September | 2016 | Italian Folk Magic

‘Stregheria’ is a term used almost exclusively by American anglophones talking about a witchcraft tradition which allegedly emerges from Italy. Often, it is accompanied by Murrayesque claims of an unbroken pagan priesthood. Much of the work presented as ‘Stregheria’ appears strongly influenced by (perhaps even originating in) the writings of Raven Grimassi, which must be read with a very critical eye. Grimassi is a controversial figure, to say the least. He himself states:

My first attempts at providing information on the Italian Craft began around 1979 with the self publication of books and a magazine. Working from material I had copied in my late teens and early twenties, I created an “outer-court” system through which I could convey the basic concepts of initiate teachings. Looking back on these early projects they were crude and amateurish. But for the time period they seemed to fit in with what most people were producing. …Thinking back on those days now I realize that I was a “true believer” in the things I had been taught and had learned. I think this was no more evident than in my writings on Aradia, which I presented in a self published work titled The Book of the Holy Strega.

I am not interested in critiquing Grimassi’s work or policing the self-identification of other practitioners. However, there are several facts which I think should be brought to bear when evaluating the claims of people who purport to practice, teach, or provide magical services under the banner of ‘Stregheria’.

‘Stregheria’ is not a common word in Italy. The Italian word for ‘witchcraft’ is ‘stregoneria’, and it has profoundly negative connotations. This is often the case among cultures who remain rooted in the magical world: they still have a need to describe the work of malevolent, spiritually powerful individuals, and no desire to reclaim that concept for political reasons. This is not to say that the word is entirely fabricated; it appears in a handful of texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. Nevertheless, it’s a word that most native Italian speakers will never have heard. It puts more distance between the anglophone American practitioner and and the people who live in the region where their tradition allegedly originates.

The matter becomes more complicated when we consider the vast linguistic and cultural diversity of the modern Italian nation. Italy as a unified country has only existed since 1861. The concept of a pan-Italian ethnic identity is even newer. Formerly–and even today, to a certain extent–each region within Italy had its own dialect and cultural identity. As most of the Italian immigrants to United States came from the Mezzogiorno region of Southern Italy and Sicily, we would expect them to have their own regionally-specific socio-magical functions and unique words for them in their own dialects.

Some modern Italian-speaking practitioners use the term ‘benedicaria’, a neologism which emphasizes the role of blessing and Catholic sacramentals in the work. Practitioners of benedicaria may not identify with the social role of the witch. The line between ‘stregoneria’ and ‘benedicaria’ remains blurry at best. My experience with practitioners who use the term benedicaria is that they tend to pay closer attention to historical folk practices, which is laudable. However, the term is not itself historically attested, and we may hypothesize that whatever thing it represents was never meant to have a name.

So why bother with this line of inquiry? Does it really matter what word is used? If the people purporting to practice ‘Stregheria’ changed their branding to so it said ‘stregoneria’, or ‘benedicaria’, or even ‘Italian folk magic’, would that resolve the issue?

Not necessarily. The larger problem here is not what word is used, but how. It’s about forging a deep, authentic relationship with the people and the land that these words come from. And for Italian-Americans in particular, it’s about strengthening our relationship with our ancestors while respecting their other descendents. When anglophones (and American anglophones in particular) use the word ‘Stregheria’, they are engaging in a kind of exotification and cultural appropriation. Swapping one word for another will not necessarily eliminate those deeper issues.

Returning for a second to Grimassi, much of his work draws on reconstructions of ancient Etrustcan religion. The Etruscans inhabited the regions now known as Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio. By contrast, approximately 84% of Italian-American immigrants during the height of the diaspora came from Southern Italy and Sicily. Most Italian-American family traditions and folk religion will not be illuminated by study of Etruscan paganism. A practitioner with roots in Naples is better served by studying the cult of San Gennaro, the cult of the Holy Souls in Purgatory at Fontenelle Cemetery, or the cult of Mama Schiavona at Montevergine–cults which, unlike the Etruscans, survive until this day and can be experienced as living traditions rather than reconstructions.

But it is just these living traditions that some seek to negate by practicing Stregheria. Certainly, there are many legitimate reasons to be uncomfortable with Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Yet some of the most pagan-seeming Italian cults originate late into the Christian era–for example, the Madonna delle Galline, an emanation of the Madonna covered in chickens who originates in the 17th century. (No, really.) Likewise, the necromantic cults of the Holy Souls in Purgatory and the Headless Souls do not, as one might think, originate in pagan hero cults. Peter Brown in his classic work The Cult of the Saints demonstrates that even the cult of the saints as collective, rather than personal, dead was only possible with the innovation of Christianity. Nascent Christianity broke many of the pagan and Jewish taboos on ancestor worship, including contact with the remains of the dead. Removing these traditions from their Christian framework is not only historically inaccurate, but, as scholar Sabina Magliocco writes, it “does violence to the way practitioners [of living traditions] perceive themselves.”

Of course, this is not to say that Italian-Americans must simply emulate their Mediterranean cousins. Doing so is equally problematic, and ignores the fact that many rich cultural traditions, including entire dialects, are better preserved in the Americas than in the old country. The most fruitful approach is considering a real, rather than immagined history: a history which includes both Christianity and the trauma of immigration. That is how we wake up our saints.

Further reading

Benedicaria – The Blessing Way of Southern Italian Folk Medicine, Part 1 by Gail Faith Edwards

Benedicaria – The Blessing Way of Southern Italian Folk Medicine, Part 2 by Gail Faith Edwards

Benedicaria: “Magia” Popolare e delle Campagne

Magic: A Theory from the South by Ernesto de Martino

Spells, Saints, and Streghe: Witchcraft, Folk Magic, and Healing in Italy by Sabina Magliocco

Il Regno: Ethno-cultural journal for people of Southern Italian descent

Stregoneria: A Roman Furnace by Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold in Serpent Songs

Italian Folk Magic

Italian Folk Magic

Month: September 2016

90th Festa di San Gennaro, Little Italy 2016

Cult of the Dead in Naples

Interrogating ‘Stregheria’