Strega is the Italian word for witch. Italian witchcraft (Stregheria) is a distinct magical and spiritual tradition rooted in Italian folk practices, the goddess Diana, the protective magic of the Cimaruta amulet, malocchio (evil eye) counter-magic, and a mythology preserved in Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899). It is separate from Wicca and carries its own theology, practices, and cultural heritage.
What Does Strega Mean?
Strega is the Italian word for witch. It derives from the Latin strix (plural: striges), a nocturnal bird, part owl and part vampire, that Roman folklore associated with witchcraft, child-stealing, and the supernatural. The strix appears in the writings of Ovid, Pliny the Elder, and other Roman authors as a creature of the night that fed on human blood and flesh, particularly that of infants. By the medieval period, the word had evolved into strega and was applied to human women accused of nocturnal flight, shape-shifting, and harmful magic.
The masculine form is stregone (sorcerer or male witch), and the collective tradition is called Stregheria, a term popularized in the late twentieth century by authors including Raven Grimassi. The related word stregoneria means sorcery or witchcraft in a general sense.
Italian witchcraft is not a single, unified tradition. It encompasses a range of regional practices, beliefs, and magical techniques that vary significantly from Sicily to Sardinia to Tuscany to Friuli. What unites these diverse practices is a shared cultural context: Italian folk Catholicism, Mediterranean beliefs about the evil eye and protective magic, the veneration of ancestors and saints, and a relationship with the natural world shaped by the Italian landscape and agricultural calendar.
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches
Charles Godfrey Leland (1824 to 1903), an American folklorist living in Florence, published Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches in 1899. Leland claimed the text was given to him by a woman he called Maddalena, a Florentine strega who served as his informant on Italian folk magic and witchcraft practices over a period of years. According to Leland, the text represented the secret scripture of an underground Italian witch religion.
The Aradia describes a mythology in which Diana, the queen of the witches, mates with Lucifer (the god of light and the sun) and produces a daughter, Aradia. Diana sends Aradia to earth to teach witchcraft to the oppressed peasants of Italy, giving them the power to resist their feudal overlords. The text includes spells, invocations, rituals (including a ritual meal of cakes and wine), and a theology that frames witchcraft as a religion of liberation.
The scholarly debate over Aradia's authenticity has been ongoing since its publication. Leland's claims are difficult to verify: Maddalena's identity has never been conclusively established, and the text contains elements that may be Leland's own invention or embellishment. Sabina Magliocco, in her analysis of the text, has argued that it likely represents a mixture of genuine Italian folk material, Leland's Romantic sensibilities, and creative literary construction.
Regardless of its authenticity as an ancient scripture, Aradia's influence has been enormous. Gerald Gardner read the text and was influenced by it in developing Wicca (the ritual meal of cakes and wine appears in both traditions). The text became a foundational document for modern Stregheria and remains one of the most widely read texts in the broader witchcraft community.
Leland's Other Italian Works
Aradia was not Leland's only work on Italian folk magic. He also published Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (1892) and Legends of Florence (1895 to 1896), both of which documented folk beliefs, magical practices, and supernatural traditions he collected during his years in Italy. These works provide additional context for the Aradia and demonstrate that Leland was drawing on a genuine body of folk material, even if his presentation of it was shaped by his own agenda.
Diana in Italian Witchcraft: The Goddess of the Night
Diana (the Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and wild places) occupies a central position in Italian witchcraft mythology. Her association with witchcraft is ancient. The Canon Episcopi (c. 906 CE), one of the most important early medieval church documents on witchcraft, denounced the belief that "certain wicked women, turning back to Satan, seduced by the illusions of demons, believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts with Diana, goddess of the pagans."
This passage is significant because it demonstrates that the association of Diana with nocturnal spirit flight was already established in popular belief by the tenth century. The Church condemned the belief as a delusion, but the condemnation itself documents the belief's existence. Italian folk tradition preserved this association for centuries: Diana was the queen of the night, the leader of the wild hunt, and the patroness of those who travelled in spirit while their bodies slept.
In Leland's Aradia, Diana is the primary deity: "Diana was the first created before all creation; in her were all things." She is the queen of heaven, the goddess of the moon, and the mother of Aradia. Her consort is Lucifer, identified not with the Christian Satan but with the morning star, the light-bearer whose name (from the Latin lux, light, and ferre, to carry) denotes the planet Venus at dawn.
The Diana of Italian witchcraft is not the chaste huntress of classical mythology but a fertility goddess, a queen of spirits, and a patroness of the marginalized. Her role as protector of the poor and outcast, transmitted through the Aradia, gives Italian witchcraft a social dimension absent from many other magical traditions.
The Benandanti of Friuli: Night Battles and Spirit Flight
Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966) documented one of the most remarkable discoveries in European witchcraft studies. In the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, Inquisition records from 1575 to the 1640s describe a group called the Benandanti ("good walkers" or "good goers") who claimed to leave their bodies at night, four times a year on the Ember Days, to battle evil witches (malandanti) in the fields.
The Benandanti said they fought with stalks of fennel against the malandanti's sorghum stalks. If the Benandanti won, the harvest would be good; if the malandanti prevailed, famine would follow. The Benandanti identified themselves not as witches but as protectors of the community, born with the caul (amniotic membrane covering the face at birth), which marked them for this spiritual role.
The Inquisition did not know what to make of the Benandanti. Their claims did not fit the standard demonological framework of the period: they were not confessing to pacts with the Devil, attendance at sabbaths, or harm to their neighbours. Over several decades, the Inquisitors gradually pressured the Benandanti to conform their testimony to the standard witch-trial template, and by the 1640s, the Benandanti had been absorbed into the Inquisition's model of Satanic witchcraft.
Ginzburg's Significance
Ginzburg's discovery was groundbreaking because it revealed a stratum of European folk belief that existed beneath and independent of the Church's demonological framework. The Benandanti were not witches in the Church's sense; they were practitioners of an agrarian spirit-flight tradition that predated the witch trials and had its own internal logic. This finding changed how historians understood European witchcraft, revealing folk traditions that the Inquisition had distorted and absorbed rather than merely invented.
The Cimaruta: Italy's Witch Amulet
The Cimaruta (from cima di ruta, "sprig of rue") is a silver amulet shaped like a branch of the rue plant (Ruta graveolens), with small symbolic charms hanging from its tips. Rue has been associated with protective magic in the Mediterranean for millennia; the ancient Romans used it to ward off the evil eye, and Italian folk tradition has maintained this use continuously.
The charms hanging from the Cimaruta's branches vary but commonly include: a crescent moon (Diana, protection at night), a key (Hecate, access to the spirit world), a serpent (wisdom, healing, the goddess), a hand making a gesture against the evil eye (the mano fico or mano cornuta), a heart (love, Venus), and a flower or blossom (fertility, growth). The combination of charms creates a comprehensive protective amulet addressing multiple spiritual threats.
Historically, the Cimaruta was hung over cradles and beds to protect infants and sleepers from the evil eye, nightmares, and malicious spirits. It was especially common in southern Italy and Sicily, where evil eye beliefs are strongest. Antique Cimarute from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries are collected as both folk art and magical artefacts.
In modern Stregheria, the Cimaruta has become a symbol of identity, comparable to the Wiccan pentacle or the Christian cross. Wearing or displaying a Cimaruta signals affiliation with the Italian witchcraft tradition and serves as a daily protective talisman.
The Malocchio: Evil Eye Beliefs and Counter-Magic
The malocchio (evil eye) is the belief that envy, jealousy, or hostile intention can cause harm through a glance or concentrated gaze. This belief is not unique to Italy; it spans the entire Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America. But in Italian culture, the malocchio is a living practice, not a historical curiosity. Italian and Italian-American communities maintain active traditions of diagnosis and cure.
Diagnosis typically involves olive oil divination. A practitioner (usually an older woman who has received the knowledge from a family elder) drops olive oil into a bowl of water. If the oil disperses or forms an eye-shaped pattern, the malocchio is confirmed. The cure involves prayers (often combining Catholic invocations with folk incantations), gestures, and the repetition of the diagnostic ritual until the oil drops hold their shape, indicating the curse is broken.
Protective measures include the corno (a horn-shaped amulet, usually red), the mano cornuta (the "horned hand" gesture), the mano fico (a fist with the thumb between the index and middle fingers), the Cimaruta, and the display of garlic, rue, and red ribbon. These protections are used preventively, not just curatively; an Italian grandmother who pins a corno to an infant's clothing is acting on the same principle as a ceremonial magician who constructs a protective circle.
The Malocchio in Practice
The evil eye tradition demonstrates how Italian folk magic operates at the intersection of Catholic devotion and pre-Christian practice. The same woman who prays to the Virgin Mary for protection may also perform the olive oil divination, hang a Cimaruta over the crib, and make the mano cornuta when she senses ill will. These practices are not experienced as contradictions but as layers of a single protective system.
La Vecchia Religione: The Old Religion Debate
La Vecchia Religione ("the Old Religion") is the term used by some Stregheria practitioners for the claimed pre-Christian Italian pagan religion that, according to tradition, survived underground for centuries despite Christianization and the Inquisition. This claim parallels Gerald Gardner's assertion that Wicca was a survival of pre-Christian British paganism and Margaret Murray's discredited "witch-cult hypothesis."
The scholarly consensus is cautious. Historians like Sabina Magliocco and Ronald Hutton acknowledge that genuine folk magical practices persisted in Italy through the Christian centuries (the malocchio tradition, herbal healing, spirit-flight beliefs like those of the Benandanti). But they distinguish between the survival of individual practices and the survival of an organized, self-conscious pagan religion. The former is well-documented; the latter is not.
What seems most likely is that Italian witchcraft, as practised historically, was a collection of folk practices embedded within a Catholic cultural framework rather than an alternative religion opposed to Christianity. The strega who cured the evil eye also attended Mass, prayed to saints, and raised her children Catholic. The framing of these practices as a coherent "Old Religion" is largely a modern development, influenced by Leland, Murray, and the broader pagan revival of the twentieth century.
This does not diminish the value or authenticity of the practices themselves. A healing charm that works is a healing charm that works, regardless of whether it belongs to an organized pre-Christian religion or to an informal folk tradition within Christianity. The debate over La Vecchia Religione is a debate about historical continuity, not about the effectiveness or cultural significance of Italian folk magic.
Italian Folk Magic Practices
Italian folk magic encompasses a rich array of practices that vary by region but share common themes: protection, healing, love magic, divination, and the management of relationships with the spirit world.
Ancestral veneration: The dead are active participants in Italian folk religion. Meals are prepared for the dead on All Souls' Day (November 2), candles are lit at home shrines, and the advice and protection of deceased family members is sought through prayer and ritual. This practice blends Catholic veneration of the dead with older folk traditions of ancestor worship.
Kitchen magic: Italian folk magic is deeply embedded in domestic life. Cooking, bread baking, wine making, and olive oil production all carry magical significance. Specific foods are prepared for specific purposes: basil for love, fennel for protection, garlic for banishing evil. The kitchen is the primary magical workspace, and the woman who controls the kitchen controls the household's magical life.
Saint magic: Italian folk practitioners work with Catholic saints as though they were pagan deities, each with specific areas of influence. Saint Anthony finds lost things, Saint Joseph provides for material needs, Saint Lucy heals the eyes. This "saint magic" is not officially sanctioned by the Church but is deeply embedded in Italian popular Catholicism.
Herbalism: Italian folk herbalism draws on both the Mediterranean pharmacopoeia and local plant lore. Rue (ruta), basil (basilico), rosemary (rosmarino), and fennel (finocchio) are among the most important magical and medicinal plants. The use of these herbs in Italian folk magic parallels and overlaps with the green witchcraft tradition.
Modern Stregheria: Grimassi and the Revival
Raven Grimassi (1951 to 2019) was the most visible figure in the modern Stregheria revival. An American of Italian descent, Grimassi published Ways of the Strega (1995, later revised as Italian Witchcraft), Hereditary Witchcraft (1999), and several other books presenting a systematic modern practice of Italian witchcraft. He claimed a family tradition of Stregheria passed through his mother's Sicilian lineage.
Grimassi's system drew on Leland's Aradia, Italian folk practices, and his own innovations. He organized the tradition around three clans (named for stars: Tanarra, Janarra, and Fanarra), established seasonal festivals, and developed a ritual structure that, while distinctly Italian in its imagery, shows the influence of Wiccan and ceremonial magic organizational patterns.
Grimassi's work was both praised and criticized. Supporters valued his systematic presentation of a tradition that had previously existed only in fragmentary form. Critics argued that he imposed a Wiccan-style organizational structure on folk practices that were not originally organized that way, and that his claims of family tradition were unverifiable.
Beyond Grimassi, the modern Italian witchcraft community includes practitioners who work strictly from family folk traditions (nonna magic), those who reconstruct practices from historical sources (Ginzburg, Leland, Inquisition records), and those who combine Italian elements with other witchcraft traditions. The diversity of approach reflects the diversity of Italian folk magic itself.
Strega vs. Wicca: Key Differences
| Feature | Stregheria | Wicca |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Italian folk practices, Leland's Aradia (1899) | Gerald Gardner, England, 1954 |
| Deity | Diana, Lucifer (light-bearer), Aradia | The Goddess and God (generic) |
| Ethics | No formal ethical code; pragmatic | Wiccan Rede, Threefold Law |
| Calendar | Regional Italian festivals, lunar cycles | Wheel of the Year (8 sabbats) |
| Evil eye | Central practice (malocchio/counter-magic) | Not part of tradition |
| Ancestors | Active veneration and communication | Not a central practice |
| Cursing | Accepted within folk tradition | Discouraged by Rede |
| Cultural context | Italian/Mediterranean | British/Anglo-Saxon |
The two traditions share some practices (circle casting, moon worship, herbalism) and share a historical connection (Leland's Aradia influenced Gardner). But their cultural contexts, theologies, and ethical frameworks are distinct. Conflating Stregheria with Wicca erases the specifically Italian character of the former and the specifically English character of the latter.
The Hermetic Context: Renaissance Italy and Magic
Italian witchcraft exists within the same cultural landscape that produced the greatest flowering of Hermetic philosophy in Western history. Marsilio Ficino (1433 to 1499) translated the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin in 1463 at the request of Cosimo de' Medici. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 to 1494) synthesized Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Christian thought in his Oration on the Dignity of Man. Giordano Bruno (1548 to 1600) carried Hermetic magic across Europe before being burned at the stake.
The folk magic of the strega and the learned magic of the Hermetic philosopher were not separate worlds. They existed on a continuum. The village healer who used herbs and prayers to cure the evil eye was practising the same principle of correspondence that Ficino employed when he prescribed specific stones, colours, and music to channel planetary influences. The intellectual framework was different, but the underlying logic (that the natural world is alive with sympathetic connections that can be activated through knowledge and intention) was the same.
Italy was the crucible in which the Hermetic tradition was reborn in the West, and Italian folk magic carries the imprint of that rebirth. The Hermetic synthesis of mind, nature, and spirit that Ficino and Pico articulated at the highest intellectual level was already present, in practical form, in the traditions of the Italian strega.
The Strega and the Philosopher
Renaissance Italy produced both Ficino's Hermetic philosophy and the village strega's protective magic. These were not opposing traditions but different expressions of the same insight: that the natural world is alive, that it responds to human intention, and that knowledge of its sympathies and correspondences confers power. The strega who knew which herb cured fever and which prayer broke the evil eye was a Hermetic practitioner in everything but name.
Key Takeaways
- Strega (Italian for witch) refers to practitioners of Italian witchcraft (Stregheria), a tradition rooted in Mediterranean folk practices, the goddess Diana, malocchio counter-magic, the Cimaruta amulet, and ancestral veneration, distinct from Wicca in theology, ethics, and cultural context.
- Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) is the foundational text of modern Stregheria, describing a mythology of Diana, Lucifer (as light-bearer), and their daughter Aradia, sent to teach witchcraft as a tool of liberation.
- Carlo Ginzburg's discovery of the Benandanti (1966) revealed a genuine Italian folk tradition of spirit flight and night battles that operated independently of the Church's demonological framework, changing how historians understand European witchcraft.
- Italian folk magic operates at the intersection of Catholic devotion and pre-Christian practice: the same practitioner may pray to the Virgin Mary, perform olive oil divination for the evil eye, and hang a Cimaruta over the cradle, experiencing these as complementary rather than contradictory.
- Renaissance Italy's Hermetic tradition (Ficino, Pico, Bruno) and its folk magic tradition share the same underlying principle: that the natural world is alive with sympathetic connections, and knowledge of those connections confers the ability to heal, protect, and transform.
Italian Folk Magic: Rue's Kitchen Witchery by Fahrun, Mary-Grace
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Frequently Asked Questions
What does strega mean?
Strega is the Italian word for witch. It derives from the Latin strix (plural: striges), a nocturnal bird associated with witchcraft and the supernatural in Roman folklore. The masculine form is stregone. The term Stregheria, meaning Italian witchcraft as a tradition, was popularized in the late twentieth century.
What is Aradia and why is it important?
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) is a text published by American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, who claimed it was given to him by Maddalena, a Florentine witch. The text describes a religion centered on the goddess Diana and her daughter Aradia, who was sent to earth to teach witchcraft to the oppressed. It became a foundational text for modern Italian witchcraft and influenced Gerald Gardner's creation of Wicca.
Who were the Benandanti?
The Benandanti ("good walkers") were members of an agrarian fertility cult in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, documented in Inquisition records from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They claimed to leave their bodies at night to battle evil witches (malandanti) in spirit form, fighting to protect their community's crops. Carlo Ginzburg documented them in The Night Battles (1966).
What is the Cimaruta?
The Cimaruta (sprig of rue) is a traditional Italian protective amulet made of silver, shaped like a branch of the rue plant with small charms hanging from its tips. Common charms include a crescent moon, a key, a serpent, a hand, and a flower. It was historically hung over cradles to protect infants from the evil eye and is now a symbol of Italian witchcraft tradition.
What is the malocchio?
The malocchio (evil eye) is the belief that envy, jealousy, or ill will can cause harm through a glance or gaze. It is one of the most widespread folk beliefs in Mediterranean culture and remains active in Italian and Italian-American communities. Counter-magic against the malocchio, including prayers, olive oil divination, and protective amulets (the corno, the mano cornuta), is a central practice in Italian folk magic.
Is Italian witchcraft the same as Wicca?
No. Italian witchcraft (Stregheria) is a distinct tradition with its own mythology (Diana, Aradia, Lucifer as light-bearer), practices (malocchio counter-magic, ancestral veneration, the Cimaruta), and cultural context. While Leland's Aradia influenced Gerald Gardner, Stregheria does not follow the Wiccan Rede, the Threefold Law, or the Wheel of the Year. The two traditions share some practices but are historically and theologically separate.
Does Stregheria worship Lucifer?
In Leland's Aradia, Lucifer appears as the god of light and the sun, Diana's consort, and Aradia's father. This is not the Satan of Christian theology but a pre-Christian figure identified with the morning star (Venus) and with light itself. The name Lucifer (Latin: light-bearer) was applied to Venus in Roman astronomy before it was adopted as a name for Satan in Christian tradition.
What is La Vecchia Religione?
La Vecchia Religione (the Old Religion) is the term used by some Stregheria practitioners for the claimed pre-Christian Italian pagan religion that survived underground through the centuries. Whether such a continuous tradition actually existed is debated by scholars. Most academics view modern Stregheria as a reconstruction based on folk practices, literary sources, and modern invention rather than a direct survival.
Who was Raven Grimassi?
Raven Grimassi (1951 to 2019) was an American author of Italian descent who popularized modern Stregheria through books including Italian Witchcraft (originally Ways of the Strega, 1995), Hereditary Witchcraft (1999), and The Book of the Holy Strega. Grimassi claimed a family tradition of Italian witchcraft and developed a systematic modern practice drawing on Italian folk magic, Leland's Aradia, and his own research.
What role does Diana play in Italian witchcraft?
Diana (the Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and wild places) is the central deity in Leland's Aradia and in much of modern Stregheria. In Italian folk tradition, Diana was associated with night-flying, the crossroads, and the company of the dead. The Canon Episcopi (c. 906 CE) denounced the belief that women rode out at night in the train of Diana, indicating that this folk belief was already widespread in the early medieval period.
Sources
- Leland, Charles Godfrey. Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. London: David Nutt, 1899. Foundational text of modern Stregheria, claiming to preserve an Italian witch religion centered on Diana and Aradia.
- Ginzburg, Carlo. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983 (Italian original 1966). Groundbreaking study of the Benandanti of Friuli.
- Magliocco, Sabina. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Academic analysis of neo-pagan movements including Italian witchcraft.
- Grimassi, Raven. Italian Witchcraft: The Old Religion of Southern Europe. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2000. Popular guide to modern Stregheria practice.
- Leland, Charles Godfrey. Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. Documents Italian folk beliefs and magical practices that provide context for Aradia.
- Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Contextualizes Italian witchcraft claims within the broader history of modern paganism.
Italian witchcraft is not a museum exhibit. The malocchio is still diagnosed in Italian-American kitchens. The Cimaruta is still worn. Olive oil is still dropped into water to test for the evil eye. These practices have survived because they work within their cultural context, providing protection, healing, and connection to the ancestral traditions of the Italian people. The strega's craft is alive wherever Italian families gather, remember, and practise.