ARADIA, or the Gospel of the Witches [with Appendix]

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches/Appendix

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He claims that mothers teach their children to focus attention and block out the external world through the repetition of chants. Unfortunately, no evidence is offered to support the suggestion that nonsense rimes and "many such devices" are used for training in "the magical use of the will" Yet the central role of the will is made clear in the text when threats to a deity turn what begins as a prayer into a command.

Further examination of the main text shows that the primary transformation is always effected on the outside world, never on the inner self. The world becomes plastic, malleable to the most personal wishes of the practitioner, so that the self becomes enthroned. One striking example of how the self is insulated with its desires intact can be seen in Leland's condensation of a legend he received in manuscript, concerning a beautiful girl who refuses to marry her betrothed because their poverty prevents them from having the opulent wedding she envisions.

Mocked for this, she attempts suicide by flinging herself from a tower, but the intervention of a beautiful, unearthly woman leaves her unharmed. Following the instructions of this lady to obtain her desires by worshipping the moon, she awakens to find herself in a great house, and is gorgeously attired by a maid, and attended by ten elegant women to a church where she has a grander wedding than she had even imagined, after which the whole town is treated to a feast.

In another incredible example of metamorphosis serving wish-fulfillment, a wizard who cannot win the daughter of a rich lord through normal means conjures Diana and Aradia to turn the girl into a dog at night, so that she can leave her house undetected. He instructs them to bring her to his bed, and transform her back into a beautiful girl. After he has had his fill of love-making with her, he tells the goddesses to transform her again into a dog and send her back to her bed, from where she will awaken as normal with only a dreamlike remembrance of the incident.

Other spells address more practical concerns, including one to insure a good grape harvest yielding a wine that will not spoil. This begins with drinking the "blood" of Diana, which the supplicant says must change to wine. Leland includes a few comments relating to antique elements of this invocation. One chant invokes help in finding a rare book at a bargain pricewhich seems it might be an uncommon sort of need in a peasant culture steeped in oral tradition. Here Leland reveals his own involvement in his researches, for he tells us he obtained it "after some delay" in response to his specific request.

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One exception to the pattern of simple wish-fullfilment is a story included in the Appendix, in which a young man who invokes the help of Diana's children, the fairies, initially enjoys financial prosperity, but then his finances take a turn for the worse. The fairies tell him, in response to his query, that he cannot depend on good fortune alone, but must himself work and save to enjoy a consistent profit. Here, as in other examples, the energies of the supernatural are directed toward affairs of the mundane world, but with the qualification that these energies alone will not suffice. If the world of Aradia sets itself against established social authority, it turns to supernatural authority to override both it and any other worldly or natural forces.

And while at times the supplicant may look with loving eyes to the benevolent parental deity, worship turns to wrath if the deity fails to fulfill the role of indulgent parent.

It is no wonder, then, that Aradia would appeal to teenage girls, for it presents a landscape where adolescent fantasies can be fulfilled. The bad parent is replaced with a good parent, who actually becomes the servant of the witch. Authority is not abolished, but transferred to a self that occupies the center of its world.

Aradia: Gospel of the Witches

It appears to be strangely out of sight and out of mind with all historians, that the sufferings of the vast majority of mankind, or the enslaved and poor, were far greater under early Christianity, or till the end of the Middle Ages and the Emancipation of Serfs, than they were before. The reason for this was that in the old 'heathen' time the humble did not know, or even dream, that all are equal before God, or that they hadmany rights, even here on earth, as slaves; for, in fact, the whole moral tendency of the New Testament is utterly opposed to slavery, or even sever servitude.

Every word uttered teaching Christ's mercy and love, humility and charity, was, in fact, a bitter reproof, not only to every lord in the land, but to the Church itself, and its arrogant prelates. The fact that many abuses had been mitigated and that there were benevolent saints,does not affect the fact that, on the whole, mankind was for a long time worse off than before, and the greatest cause of this suffering was what may be called a sentimental one, or a newly born consciousness of rights withheld, which is always of itself a torture.

And this was greatly aggravated by the endless preaching to the people that it was a duty tosuffer and endure oppression and tyranny, and that the rights of Authority of all kinds were so great that they on the whole even excused their worst abuses. For by upholding Authority in the nobility the Church maintained its own. The result of it all was a vast development of rebels, outcasts, and all the discontented, who adopted witchcraft or sorcery for a religion, and wizards as their priests.

They had secret meetings in desert places, among old ruins accursed by priests as the haunt of evil spirits or ancient heathen gods, or in the mountains. To this daythe dweller in Italy may often find secluded spots environed by ancient chestnut forests, rocks, and walls, which suggest fit places for the Sabbat, and are sometimes still believed by tradition to be such.

And I also believe that in this Gospel of the Witches we have a trustworthy outline at least of the doctrine and rites observed at these meetings. They adored forbidden deities and practiced forbidden deeds, inspired as much by rebellion against Society as their own passions. There is, however, in the Evangel of the Witches an effort made to distinguish between the naturally wicked or corrupt and those who are outcasts or oppressed, as appearsfrom the passage: The supper of the Witches, the cakes of meal, salt, and honey, in the form of crescent moons, are known to every classical scholar.

The moon or horn shaped cakes are still common. I have eaten of them this very day, and though they are known all over the world, I believe they owe their fashion to tradition. In the conjuration of the meal there is a very curious tradition introduced to the effect that the glittering grains of wheat from which spikes shoot like sun rays, owe their brilliant likeness to a resemblance to the firefly, 'who comes to give the light.

Hereuponthe Vangelo cites a common nursery rhyme, which may also be found a nursery tale, yet which, like others, is derived from witch lore, by which the lucciola is put under a glassand conjured to give by its light certain answers. The conjuration of the meal or bread, as being literally our body as contributing to form it, and deeply sacred because it had lain in the earth, where dark and wondrous secrets bide, seems to cast a new light on the Christian sacrament. It is a type of resurrection from earth, and was therefore used at the Mysteries and Holy Supper, and the grain had pertained to chthonic secrets, or to what had been under the earth in darkness.

Thus even earthworms are invoked in modern witchcraft as familiar with dark mysteries, and the shepherd's pipe to win the Orphic power must be buried three days in the earth. And so all was, and is, in sorcery a kind of wild poetry based on symbols, all blending into one another, light and darkness, fireflies and grain, life and death. Very strange indeed, but very strictly according to ancient magic as described by classic authorities, is the threatening Diana, in case she will not grant a prayer.

This recurs continually in the witch exorcisms or spells.

The magus, or witch, worships the spirit, but claims to have the right, drawn from a higher power, to compel even theQueen of Earth, Heaven and Hell to grant the request. This is all classic. No one everheard of a Satanic witch invoking or threatening the Trinity, or Christ or even the angels or saints.

In fact, they cannot even compel the devil or his imps to obey - they work entirely by his good will as slaves. But in the old Italian lore the sorcerer or witch is all or nothing, and aims at limitless will or power. Of the ancient belief in the virtues of a perforated stone I need not speak. Butit is to be remarked that in the invocation the witch goes forth in the earliest morning to seek for verbena or verbain.

The ancient Persian magi, or rather their daughters, worshipped the sun as it rose by waving freshly plucked verbena, which was one of the seven most powerful plants in magic. These Persian priestesses were naked while they thus worshipped, nudity being a symbol of truth and sincerity. The extinguishing the lights, nakedness, and the orgy, were regarded as symbolical of the body being laid in the ground, the grain being planted, or of entering into darkness and death, to be revived in new forms, or regeneration and light.

It was the layingaside of daily life. The Gospel of the Witches, as I have given it, is in reality only the initial chapter of the collection of ceremonies, incantations, and traditions current in the fraternity or sisterhood, the whole of which are in the main to be found in my Etruscan Roman Remains and Florentine Legends.

I have, it is true, a great number as yet unpublished, and there are more ungathered, but the whole scripture of this sorcery, all its principal tenets, formulas, medicaments, and mysteries may be found in what I have collected and printed. Yet I would urge that it would be worth while to arrange and edit it all into one work, because it would be to every student of archeology, folk lore, or history of great value. It has been the faith of millions in the past it has made itself felt in innumerable traditions, which deserve to be better understood than they are, and I would gladly undertake the work if I believed that the public would make it worth the publisher's outlay and pains.

It may be observed with truth that I have not treated this Gospel, nor even the subject of witchcraft, entirely as folk lore, as the word is strictly defined and carried out; that is, as a mere traditional fact or thing to be chiefly regarded as a variant like or unlike sundry other traditions, or to be tabulated and put away in pigeon holes for reference. That it is useful and sensible to do all this is perfectly true, and it has led to an immense amount of valuable search, collection, and preservation.

But there isthis to be said, and I have observed that here and there a few genial minds are beginning to awake to it, that the mere study of the letter in this way has developed a great indifference to the spirit, going in may cases so far as to produce, like Realism in Art to which it is allied , even a contempt for the matter or meaning of it, as originally believed in.

I was lately much struck by the fact that in a very learned work on Music, the author, in discussing that of ancient times and of the East, while extremely accurate and minute in determining pentatonic and all other scales, and what may be called the mere machinery and history of composition, showed that he was utterly ignorant of the fundamental fact that notes and chords, bars and melodies, were in themselves ideas or thoughts.

Thus Confucius is said to have composed a melody which was a personal description of himself. Now if this be not understood, we cannot understand the soul of early music, and the folk lorist who cannot get beyond the letter and fancies himself 'scientific' is exactlylike the musician who has no idea of how or why melodies were anciently composed. Leland's translation and editing was completed in early 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 in a small print run. 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". 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 ".

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 ".

by Charles G. Leland

Aradia's students thus became the first witches, who would then continue the worship of Diana. Leland was struck by this cosmogony: Aradia is composed of fifteen chapters, the first ten of which are presented as being Leland's translation of the Vangelo manuscript 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, II, 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 ".

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. In several places Leland provides the Italian he was translating. According to Mario Pazzaglini, author of the translation, the Italian contains misspellings, missing words, and grammatical errors, and is in a standardised Italian rather than the local dialect one might expect.

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 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".

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