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ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
Charles G. Leland
ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
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ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
Charles G. Leland
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
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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 gen erations. 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 North ern Italy, as its
literature indicates, though there
[1. March, 1897: "Neapolitan Witchcraft."]
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.[1]
ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
1
   ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
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
[1. Thus we may imagine what the case would have been as regards German fairy−tales if nothing bad
survived to a future day except the collections of Grimm and Musæus. The world would fall into the belief
that these constituted all the works of the kind which had ever existed, when, in fact they form only a small
part of the whole. And folklore was unknown to classic authors: there is really no evidence in any ancient
Latin writer that he gathered traditions and the like among the vulgar, as men collect at present. They all
made books entirely out of books−there being still "a few left of the same sort" of literati.]
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. 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.
ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
2
ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches
Since writing the foregoing I have met with and read a very clever and entertaining work entitled
Il 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 once occurred to the narrator that these traditions were anything but noxious nonsense or abominably
un−Christian folly. That there exists in them
marvellous
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
endeavoured to kill seven people as a ceremony or 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 into the crater of
Vesuvius after it 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
Witches, apparently of extreme antiquity, em bodying 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.
CHAPTER I. How Diana Gave Birth to Aradia (Herodias)
"It is Diana! Lo!
She rises crescented."
−Keats'
Endymion
"Make more bright
The Star Queen's crescent on her marriage night."
CHAPTER I. How Diana Gave Birth to Aradia (Herodias)
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