by Dee Rapposelli

Created on: November 12, 2009

Which Witch?

The Historical Backdrop of Witchcraft and Paganism

Like other religions, Wiccans and Pagans have legends about how their traditions came to be. Like adherents of some of those other religions, such as . . . hmm . . . fundamentalist Christianity, many Wiccans and Pagans believe that their legends are historical facts. These concepts continue to be widely promoted and repeated (and in the age of the Internet) copied and pasted despite contrary evidence.

A curiosity to me in relation to Paganism (capitalized here to denote post-modern paganism and not pre-Christian-era culture) is the use of the term witch. Many Pagans and Western occultists/esotericistsincluding myselfblithely self-identify as witches. I thought thinking myself one was cool' when my grandfather, after learning that I dabbled in palm and card reading, announced that I was following in the footsteps of his mother. He proudly announced that she was a stregaa witch.

Now, I knew that my maternal great grandmother, who hailed from Bari, Italy, was a wise woman. Like many other people's provincial Old World great grandmothers, she divined and cast spells and was a living lexicon of folklore, folk healing, and superstition. Her philosophy was that of other Italian cunning folk: maintain a positive mindset and not speak of disease or death lest doing so attract negative influences.

Although not transmitted overtly or at all formally (and presumably lost to all of her progeny except perhaps me), certain affectations were passed down. When I moved into my grandfather's house after his death, I found it chock-full of talismans that were groupings of Christian paraphernalia and evil-averting objects. They took the form of rosaries, blessed palm and/or devotional scapulars bound up with cornos (Italian horns) and similar charms, glass eyes, or horseshoes. Curiously, I found many of these curios dangling from giant, rusted nails driven into the walls in the backs of closets or concrete pillars in the cellar. A bull's horn affixed with glass amber eyes hung over the main entrance and today still guards the entrance of my present living space.

But my great grandmother was not a strega exactly. Perhaps she was a maga (a lady mage) or a stregona (a sorceress) or a donna di fiori (an outsider), or a myriad other regional names that people gave to local healers, diviners, charmers, and unbewitchers. No one in their right mind called him- or herself a witch anywhere in Europe until the latter

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