Amanda Messenger
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« on: January 14, 2009, 03:58:43 pm » |
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What will strike many readers as strange is that there should have existed to the present day--though it is now rapidly disappearing--in a Roman Catholic country, an ancient heathen religion of sorcery, from earliest Tuscan times. That such a survival under such a stratum is not without parallel, I have shown by an incident, which is thus described in my Gypsy Sorcery:--
"It has been discovered of late years in India, that during thousands of years of Brahminic, Buddhistic and Mahometan rule, there always existed among the people a rude Shamanism, or worship of spirits and stones, eked out with coarse sorcery, which formed a distinct religion by itself, and which came to light as soon as British government removed religious oppression. This religion consisted of placing small rocks after the fashion of Stonehenge and other 'Druidic' monuments, and in other rites of the most primitive kind. And it is very evident that the oldest religions everywhere are founded on such a faith."
But I was much more astonished to find that in Tuscany, the most enlightened portion of Italy, under all Roman rule an old pagan faith, or something like it, has existed to a most extraordinary degree. For it is really not a mere chance survival of superstitions here and there, as in England or France, but a complete system, as this work will abundantly prove. A few years ago Count ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS informed Mr. GLADSTONE, in conversation, that there was actually among the Tuscan peasantry ten times as much heathenism as Catholicism. I repeated this remark to a woman whom I employed to collect folk-lore, and her reply was: "Certainly, there is ten times more faith in la vecchia religione" ("the old religion"). "For the peasants have recourse to the priests and the saints on great occasions, but they use magic all the time for everything."
At another time when I expressed my astonishment that a certain girl who had grown up in the country was utterly ignorant of the name of a single spirit,
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and could recall nothing relating to witchcraft, she became scornful, and then excited, exclaiming:--
"And how should such a stupid fool, who is afraid of the priests and saints, know anything? I call myself a Catholic--oh, yes--and I wear a medal to prove it"--here she, in excitement, pulled from her bosom a saint's medal--"but I believe in none of it all. You know what I believe."
"Si; la vecchia religione" ("the old faith"), I answered, by which faith I meant that strange, diluted old Etrusco-Roman sorcery which is set forth in this book. Magic was her real religion.
Much of this magic is mixed up with Catholic rites and saints, but these in their turn were very often of heathen origin. Some saints such as Antony, Simeon, and Elisha, appear as absolutely sorcerers or goblins, and are addressed with ancient heathen ceremonies in cellars with magical incantations. The belief in folletti, a generic term for goblins, and other familiar spirits, has not sunk as yet to the "fairy-tale" level of beings only mentioned for entertainment--as in Grimm's Tales--they enter into popular belief as a part of the religion, and are invoked in good faith. There is actually in Tuscany a culture or worship of fetishes which are not Catholic, i.e., of strange stones and many curious relics.
But there is, withal, as I have remarked, a great deal of mystery and secrecy observed in all this cult. It has its professors: men, but mostly women, who collect charms and spells, and teach them to one another, and hold meetings; that is, there is a kind of college of witches and wizards, which, for many good reasons, eludes observation. It was my chance to become acquainted in Florence with the fortune-teller referred to, who was initiated in these secrets, and whose memory was stocked to an extraordinary and exceptional degree with not only magical formulas but songs and tales. Such familiarity with folk-lore and sorcery as I possess, resulted in confidence--the end being that I succeeded in penetrating this obscure and strange forest inhabited by witches and shadows, faded gods and forgotten goblins of the olden time, where folk-lore of every kind abounded to such excess that, as this book shows, I in time had more thereof than I could publish. To do this I went to strange places and made strange acquaintance, so that if the reader will kindly imagine something much out of common life, and often wild and really weird--i.e., prophetic--when fortune-telling was on the cards, as the dramatic accompaniment of every charm and legend in this book, he will but do it justice. To collect volumes of folk-lore among very reticent Red Indians, and reserved Romanys is not unknown to me, but the extracting witchcraft from Italian strege far surpasses it. "I too was among the shadows."
There are many people, even Italians, who will say, "It is very remarkable
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that we never heard of any association of witches nor met with any of all this mythology or lore--we who know the people so well." just the same might have been said of almost every respectable white native of Philadelphia when I was there a few years ago, as to the Voodoo sorcerers, who, silent and unseen, conjured and worked in darkness among the coloured people of that city. What did any of us know about even our own black servants in their homes? And the class which corresponds to the Voodoo acts in Tuscany, in opposition--unlike the American--to a powerful national religion which till of late ruled by the strong hand, and it fears everybody.
The extraordinary tenacity and earnestness with which the peasant Tuscans have clung to these fragments of their old faith is quite in accordance with their ancient character. Livy said of them they were "a race which excelled all in devotion to religious rites and in the art of cultivating them" (v. I. 6). But as KARL OTTFRIED MÜLLER remarks in Die Etrusker--a work which has been of great use to me--"while the Greeks expressed their religious feelings with boldness in varied forms . . . the Tusker (Tuscans) blended them in the most intimate manner with every domestic practical interest. Tuscan divination was consequently the most characteristic trait of the nation and the Hauptpunkt, or beginning of their intellectual action and education." And this spirit still survives. Among all the wars and convulsions of Italy the peasants of Tuscany have remained the same race. Englishmen and Frenchmen are the result of modern mixtures of peoples, but the Italians, like HAWTHORNE'S Marble Faun, are absolutely ancient, if not prehistoric. There are families in Italy who find their family names in Etrurian monuments on their estates. And CICERO, TACITUS, LIVY, VIRGIL, and many more, testify that all their divination and religious observances were drawn from and based on Etruscan authority. "This," says MÜLLER, "was shared by the common people. There were in Italy schools, like those of the Jewish prophets and Gallic Druids, in which the system was thoroughly taught." And there is the last relic of these still existing among the Tuscan " witches." In later times the Chaldæan sorcerers took the upper hand in Rome with their astrology, but the Etruscan augures were still authorities, so late as the fifth century, A.D., since they were consulted at the birth of CLAUDIUS. In 4o8, they protected Narnia by invoking lightning against the Goths (MÜLLER).
The Etruscan books of magic were common among the Romans. In Cicero's time (Cic. de Div. i. 33), there were many of them. I have been assured that there is in existence a manuscript collection of charms and spells such as are now in use--in fact it was promised me as a gift, but I have not succeeded in obtaining it. I have, however, a large MS. of this kind which was written for me from collection
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