This book was written by Charles G. Leland in 1890. It is not copyrighted in any way and therefore may be duplicated in any manner required for the widest possible dissemination.

If the reader has ever met with the works of the learned folklorist G. Pitre, or the articles contributed by "Lady Vere de Vere" to the Italian Rivista or that of J. H. Andrews to Folk-Lore, he will be aware that there are in Italy great numbers of strege, fortune-tellers or witches, who divine by cards, perform strange ceremonies in which spirits are supposed to be invoked, make and sell amulets, and, in fact, comport themselves generally as their reputed kind are wont to do, be they Black Voodoos in America or sorceresses anywhere. 

But the Italian strega or sorceress is in certain respects a different character from these. In most cases she comes of a family in which her calling or art has been practiced for many generations. I have no doubt that there are instances in which the ancestry remounts to mediaeval, Roman, or it may be Etruscan times.

The result has naturally been the accumulation in such families of much tradition. But in Northern Italy, as its literature indicated, though there has been some slight gathering of fairy tales and popular superstitions by scholars, there has never existed the least interest as

regarded the strange lore of the witches, nor any suspicion that it embraced an incredible quantity of old Roman minor myths and legends, such as Ovid has recorded, but of which much escaped him and all other Latin writers. 

This ignorance was greatly aided by the wizards and witches themselves, in making a profound secret of all their traditions, urged thereto by fear of the priests. In fact, the latter all unconsciously actually contributed in vanishment of all. 

However, they die slowly, and even yet there are old people in the Romagna of the North who know the Etruscan names of the Twelve Gods, and invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus and Mercury, and the Lares or ancestral spirits, and in the cities are women who prepare strange amulets, over which they mutter

spells, all known in the old Roman time, and who can astonish even the learned by their legends of Latin gods, mingled with lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. 

With one of these I became intimately acquainted in 1886, and have ever since employed her specially to collect among her sisters of the hidden spell in many places all the traditions of the olden time known to them. 

It is true that I have drawn from other sources, but this woman by long practice has perfectly learned what few

understand, or just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind. Among other strange relics, she succeeded, after many years, in obtaining the following "Gospel", which I have in her handwriting. A full account of its nature with many details will be found in an Appendix. 

I do not know definitely whether my informant derived a part of these traditions from written sources or oral narration, but believe it was chiefly the latter. However, there are a few wizards who copy or preserve documents relative to their art. I have not seen my collector since the "Gospel" was sent to me. I hope at some future time to be better informed.

For brief explanation I may say the witchcraft is known to its votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which DIANA is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodius) the female Messiah, and that this little work sets forth how the latter was born, came down to earth, established witches and witchcraft, and then returned to heaven. 

With it are given the ceremonies and invocations or incantations to be addressed to Diana and Aradia, the exorcism of Cain, and the spells of the holy-stone, rue, and verbena, constituting, as the text declares, the regular church-service, so to speak, which is to be chanted or pronounced at the witch meetings.

There are also included the very curious incantations or benedictions of the honey, meal, and salt, or cakes of the witch-supper, which is curiously classical, and evidently a relic of the Roman Mysteries. 

The work could have been extended ad infinitum by adding to it the ceremonies and incantations which actually form a part of the Scripture of Witchcraft, but as these are nearly all - or at least in great number - to be found in my works entitled Etruscan-Roman Remains and Legends of Florence, I have hesitated to compile such a volume before ascertaining whether there is a sufficiently large number of the public who would buy

Since writing the foregoing I have met with and read a very clever and entertaining work entitled Romanzo dei Settimani, G. Cavagnari, 1889, in which the author, in the form of a novel, vividly depicts the manners, habits of thought, and especially the nature of witchcraft, and the many superstitions current among the peasants in Lombardy.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding his extensive knowledge of the subject, it never seems to have occurred to the narrator that these traditions were anything but noxious nonsense or abominably un-Christian folly. That there

exist in them marvelous relics of ancient mythology and valuable folklore, which is the very cor cordium of history, is as uncared for by him as it would be by a common Zoccolone or tramping Franciscan. 

One would think it might have been suspected by a man who knew that a witch really endeavored to kill seven people as a ceremony rite, in order to get the secret of endless wealth, that such a sorceress must have had a store of wondrous legends; but of all this there is no trace, and it is very evident that nothing could be further from his mind than that there was anything interesting from a higher or more genial point of view in it all. 

His book, in fine, belongs to the very great number of those written on ghosts and superstition since the latter has fallen into discredit, in which the authors indulge in much satirical and very safe but cheap ridicule of what

to them is merely vulgar and false. Like Sir Charles Coldstream, they have peeped in the crater of Vesuvius after is had ceased to "erupt", and found "nothing in it." 

But there was something in it once; and the man of

science, which Sir Charles was not, still finds a great deal in the remains, and the antiquarian a Pompeii or a Herculaneum - 'tis said there are still seven buried cities to unearth. I have done what little (it is really very little) I could, to disinter something from the dead volcano of Italian sorcery. 

If this be the manner in which Italian witchcraft is treated by the most intelligent writer who has depicted it, it will not be deemed remarkable that there are few indeed who will care whether there is a veritable Gospel of the Witches, apparently of extreme antiquity, embodying the belief in a strange counter-religion which has held its own from pre-historic time to the present day. 

"Witchcraft is all rubbish, or something worse," said old writers, "and therefore all books about it are nothing better." I sincerely trust, however, that these pages may fall into the hands of at least a few who will think better of them. 

I should, however, in justice to those who do care to explore dark and bewildering paths, explain clearly that witch-lore is hidden with most scrupulous care from all save a very few in Italy, just as it is among the Chippeway Medas or the Black Voodoo. 

In the novel to the life of I Settimani an aspirant is represented as living with a witch and acquiring or picking up with pain, scrap by scrap, her spells and incantations, giving years to it. So my friend the late M. Dragomanoff told me how a certain man in Hungary,

having learned that he had collected many spells (which were indeed subsequently published in folklore journals), stole them, so that the next year when Dragomanoff returned, he found the thief in full practice as a

blooming magician. Truly he had not got many incantations, only a dozen or so, but a very little will go a great way in the business, and I venture to say there is perhaps hardly a single witch in Italy who knows as many as I have published, mine having been assiduously collected from many, far and wide. Everything of the kind which is written is, moreover, often destroyed with scrupulous care by priests or penitents, or the vast number who have a superstitious fear of even being in the same house with such documents, so that I regard the rescue of the Vangelo as something which is to say the least remarkable.

"It is Diana! Lo!  She rises crescented." - Krats' Endymion

Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light (Splendor), who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from Paradise. Diana had by her brother a

daughter, to whom they gave the name of Aradia (i.e. Herodius). In those days there were on earth many rich and many poor. The rich made slaves of the poor. In those days were many slaves who were cruelly treated; in every palace tortures, in every castle prisoners. Many slaves escaped.

They fled to the country; thus they became thieves and evil folk. Instead of sleeping by nigh, they plotted escape and robbed their masters, and then slew them. So they dwelt in the mountains and forests as robbers and

Diana said one day to her daughter Aradia: 

'Tis true indeed that thou a spirit art, 

But thou wert born but to become again 

A mortal; thou must go to earth below 

To be a teacher unto women and men 

Who fain would study witchcraft in thy school 

Yet like Cain's daughter thou shalt never be 

Nor like the race who have become at last 

Wicked and infamous from suffering, 

As are the Jews and wandering Zingari, 

Who are all thieves and knaves; like unto them

Now when Aradia had been taught, taught to work all witchcraft, how to destroy the evil race (of oppressors), she (imparted it to her pupils) and said unto them:

Here follows the supper, of what it must consist, and what shall be said and done to consecrate it to Diana.

You shall take meal and salt, honey and water, and make this incantation:

From the sun where thou art prisoned, and must go

You shall make cakes of meal, wine, salt, and honey in the shape of a (crescent or horned) moon, and then put them to bake, and say:

And thus shall it be done: all shall sit down to the supper all naked, men and women, and the feast over, they shall dance, sing, make music, and then love in the darkness, with all the lights extinguished; for it is the

Spirit of Diana who extinguishes them, and so they will dance and make music in her praise. And it came to pass that Diana, after her daughter had accomplished her mission or spent her time on earth among the living

(mortals), recalled her, and gave her the power that when she had been invoked...having done some good deed...she gave her the power to gratify those who had conjured her by granting her or him success in love:

To converse with spirits. 

To find hidden treasures in ancient ruins. 

To conjure the spirits of priests who died leaving treasures. 

To understand the voice of the wind. 

To change water into wine. 

To divine with cards. 

To know the secrets of the hand (palmistry) 

To cure diseases. 

To make those who are ugly beautiful. 

To tame wild beasts.

And whatever thing should be asked from the spirit of Aradia, that should be granted unto those who merited her favor. And thus must they invoke her:

At midnight, at midnight I go into a field, and with me I bear water, wine, and salt, I bear water,

wine, and salt, and my talisman - my talisman, my talisman, and a red small bag which I ever hold in my hand - con dentro, con dentro, sale, with salt in it, in it. With water and wine I bless myself, I bless myself

with devotion to implore a favour from Aradia, Aradia. (emphasize italics and repetitions)

Diana was the first created before all creation; in her were all things; our of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself; into darkness and light she was divided. 

Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light. And when Diana saw that the light was so beautiful, the light which was her other half, her brother Lucifer, she yearned for it with exceeding great desire. 

Wishing to receive the light again into her darkness, to swallow it up in rapture, in delight, she trembled with

desire. This desire was the dawn. But Lucifer, the light, fled from her, and would not yield to her wishes; he was the light which flies into the most distant parts of heaven, the mouse which flies before the cat. 

Then Diana went to the fathers of the Beginning, to the mothers, the spirits who were before the first spirit, and lamented unto them that she could not prevail with Lucifer. And they praised her for her courage; they told

her that to rise she must fall; to become the chief of goddesses she must become mortal. And in the ages, in the course of time, when the world was made, Diana went on earth, as did Lucifer, who had fallen, and Diana

taught magic and sorcery, whence came witches and fairies and goblins - all that is like man, yet not mortal. And it came thus that Diana took the form of a cat. Her brother had a cat whom he loved beyond all creatures,

and it slept every night on his bed, a cat beautiful beyond all other creatures, a fairy: he did not know it. 

Diana prevailed with the cat to change forms with her; so she lay with her brother, and in the darkness assumed her own form, and so by Lucifer became the mother of Aradia. But when in the morning he found that he lay by his sister, and that light had been conquered by darkness, Lucifer was extremely angry; but Diana with

her wiles of witchcraft so charmed him that he yielded to her love. This was the first fascination; she hummed the song, it was as the buzzing of bees (or a top spinning round), a spinning-wheel spinning life. She spun the lives of all men; all things were spun from the wheel of Diana.

Lucifer turned the wheel. Diana was not known to the witches and spirits, the fairies and elves who dwell in desert place, the goblins, as their mother; she hid herself in humility and was a mortal, but by her will she

rose again above all. She had passion for witchcraft, and became so powerful therein, that her greatness could not be hidden. 

And thus it came to pass one night, at the meeting of all the sorceresses and fairies, she declared that she would darken the heavens and turn all the stars into mice. All those who were present said - "If thou canst do such a strange thing, having risen to such power, thou shalt be our queen." 

Diana went into the street; she took the bladder of an ox and a piece of witch-money, which has an edge from a knife - with such money witches cut the earth from men's foot tracks - and she cut the earth, and with it and many mice she filled the bladder, and blew into the bladder till it burst. And there came a great marvel, for the earth which was in the bladder became the round heaven above, and for three days there was a great rain; the mice became stars or rain. And having made the heaven and stars and the rain, Diana became Queen of the Witches; she was the cat who ruled the star mice, the heaven and the rain.

He who does so shall take it in his hand and repeat the following, having observed the ceremony as enjoined -

[Here we have again the threatening the deity, just as in Eskimo or other Shamanism, which represents the rudest primitive form of conjuring, the spirits are menaced. A trace of this is to be found among rude Roman Catholics. 

Thus when St. Bruno, some years ago, at a town in the Romagna, did not listen to the prayers of his devotees for rain, they stuck his image in the mud of the river, head downwards. A rain speedily followed, and the saint was restored in honour to his place in the church..]

The finding of a round stone, be it great or small, is a good sign, but it should never be given away, because the receiver will then get the good luck, and some disaster befall the giver. 

On finding a round stone, raise the eyes to heaven, and throw the stone up three times (catching it every time), and say -

A lemon stuck full of pins of different colours always brings good fortune. 

If you receive as a gift a lemon full of pins of diverse colours, without any black ones among them, it signifies that your life will be perfectly happy and prosperous and joyful. But if some black pins are among them, you may enjoy good fortune and health, yet mingled with troubles which may be of small account. [However, to lessen their influence, you must perform the following ceremony, and pronounce this incantation, wherein all is also described.

[Something is here omitted in the MS. I conjecture that the two are tossed without seeing them into the air, and if the lemon remains, the ceremony proceeds as follows. This is evident, since in it the incantation is confused with a prose direction how to act]

Saying this, one looks up at the sky, and I found the lemon in one hand, and a voice said to me - "Take many pins, and carefully stick them in the lemon, pins of many colours; and as thou wilt have good luck, and if thou

desirest to give the lemon to any one or to a friend, thou shouldst stick in it many pins of varied colours. "But if thou wilt that evil befall any one, put in it black pins. "But for this thou must pronounce a different incantation (thus)":

As the orange was the fruit of the Sun, so is the lemon suggestive of the Moon or Diana, its colour being of a lighter yellow. However, the lemon specially chosen for the charm is always a green one, because it "sets

hard" and turns black. It is not generally known that orange and lemon peel, subjected to pressure and combined with an adhesive may be made into a hard substance which can be moulded or used for many purposes. I have devoted a chapter to this in an as yet unpublished work entitled One Hundred Minor Arts. This was suggested to me by the hardened lemon given to me for a charm by a witch.