Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches
Encyclopedia
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is a book composed by the American folklorist Charles Leland that was published in 1899. It contains what he believed was the religious text of a group of pagan
witches
in Tuscany
, Italy
that documented their beliefs and rituals, although various historians and folklorists have disputed the existence of such a group. In the 20th century, the book was very influential in the development of the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca
.
The text is a composite. Some of it is Leland's translation into English of an original Italian manuscript
, the Vangelo (gospel). Leland reported receiving the manuscript from his primary informant on Italian witchcraft beliefs, a woman Leland referred to as "Maddalena" and whom he called his "witch informant" in Italy. The rest of the material comes from Leland's research on Italian folklore and traditions, including other related material from Maddalena. Leland had been informed of the Vangelos existence in 1886, but it took Maddalena eleven years to provide him with a copy. After translating and editing the material, it took another two years for the book to be published. Its fifteen chapters portray the origins, beliefs, rituals, and spells of an Italian
pagan
witchcraft tradition. The central figure of that religion is the goddess
Aradia
, who came to Earth to teach the practice of witchcraft to peasants in order for them to oppose their feudal
oppressors and the Roman Catholic Church
.
Leland's work remained obscure until the 1950s, when other theories about, and claims of, "pagan witchcraft" survivals began to be widely discussed. Aradia began to be examined within the wider context of such claims. Scholars are divided, with some dismissing Leland's assertion regarding the origins of the manuscript, and others arguing for its authenticity as a unique documentation of folk beliefs. Along with increased scholarly attention, Aradia came to play a special role in the history of Gardnerian Wicca
and its offshoots, being used as evidence that pagan witchcraft survivals existed in Europe, and because a passage from the book's first chapter was used as a part of the religion's liturgy
. After the increase in interest in the text, it became widely available through numerous reprints from a variety of publishers, including a 1999 critical edition with a new translation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini.
Charles Godfrey Leland
was an American author and folklorist
, and spent much of the 1890s in Florence
researching Italian folklore
. Aradia was one of the products of Leland's research. While Leland's name is the one principally associated with Aradia, the manuscript that makes up the bulk of it is attributed to the research of an Italian woman that Leland and Leland's biographer, his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell
, referred to as "Maddalena". According to folklorist Roma Lister, a contemporary and friend of Leland's, Maddalena's real name was Margherita, and she was a "witch" from Florence who claimed a family lineage from the Etruscans
and knowledge of ancient rituals. Professor Robert Mathiesen, as a contributor to the Pazzaglini translation of Aradia, mentions a letter from Maddalena to Leland, which he states is signed "Maddalena Talenti" (the last name being a guess as the handwriting is difficult to decipher). However, pagan scholar Raven Grimassi
presented a document at the Pantheacon convention on February 17, 2008, revealing that Maddalena's last name was actually Taluti. This document was reproduced from The International Folklore Congress: Papers and Transactions, 1892 - page 454.
Leland reports meeting Maddalena in 1886, and she became the primary source for his Italian folklore collecting for several years. Leland describes her as belonging to a vanishing tradition of sorcery
. He writes that "by long practice [she] has perfectly learned... just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind." He received several hundred pages worth of material from her, which was incorporated into his books Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition, Legends of Florence Collected From the People, and eventually Aradia. Leland wrote that he had "learned that there was in existence a manuscript setting forth the doctrines of Italian witchcraft" in 1886, and had urged Maddalena to find it. Eleven years later, on 1 January 1897, Leland received the Vangelo by post. The manuscript was written in Maddalena's handwriting. Leland understood it to be an authentic document of the "Old Religion" of the witches, but explains that he did not know if the text came from written or oral sources. Maddalena's correspondence with Leland indicated that she intended to marry a man named Lorenzo Bruciatelli and emigrate to the United States, and the Vangelo was the last material Leland received from her. Author Raven Grimassi
, at the Pantheacon convention on February 17, 2008, presented a copy of a letter written by Leland (housed in The Library of Congress). The letter states that Maddalena did not follow through with her plans, but instead left her husband and worked in Genoa for a period of time before returning to Florence.
Leland's translation and editing was completed in early 1897 and submitted to David Nutt for publication. Two years passed, until Leland wrote requesting the return of the manuscript in order to submit it to a different publishing house. This request spurred Nutt to accept the book, and it was published in July 1899 in a small print run. Wiccan author Raymond Buckland
claims to have been the first to reprint the book in 1968 through his "Buckland Museum of Witchcraft" press, but a British reprint was made by "Wiccens" Charles "Rex Nemorensis" and Mary Cardell in the early 1960s. Since then the text has been repeatedly reprinted by a variety of different publishers, including as a 1998 retranslation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini with essays and commentary.
]. They adored forbidden deities and practised forbidden deeds, inspired as much by rebellion
against Society as by their own passions."
Leland's final draft was a slim volume. He organised the material to be included into fifteen chapters, and added a brief preface and an appendix. The published version also included footnotes and, in many places, the original Italian that Leland had translated. Most of the content of Leland's Aradia is made up of spells
, blessings and rituals, but the text also contains stories and myths
which suggest influences from both the ancient Roman religion
and Roman Catholicism
. Major characters in the myths include the Roman goddess Diana
, a sun god
called Lucifer
, the Biblical Cain as a lunar figure
, and the messianic
Aradia
. The witchcraft of "The Gospel of the Witches" is both a method for casting spells and an anti-hierarchical "counter-religion" to the Catholic church.
Entire chapters of Aradia are devoted to rituals and magic spells. These include enchantments to win love (Chapter VI), a conjuration to perform when finding a stone with a hole or a round stone in order to turn it into an amulet
for Diana's favour (Chapter IV) and the consecration of a ritual feast for Diana, Aradia and Cain (Chapter II). The narrative material makes up less of the text, and is composed of short stories and legends about the birth of the witchcraft religion and the actions of their gods. Leland summarises the mythic material in the book in its appendix, writing "Diana is Queen of the Witches; an associate of Herodias
(Aradia) in her relations to sorcery; that she bore a child to her brother the Sun
(here Lucifer); that as a moon-goddess
she is in some relation to Cain, who dwells as prisoner in the moon, and that the witches of old were people oppressed by feudal
lands, the former revenging themselves in every way, and holding orgies
to Diana which the Church represented as being the worship of Satan
". Diana is not only the witches' goddess, but is presented as the primordial creatrix
in Chapter III, dividing herself into darkness and light. After giving birth to Lucifer, Diana seduces him while in the form of a cat, eventually giving birth to Aradia, their daughter. Diana demonstrates the power of her witchcraft by creating "the heavens, the stars and the rain", becoming "Queen of the Witches". Chapter I presents the original witches as slaves that escaped from their masters, beginning new lives as "thieves and evil folk". Diana sends her daughter Aradia to them to teach these former serfs witchcraft, the power of which they can use to "destroy the evil race (of oppressors)". Aradia's students thus became the first witches, who would then continue the worship of Diana. Leland was struck by this cosmogony
: "In all other Scriptures of all races, it is the male... who creates the universe; in Witch Sorcery it is the female who is the primitive principle".
given to him by Maddalena. This section, while predominantly made up of spells and rituals, is also the source of most of the myths and folktales contained in the text. At the end of Chapter I is the text in which Aradia gives instructions to her followers on how to practice witchcraft.
The first ten chapters are not entirely a direct translation of the Vangelo; Leland offers his own commentary and notes on a number of passages, and Chapter VII is Leland's incorporation of other Italian folklore material. Medievalist
Robert Mathiesen contends that the Vangelo manuscript actually represents even less of Aradia, arguing that only chapters I, I and the first half of Chapter IV match Leland's description of the manuscript's contents, and suggests that the other material came from different texts collected by Leland through Maddalena.
The remaining five chapters are clearly identified in the text as representing other material Leland believed to be relevant to the Vangelo, acquired during his research into Italian witchcraft, and especially while working on his Etruscan Roman Remains and Legends of Florence. The themes in these additional chapters vary in some details from the first ten, and Leland included them partly to "[confirm] the fact that the worship of Diana existed for a long time contemporary with Christianity
". Chapter XV, for example, gives an incantation
to Laverna
, through the use of a deck of playing card
s. Leland explains its inclusion by a note that Diana, as portrayed in Aradia, is worshipped by outlaws, and Laverna was the Roman goddess of thievery. Other examples of Leland's thoughts about the text are given in the book's preface, appendix, and numerous footnotes.
In several places Leland provides the Italian he was translating. According to Mario Pazzaglini, author of the 1999 translation, the Italian contains misspellings, missing words and grammatical errors, and is in a standardised Italian rather than the local dialect
one might expect. Pazzaglini concludes that Aradia represents material translated from dialect to basic Italian and then into English, creating a summary of texts, some of which were mis-recorded. Leland himself called the text a "collection of ceremonies, "cantrips," incantations, and traditions" and described it as an attempt to gather material, "valuable and curious remains of ancient Latin
or Etruscan lore" that he feared would be lost. There is no cohesive narrative even in the sections that Leland attributes to the Vangelo. This lack of cohesion, or "inconsistency", is an argument for the text's authenticity, according to religious scholar Chas S. Clifton
, since the text shows no signs of being "massaged... for future book buyers."
Leland wrote that "the witches even yet form a fragmentary secret society or sect, that they call it that of the Old Religion, and that there are in the Romagna
entire villages in which the people are completely heathen". Accepting this, Leland supposed that "the existence of a religion supposes a Scripture, and in this case it may be admitted, almost without severe verification, that the Evangel of the Witches is really a very old work... in all probability the translation of some early or later Latin
work."
Leland's claim that the manuscript was genuine, or even that he received such a manuscript, has been called into question. After the 1921 publication of Margaret Murray
's The Witch-cult in Western Europe, which hypothesised that the European witch trials
were actually a persecution of a pagan religious survival, American sensationalist author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia. Arguments against Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland. Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell
devoted some of his 1980 book A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against the claims in Aradia, Murray's thesis, and Jules Michelet
's 1862 La Sorcière, which also theorised that witchcraft represented an underground religion. Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor for a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion. In his Triumph of the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton
summarises the controversy as having three possible extremes:
Hutton himself is a sceptic, not only of the existence of the religion that Aradia claims to represent, but also of the existence of Maddalena, arguing that it is more likely that Leland created the entire story than that Leland could be so easily "duped" by an Italian fortune-teller. Clifton takes exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounts to an accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from absence
"; one of Hutton's main objections is that Aradia is unlike anything found in medieval literature
.
Mathiesen also dismisses this "option three", arguing that while Leland's English drafts for the book were heavily edited and revised in the process of writing, the Italian sections, in contrast, were almost untouched except for corrections of "precisely the sort that a proofreader would make as he compared his copy to the original". This leads Mathiesen to conclude that Leland was working from an extant Italian-language original that he describes as "authentic, but not representative" of any larger folk tradition. Anthropologist
Sabina Magliocco
examines the "option one" possibility, that Leland's manuscript represented a folk tradition involving Diana and the Cult of Herodias, in her article Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend. Magliocco writes that Aradia "may represent a 19th century version of [the legend of the Cult of Herodias] that incorporated later materials influenced by medieval diabolism
: the presence of "Lucifero," the Christian devil; the practice of sorcery; the naked dances under the full moon."
. The text apparently corroborates the thesis of Margaret Murray that early modern
and Renaissance
witchcraft represented a survival of ancient pagan beliefs, and after Gerald Gardner
's claim to have encountered religious witchcraft in 20th-century England, the works of Michelet, Murray and Leland helped support at least the possibility that such a survival could exist.
The Charge of the Goddess
, an important piece of liturgy used in Wiccan rituals, was inspired by Aradia's speech in the first chapter of the book. Parts of the speech appeared in an early version of Gardnerian Wicca ritual. According to Doreen Valiente
, one of Gardner's priestesses, Gardner was surprised by Valiente's recognising the material as having come from Leland's book. Valiente subsequently rewrote the passage in both prose and verse, retaining the "traditional" Aradia lines. Some Wiccan traditions use the name "Aradia", or Diana, to refer to the Goddess or Queen of the Witches, and Hutton writes that the earliest Gardnerian rituals used the name Airdia, a "garbled" form of Aradia. Hutton further suggests that the reason that Wicca includes skyclad practice, or ritual nudity, is because of a line spoken by Aradia:
Accepting Aradia as the source of this practice, Robert Chartowich points to the 1998 Pazzaglini translation of these lines, which read "Men and Women / You will all be naked, until / Yet he shall be dead, the last / Of your oppressors is dead." Chartowich argues that the ritual nudity of Wicca was based upon Leland's mistranslation of these lines by incorporating the clause "in your rites".
There are, however, earlier mentions of ritual nudity among Italian witches. Historian Ruth Martin states that it was a common practice for witches of Italy to be "naked with their hair loose around their shoulders" while reciting conjurations. Jeffrey Burton Russell
notes that "A woman named Marta was tortured in Florence about 1375: she was alleged to have placed candles round a dish and to have taken off her clothes and stood above the dish in the nude, making magical signs". Historian Franco Mormando refers to an Italian witch: "Lo and behold: in the first hours of sleep, this woman opens the door to her vegetable garden and comes out completely naked and her hair all undone, and she begins to do and say her various signs and conjurations...".
The reception of Aradia amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of Leo Martello
and Raven Grimassi
, must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in Aradia. He further suggests that a lack of comfort with Aradia may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival.
Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of Lucifer
as the God of the witches in Aradia was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and Satanism
.
Clifton writes that Aradia was especially influential for leaders of the Wiccan religious movement in the 1950s and 1960s, but that the book no longer appears on the "reading lists" given by members to newcomers, nor is it extensively cited in more recent Neopagan books. The new translation of the book released in 1998 was introduced by Wiccan author Stewart Farrar
, who affirms the importance of Aradia, writing that "Leland's gifted research into a 'dying' tradition has made a significant contribution to a living and growing one."
Author Raven Grimassi
has written extensively about Aradia, presenting what he admits is his own personal rendering of her story. He differs from Leland in many ways, particularly in portraying her as a witch who lived and taught in 14th century Italy, rather than a goddess.
In response to Clifton, he states that similarity or dissimilarity to Leland's Aradia material cannot be a measure of authenticity, since Leland's material itself is disputed. "Therefore it cannot effectively be used to discredit other writings or views on Italian witchcraft, nor is it a representative ethnographic foundation against which other writings or views 'must' be compared. The Aradia material is, unfortunately, a disputed text with problems of its own when compared to the usually accepted folklore, folk traditions, and folk magic practices of Italy." He agrees with Valiente that the major objection of Neopagans to this material is its "inclusion of negative stereotypes related to witches and witchcraft", and suggests that comparisons between this material and religious witchcraft are "regarded as an insult by many neo-pagans".
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
witches
Witch-cult hypothesis
The Witch-cult is the term for a hypothetical pre-Christian, pagan religion of Europe that survived into at least the early modern period. As late as the 19th and early 20th centuries, some scholars had postulated that European witchcraft was part of a Satanic plot to overthrow Christianity; most...
in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
that documented their beliefs and rituals, although various historians and folklorists have disputed the existence of such a group. In the 20th century, the book was very influential in the development of the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
.
The text is a composite. Some of it is Leland's translation into English of an original Italian manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
, the Vangelo (gospel). Leland reported receiving the manuscript from his primary informant on Italian witchcraft beliefs, a woman Leland referred to as "Maddalena" and whom he called his "witch informant" in Italy. The rest of the material comes from Leland's research on Italian folklore and traditions, including other related material from Maddalena. Leland had been informed of the Vangelos existence in 1886, but it took Maddalena eleven years to provide him with a copy. After translating and editing the material, it took another two years for the book to be published. Its fifteen chapters portray the origins, beliefs, rituals, and spells of an Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
witchcraft tradition. The central figure of that religion is the goddess
Goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....
Aradia
Aradia (goddess)
Aradia is one of the principal figures in the American folklorist Charles Leland’s 1899 work Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which he believed to be a genuine religious text used by a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, a claim that has subsequently been disputed by other folklorists and...
, who came to Earth to teach the practice of witchcraft to peasants in order for them to oppose their feudal
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
oppressors and the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
.
Leland's work remained obscure until the 1950s, when other theories about, and claims of, "pagan witchcraft" survivals began to be widely discussed. Aradia began to be examined within the wider context of such claims. Scholars are divided, with some dismissing Leland's assertion regarding the origins of the manuscript, and others arguing for its authenticity as a unique documentation of folk beliefs. Along with increased scholarly attention, Aradia came to play a special role in the history of Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian Witchcraft, is a mystery cult tradition or denomination in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner , a British civil servant and scholar of magic...
and its offshoots, being used as evidence that pagan witchcraft survivals existed in Europe, and because a passage from the book's first chapter was used as a part of the religion's liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
. After the increase in interest in the text, it became widely available through numerous reprints from a variety of publishers, including a 1999 critical edition with a new translation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini.
Origins
Charles Godfrey Leland
Charles Godfrey Leland was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe....
was an American author and folklorist
Folkloristics
Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. The term derives from a nineteenth century German designation of folkloristik to distinguish between folklore as the content and folkloristics as its study, much as language is distinguished from linguistics...
, and spent much of the 1890s in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
researching Italian folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. Aradia was one of the products of Leland's research. While Leland's name is the one principally associated with Aradia, the manuscript that makes up the bulk of it is attributed to the research of an Italian woman that Leland and Leland's biographer, his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Elizabeth Robins Pennell was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London...
, referred to as "Maddalena". According to folklorist Roma Lister, a contemporary and friend of Leland's, Maddalena's real name was Margherita, and she was a "witch" from Florence who claimed a family lineage from the Etruscans
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
and knowledge of ancient rituals. Professor Robert Mathiesen, as a contributor to the Pazzaglini translation of Aradia, mentions a letter from Maddalena to Leland, which he states is signed "Maddalena Talenti" (the last name being a guess as the handwriting is difficult to decipher). However, pagan scholar Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi is the pen name of an Italian-American author, publishing on the topics of Neo-paganism and witchcraft. He is perhaps best known for his popularization of Stregheria, a neopagan revival of "Italian witchcraft"....
presented a document at the Pantheacon convention on February 17, 2008, revealing that Maddalena's last name was actually Taluti. This document was reproduced from The International Folklore Congress: Papers and Transactions, 1892 - page 454.
Leland reports meeting Maddalena in 1886, and she became the primary source for his Italian folklore collecting for several years. Leland describes her as belonging to a vanishing tradition of sorcery
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
. He writes that "by long practice [she] has perfectly learned... just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind." He received several hundred pages worth of material from her, which was incorporated into his books Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition, Legends of Florence Collected From the People, and eventually Aradia. Leland wrote that he had "learned that there was in existence a manuscript setting forth the doctrines of Italian witchcraft" in 1886, and had urged Maddalena to find it. Eleven years later, on 1 January 1897, Leland received the Vangelo by post. The manuscript was written in Maddalena's handwriting. Leland understood it to be an authentic document of the "Old Religion" of the witches, but explains that he did not know if the text came from written or oral sources. Maddalena's correspondence with Leland indicated that she intended to marry a man named Lorenzo Bruciatelli and emigrate to the United States, and the Vangelo was the last material Leland received from her. Author Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi is the pen name of an Italian-American author, publishing on the topics of Neo-paganism and witchcraft. He is perhaps best known for his popularization of Stregheria, a neopagan revival of "Italian witchcraft"....
, at the Pantheacon convention on February 17, 2008, presented a copy of a letter written by Leland (housed in The Library of Congress). The letter states that Maddalena did not follow through with her plans, but instead left her husband and worked in Genoa for a period of time before returning to Florence.
Leland's translation and editing was completed in early 1897 and submitted to David Nutt for publication. Two years passed, until Leland wrote requesting the return of the manuscript in order to submit it to a different publishing house. This request spurred Nutt to accept the book, and it was published in July 1899 in a small print run. Wiccan author Raymond Buckland
Raymond Buckland
Raymond Buckland , whose craft name is Robat, is an English American writer on the subject of Wicca and the occult, and a significant figure in the history of Wicca, of which he is a High Priest in both the Gardnerian and Seax traditions.According to his written works, primarily Witchcraft from the...
claims to have been the first to reprint the book in 1968 through his "Buckland Museum of Witchcraft" press, but a British reprint was made by "Wiccens" Charles "Rex Nemorensis" and Mary Cardell in the early 1960s. Since then the text has been repeatedly reprinted by a variety of different publishers, including as a 1998 retranslation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini with essays and commentary.
Contents
After the eleven-year search, Leland writes that he was unsurprised by the contents of the Vangelo. It was largely what he was expecting, with the exception that he did not predict passages in "prose-poetry". "I also believe that in this Gospel of the Witches", comments Leland in the appendix, "we have a trustworthy outline at least of the doctrine and rites observed at [the witches' SabbatSabbath (witchcraft)
The Witches' Sabbath or Sabbat is a supposed meeting of those who practice witchcraft, and other rites.European records indicate cases of persons being accused or tried for taking part in Sabbat gatherings, from the Middle Ages to the 17th century or later.- Etymology :The English word “sabbat”...
]. They adored forbidden deities and practised forbidden deeds, inspired as much by rebellion
Rebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
against Society as by their own passions."
Leland's final draft was a slim volume. He organised the material to be included into fifteen chapters, and added a brief preface and an appendix. The published version also included footnotes and, in many places, the original Italian that Leland had translated. Most of the content of Leland's Aradia is made up of spells
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
, blessings and rituals, but the text also contains stories and myths
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
which suggest influences from both the ancient Roman religion
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
and Roman Catholicism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. Major characters in the myths include the Roman goddess Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
, a sun god
Solar deity
A solar deity is a sky deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms...
called Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, the Biblical Cain as a lunar figure
Lunar deity
In mythology, a lunar deity is a god or goddess associated with or symbolizing the moon. These deities can have a variety of functions and traditions depending upon the culture, but they are often related to or an enemy of the solar deity. Even though they may be related, they are distinct from the...
, and the messianic
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
Aradia
Aradia (goddess)
Aradia is one of the principal figures in the American folklorist Charles Leland’s 1899 work Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which he believed to be a genuine religious text used by a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, a claim that has subsequently been disputed by other folklorists and...
. The witchcraft of "The Gospel of the Witches" is both a method for casting spells and an anti-hierarchical "counter-religion" to the Catholic church.
Themes
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
for Diana's favour (Chapter IV) and the consecration of a ritual feast for Diana, Aradia and Cain (Chapter II). The narrative material makes up less of the text, and is composed of short stories and legends about the birth of the witchcraft religion and the actions of their gods. Leland summarises the mythic material in the book in its appendix, writing "Diana is Queen of the Witches; an associate of Herodias
Herodias
Herodias was a Jewish princess of the Herodian Dynasty. Asteroid 546 Herodias is named after her.-Family relationships:*Daughter of Aristobulus IV...
(Aradia) in her relations to sorcery; that she bore a child to her brother the Sun
Solar deity
A solar deity is a sky deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms...
(here Lucifer); that as a moon-goddess
Lunar deity
In mythology, a lunar deity is a god or goddess associated with or symbolizing the moon. These deities can have a variety of functions and traditions depending upon the culture, but they are often related to or an enemy of the solar deity. Even though they may be related, they are distinct from the...
she is in some relation to Cain, who dwells as prisoner in the moon, and that the witches of old were people oppressed by feudal
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
lands, the former revenging themselves in every way, and holding orgies
Orgy
In modern usage, an orgy is a sex party where guests engage in promiscuous or multifarious sexual activity or group sex. An orgy is similar to debauchery, which refers to excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures....
to Diana which the Church represented as being the worship of Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
". Diana is not only the witches' goddess, but is presented as the primordial creatrix
Creator deity
A creator deity is a deity responsible for the creation of the world . In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator deity, while polytheistic traditions may or may not have creator deities...
in Chapter III, dividing herself into darkness and light. After giving birth to Lucifer, Diana seduces him while in the form of a cat, eventually giving birth to Aradia, their daughter. Diana demonstrates the power of her witchcraft by creating "the heavens, the stars and the rain", becoming "Queen of the Witches". Chapter I presents the original witches as slaves that escaped from their masters, beginning new lives as "thieves and evil folk". Diana sends her daughter Aradia to them to teach these former serfs witchcraft, the power of which they can use to "destroy the evil race (of oppressors)". Aradia's students thus became the first witches, who would then continue the worship of Diana. Leland was struck by this cosmogony
Cosmogony
Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία , from κόσμος "cosmos, the world", and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα "to be born, come about"...
: "In all other Scriptures of all races, it is the male... who creates the universe; in Witch Sorcery it is the female who is the primitive principle".
Structure
Aradia is composed of fifteen chapters, the first ten of which are presented as being Leland's translation of the Vangelo manuscriptManuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
given to him by Maddalena. This section, while predominantly made up of spells and rituals, is also the source of most of the myths and folktales contained in the text. At the end of Chapter I is the text in which Aradia gives instructions to her followers on how to practice witchcraft.
The first ten chapters are not entirely a direct translation of the Vangelo; Leland offers his own commentary and notes on a number of passages, and Chapter VII is Leland's incorporation of other Italian folklore material. Medievalist
Medievalism
Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the Middle Ages, or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture.Since the 18th century, a...
Robert Mathiesen contends that the Vangelo manuscript actually represents even less of Aradia, arguing that only chapters I, I and the first half of Chapter IV match Leland's description of the manuscript's contents, and suggests that the other material came from different texts collected by Leland through Maddalena.
The remaining five chapters are clearly identified in the text as representing other material Leland believed to be relevant to the Vangelo, acquired during his research into Italian witchcraft, and especially while working on his Etruscan Roman Remains and Legends of Florence. The themes in these additional chapters vary in some details from the first ten, and Leland included them partly to "[confirm] the fact that the worship of Diana existed for a long time contemporary with Christianity
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
". Chapter XV, for example, gives an incantation
Incantation
An incantation or enchantment is a charm or spell created using words. An incantation may take place during a ritual, either a hymn or prayer, and may invoke or praise a deity. In magic, occultism, witchcraft it may be used with the intention of casting a spell on an object or a person...
to Laverna
Laverna
In Roman mythology, Laverna was a goddess of thieves, cheats and the underworld. She was propitiated by libations poured with the left hand. The poet Horace and the playwright Plautus call her a goddess of thieves. In Rome, her sanctuary was near the Porta Lavernalis.-References:Michael Jordon,...
, through the use of a deck of playing card
Playing card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games...
s. Leland explains its inclusion by a note that Diana, as portrayed in Aradia, is worshipped by outlaws, and Laverna was the Roman goddess of thievery. Other examples of Leland's thoughts about the text are given in the book's preface, appendix, and numerous footnotes.
In several places Leland provides the Italian he was translating. According to Mario Pazzaglini, author of the 1999 translation, the Italian contains misspellings, missing words and grammatical errors, and is in a standardised Italian rather than the local dialect
Italian dialects
Dialects of Italian are regional varieties of the Italian language, more commonly and more accurately referred to as Regional Italian. The dialects have features, most notably phonological and lexical, percolating from the underlying substrate languages...
one might expect. Pazzaglini concludes that Aradia represents material translated from dialect to basic Italian and then into English, creating a summary of texts, some of which were mis-recorded. Leland himself called the text a "collection of ceremonies, "cantrips," incantations, and traditions" and described it as an attempt to gather material, "valuable and curious remains of ancient Latin
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
or Etruscan lore" that he feared would be lost. There is no cohesive narrative even in the sections that Leland attributes to the Vangelo. This lack of cohesion, or "inconsistency", is an argument for the text's authenticity, according to religious scholar Chas S. Clifton
Chas S. Clifton
Chas S. Clifton is an American academic, author and historian who specialises in the fields of English studies and Pagan studies. Clifton currently holds a teaching position in English at Colorado State University-Pueblo, prior to which he taught at Pueblo Community College.A practicing Pagan...
, since the text shows no signs of being "massaged... for future book buyers."
Claims questioned
Romagna
Romagna is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna. Traditionally, it is limited by the Apennines to the south-west, the Adriatic to the east, and the rivers Reno and Sillaro to the north and west...
entire villages in which the people are completely heathen". Accepting this, Leland supposed that "the existence of a religion supposes a Scripture, and in this case it may be admitted, almost without severe verification, that the Evangel of the Witches is really a very old work... in all probability the translation of some early or later Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
work."
Leland's claim that the manuscript was genuine, or even that he received such a manuscript, has been called into question. After the 1921 publication of Margaret Murray
Margaret Murray
Margaret Alice Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist and anthropologist. Primarily known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of...
's The Witch-cult in Western Europe, which hypothesised that the European witch trials
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...
were actually a persecution of a pagan religious survival, American sensationalist author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia. Arguments against Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland. Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell
Jeffrey Burton Russell
Jeffrey Burton Russell is an American historian and religious studies scholar who received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1955 and his PhD from Emory University in 1960. He is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
devoted some of his 1980 book A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against the claims in Aradia, Murray's thesis, and Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
's 1862 La Sorcière, which also theorised that witchcraft represented an underground religion. Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor for a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion. In his Triumph of the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A reader in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio...
summarises the controversy as having three possible extremes:
- The Vangelo manuscript represents a genuine text from an otherwise undiscovered religion.
- Maddalena wrote the text, either with or without Leland's assistance, possibly drawing from her own background with folklore or witchcraft.
- The entire document was forged by Leland.
Hutton himself is a sceptic, not only of the existence of the religion that Aradia claims to represent, but also of the existence of Maddalena, arguing that it is more likely that Leland created the entire story than that Leland could be so easily "duped" by an Italian fortune-teller. Clifton takes exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounts to an accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from absence
Argument from ignorance
Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or "appeal to ignorance" , is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted"...
"; one of Hutton's main objections is that Aradia is unlike anything found in medieval literature
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
.
Mathiesen also dismisses this "option three", arguing that while Leland's English drafts for the book were heavily edited and revised in the process of writing, the Italian sections, in contrast, were almost untouched except for corrections of "precisely the sort that a proofreader would make as he compared his copy to the original". This leads Mathiesen to conclude that Leland was working from an extant Italian-language original that he describes as "authentic, but not representative" of any larger folk tradition. Anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
Sabina Magliocco
Sabina Magliocco
Sabina Magliocco , is a professor of Anthropology and Folklore at California State University, Northridge . She is an author of non-fiction books and journal articles about folklore, religion, religious festivals, foodways, witchcraft and Neo-Paganism in Europe and the United States.A recipient of...
examines the "option one" possibility, that Leland's manuscript represented a folk tradition involving Diana and the Cult of Herodias, in her article Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend. Magliocco writes that Aradia "may represent a 19th century version of [the legend of the Cult of Herodias] that incorporated later materials influenced by medieval diabolism
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
: the presence of "Lucifero," the Christian devil; the practice of sorcery; the naked dances under the full moon."
Influence on Wicca and Stregheria
Magliocco calls Aradia "the first real text of the 20th century Witchcraft revival", and it is repeatedly cited as being profoundly influential on the development of WiccaWicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
. The text apparently corroborates the thesis of Margaret Murray that early modern
Early modern Europe
Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Europe which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...
and Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
witchcraft represented a survival of ancient pagan beliefs, and after Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
's claim to have encountered religious witchcraft in 20th-century England, the works of Michelet, Murray and Leland helped support at least the possibility that such a survival could exist.
The Charge of the Goddess
Charge of the Goddess
The Charge of the Goddess is a traditional inspirational text sometimes used in the neopagan religion of Wicca. Several versions exist, though they all have the same basic premise, that of a set of instructions given by a Great Goddess to her worshippers...
, an important piece of liturgy used in Wiccan rituals, was inspired by Aradia's speech in the first chapter of the book. Parts of the speech appeared in an early version of Gardnerian Wicca ritual. According to Doreen Valiente
Doreen Valiente
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente , who also went under the craft name Ameth, was an influential English Wiccan who was involved in a number of different early traditions, including Gardnerianism, Cochrane's Craft and the Coven of Atho...
, one of Gardner's priestesses, Gardner was surprised by Valiente's recognising the material as having come from Leland's book. Valiente subsequently rewrote the passage in both prose and verse, retaining the "traditional" Aradia lines. Some Wiccan traditions use the name "Aradia", or Diana, to refer to the Goddess or Queen of the Witches, and Hutton writes that the earliest Gardnerian rituals used the name Airdia, a "garbled" form of Aradia. Hutton further suggests that the reason that Wicca includes skyclad practice, or ritual nudity, is because of a line spoken by Aradia:
- "And as the sign that ye are truly free,
- Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men
- And women also: this shall last until
- The last of your oppressors shall be dead;"
Accepting Aradia as the source of this practice, Robert Chartowich points to the 1998 Pazzaglini translation of these lines, which read "Men and Women / You will all be naked, until / Yet he shall be dead, the last / Of your oppressors is dead." Chartowich argues that the ritual nudity of Wicca was based upon Leland's mistranslation of these lines by incorporating the clause "in your rites".
There are, however, earlier mentions of ritual nudity among Italian witches. Historian Ruth Martin states that it was a common practice for witches of Italy to be "naked with their hair loose around their shoulders" while reciting conjurations. Jeffrey Burton Russell
Jeffrey Burton Russell
Jeffrey Burton Russell is an American historian and religious studies scholar who received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1955 and his PhD from Emory University in 1960. He is now Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
notes that "A woman named Marta was tortured in Florence about 1375: she was alleged to have placed candles round a dish and to have taken off her clothes and stood above the dish in the nude, making magical signs". Historian Franco Mormando refers to an Italian witch: "Lo and behold: in the first hours of sleep, this woman opens the door to her vegetable garden and comes out completely naked and her hair all undone, and she begins to do and say her various signs and conjurations...".
The reception of Aradia amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of Leo Martello
Leo Martello
Leo Martello was an author, lecturer, gay civil rights activist, and an early voice in the American Neopagan movement. He drew heavily on his Sicilian heritage, teaching the Strega Tradition which was named after the Italian word for Witch....
and Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi is the pen name of an Italian-American author, publishing on the topics of Neo-paganism and witchcraft. He is perhaps best known for his popularization of Stregheria, a neopagan revival of "Italian witchcraft"....
, must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in Aradia. He further suggests that a lack of comfort with Aradia may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival.
Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
as the God of the witches in Aradia was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and Satanism
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
.
Clifton writes that Aradia was especially influential for leaders of the Wiccan religious movement in the 1950s and 1960s, but that the book no longer appears on the "reading lists" given by members to newcomers, nor is it extensively cited in more recent Neopagan books. The new translation of the book released in 1998 was introduced by Wiccan author Stewart Farrar
Stewart Farrar
Frank Stewart Farrar , who always went by the name of Stewart Farrar, was an English screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar, and then his friend Gavin Bone...
, who affirms the importance of Aradia, writing that "Leland's gifted research into a 'dying' tradition has made a significant contribution to a living and growing one."
Author Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi
Raven Grimassi is the pen name of an Italian-American author, publishing on the topics of Neo-paganism and witchcraft. He is perhaps best known for his popularization of Stregheria, a neopagan revival of "Italian witchcraft"....
has written extensively about Aradia, presenting what he admits is his own personal rendering of her story. He differs from Leland in many ways, particularly in portraying her as a witch who lived and taught in 14th century Italy, rather than a goddess.
In response to Clifton, he states that similarity or dissimilarity to Leland's Aradia material cannot be a measure of authenticity, since Leland's material itself is disputed. "Therefore it cannot effectively be used to discredit other writings or views on Italian witchcraft, nor is it a representative ethnographic foundation against which other writings or views 'must' be compared. The Aradia material is, unfortunately, a disputed text with problems of its own when compared to the usually accepted folklore, folk traditions, and folk magic practices of Italy." He agrees with Valiente that the major objection of Neopagans to this material is its "inclusion of negative stereotypes related to witches and witchcraft", and suggests that comparisons between this material and religious witchcraft are "regarded as an insult by many neo-pagans".
External links
- Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
(scanned books illustrated) - Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches at Internet Sacred Text ArchiveInternet Sacred Text ArchiveThe Internet Sacred Text Archive is a website dedicated to the preservation of electronic public domain texts, specifically those with significant cultural value...
(HTML) - Aradia, article at an Italian witchcraft website.