Notable figures

Notable figures

• Charles Godfrey Leland 1824–1903
  Compiler of <em>Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches</em>

  American folklorist who spent much of his later life in Florence collecting Italian folk-magical material. His Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (1892) and Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) are the principal nineteenth-century English-language texts of Italian folk witchcraft. Leland’s framing of the material as a surviving witch-religion has been more influential than his philological work; the framing is itself the foundation of modern Stregheria.

• Raven Grimassi (Gary Charles Erbe) 1951–2019
  Founder of the Arician Tradition; principal modern author

  American writer of Italian-American descent whose books from the mid-1990s onward established modern Stregheria as a recognisable practised tradition. Founded the Arician Tradition in the early 1980s. His later work moved toward a broader pan-European witchcraft framework while retaining the Italian core.

• Aradia Legendary
  Daughter of Diana; messianic teacher in the foundational text

  The figure central to Leland’s 1899 text, presented as the daughter of Diana and Lucifer (in his pre-Christian Roman sense as the bringer of light) and as the teacher who descended to earth to instruct the oppressed in witchcraft. There is no independent historical evidence for her as a historical person; she functions as a religious figure within the tradition. Doreen Valiente’s “Charge of the Goddess,” central to modern Wicca, is adapted in part from the speech attributed to Aradia in Leland’s text.