern Wicca. Grimassi understood this work as recovering an old religion. Magliocco’s account, based in part on interviews with him, shows the choices involved in arranging that material into a system his contemporaries could practice. Catalogue record for Ways of the Strega · Magliocco’s discussion of Grimassi, pp. 196–199
Conclusion
Stregheria’s modern history is a history of selection and interpretation. Some practitioners brought family customs into a new setting. Leland’s book gave Diana and Aradia a place in twentieth-century witchcraft. Martello, Bruno and Grimassi organized folklore and religious practices for different audiences. The record shows how people made those materials part of a living religion, while leaving the age and transmission of particular customs open to historical inquiry.
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