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A Grimoire of Italian Witchcraft, by Raven Grimassi

A Grimoire of Italian Witchcraft: Practical Spells & Rituals of the Old Religion, by Raven Grimassi
Crossed Crow Books, 1964537584, 276 pages, February 2026

My ancestors were from Italy. And while it appears I belong to a longtime staunchly Catholic family–while reading this book, my 89-year old Italian-American Grandmother picked it up and said, “What the hell is this?”–I can’t help but (wishfully) believe there is some lingering Italian folk magic within my veins. This has led me on a quest to learn more about neo-Pagan Italian witchcraft, or Stregheria. Having read other books by author Raven Grimassi, I was drawn to A Grimoire of Italian Witchcraft because it offers lore, spells, rituals, and teachings intended to bring this tradition into everyday magical practice.

As someone looking to build a foundation from the ground up, this book was a great starting point. Grimassi covers a variety of topics in this book, providing a structural overview of Italian spirituality, folklore, and ritual practices for those interested in the Old Religion. The book begins with a synopsis of Italian witchcraft and offers a ritual of dedication to begin one’s journey on this path. Grimassi also discusses Lasa and Lare, spirits who protect the Old Ways, encouraging readers to build a shrine as part of this work.

Chapters four through seven–”Making Contact”, “Sign and Symbol”, “Raising and Drawing Power”, and “The Art of Magick”–focus on core magical concepts but from the perspective of Italian witchcraft. For instance, there’s illustrations of physical poses to connect with the Grigori, “the entities that guard the ritual circle’s portals”1, as well as tables for symbols important in this tradition (Eight-Fold Path, Tanus (light), The Spirit of Aradia, and many more). Grimassi covers God and Goddess currents, explaining how energy flows through the body and teaching how to raise this power and move it accordingly. He also covers different types of magic and mechanisms of magic, noting the overlap between witchcraft and magical energy and components of ritual magic.

Chapter eight “Aradia, Woman of Power” and chapter nine “Moon Tree” delve more into the folklore of this path. The story of Aradia, popularized by Charles Leland, and her relevance to Italian witchcraft are explained. The symbol of the Moon tree and its ancient and esoteric meaning are also discussed, providing fascinating coverage of this lore.

The final four chapters– “Magickal and Ritual Gestures”, “Italian Folk Magic”, “The Ritual Tools”, and The Rituals”–are the practical “how-to” of the book. Readers learn the gestures and poses associated with Italian witchcraft, including “Calling Down the Goddess”2. Then there’s guidance about the saints and archangels to work with along with traditional spells and enchantments (silencing gossip, gambling, blessings). Additionally, all the tools needed are covered, including how to prepare them for use.

As for the rituals, they are varied but written out in full, so the reader can easily follow the script. Grimassi includes a ritual for a full moon and then all eight of the tregenda, or sabbats (Shadowfest, Winter Solstice, Lupercus, Spring Equinox, Diana’s Day, Summer Solstice, Cornucopia, and Autumn Equinox). To me, they were very traditional rituals, reminding me a lot of traditional Wicca, so I would probably adapt them, but they still serve as a good starting point.

The Appendices are also filled with a ton of additional information about Strega. Grimassi provides a history of the Old Religion, overview of the main deities, lists important plants and their uses, shares some Italian lore, an overview of palmistry, and more! It’s almost like all the neat other stuff that didn’t fit neatly into the structure of the book got put in the appendices, and I enjoyed it very much!

Compared to other books on this subject by Grimassi, A Grimoire of Italian Witchcraft functions much like a structured magical handbook (hence it’s name!). More than focusing solely on theory, the book is organized around practical application, presenting spells, rituals, and devotional practices that draw from the imagery and mythology associated with Italian witchcraft to make for a year-round meaningful practice. From workings related to seasonal observances to the ritual tools used, this book lays out an entire Stregheria practice that is accessible to modern practitioners.

What’s nice about the book as a whole though is that it also includes history that bridges past and present. Grimassi explains how this magic has evolved through time, dating back to the cult of Diana referenced as early as 30 BC, situating readers in the lineage and offering a connection to the origins of this magic. I really enjoyed the table of Old Gods of Tuscany and their Roman correspondences in “Chapter 3: Between Worlds”, as I previously hadn’t heard of any of these deities before.  Tapping into the historical roots of Italian spirituality made me feel like a portal was opening to all those who walked this path before me, even if it wasn’t technically Strega. There’s still this deep connection I felt towards those who honored nature and the old gods and goddesses in this way.

Overall, A Grimoire of Italian Witchcraft continues the legacy of Raven Grimassi’s work by presenting Italian-inspired witchcraft as a living and accessible tradition. The book emphasizes practice over theory, offering readers a collection of rituals and magical exercises rooted in Italian history and Pagan spirituality. In this way, the grimoire attempts to serve both as a reference text and as a working manual for those interested in exploring the path of the Strega. I definitely plan to continue to refer to it as a I connect with my Italian ancestors.

About the Author

Raven Grimassi (1951–2019) was a prolific American writer on witchcraft, Wicca, and Neopagan spirituality, publishing more than twenty books throughout his career. He is particularly known for popularizing Stregheria, a form of Italian-inspired witchcraft that blends folklore, historical research, and modern Pagan ritual practice. Grimassi was also a practicing Wiccan priest and a teacher within Pagan communities for decades, shaping the way many modern practitioners encountered Italian magical traditions.

Witchcraft, by Raven Grimassi

Witchcraft: A Mystery Tradition, by Raven Grimassi
Crossed Crow Books, 978-1-959883-59-3, 270 pages, July 2024

Neo-Pagan scholar and witch Raven Grimassi (1951-2019) was the prolific author of several books on the Old Religion. Initiated into Wicca in 1970, he founded the Aridian tradition a decade later, which blended Wicca and Italian witchcraft. In 2006, he established the Ash, Birch and Willow tradition with his wife Stephanie, which emphasizes the primal roots of European witchcraft. 

Crossed Crow Books, dedicated to preserving Grimassi’s legacy by republishing his out-of-print works, has rereleased Witchcraft: A Mystery Tradition. In this comprehensive work, Grimassi explores the myths and universal deity archetypes at the core of the Mysteries, which he says are “applicable to any system or tradition of Witchcraft.”3. This book was inspired by the Goddess of the Mysteries, Ceres, who Grimassi honored as his patroness because he was born on her festival day, April 12th. Before writing each chapter, Grimassi asked Ceres for her guidance.

For me, witchcraft is an ecstatic religious experience rooted in ancient practices, and Grimassi’s writings support that school of thought with meticulous research.

“It is my personal belief and experience that Witchcraft is a religion that has evolved over countless centuries (as opposed to a modern construction),”4 Grimassi says. “Historians and archaeologists spend a great deal of time and energy trying to separate magick and sorcery from Witchcraft as well as other things that the Witch as a practitioner knows to be inseparable.”5

Grimassi’s traditional perspective is so validating and refreshing to read, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. It’s become trendy for witches on social media to deny that witchcraft is a religion, and I can’t help but feel that they are serving their egos instead of the Goddess and the God.

Grimassi provides supporting historical evidence of Wiccan concepts and practices that have supposedly been debunked by historians like Ronald Hutton as modern inventions. He traces the ancient origins of ritual nudity, also known as being “skyclad,”6 citing seventeenth-century woodcuts and classical works, such as Ovid’s Fasti, as proof. He also validates the threefold nature of the goddess of witches, who is mentioned in classical sources like Lucan’s Pharsalia and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as in “the ancient concept of the Three Fates,” in which “we see the classic Maiden, Mother, and Crone vision.”7 

One of the greatest strengths of this book is that Grimassi helps readers see the Mystery Tradition from the perspective of our prehistoric ancestors. For example, he suggests that the ancient belief in an afterlife may have stemmed from the observation that sleeping people resemble the dead and visit the spirit realm in dreams. He also notes that “the Sun and Moon appeared to arise from beneath the ground and return each day or night,”8 suggesting the presence of an Underworld beneath the earth.

“It is the work of a Witch, as a practitioner of Earth Religion, to be a steward of nature,”9 Grimassi says.

Witches align with nature through the seasonal rites of the Sabbats, which Grimassi explores in detail. He explains how the waxing and waning halves of the years are personified by the Holly King and Oak King, whose animal forms are the stag and the wolf, and he analyzes the symbolism associated with the myths and legends of each Sabbat. 

“The Mystery Teachings are designed to bring humankind back to its original relationship with nature,”10 Grimassi says. By studying these teachings, he believes we can reactivate dormant ancestral knowledge, which he refers to as “memory-chain associations.”11 Memory-chain associations are energetic currents that Grimassi likens to quantum threads in a spider’s web of non-linear time, weaving together the simultaneously existing past, present, and future.

By aligning with a “core concept” that is received upon initiation into the Mysteries, “one can interface with the memory-chain associations.”12 Once the memory-chain has been activated, the initiate can draw from the Underworld cauldron of ancestral memory hidden within the labyrinthine tangle of roots beneath the Tree of Knowledge. The wisdom that lies therein is meant to be shared, for the enlightenment of humanity, and “the cauldron will not offer its essence to those who serve only themselves.”13

I believe Grimassi wrote this book in such a way that it activates those memory chains in the reader, stimulating initiatory insights, and this book is such a wellspring of information that it would take multiple readings to fully integrate what it has to offer. By shifting my mindset to the primal perspective of this work, I had a profound epiphany that deepened my understanding of the Horned God and my personal relationship with him. 

I took the holy sacrament of psilocybin cubensis for the first time while reading Chapter Three, “The God of the Witches,” and it was a truly initiatory experience. Although Grimassi does not mention the use of psychedelic sacraments in this book, I felt guided to do so by my guardian spirits because the mushroom, with its phallic shape and ecstatic properties, is a sacred plant medicine of the Horned God. It was a fortuitous synchronicity that I received the sacrament from a church the day after I started reading this book. I was also given signs to take it by the presence of two large mushroom fairy rings at the local park.

After waiting several hours for something to happen, I was disappointed because I thought the sacrament wasn’t working. I gave up and watched an episode of the X-Files, in which Agent Scully was kidnapped and almost lobotomized by a serial killer who wanted to trepan out her demons. Before Mulder rescued her, I had an intense craving for Doritos. That’s when the magic mushrooms finally started to kick in.

I heard a spirit voice tell me that I was protected and it was safe for me to let my guard down and surrender to the experience. She told me I have a very strong mind, like barbed wire, and it took a long time for me to feel the effects of the sacrament because of my psychic barriers. I realized she was right. I was curious to see what would happen, but I was also afraid of being mind-raped by the mushroom, so I had a lot of subconscious resistance. Up until that point, I had been worried that I wasn’t feeling anything because I didn’t take enough, but she told me that the Universe had provided me with the exact dosage that was right for me to consume at that time. Left to my own devices, I could easily have overdosed and become Madame Psychosis. My guardian spirits know me all too well.

At the peak of my trip, Dionysos appeared to me in the form of a serpent crawling along the tiles of my floor. The serpent told me he knows me better than I know myself, and gave me a lot of insight into my own behavior. He revealed to me that he is like a chameleon, and if I try too hard to see him, I won’t find him at all. “Surprise!” he said. I am the Mushroom King. He was very playful and teased me for overlooking him when he’s all around me, giving me obvious signs of his presence.

On the eve of Lughnassadh, a few days prior to me consuming the sacrament, a catalpa tree fell in the backyard during a thunderstorm. Thankfully, no one was injured and there was minimal damage, but it was a really startling encroachment of nature. A forked stang was gifted to me from that fallen tree, and I learned from an internet search that catalpa wood encourages creative self-expression, embracing one’s uniqueness, and facilitates communication with spirits, including angels, fairies, and ancestors.

The garden has also been strangely wild and overgrown with monstrous weeds this summer, despite all my diligent efforts to tame them. The corn was mysteriously knocked over by some unseen force, which was a frustrating disappointment, but the berry bushes have been thriving. All of this excessive weedy vegetation has been the Horned God’s way of trying to get my attention. He confirmed that I am a maenad by giving me a vision of myself with green skin and wearing a flower crown, which aligned with me being born in May and the emerald being my birthstone. I reveled in this Dionysian ecstasy without worrying about whether or not these insights were real or a form of spiritual psychosis, and once it was over, I felt heightened creativity and wrote down everything I could remember and transformed my experience into a poem.

Dionysos taking the form of a serpent in my vision was significant because Grimassi writes that, according to Plutarch, during the waning half of the year, “Dionysos is lord of Delphi,”14 while Apollo reigns during the waxing year. He likens Apollo and Dionysos to the Oak and Holly Kings of the waxing and waning and waning year who annually battle for regency. After re-reading this passage, I realized I had seen Dionysos in the form of the sacred python of the Delphic Oracle. This information was important for me to integrate because I’ve been wanting to incorporate Apollo into my practice as a complement to Dionysos, and seeing him as the king of the waxing year adds more depth to how I perceive his relationship with the Dionysian shadow.

I now see Apollo as the rational conscious mind, the Luciferian prince of dawn who wakes us in the morning and helps us remember and interpret the dreams and visions gifted to us in the Dionysian underworld of the subconscious mind. Light-bringing Apollo helps us make sense of it all and gives our visions deeper meaning by translating them into poetry, music, and other art forms. Apollo, the embodiment of reason, bestows the gift of discernment, enabling the mind to parse out delusions and fantasies from genuine prophecies and mystical experiences.

According to Grimassi, when the conscious mind attempts to digest illogical dream symbolism, “it discards what cannot be understood and retains what can be deciphered through logic and rational reasoning.”15 “The discarded information falls back into the subconscious mind where it later reappears in another dream state,”16 Grimassi says. This subconscious stew of dreams is symbolized in mythology as a magical cauldron, and as I read Grimassi’s words, I had a sudden epiphany that these dream fragments are reflected in the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysos, who was cooked in a cauldron and eaten by the Titans.

“The mystical theme of consuming is at the core of the Mystery Teaching associated with the Sacred King or Slain God,” Grimassi says. “The seed must go into the earth and the God must go into the soul. In essence, burial takes place in the soil and the stomach.”17 Grimassi also points out that the hearth was seen “as an entrance to the Underworld.”18 “The cauldron,” he says, “is not only a cooking pot but also a womb symbol from which metaphorical children are born.”19 

Taking the sacrament while reading this chapter gave me a whole new perspective of the Horned God’s manifestation as the sacred serpent. The correlation between the Horned God and digestion got me thinking about how the human digestive tract is just one long snake.

“The serpent is a very old symbol of the forces of the Underworld and of transformation itself,”20 Grimassi says.

Part of the Biblical serpent’s wisdom must have been instinctual discernment of what is safe and not safe to eat. Practicing Grimassi’s prehistoric way of thinking, I imagined the process of trial and error for hunters and gatherers learning which plants were safe for consumption and which ones were poisonous. To consume the sacrament is to metabolize plant wisdom. Perhaps being cursed to crawl on one’s belly metaphorically means that the will to survive is driven by the pangs of hunger. In order to stay alive, we are slaves to the dietary needs of our bodies.

Perhaps this is why so many Christian ascetics used fasting as a method of resisting the Devil. I have come to the conclusion that the Tree of Knowledge is the human body, and the serpent is the digestive system. The serpent rules the literal bowels of the Underworld, the digestive system that alchemizes food into energy. By honoring the wisdom of the serpent, we treat all food as sacred and become more mindful of what we consume.

Witchcraft: A Mystery Tradition has blessed me with initiatory revelations and I can’t praise this book enough. I came to this work seeking to know the God of Witches better, but of course, Grimassi devotes the same amount of attention to the Triple Goddess. In the past, my practice has been primarily goddess-centric, so this book initiated me into an aspect of the Horned God’s mysteries because that’s what I needed most for my personal spiritual journey. I have no doubt that multiple readings will take me in new directions, and every reader’s initiatory experience will be different, depending on where they are on their spiritual path.