Aradia di Toscano
Aradia di Toscano, or
Aradia de Toscano, is the name given by
Raven Grimassi for the founder of
Stregheria, which he describes as "the Old Religion of
Italy... the
Witch sect of Old Italy". The name means "Aradia of
Tuscany". Grimassi suggests that Aradia di Toscano is the origin of the mythological figure
Aradia that appeared in the nineteenth century book
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.
Aidan Kelly also suggested that Aradia may have been a mortal woman, but Kelly's treatment of the idea differs significantly from that of Grimassi.
The first appearance of a figure named Aradia as a teacher of religious
witchcraft is in
Charles Godfrey Leland's 1899 book
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. In that text, Aradia is the daughter of the
Roman goddess Diana, who comes to
Earth to teach witchcraft and relieve Diana's worshippers of oppression.
Both the figure of Aradia and the book's description of the religious practices of her worshippers played an important role in the development of modern
Wicca.
In 1981, Raven Grimassi published a booklet named
The Book of the Holy Strega through Nemi Enterprises. The book described Stregheria practices and teachings and identified Aradia as their originator. Later, in 1995, Raven Grimassi published his book
Ways of the Strega. In it, Grimassi argued that Leland had published a "distorted version" of the story of Aradia, and that there really had existed a mortal woman named Aradia di Toscano.
Aradia di Toscano, according to Grimassi, who also calls her "The Holy
Strega", or
"La Bella Pellegrina" (the Beautiful Pilgrim), was a woman from Tuscany, born in 1313. Grimassi's Aradia was taught witchcraft by her aunt, and used her power to "challenge the existing order". According to the story, she recruited followers from the
Lake Nemi region, and it is these followers (called "The Triad Clans") that passed on the religion of Stregheria, of which Grimassi teaches a variant that he calls the "Aridian Tradition".
Some people, while rejecting much of Grimassi's belief system, have tried to independently verify some parts of his history. Sabina Magliocco notes that it is possible that women in fourteenth century Tuscany might have adopted Aradia as a name. She comments that "The existence of ostension in connection to these legends could also mean that Grimassi's claim that Aradia was a real person may, in fact, not be entirely out of the question; a healer who was part of the society might have chosen to play the part of, or even take on the name of, Erodiade."
In
1992 Aidan Kelly, co-founder of the
New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, distributed a document titled
The Gospel of Diana (a reference to
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches). The text contained a list of mother and daughter
priestesses who had taught religious
witchcraft through the centuries. Instead of Leland's goddess Diana and her
messianical daughter, Aradia, Kelly's text described mortal human beings. The priestesses' names alternated between Aradia and Diana. Magliocco describes the character of Aradia in Kelly's accompanying narrative as "a notably
erotic character; according to her teachings, the
sexual act becomes not only an expression of the divine life force, but an act of resistance against all forms of oppression and the primary focus of
ritual". Magliocco also notes that the text "has not achieved broad diffusion in contemporary Pagan circles".
*
Grimassi's Stregheria.com homepage# # ## # Sabina Magliocco quotes
Silvio Baldassare as stating that the text was Kelly's
spoof of
The Gnostic Gospels; #
