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Feel like I'm spamming the comm with posts, but hey, we need more conversation up in here!! So here goes.

My Nana, my Paternal grandmother, moved from Sicily to America as a young girl, and lived in a very close-knit Italian community for most of her life. Her family was of Neapolitan descent, however (I just recently found this out) as was the family of my grandfather. They lived in Sicily for a time because my great-grandfather was a master mason (as was my grandfather later in life; it was a bit of a family tradition) and moved wherever his contracts took him. This would explain the parallels between Northern Italian pagan-based folk tradition and what Nana practiced. Italian history is not my strong suit, and I apologize for any confusion this may have cause people.

Nana was a very devout Catholic. I don’t believe she ever missed a Sunday service in her life. She said Catholic prayers before meals and bed, attended Confession every week, believed quite seriously in the transubstantiation of bread and wine, and collected religious images (icons) of saints and crucifixes which she hung on her walls.

Having said all that, you may be surprised to learn that she was also a very talented, very knowledgeable Strega, a white witch, a practitioner of Italian folk magic whose roots have nothing to do with Christianity of any sort.

I guess that makes me a hereditary witch, but I’ve never felt much of an affinity for Stregheria. Apart from a few practices (I wear iron keys as good luck charms and always have some jasper on hand for when I cut myself) I don’t follow the path of the Strega.

Still, since I haven't seen any posts Stregheria in this forum, I figured I would share what I know. I have no references to give, these come straight from my memories of what my Nana taught me and what I learned from other family members. Any misinformation is probably because of my own faulty memory, but I think most of this is correct. It should also be noted that the modern Stregheria religion is most likely very different from what Nana did--all I know is what I was taught. It's not a subject I've researched beyond the primary sources mentioned.

Because of a PM I recently received, I want to stress VERY strongly that NONE of this information comes from ANY book published on Stregheria. I have never read anything by Grimassi or any other author on the subject. The theories that I postulate about Nana's beliefs being Estrucan-paganism-based, her charms being symbols of this or that, or Mary being viewed as a Goddess come from, respectively, my uncle (an amateur Italian historian as well as our family historian who also has some interest in my Nana's practices, and who was an invaluable source of information on this post) and Joseph Campbell (He talked extensively about Mary being equated with many European Goddesses during the spread off Christianity in his interview "The Power of Myth").

I am not filling in any blanks with information from any other sources. This post is meant to expound upon my grandmother's own practices; if you want to know about modern Stregheria and its history, I'm afraid you'll have to go to someone else more knowledgeable on the subject.

Anyway, here goes.

Divination
I have never had a knack for this kind of magic, but my Nana often read peoples’ futures in tea leaves and crystal balls. The practice of reading tea leaves is called “tesseomancy”. I never showed much skill for either method, so I’m afraid I can’t elaborate much. I do have a few of her crystal balls, however. I keep one on my altar, to remember her by.

The “Malocchio”/The Evil Eye
Supposedly, Nana knew how to cast it, though I never dared ask. Mostly, she just performed cures for people who were affected (or thought they were affected) by this traditional curse. She would mixed oil and water in a special ritual to find out if someone afflicted. I never saw her perform the cure, but as I recall it had something to do with mirrors--reflecting the curse back on the one who cast it. Iron wards off the Evil Eye as well.

Protection from Bad Luck
Nana's pockets always had bits of iron in them--nails and such--which she would occasionally touch to ward off sfortuna (“bad luck”). She rarely gave anyone compliments for fear it would tempt evil spirits to jealously attack the complemented person. Her jewelry box box was full of not only rosaries and crucifixes, but all sorts of amulets and charms--horns (phallic symbols), fish (a symbol of both Christ and fertility), bits of coral, keys (esp. iron or silver ones)--all good luck charms, all blessed and purified by her own hand in saltwater.

Iron
Iron has a long history of being a protective metal against all sorts of things, not just in Italy, but many other European cultures as well. Touching iron is said to shield someone from any sort of negative magic, including the evil eye, as well as evil spirits, ghosts, and even those who intend physical harm.

(A rather racist example of this in history is that in Europe, clear through to the Edwardian Age, any time a Christian saw or spoke to a Muslim or anyone Non-Christian with dark skin, one was supposed to touch iron to keep their “evil” from spreading to them or something. It’s a stupid interpretation of the traditional use of iron, but I felt it was worth mentioning for history’s sake. I even encountered a description of this belief when I was reading The Phantom of the Opera recently, which was published in 1910!)

Pregnancy
Whenever someone she knew in er community was pregnant, she would find a smooth round stone, say a prayer to the Madonna (the Virgin Mary, though I suspect Nana viewed her as a Mother Goddess--more on that later) and give it to the pregnant woman to carry with her for the protection of both mother and child.

The Virgin Mary as the Mother Goddess
In Europe, and in Italy especially, the Virgin Mary is sometimes revered on the same level as the Holy Trinity. This is probably due to the imortance of the Mother Goddess in ancient Estrucan culture. A few Italian tiltes for Mary that my Nana used are “Madonna” (“Great Lady” or “Our Lady”) or “Regina Cielo” (“Queen of Heaven”). I know she had way more icons (religious depictions) of Her (especially of the Madonna and Child, showing her as a mother-figure) than crucifixes or even icons of Jesus alone. And she had a lot of icons in her house.

Healing
There was a tin box on her kitchen counter full of small pieces of tumbled red jasper, which she used in healing rituals, especial for any wounds that bled. She would press them to the cut or scrape, say a quick prayer in Italian, and then hand me a band-aid. (For health reasons in this modern age I would put the band-aid on first, then press the stone to the cut. I'm certain whatever healing spirit she was invoking would understand the need for cleanliness.)

Herbs
Herbal magic ot my strong suit, but I do know that she grew rue and lavender in her garden and put it in small bags on strings for her children (and later her grandchildren, me included) to wear around the neck for protection. Also, I suspect because they smell quite nice. :3 I still love the smell of lavender and rue.

Women's Business??? O_o
Before writing this post, I had a discussion with my father to see if he knew or remembered something I did not. I gleaned a few things from him, but the most surprising was that she always refused to answer any of his direct questions on the matter. "It's women's business," she would say. She believed that men were not only incapable of practicing magic, but that they shouldn't even be aware of it's secrets any more than they had to be. She also seemed to believe that some women had a knack for it while others did not. I don't know if that's why she never taught her own daughter, my Aunt, anything about it, but I suspect so.

Modern Stregheria is practiced by both men and women, however, and I have to respectfully (VERY respectfully) disagree with Nana's beliefs on that point. I'm of the opinion that it could be practiced by anyone who is properly educated in it. I don't believe in hereditary "gifts" of magic.

Conclusion
My grandmother managed to blend together Catholicism and Italian folk magic mostly based on ancient Estrucan and possibly other pagan beliefs, and from what I glean, so did many women like her. Many would say that’s impossible; you can only do one or the other. Nana would have certainly had a thing or two to say about that, and she wasn’t the kind of woman you wanted to argue with. (All of five feet tall and able to quiet a roomful of grown men with one single glare; I always admired that.)

Folk magic is flexible magic--it differs from area to area and even person to person, especially since it's primarily an oral tradition. I can't absolutely guarantee that any of these practices are 100% ancient pagan-based practices, but in the end I don't think it really matters.

What matters is that they were believed by those who used them, subtly blended into daily life. Not flashy, not loud, not even necessarily religious. Just simple rituals to aid in getting through day-to-day existence.

I’ve been thinking of her quite a lot lately, especially how she took two opposing belief systems and merged them into a unique brand of faith and magic. It’s a lesson I took to heart, and one I try to follow in my daily life.

I hope this post is instructive. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and if anyone is a Strega or knows anything else about Stregheria or Italian Witchcraft, I'd love to hear that, too.

-Nerdy

She was a very cool lady. I wish she she hadn't passed on so soon. I was only twelve when she died. I may not be that into Stregheria, but I would have loved to learn whatever she could have taught me. Folk magic is a practice that seems to be dying out, but it is being revived in aspects of certain neo-pagan and the revival of what is known of ancient religions, so there is hope. :3

I'm passing along what little I know so there's less of a chance it will be lost to history. Even if just one person remembers just one thing, I'll feel like I've honored her memory. As much as she didn't want everyone to know about them, she would have wanted even less for her practices to be lost to time.