Aradia – Gospel Of The Witches

Aradia – Gospel Of The Witches – Charles Godfrey Leland

Indefatigable in research, Mr. Leland collects from the mouths of Italian peasants all the information still surviving concerning witches and their rites. Much of this he incorporated in his previous writings, and much more-some of it, we are glad to think, on the point of appearance-has yet to see the light. It is difficult to over-estimate the interest of these survivals in Italy of pagan faith and rite, and it is eminently desirable that so much of them as possible should be preserved. They are on the verge of disappearance, and what is not now reclaimed will inevitably perish. On this point Mr. Leland insists. There are still, however, some few people in the Northern Ramagna who know the Etruscan names of the twelve gods. Invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the Lares may yet be heard, and there are women in the cities who mutter over the amulets they prepare spells known to the old Roman, and have lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. Aradia (Herodias), it may be said, is, according to the Vangelo of the witches, the daughter of Diana by her brother Lucifer, the god of the sun and of the moon, who for his pride was driven from Paradise. Aradia – not, Mr. Leland thinks, the Herodias of the New Testament, but an earlier replica of Lilith-is the chief patron of witches and the teacher of witchcraft. Deeply interesting is all that is said concerning her, and the book, which translates the poetic invocations, is a treasure-house to the student of witchcraft and myth.

Aradia – Gospel Of The Witches

Aradia – Gospel Of The Witches

Format: Paperback.

Aradia – Gospel Of The Witches.

ISBN: 9783849676520.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

More information on the book (from wikipedia)

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is a book composed by the American folklorist Charles Godfrey 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 Vangelo’s 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.

 

(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

 

Publisher’s Note: This book is printed and distributed by Createspace a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC and is typically not available anywhere else than in stores owned and operated by Amazon or Createspace.

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