Strega

“The Old Gods still speak, but they must do so with young voices. Every age needs the Devil reborn, not complacency or nostalgia, but paradoxically the experience of this truth can transport vertiginously back to a confrontation with the origins of who we once were and who we can truly become.”  ~Peter Grey in Apocalyptic Witchcraft

When we think of a strega we may imagine an old crone or maybe an herbalist, maybe we think of the infamous Strega Nona from the children’s books. Or maybe a strega looks like many other witches from European mythology and folklore or maybe an eccentric social outcast with spells and potions. We might also think of a more modern concept of strega as a magician or spiritual healer, perhaps even a political dissident.

In my own family, I was often told that my bisnonna (great-grandmother) was a strega. It has taken years to understand what that truly meant. My search included many questions and experiences with my own family and local community as well as a visit to the city of Benevento in Italy where she lived; also known as la città delle streghe, the city of witches. There is a popular image of the streghe of Benevento dancing around the infamous walnut tree near Benevento where it is said that the rites of the Goddess Diana were held. 

I am still in the process of learning about my ancestral lineage, and will be for the rest of my life, but so far I have found out that the streghe were wise people and wortcunners, practitioners of folk catholicism and peasant medicine who used prayers, blessings, herbs, food, music, dance, and ritual to heal their families and communities.

I also found out that the word strega is often considered a derogatory term used to disparage and condemn the folk medicine ways of rural and poor people as well as disempower and further oppress the already marginalized and vulnerable, usually elder women, much as the word witch has been used for the same purpose across Europe and many other places around the world. 

The word strega in Italian literally translates as “witch” and the plural is streghe/witches.  But what do we really mean when we call ourselves or someone else a strega?

I don’t ask this question to come up with a quick answer but as a way to engage in a dialogue with my own understanding as well as with that of others. The meaning of words is mutable, changing through time, and transforming to meet the needs of changing culture. I am in ongoing exploration with my understanding of both “strega” and “witch” and have developed some ideas around their meaning. Word meanings are shaped by the people that use them and they change based on context. 

The word strega means something different in Italy than it does in North America and it has been claimed by the Italian diaspora as a way to self-identify with our folk healing lineage from the paesani (paesant) and contadini (farmer) ancestors from Southern Italy. It has also been misused and culturally appropriated by the new age witchcraft movement. 

One of the reasons for this, I believe, is not just misunderstanding, but also a lack of words and language around what might be called the “shamanic” practices of Southern Italy and the Mediterranean world. The word “shaman” has become increasingly problematic because it has been also displaced and then misapplied. The origins are controversial along with the use of the word itself, but it is generally agreed that it was first from the indigenous peoples of Siberia. 

“the problematic word Shaman: There is a vast literature, which cannot be reviewed here, on the etymology of the word shaman. As far as I can see, there are three main theories about its origin. The first claims that it originated directly from the Indian term śramaṇa ‘monk’. Others believe in a derivation from Tungusic saman (samān), which comes from the verb sa- ‘to know’. The third position holds the view that the Indian śramaṇa was borrowed into Tungus and spread from there into the world. The modern word forms of Shaman started with Russian in the 17th century. N. D. Mironov and S. M. Shirokogoroff (1924) summarized the positions best as early as 1924; recently V. Voigt (1984) added his ideas. R. A. Miller and N. Naumann (1994) also provided valuable data, as did G. Kara (1997) in his review of their study.” ~A Note on the Word Shaman’ in Old Turkic by Peter Zieme

Finding the etymology of words is a process of excavation because every word we use in our modern tongue has its roots going back to somewhere that has usually been lost and forgotten. Word meanings come from not only the source of the sounds and symbols that form them, but the way that they culturally converged with local conditions.

Words move, change, and recreate themselves in different contexts amongst different peoples. These variables can vastly change the meaning of any word. 

In recent times, the word “shaman” has come to North American English, from wherever it originated, to be superimposed over the spiritual healers and sacred traditions of the native peoples and then has been culturally appropriated by white settlers who claim to be “shamans” and go about practicing twisted, out-of-context, stolen, spiritual systems of healing mimicking those native traditions. The word “shaman” seems to have taken quite a journey and I am aware that there is an entire maze of nuances here that an entire post could be written about.

The bottom line is that the word “shaman” when used by white people in North America to describe themselves is a big problem and it has been requested, by the indigenous people, that we not do it and I believe that’s a valid request that I personally respect.

So where does that leave us in regard to describing similar, or what could be called shamanic, healing practices from places such as Southern Italy? The word “witch” has been employed in this manner although, like shaman, “witch” has taken on meanings that are misused and misappropriated as well as misunderstood both in the present and historically. 

The new age use of “witch” has become associated with Wicca which is a term used to describe a modern religion derived and shaped from the principles of European paganism mixed with new age spirituality. I’m not an expert on Wicca so my explanation may be lacking.

“Witch” and our concept of witchcraft also has a somber and traumatic history from Europe, as well as many other places in the world where, primarily women were executed because of the dominant Christian patriarchal narrative, that continues today, and associates the indigenous healing practices of village herbalists and wise folks with evil and as a threat to Christian doctrine. There are economic and political that drove the witchcraft hysteria and inquisition in Europe as capitalism claimed the labor and life blood of the peasant class. For more on this I highly recommend Sylvia Frederici’s book “Caliban and the Witch.”

The modern and historical witchcraft practices of indigenous Europe have multiple variations, but all were at one time a formed of place-based methods and systems used by folk healers to maintain a healthy and balanced relationship with the animate forces of nature for which we are inextricably linked. 

The popular idea of Italian witchcraft that resembles new age spirituality or Wicca is not historically or culturally accurate and does not relate to the actual embodied folk healing practices in Southern Italy or in the communities of Italian Americans. It is largely speculative to regard any pre-Christian spiritual or healing practices in Southern Italy in the same light as our modern concept of witchcraft. 

The prolific cosmological beliefs through time in Southern Italy were intertwined with the art, ritual, and social expressions of daily and seasonal existence and were transmitted through these means. Any pre-Christain traditions that might be considered witchcraft were passed from person to person and family to family, adapting to the conditions and needs of each generation. As Christianity took over the folk magic and pagan worship of the people converted with them, undoubtedly changed, but still with basic threads intact. It is quite simple to trace many Catholic prayers, rituals, seasonal festivals, and even deities, angels, and saints to corresponding pagan roots. Most of this, at least until people became literate and had access to a printing press, was not recorded. The recorded history of Southern Italy before Christianity was quite limited to only those that had access to a scribe and/or were literate.

The true holy lineage of the Italian people is a thread that sews its way through our genetic memories into us from our ancestors and, in my opinion, is the most accurate source of our history that we have.

Nowadays, the word strega in Italy is not used to identify village or folk healers and is, in fact, considered a derogatory term at least by older generations. But it has been reclaimed and re-defined by modern Italian American folk healers to identify themselves as practitioners of their lineage folk ways that include all that is contained therein both inside and outside of a Catholic context. Yet, there can be no denial that any practice of Italian folk medicine and magic that does not integrate the Catholic foundations of the culture has been at the very least extracted from them. Otherwise it would leave out several hundred years of the evolution of Italian folk traditions and disregard the shared history of the Italian people.

The practices that have been oft misidentified as witchcraft, and those that were practiced by own bisnonna, are the traditions of “Benedicaria” which means “blessing way” or might simply be called “the things we do.” Benedicaria is performed by a “bendetta” or “benedetto” which is a person who “blesses.”  This a cultural tradition that is passed from generation to generation in Italian American communities but has, unfortunately, been diluted through time and assimilation. It is one of the precious and sacred cultural traditions that many Italian Americans are now revitalizing and remembering.

As with any indigenous peoples or culture, healing in Southern Italy began with the first people who settle the Italian peninsula which has been determine to go as far back as the paleolithic period. Archaeologists have been able to track and record the evolution of multiple variations of complex cultural rituals and healing practices that are resonant with totemic, animistic, and what we now consider shamanic healing practices as well as what has also might be called witchcraft.

Much of the evidence for this was discovered by the renowned archeologist Marija Gimbutas. Archaeological finds have included pendants made from ivory, perforated teeth, bones, and shells that were perforated to make necklaces or amulets. Also found are figurines and statuettes resembling the female form, sometimes called “Venus figurines,” carved in bone and different types of stone. Others figures reflected animals and natural elements or patterns. These all suggest a form of worship was centered on the symbolism of mother or “Mother Goddess” and rituals and many the carvings and artifacts during these times are believed to have been methods of sympathetic magic and healing. 

“A number of naturally occurring stones and found objects were thought to have apotropaic qualities, and were carried in the pocket as protection or incorporated into other amulets. For example, arrow or spear points from Paleolithic sites, known as pietre della saetta, were believed to be the physical manifestations of lightning, and to be both the cause of and a form of protection against strokes. In some areas of southern Italy, women would find round or kidney-shaped stones of iron-rich clay that rattled from the loose minerals trapped inside. Through sympathetic magic, these became known as pietre della gravidanza, or pregnancy stones, and were believed to protect pregnant women and allow them to carry to term successfully. “ ~Witchcraft, healing and vernacular magic in Italy

 By Sabina Magliocco

Magic, another tricky word, coming from the Proto-Indo -European root magh-, means to be able or to have power

Magic is the practice of bringing our awareness to our relationship with more than our 3-dimensional space-time as full participants in the forces of nature, the imaginal realm, and the vital force of healing, not to manipulate it, but to serve and interact with the sacred in ourselves and all of life. Magic allows us to embody the mythic and archetypal elements of the divine or multi-dimensional reality that guides our Earthly human work to the benefit of creation. 

Italian folk medicine and indigenous healing is sourced in a magico-religious history that combines local healing practices with vernacular or folk magic and the regional spiritual practices of the people. Since the time that Christianity took over Europe, these healing practices have been transformed from their pagan character and qualities and intertwined with Italian Catholicism. 

As many of the modern generations of Italian Americans have sought to reclaim and remember their cultural history and resist further assimilation, these traditions have been resurging in the context of an era where witchcraft, as a healing art, is also resurging, and although “strega” may have negative connotations in some contexts, it has been reasserted as a valuable and explicit word to describe the full spectrum of inherited and reclaimed practices of Italian folk magic as they have been adapted in the Italian diaspora in the socio-political moment happening now in the United States.

Though we may not know much about how the world was for our ancestors we do know that they were tasked, like us, with being the living generation that would lead the way for the next. And we, right now, are ancestors and as such our task is to begin. 

The streghe in North America in this generation, are the future ancestors and, as such, our task is to remember and cultivate our heritage and traditions so that our descendants have a lineage to inherit.

The word “return” is from the Latin “tornare” which means to turn. We the prefix re- it means to turn back. And although we can’t go back in time, we can turn back to call up what was passed on to us and hold shape it where we are standing in the here and now. When we seek to fully live and feel and connect to the past, present, and future as a way of becoming who we are as the evolutionary expression of all that has come before us and and all that is to come we do, in a sense, return. We return back to the raw elements of creation and culture. We return back to what is before us and we make that ours with our hands and the needs of our times.

Because of this, I believe that the reclamation and reappropriation of the word “strega” in the context of Italian American folk magic is both authentic and accurate even in lieu of the fact that it may have negative connotations in Southern Italy. It is also a word that is continually being defined, as all words, and it is our willingness to dialogue with our language and how we express who we are, where we are, and what our context of relationship is to the guiding principles of our ancestral lineage.

Resources:

For some really clear and succinct, as well as authentic reading on Italian Folk Healing the book Italian Folk Magic by Mary-Grace Fahrun

On general European witchcraft: Witchcraft Medicine; Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants by Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl

Image: Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, c. 1609, by the Italian master Caravaggio