Aradia or the gospel of the witches
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (German title: Aradia. The teachings of witches ) is a book by the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland , which was published in 1899. According to him, it contains the religious text of a group of pagan witches of Tuscany, documenting their beliefs and rituals. Various historians and folklorists have denied the existence of such a group. In the 20th century, the book was very influential in the development of neo-paganism in the Wiccan movement.
The text is composed of several parts. Part of this is Leland's translation of an original Italian manuscript, the Vangelo (Gospel). Leland reports that he received the manuscript from his main informant on Italian witchcraft belief, a woman who Leland calls "Maddalena". The remaining material comes from Leland's research on Italian folk culture and traditions, including other relevant material from Maddalena. Leland had learned of the Vangelo's existence in 1886, but it was 11 years before Maddalena provided him with a copy. After the material was translated and edited, it was two years before publication. In fifteen chapters, the Vangelo describes the origins, beliefs, rituals and magic arts of the Italian pagan tradition. The central figure of this religion is the goddess Aradia , who came to earth to teach the peasants the practice of witchcraft so that they can resist their feudal oppressors and the Roman Catholic Church.
Leland's work remained unknown until the 1950s, when the discussion about continued "pagan witchcraft" began. Aradia was studied under these new theories. Scholars are divided in their views, some reject Leland's assumptions about the origin of the manuscript, others argue in favor of authenticity and consider the work a unique testimony to popular belief. With the growing scientific interest, Aradia also played an increasingly important role in the history of the Gardnerian Wicca and its offshoots. It was considered evidence of the survival of pagan witchcraft in Europe. In addition, a section from the first chapter was used for the liturgy. The work was widely distributed through numerous reprints. In 1999 a critical edition was published with a new translation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini.
origin
Charles Godfrey Leland was an American author and folklorist who spent much of the 1890s in Florence researching Italian folk culture. Aradia was one of the research results. According to the folklorist Roma Lister, Maddalena, from whom he claims to have received the manuscript, was actually called Margherita. She is said to have been a witch from Florence. who claimed to be descended from the Etruscans and to know ancient rituals. Professor Robert Mathiesen, who works for the translation of Pazzaglini, mentions a letter from Maddalena to Leland, which is said to be signed Maddalena Talenti. The second name could hardly be deciphered and was therefore uncertain.
Leland reports a meeting with Maddalena in 1886. Thereafter, for several years she became his main source for the collection of Italian folk culture. He describes it as part of the vanishing tradition of magic . Through years of practice, she has learned “[…] what I am looking for and how I want to find out from people of her kind.” He claims to have received several hundred pages of material from her, which he found in his books Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition , Legends of Florence Collected From the People , and finally in Aradia . Leland wrote that he learned in 1886 that there was a manuscript outlining the teachings of Italian witchcraft. He urged Maddalena to find it. Eleven years later, on January 1, 1897, he was sent to Vangelo . The manuscript was written in Maddalena's handwriting. Leland considered it an authentic document of the "ancient religion" of witches. However, he stated that he did not know whether it came from written or oral sources.
Lelands completed his translation and editing of the text in the spring of 1897 and submitted it to David Nutt for publication. Two years later, leland requested the manuscript back to be offered to another publisher. This suggestion spurred Nutt to accept the book, which was then printed in small editions in July 1899. Wiccan writer Raymond Buckland claims 1968 in his Buckland Museum of Witchcraft press, but a British reprint was undertaken by the "Wiccens" [ sic ] Charles "Rex Nemorensis" and Mary Cardell in the early 1960s. Since then the text has been reprinted by a number of publishers, including the 1998 new translation by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini, which also included essays and commentary.
content
After an eleven year search, Leland says he was not surprised by the content of the Vangelo . It largely met his expectations, with the exception of the sections in "Prose Poetry" which he had not predicted. “I also believe that in this gospel of witches,” Leland writes in the appendix, “we have at least a credible outline of the teachings and rites that are observed on the Witches' Sabbath . They admired forbidden deities and practiced forbidden acts, inspired by rebellion against society as well as their own passions. "
Leland's final version was a slim volume. He organized the material into fifteen chapters and added a short preface and an appendix. The published version also includes footnotes and, in many places, the original Italian ones that he translated. Most of Aradia consists of magic , blessings and rituals, but the text also contains tales and myths that suggest influences from ancient Roman religion and Catholicism . The main personalities are the Roman goddess Diana , a sun god named Lucifer , the biblical Cain as a moon deity and the messianic Aradia . The magic of the “witch's gospel” is at the same time a guide to the arts of magic and an anti-hierarchical counter-religion to the Catholic Church.
Subject
Chapter by chapter Aradia deals with spells, such as incantations to win love (Chapter VI), spells for turning a stone into an amulet to gain the favor of Diana (Chapter IV), the consecration ceremony for a ritual feast for Diana, Aradia and Cain ( Chapter II). The narrative material makes up only a minor portion of the text and consists of short stories and legends about the birth of the witch religion and the deeds of their gods. Leland summarizes the myth material in the appendix and writes: “Diana is the queen of witches; an ally of Herodias (Aradia) in terms of witchcraft; She gave birth to her brother, the sun (here Lucifer); As the moon goddess she is related to Cain, who lives a prisoner on the moon, and that the witches of ancient times were people who were oppressed by feudal burdens and who took revenge on their masters in every possible way; They organized orgies for Diana which, according to the Church, served to worship Satan ”. Diana is not only the goddess of witches, but the primordial creatrix in Chapter III who divides herself into light and darkness. After giving birth to Lucifer, Diana seduces him in the form of a cat and finally gives birth to Aradia, their daughter. Diana proves the power of her magic by creating the sky, the stars and the rain and becoming queen of witches. Chapter I shows the witches in their original role as slaves who escaped from their masters and began a new life as "thieves and bad people". Diana sends them her daughter Aradia to teach the former serfs the art of witchcraft, with whose power they can "destroy the evil race of their oppressors". Aradia's students thus become the first witches to worship Diana. Leland was impressed by the cosmogony : “In all other writings of other races, it is the man ... who creates the universe; in the belief in witches it is the woman who represents the original principle ”.
construction
Aradia consists of 15 chapters. The first 10 are Leland's translations of the Vangelo manuscript . Here you can find rituals and sayings, but also myths and folk tales. At the end of Chapter 1, Aradia gives instructions to her followers on how to practice witchcraft.
Chapters 1-10 of the Vangelo are not just translations; Leland comments on a number of sections; in Chapter VII he inserts other material. The medievalist Robert Mathiesen claims that the Vangelo manuscript contains less than Aradia , only I, II, and the first half of IV corresponds to the contents of the Vangelo given by Leland.
The remaining 5 chapters contain folkloric material, particularly from his research on Etruscan Roman Remains and Legends of Florence . Leland recorded these roles to "[confirm] the fact that Diana's worship coexisted with Christianity for a long time". XV contains, for example, an invocation of Laverna using playing cards.
In many places Leland gives the Italian passages that he translated. Mario Pazzaglini, the author of the 1999 translation, states that the Italian is flawed and corresponds more to standard Italian than to the local dialect forms to be expected. Pazzaglini explains this by the fact that Aradia contains material that has been translated from the dialect into Italian colloquial language, and then only into English, which resulted in a summary of texts, some of which were incorrectly recorded. Leland himself calls the text a "collection of ceremonies, cantrips , magic spells and traditions". The lack of cohesion of the texts is considered to be an argument for authenticity, since in the opinion of the cleric Chas S. Clifton the text shows no processing for future book buyers.
Questionable allegations
Leland wrote, "Even today, witches form a fragmentary secret society or sect they call that of the ancient religion, and that there are whole villages in Romagna where people are completely pagan" Leland believed this to be true and assumed that every religion presupposes a scripture. The Vengelio is an old work, probably translated from Latin.
Leland's assumption that the manuscript was authentic and his assurances that he had received it have been questioned. After the publication of Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult in Western Europe , in which she argues that the European witch hunt is actually a persecution of followers of the surviving pagan religion, Theda Kenyon linked Murray's thesis with the witch religion in his 1929 book Witches Still Live in Aradia . Jeffrey Russell, in his work A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (1980), questioned the claims in Aradia , Murray's remarks and Jules Michelet's 1862 representation in La Sorcière . In his work A Razor for a Goat, Elliot Rose characterized Aradia as a mere collection of magic spells that wrongly claim to represent a religion. In Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton summarized the controversial viewpoints ideally:
- The Vangelo manuscript is an authentic text from a previously undiscovered religion.
- Maddalena wrote the text herself, either alone or with Leland's assistance. Possibly her experiences with folk tradition or witchcraft went into it.
- The entire document is a forgery by Leland.
Hutton himself sees not only the question of the existence of a religion claimed by Aradia with skepticism, but also the existence of Maddalena. He bases his doubts on the argument that Leland was more likely to have written the entire text himself, rather than being so easily fooled by an Italian fortune teller. Clifton rejects this position as an accusation of serious falsification of sources, as it is based on an " Argumentum ad ignorantium "; Hutton's main allegation is that nothing like Aradia is found in all of medieval literature.
Mathiesen also rejects thesis 3, since the Italian passages have remained almost unchanged despite many edits of the English text. Only corrections of the kind made by proofreaders when comparing with the original would be found there. Mathiesen concludes from this that Leland worked with the help of an available Italian-language original. He describes this original as "authentic, but not representative" of a more extensive folk tradition. The anthropologist Sabina Magliocco examined the first option from the point of view of a possible worship of Diana in the population and of the Herodias cult . In her work Who Was Aradia? In The History and Development of a Legend , she writes that Aradia “might represent a version of the nineteenth-century legend that would have incorporated later materials from medieval Satanism: the presence of a 'Lucifero,' the Christian devil; magical practices; the nude dances under the full moon. "
Influence on Wicca and Stregheria
Magliocco describes Aradia as "the first real text of the revival of witchcraft in the 20th century." Its profound influence on the development of the Wicca movement has been mentioned repeatedly. The text evidently confirms Margaret Murray's view that the Renaissance and early modern witchcraft were a holdover from ancient pagan beliefs. Following Gerald Gardner's claim that he found sectarian witchcraft in 20th century England, the works of Michelet, Murray, and Leland at least supported the possibility of such an assumption of the survival of pagan traditions.
The Charge of the Goddess, an important part of the Wiccan rituals, was inspired by Aradia's speech in the first chapter of the book. Portions of the speech appeared in an early version of Gardner's Wiccan ritual. In the opinion of Doreen Valiente , one of Gardner's priestesses, he was surprised by Valiente's view that the material came from Leland's book. Valiente subsequently rewrote the passage in prose and verse form, keeping the original Aradia lines . Some traditions of the Wicca cult make use of the names Aradia or Diana to denote the goddess or queen of witches. Hutton mentions that Gardner's earliest rituals included the name Airdia , an altered form of Aradia . Hutton attributes the ritual nudity of many cults to a line by Aradia:
“And as the sign that ye are truly free,
Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men
And women also: this shall last until
The last of your oppressors shall be dead”
"And as a sign of your true freedom
you should be naked in your rites, men and women.
This should continue until the last of your oppressors is dead;"
Robert Chartowich refers to the 1998 translation by Pazzaglini: “Men and women / you will all be naked until / that he is dead, the last one / of your oppressors is dead.” Chartowich thinks Leland translated the lines and the wrong Added the restriction “in your rites”. However, ritual nudity among witches has been mentioned earlier. Ruth Martin considers it a common practice for witches in Italy to cast spells "naked, with bare hair around the shoulders". Jeffrey Burton Russell tells of a woman named Marta who was tortured in Florence around 1375. She allegedly "put candles around a bowl, took off her clothes and stood naked on the bowl and made magic signs". Franco Mormando describes a scene in which a witch walks naked into her garden in the evening to cast her spells.
The reception in neo-paganism was not always benevolent. Clifton recommends comparison with Leo Martello and Raven Grimassi. He attributes the uncertainty to the fact that neo-paganism is undecided with regard to the question of a tradition of its beliefs. Valiente considers the identification of Lucifer with the god of witches in Aradia to be too great an imposition for many Wikka followers, who were used to Gerald Gardner's more romantic paganism and who rejected the connection between witchcraft and Satanism .
Clifton describes Aradia as particularly influential for the Wikka movement of the 1950s and 1960s, but since then the book has not been on the reading lists and is no longer widely cited. The 1998 new translation contained an introduction by Stewart Farrar, in which he emphasized Aradia's importance and Leland's enduring achievement.
Raven Grimassi wrote extensive depictions to popularize the Stregheria. Unlike Leland, he depicts her as a witch who lived and worked in the 14th century. But she is not a goddess. The agreement with Aradia is no proof of authenticity, since Leland's material itself is controversial. With Valiente he sees the main criticism of the neo-pagans in the “negative stereotypes about witches and magic” contained in the text. The comparisons between this material and religious belief in witches would "be felt as an insult by many neo-pagans".
literature
- Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches - Internet Archive (scan of the illustrated book edition)
- Charles Godfrey Leland: Aradia, the teachings of the witches. Myths, spells, wisdom, images . Ed .: Charles Godfrey Leland (= Goldmann, Grenzwissenschaften, Esoterik . No. 11816 ). Approved paperback edition, 2nd edition. Goldmann, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-442-11816-6 (English: Aradia or the gospel of the witches . London 1899. First edition: 1988).
Web links
- Aradia, Gospel of the Witches Index. sacred-texts.com, accessed November 28, 2016 .
- Aradia. stregheria.com, accessed on November 28, 2016 (article on an Italian site on witches).
Individual evidence
- ^ Lister, Roma (1926).
- ^ Mathiesen, Robert (1998).
- ^ A b Charles Godfrey Leland: (1899).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Charles Godfrey Leland: (1899).
- ^ Mathiesen, p. 35.
- ↑ Clifton, Chas (1998).
- ↑ Buckland, Raymond, quoted in Clifton, p 75 miles.
- ^ Hutton, Ronald (2000).
- ^ A b Mathiesen, p. 50.
- ^ Mathiesen, p. 37.
- ↑ Leland: Chapter XI
- ^ A b Mario Pazzaglini: (1998).
- ↑ Pazzaglini, p. 92.
- ↑ Clifton, p. 70.
- ↑ Hutton, 2000, p. 199.
- ↑ Clifton, p. 62.
- ^ Russell, Jeffrey (1982).
- ^ Rose, Elliot (1962).
- ↑ a b Hutton, 2000, pp. 145–148.
- ^ Hutton, Ronald (1991).
- ^ Clifton, p. 67.
- ^ Mathiesen, p. 39.
- ^ Magliocco, Sabina (2002).
- ^ Magliocco, Sabina (1999).
- ↑ Gerald Gardner (1954).
- ^ Clifton, p. 75.
- ↑ Clifton, p. 60.
- ↑ Serith, Ceisiwr.
- ↑ Doreen Valiente : quoted in Clifton, S. 73rd
- ↑ Hutton, 2000, p. 234.
- ↑ Hutton, 2000, p. 225.
- ↑ Leland: Chapter I.
- ↑ Chartowich, Robert (1998).
- ↑ Martin, Ruth.
- ↑ JBRussel:
- ↑ Mormando, Franco.
- ^ Clifton, p. 61.
- ↑ Doreen Valiente: quoted in Clifton, S. 61st
- ↑ Clifton, pp. 71-72.
- ↑ Stewart Farrar: (1998).
- ↑ Grimassi, Raven (2000).
- ↑ Grimassi, Raven (1999).
- ↑ Raven Grimassi: A BIRD'S EYE VIEW: Rebuttals by Raven Grimassi.