STREGA - the word and the witch by Anna Maria Bruciatelli

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

I've seen some misinformation related to the nature and origins of the strega on this site and other places on the Internet.  So I think this forum is a good place to address it and discuss the facts.

 

In Italian the word "strega" means a witch, but more properly a female witch.  The name for a male witch is stregone.  Both appear to be related to the Italian word "strego" which means to enchant.

 

Most modern scholars connect the word strega to a legendary figure in the ancient Aegean-Mediterranean, known as a strix or striga.  This was a supernatural creature, owl-like in appearance, that could transform into a woman.  The strix/striga had a vampire nature as well, and preyed primarily on babies, children, and women.  This folkloric being is referred to by many scholars as the night-witch.

 

Historian Michael Bailey, in his book Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft,  writes:

 

[Strix]  In classical mythology, striges (the plural of strix or striga) were malevolent nighttime monsters. The Latin strix literally meant a screech owl, and the striges were believed to be birdlike creatures with great talons. …The image of the strix contributed to the later Christian idea of witches as women who flew at night and often murdered babies and young children. The word also became a term for witch in the medieval and early-modern periods. – page 129

 

So here we see a mention of the influence of the supernatural night-witch in the Christian era, a view that formed a new kind of witch character.  But what about the pre-Christian witch figure?

 

Greco-Roman historian Richard Gordon demonstrates that a period existed in which the supernatural witch and the everyday witch were not one and the same. Gordon points out that people in ancient times knew the distinction between the striga and the witch. The following quotes come from Gordon's contributed chapter in the book Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome: 

[the night witch is] essentially a nightmare creature who, unlike the day-witch, can never be encountered but who by her activity erodes the very foundation of human society - page 204

"we have already encountered the distinction between the every-day witch and the night-witch, the one the kind of person one might well meet, and whom many people knew (of), the other the radical enemy of all human civilization" - page 184

Gordon is a well respected historian who specializes in ancient Greece and Rome. His statements demonstrate that a period existed in which the supernatural witch and the everyday witch were not one and the same. It then logically follows that the conflation happened at a later period in time, namely the Christian era.

 

We can get a glimpse of the view about the witch in pre-Christian writings such as those by Horace, an ancient Roman poet.  In his work known as the Epodes he mentions the strix or striga as a creature whose feathers are added to a witch's brew. This shows the separation between the striga/stix existed in this era (Horace wrote in the first century bce).

Writer's of the first century in the Chrisitan era, like Ovid, Lucan, and Apuleius, mix the striga and the witch into one being. Historian Norman Cohn, in his book Europe's  Inner Demons, presents his theory of how views about the supernatural night-witch influenced the depiction of the witch during the medieval and later periods of the Christian era.  Unfortunately his view is almost useless in looking at ancient witchcraft ideas. Instead he focuses primarily on how the striga/strix legends influenced the way witchcraft was perceived in medieval times, and how it evolved in the following periods.

 

Cohn does touch briefly on the witch in antiquity in chapter nine of his book. But he deals only with the supernatural striges or strige. He ignores the everyday witch of ancient times (what historian Gordon calls the day-witch). Then Cohn wanders off and drags in Germanic lore into this Aegean-Mediterranean soup.

The value of Cohn's writings is that he shows a not unreasonable theory as to how the Church and its agents created the stereotype witch, witchcraft, and the Sabbat in the Christian era. Into the mix he adds lore related to the goddess Diana, and notes its place in the Canon Episcopi. Then he runs around waving Heriodias, Holda, Lady Abunda, and other figures to draw attention to his theme of a contrived witchcraft image. But again, this has nothing to do with pre-Christian witches and witchcraft of the Aegean-Mediterrranean as it pertains to the day-witch. What Cohn is talking about is conflation as it functioned in the Christian era, not the pre-Christian era.

 

It's interesting to look back at the etymology for the word "witch" in ancient Aegean-Mediterranean lands. The oldest word in Western culture is the Greek word pharmakis. Historian Richard Gordon writes: "So far as I know, this is the earliest example in extant Greek of the word pharmakis, which became one of the standard words for wise woman/witch, used as a substantive." So here we have the earliest view of the witch as a wisewoman. Nothing evil in this, and nothing connected to supernatural beings of ill intent.

Other words follow, and in Italy the word becomes "saga" - a name meaning "seer" - and here again, nothing evil. It's not until the word "venefica" arises that evil or ill intent enters into the etymology. But this takes centuries before the shift evolves and manifests.

 

At some point in time the word for witch, in Italian, becomes strega. I have yet to find the earliest references to it, it's first appearance, and first application.  However it seems logical to assume it has an etymology back to Latin roots.  There are no records to indicate what witches in ancient Italy called themselves. We only know the names and titles other people gave them or applied to them. Did these come from the witches themselves and in turn were then used by non-witches? Or did non-witches invent the names and titles?

 

Whatever the case may be, it seems likely that witches were aware of what people called them (aware of the name and titles).  If such terms were outsider's names, would witches have used them themselves at some point?

 

The only period in which we can look at documentation that reveals what witches called themselves, appears in the records of folkloric field studies in 19th century Italy.  The term was strega.

 

There are several sources in which we find references to people identifying themselves as strega in Italy. What's valuable here is that these are the first instances in which we find information about witches from witches. Prior to the 19th century all accounts of witches and witchcraft come from non-witches. The 19th century folklorists in Italy are the first to interview people that self-identify as witches in Italy (strega/streghe).

Roma Lister writes about this in her book of Reminiscences (and btw she is another person other than Leland who knew Maddalena). We also have the article in La Rivista of Rome (published June 1894) in which Lady de Vere writes of her interviews with strega women, and tells us that "the Community of Italian Witches is regulated by laws, traditions, and customs of the most secret kind, possessing special recipes for sorcery." This, of course, speaks to an organized underground. And as I mentioned before, we have the interviews by J.B. Andrews, and of course Charles Leland, who gathered information from people calling themselves witches (strega/streghe).

All of these reports from the folklorists speak to surviving traditions from days of old. That the people call themselves Strega suggests that they have also preserved the name by which they have always called themselves through the centuries.  Why else refer to themselves as strega as they did when interviewed?

 

So, just what is the truth about the strega?  Our ancestors were practitioners of magic who called upon goddesses associated with night, the stars & moon, and the Underworld.  Glimpses of this can be seen in the ancient writings about Medea, Canidia, and even Circe (although the latter is often regarded as a goddess instead of a witch). Unfortunately such tales are set in the politics of witches as people of ill intent.

 

The ancient strega was a healer, midwife, spellcaster, avenger, rebel, and one who communicated with the dead.  It remains so to this day. This is the denied and supressed history of the strega.

 

Because our ancestors gathered at night to perform their rites and to talk with the dead, the common people feared them as all secret societies have been feared at one time or another.  Wild imaginings took place, and this was mixed with superstition.  From this ignorance arose the image of the night-witch.  It is now ingrained in cultural stereotypes that cannot die because people keep them alive.