Italy is another world. The past is everywhere - you feel it watching from behind any sienna-washed stucco building, from the poppies in the fields. In some places, you still catch a scent of sensuous Etruscan sweat, though the lovers wandered on 2000 years ago.
We have come to see our friends, relax and look for what remnants we can uncover of the kind of witchcraft Charles Leland found here in the 1890s. (An American folklorist, Leland published a number of books based on his research in Tuscany in the 1880s and 1890s, including Etruscan Magic and Occult Remedies, Legends of Florence, and the better-known but less intersting Aradia.) Based on previous experiences, we have no great expectations: "There's no witchcraft left in Italy," an historian friend assured us several years ago. Still, one of the friends we're visiting (we'll call her Liz) is an anthropologist, and she has offered to help us in our project.
-
"Facture." Everyone laughs. "Nobody does facture (spells) any more!"
"Not unless you include signing."
"Of course, there's pranotherapy, but that's not really the same."
"Then, too, there are the old women who wash people with fear herb."
"My grandmother did that, and my aunt still does…."
We're talking with a group of five women who often stop to have coffee, together with Liz, after they and she drop their children off at elementary school. The women are mostly in their thirties, attractive, dressed like professionals. From different social and educational backgrounds, they have become friends through their children. You can tell that most of them grew up in this region from the way their hard c's soften into breathy h's, an accent called "eating your c's."
"Are there still any witches?" We ask. The word shocks them.
"There are the Satanists, of course. You can read about them."
"Around here? Do you know any?"
Even worse! They shake their heads vaguely. The whole idea of Satanists seems to violate a basic contract of civility while confirming a premise about humanity. Satanists, like serial killers, are far away, one hopes, but certainly they exist. No one knows any, even secondhand, but these women don't doubt that somewhere, in the cities, there are Satanist groups who practice witchcraft. It is clear that the word strega (witch) still carries strong overtones of malevolence and danger.
-
Tiziano, a musician and Tuscan interpreter of American urban blues, explains he is an electronic engineer by day. We talk shop a bit - his current project is impressively complex. At 38, he still lives at home with his parents, as do many of his peers.
His girlfriend of several years, Monica, is an architect. Harold asks them about old woman healers. Tiziano shrugs; it isn't his thing. Monica says, "There are such women, you know. They are very religious."
"You mean Catholic?"
She looks confused. "Yes, of course." What else could "religious" mean?
"Do you know much about it?"
"Me? I stick with astrology."
"Are people very interested in astrology in Italy?"
Everyone nods. "Oh yes."
Across the table, their friend Massimo leans forward. He is elegant with his hair slicked back, confidant in a pleasant sort of way. He seems intelligent and well-educated; his wife Sabrina is a psychotherapist.
"When I was growing up," he says, "I heard a lot about spells. We believed in charms and healings. You know about the malocchio, the evil eye? Look." He shows us charms he is wearing around his neck on a slender golden chain. "See, the horns keep off the evil eye." They are the horns of a crescent moon. There are other complex shapes on the chain, but he tucks it back into his shirt as the conversation wanders on, and we never get around to asking him about them.
I describe an Inquisition report from the 1500s that lists objects of sympathetic magic taken from a mattress, including many different kinds of seeds, beans, nails and needles serving as fertility and phallic charms in love magic.
"Sure," says Massimo. "You can easily find the same kinds of things in mattresses today."
Language gets in our way somewhat. We stumble along in Italian at many points, needing our imndulgent friends to translate for us. "But you studied English, didn't you?" asks Liz in English at one point, turning to Monica.
"No," she answers in Italian, with a wry grin, completely misunderstanding. "We are living in sin." The table is delighted.
-
"When I was a child," Stellina reports, "there was a girl in my class who was very short."
We are drinking wine before the fireplace in Liz's house. Stellina is an engineering student, a pretty, boyish girl who rides a motorcycle and eats her c's as much as anyone we've met, a true Toscana. Her boyfriend, Andrea, accompanies us.
"She was convinced someone had put a fatura on her to make her short. Her mother thought so too. She found something under her pillow that convinced her, I can't remember exactly what."
To Stellina and Andrea, two of the more open-minded people we've met, we try to explain neo-paganism. The idea to them is somewhat dumbfounding, and in the end interesting principally from a feminist standpoint.
The candles flicker. The conversation drifts to other topics. A new genre in Italian film and books has grown up, called pulp, the term taken from Pulp Fiction. Stellina and Andrea want to know if "pulp" has some underground, cult meaning. We work, between our mediocre Italian and Andrea's tolerable English - Stellina pushing hard at every turn, she speaks only Italian and is used to being articulate - to explain the (not very underground) derivation of "pulp."
-
A friend has told Liz about a witch living on the hill above a nearby town. We pile into the car to look for her.
When we came to Tuscany, it was cold, rainy, bone-chilling without central heating in the tall rooms with tile floors. We slept under three layers of blankets. Now it has gotten hot, and piled cumulus clouds coast across a high blue sky, the sun casting shadows of leaves on the dirt road. Climbing the roadside shrine to Mary twine wild roses, simple-petaled, crimson paling to white hearts with golden stamens. We go higher, and warm browns of terracotta roofs dot the rolling country below us, dense with grapevines, whose new leaves unfurl pale ice-green, and with grey-green olive trees. The fields lie patterned in stripes as in a painting. Leonardo was born near here, in Vinci.
We come to the house where we are going to ask directions of Liz's friend. Houses up here are few, scattered among the olive groves and vineyards. Across from the driveway, we find three men leaning on a truck, talking, a man in a dusty business suit and two men who look like laborers; another car is parked just ahead of the truck. The truck and its leaners takes up half the steep road, making it hard to pass; though the men move politely, it's a fight in low gear to get beyond and park.
The friend isn't in. We begin a desultory conversation with the men, talking of witches, old women and healing. They nod sagely. Yes, there are a couple of old women around here who perform signing and other kinds of healing. Not witches, of course, nothing out of the ordinary.
On the way home, we buy Chianti from a 600-year-old winery belonging to a family Liz knows. Down in the cavelike underground cantina, floored with great tiles of a size not made anymore, are dozens of huge oval-fronted oak wine barrels mounted on their sides. Each one could fit the three of us easily, drowned in wine.
-
The household magick of the countryside that the Italian Inquisition pursued half-heartedly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries appears alive and well today. The practice of "signing," for example, seems as popular now as it was then. Signing involves healing using gestures, chiefly the sign of the cross, sometimes combined with Christian or other incantations, oiling of the body and herbal baths.
Pranotherapy, too, flourishes. Despite its Indian-sounding name, it seems to have little to do with the teachings of the East. It's a form of laying on of hands, and to line up for appointments with famous pranotherapists people drive across Italy and sleep in their cars overnight.
Liz has visited one such pranotherapist. It seems one day he hurt his leg, and touching it with his hands he found he could take away the pain. Now he shares his gift with others. His family has no history of healing power, and he says he does not understand his gift. Like other pranotherapists, he asks no money for his services; instead, you make a voluntary donation when you see him. Liz says the greater number of pranotherapists seem to be men.
In contrast, it's women whom we hear wash people with fear herb (erba della paura). Liz's bank teller knows of a shop where we can buy this herb, and so one early afternoon we make our way there, hoping to meet such women.
The shop is small and clean, its tile floor cold. The front is lit from the display window; the back lies shadowy. We see no herbs. Toward the back hang rubber thong sandals, beach gear, rainbow-weave shopping bags. The middle and front of the room is dominated by wicker baskets, bins and cardboard tin-lipped barrels, all sizes, containing beans of many kinds: large, small, round, flat, oblong, white, mottled, black. On the walls, in the corners, in trays and bins stand and lie every conceivable shape and size of brush and broom, hand-size to shop-size, hand-made to O'Cedar.
Beans and brooms…. Beans have had magickal associations since before the Pythagoreans, and brooms are traditional symbols of witchcraft and sex. A common Italian slang equivalent of the verb "to fuck" is scopare, from scopa, a broom, and by association a pubic bush.
The shopkeeper comes forward. Her age is hard to determine. At first, she appears to be in her early fifties, but perhaps she is older. At her collar, I see she is wearing four layers of clothing; a pale blue T-shirt, over that a pink housecoat, over that a blue crew-neck wool sweater, over that a light camel-hair coat, on the breast two shiny pins of red flowerets, cheaply pretty. The shop is chilly, but her layers make me think of the thin blood of the old. Her hair is dyed straw-colored, grey or white at the part, a little shorter than shoulder length. Her eyebrows are thick and black, her nose long, her skin smooth but a little age-mottled, thin around her large, appealing brown eyes.
Later, all three of us confess she looks like the classic caricature of a witch.
"Can I help you?"
We explain what we are looking for. She looks at each of us in turn. What can she think of these foreigners looking for a magickal herb? She seems earnest, a little shy, uncertain what to make of our request.
"I'm sorry," she tells us. "I don't sell fear herb."
"Ah, our mistake. Someone told us we could find it here."
"I haven't been able to sell it here for the last two years, because of legal problems."
"Oh really? Legal problems?"
"Oh," she brushes at bureaucratic cobwebs with her hand, "Tax matters." She explains that the old people who gather the herb are pensioners, not willing to report any income from selling their harvest. She, on the other hand, must be able to produce invoices for the auditors showing how much she paid for it.
"My family has been selling it here in this shop for three generations," she tells us with indignation.
"How is the herb used?"
"Ah, you boil it in water, and then use the water to wash the face, the arms, the legs."
"And it is to reduce fear?"
"Fear, yes. But fear…" she looks for the right way to express it. "Sometimes people are filled with tension." She clenches her fist and hunches her shoulders expressively. "Their blood becomes thickened with it. The herb cleans out the tension, lets the blood flow easily again." She relaxes her shoulders, straightens up again. "The herb fights stress."
It's strange to hear the English word in Italian, lo stress, a mainstream medical term for what here is called more simply fear.
"Do you know where we could find this herb, by any chance?"
"Why don't you try the erbolaio down in the piazza. They might still have some there."
"Do you know how to do the washing yourself?" We put it awkwardly, and Liz makes a joke about not being a strega to help regain our balance. But the joke falls badly, and the woman recoils.
"Me? Oh, no. I've only heard people speak of these things."
-
The little herbal shop has been cut from a larger room, the arch at the back reaching its height where it hits the far wall, The library-like, polished wood shelves stuffed with brightly colored boxes and bottles can hardly be distinguished from those of an Italian pharmacy. The pleasant, well-dressed woman behind the counter is in her early thirties.
Again, we explain what we want.
"I'm sorry, I'm entirely out of it."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"Yes, they only harvest it once a year, in June, and last year's supply is gone. Unfortunately, this spring has been so rainy that I've heard it will be a poor season for fear herb this year."
"Oh, really. Where is it gathered?"
"On Montemurlo, I've heard. Old people go out and pick it."
"Is it effective?"
"Yes, I believe it is."
"How is it used?"
"Well, you boil a bunch in water, and then you wash the person's face and arms and legs, always washing down, away from the body." She demonstrates how you brush outward from the torso with the liquid, pushing fear out of the body.
"Do special people have to do the washing?"
"Oh no, anyone. People believe," she smiles to show that she doesn't necessarily join them, "that you should say certain prayers or spells, and that the person doing the washing shouldn't be in the family of the person being washed, and that you need to do the washing with the downward, outward motion. I think the washing may have a biochemical effect."
"Really? Do you have a picture of the herb, by any chance?" Liz has told us of finding in her anthropological work an Italian principle of "two no's and a yes" - expect two polite refusals before you obtain any significant information. You need to continue the negotiation, showing your courtesy and true interest.
"No, it's a local herb. A form of stachys. But I might have a little left." She goes over to a rather large wooden bin and removes the lid, marked Erba della Paura. At the bottom are some loose leaves and twigs, and one little bundle. She lifts out the bundle and hands it to us. "Here."
"Oh, wonderful. Thank you." We examine it.
"They call it (such a bundle) a fist." The shopkeeper clenches her hand. "They make a fist of it to strike the fear."
"Do many people use it?"
She shrugs. "Often people buy it for their children. Then, you know, they use it themselves."
She finds a file folder in a drawer and begins looking through it.
"How much do we owe you?"
"Take it as a present. I didn't even know I had it." As we start to thank her, she pulls a Xeroxed sheet from the file folder and hands it to us. "Ah yes, and here is a sheet of directions for using it." With her bright-colored boxes and bottles, her Xeroxed sheet, her smile indulgent of the idea of fear-washing, no one could accuse her of being a strega.
We thank her profusely.
-
Later, at home in the United States, we look up stachys. Fear herb must be wood betony or a relative of woundwort. Betony has a reputation of being effective against nervous headaches and tension.
The sheet of directions given to us in the herb shop reads as follows, translated into English:
(Notes of an herbalist and harvester from Sesto Fiorentino)
History
In Tuscany, there is an herb that grows wild, called erba della paura. People don't take it internally, but use it externally to cure all the sensations of agitation and anxiety characteristically experienced after small or large shocks.
It is known in a good part of Tuscany and in other areas of Emilia Romagna. It is also present in the Dolomites, in Abruzzo, and in Val d'Aosta, but people there know of neither internal nor external uses for it.
Harvesting the Herb
The herb is harvested in accord with tradition on the 24th of June, the summer solstice. It is preserved in little bunches that take the form of a "fist," which serves, as people say, to "hit the fear."
Use
It is prepared using a dose or "fist" of the plant in about a liter of water (some people add a small branch of olive leaves), brought to a slow boil and simmered for about 20 minutes.
The liquid obtained, after it has cooled and been strained, serves to "wash away" fear. The washing should be done by another person and by the same hand each time.
Proceed by immersing one hand in the water and washing the person's face, the front of the neck, and the ears, then the arms, moving the hands from top to bottom, and then the legs from thighs to feet, including the soles of the feet, repeating the whole washing three times.
Repeat the washing three successive days which do not include Tuesday or Friday; in other words, the right days will be Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Results
The results of this first washing that will be immediately visible will be that the liquid will normally assume a "mossy" aspect, like water in a polluted river.
It will diminish with the second washing, and disappear with the third.
If there is no fear present to create the state of alteration, the water will remain clear right from the first washing, but will produce a state of particular tranquility at night.
In Tuscany, ancient women continue to research and use the herb in the traditional washing, although only a few harvesters look for the herb to supply it to a small number of qualified herbalists and pharmacists.
-
In part, our quest has been successful. We have established that behind the Marxist materialist/Catholic Christian dialectic in Italy today there still exists a world of unacknowledged folk magick. If we returned and had six months to a year, we could probably find a witch or witches with whom to study. We could learn their lore; we could compare their facture with those reported by Leland. Chances are the spells would bear a family resemblance.
It seems that witchcraft in Italy never died, so never needed to be reinvented. But it's mixed, half-hidden in Catholicism, as the pentacle inlaid in stone on the wall of Prato's cathedral sits among crosses and six-pointed stars. When Harold was 12 and took a day-trip with his family in Italy, their guide pointed to groves atop hills, calling them witch-groves. How long ago were they used so? Are they now?
When you meet an old Italian woman who heals with herbs and charms, she'll probably be "very religious." Don't call her a witch - witches are feared, mixed up with Satanists. Be polite; be patient; be ready to experience at least two no's before you hear a yes. Be prepared to return many times, and try to be as charming as an Italian when you do. Ply her with coffee, biscotti, new wine, vin santo. Come back and tell us what you find.
If we can, we'll go ourselves.
[Home Page | Other Articles in This Issue | FAQ | Local Resources]