Aradia: Gospel of the Witches - Couverture souple

Leland, Professor Charles Godfrey

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1602063028 ISBN 13 : 9781602063020

Editeur : Cosimo Classics, 2007

Synopsis

Its accuracy is disputed by some, while others consider it a vital resource for studying and understanding Italian witch folklore of the 19th century. What is certain is that this 1899 classic has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland claimed his "witch informant," a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths. American journalist and folklorist CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903) was editor of Continental Monthly during the Civil War and coined the term emancipation as an alternative to abolition, but he is best remembered for his books on ethnography, folklore, and language, including The Gypsies (1882), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892), and Unpublished Legends of Virgil (1899).

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and became interested in folklore and folk linguistics, publishing books and articles on American and European languages and folk traditions. By the end of his life shortly after the turn of the century, Leland had worked in a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as the author of the comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads, fought in two conflicts, and had written what was to become a primary source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Leland travelled widely, eventually settling in London. In his travels, he made a study of the Gypsies, on whom he wrote more than one book. Leland began to publish a number of books on ethnography, folklore and language. His fame during his lifetime rested chiefly on his comic Hans Breitmann’s Ballads (1871), written in a combination of broken English and German (not to be confused, as it often has been, with Pennsylvania German). His writings on Algonquian and gypsy culture were part of the contemporary interest in pagan and Aryan traditions. He erroneously claimed to have discovered 'the fifth Celtic tongue': the form of Cant, spoken among Irish Travellers. He named it Shelta. Leland became president of the English Gypsy-Lore Society in 1888. Eleven years later Godfrey produced Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Indefatigable in research, Mr. Leland collects from the mouths of Italian peasants all the information still surviving concerning witches and their rites. Much of this he incorporated in his previous writings, and much more-some of it, we are glad to think, on the point of appearance-has yet to see the light. It is difficult to over-estimate the interest of these survivals in Italy of pagan faith and rite, and it is eminently desirable that so much of them as possible should be preserved. They are on the verge of disappearance, and what is not now reclaimed will inevitably perish. On this point Mr. Leland insists. There are still, however, some few people in the Northern Ramagna who know the Etruscan names of the twelve gods. Invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the Lares may yet be heard, and there are women in the cities who mutter over the amulets they prepare spells known to the old Roman, and have lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. Aradia (Herodias), it may be said, is, according to the Vangelo of the witches, the daughter of Diana by her brother Lucifer, the god of the sun and of the moon, who for his pride was driven from Paradise. Aradia - not, Mr. Leland thinks, the Herodias of the New Testament, but an earlier replica of Lilith-is the chief patron of witches and the teacher of witchcraft. Deeply interesting is all that is said concerning her, and the book, which translates the poetic invocations, is a treasure-house to the student of witchcraft and myth.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Cosimo Classics
• Date d'édition: 2007
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1602063028
• ISBN 13: 9781602063020
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 80
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible