Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (Annotated), by Charles Godfrey Leland
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Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (Annotated), by Charles Godfrey Leland
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PREFACE If the reader has ever met with the works of the learned folk-lorist G. Pitré, or the articles contributed by "Lady Vere De Vere" to the Italian Rivista, or that of J. H. Andrews to Folk-Lore, 1 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 practised for many generations. I have no doubt that there are in stances in which the ancestry remounts to mediæval, 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 indicates, 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 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. However this may be, both priest and wizard are vanishing now with incredible rapidity--it has even struck a French writer that a Franciscan in a railway carriage is a strange anomaly--and a few more years of newspapers and bicycles (Heaven knows what it will be when flying-machines appear!) will probably cause an evanishment of all. However, they die slowly, and even yet there are old people in the Romagna of the North who know the Etruscan names of the Twelve Gods, and invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus, 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 that witch craft is known to its votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which Diana is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodias) 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...
Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (Annotated), by Charles Godfrey Leland- Amazon Sales Rank: #292981 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Format: Kindle eBook
About the Author Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and became interested in folklore and folk linguistics, publishing books and articles on American and European languages and folk traditions. By the end of his life shortly after the turn of the century, Leland had worked in a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as the author of the comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads, fought in two conflicts, and had written what was to become a primary source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Leland travelled widely, eventually settling in London. In his travels, he made a study of the Gypsies, on whom he wrote more than one book. Leland began to publish a number of books on ethnography, folklore and language. His fame during his lifetime rested chiefly on his comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads (1871), written in a combination of broken English and German (not to be confused, as it often has been, with Pennsylvania German). His writings on Algonquian and gypsy culture were part of the contemporary interest in pagan and Aryan traditions. He erroneously claimed to have discovered 'the fifth Celtic tongue': the form of Cant, spoken among Irish Travellers. He named it Shelta. Leland became president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society in 1888. Eleven years later Godfrey produced Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.
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Most helpful customer reviews
96 of 102 people found the following review helpful. I'd like to make a correction By Pagan Vixen I would like to make a few corrections of people's assumptions. Everyone who reviewed this book made these assumptions which are grossly incorrect. 1) Lucifer(latin for light-bearer) is mentioned only once in the Bible, Isaiah 14:12 where it is used to refer to the king of Babylon. In Aradia the title of Light Bearer or Dawn Bringer is used to refer to the God Dianus who was Diana's other half/soulmate in Etruscan Mythology. 2)Aradia was never meant to be "a forerunner to Wicca". It was a scholarly work by Charles Leland documenting the vestiges of witchcraft in Northern Italy. Against popular opinion Wicca does NOT mean "practicer of the Celtic paths" it has become the title of a religion (thanks to Gerald Gardner...who apparently wasn't able to determine the meanings of "simple words"). If you claim to follow the Old Ways you should at least understand that *all* Old Ways are worthy of respect, even the Italian ones.Obviously, Aradia greatly influenced the creators of the modern Wicca religion. It is the first time the Charge appeared in print. (It was later taken by Gardner for his covens and rewritten by Doreen Valiente.) There is a lot of negative magick in this book. Then again, it is thought that Maddalena either belonged to a group of witches who were called "Malandanti" (evil witches) or she was purposely feeding Leland false information. However, the roots of the witchcraft are evident. They were descendants of Etruria, still living in the ancestral homeland of Tuscany. They were still worshipping their ancient Goddess of Light, Diana and Her other half, Dianus called Lucifer or Light Bringer.I highly recommend this book for historical purposes. The serious student of traditional witchcraft should definitely consider this book, especially at the relatively inexpensive price. I do not recommend this book to Wiccans unless they are interested in the roots of their religion i.e. important documents co-opted or plundered by Gardner et al.
54 of 57 people found the following review helpful. An invaluable presentation of a primary document By Vincent M. Silenzio The controversies surrounding Leland's book aside, this edition, which includes several essays as well as side-by-side translations of the origianl texts, is an invaluable resource. No matter what its faults, "Aradia" remains an important link in the chain of neopaganism in the past century. This expanded edition will remain an important reference work for folklorists and ethnographers, and for Wiccans, Witches, and neopagans whose traditions have been heavily influenced by this work.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Italy's "strege" provide early inspiration to modern Wiccans By A Customer First published over 100 years ago this little book probablywould have vanished into obscurity like Leland's other works if ithadn't been one of Gerald Gardner's sources for building up his Wiccan traditions. While Leland claims to be presenting us with an authentic ancient, or at least medieval, treatise on the religion of the "strege" or Italian gypsy/witches, the text's validity is questionable. Leland claims to have obtained the manuscript from an Italian witch named Madellana who was the most recent witch in a long family line of witches. Critics have challenged the vailidity of the text & even Leland admits his manuscript is in Madellana's own handwritting. However, he attributes this to the fact that she had commited to paper what was a mostly oral tradition & not to the idea that she intentionally decieved him. Aradia contains little material that is recognizable as typical Wiccan doctrine but behind the corrupted Latin invocations & spells lie the inspiration behind "The Charge Of The Goddess". There are no mention of familar elements such as the pentagram & the word "Wicca" is never used. However, we find traces of what would become the ritual of "drawing down the moon" & the idea that meetings, or esbats, should be determined by a lunar calander & meetings were preferably held on nights of the full moon. We also encounter the requirement of ritual nudity.Besides the invocations, spells & rituals Aradia also offers a fair portion of witch mythology or witch-lore. There is the standard mother/moon goddess & father/sun god story. They differ from typcial Wiccan myth in the fact that their union produces a divine daughter instead of a divine son. This divine daughter (Aradia) is sent to Earth "to be a teacher unto women & men who fain would study witchcraft". While there are some respemblances between this "gospel" & modern Wiccan traditions in the area of ritual, they're hardly alike in intent. The main deities of Aradia are the mother goddess Diana & her husband the father god Lucifer. While Lucifer is clearly not synonymous with the biblical Lucifer it's obvious that some confusion between the two has occured. Aradia herself seem primarily to be goddesses of ill intent & protectors of genrally unsavory people. She teaches all the stock medeval maleficarum such as poisoning, blighting crops & man, determining future lovers & casting love spells.In the end Aradia is a combination of witch-lore, occultism, demonology & traces of Greek mythology & mystery religions. Such a unusual mixture of sources leads many to discredit Aradia as a fake. Leland never did produce the handwritten manuscript & even failed to produce Madellana herself as evidence. However, the mixture found in Aradia could also be the result of a long hidden & garbled oral tradition which had been corrupted over time by supersition & other religions. Either way, Aradia remains a forerunner of the Wiccan religion.
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