Neopaganism
Aradia has become an important figure in Wicca as well as some other forms of Neo-Paganism. Some Wiccan traditions use the name "Aradia" as one of the names of the Great Goddess, Moon Goddess or "Queen of the Witches". Portions of Leland's text influenced the Gardnerian Book of Shadows, especially the Charge of the Goddess. Alex Sanders invoked Aradia as a Moon Goddess in the 1960s. Janet and Stewart Farrar used the name in their Eight Sabbats for Witches and The Witches Way. Aradia was invoked in spellcraft in Z. Budapest's The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. An entire website, the Goddess Aradia and Related Subjects, is devoted to Aradia as a Wiccan goddess and a powerful spirit in Italian folklore.
Aradia is a central figure in Stregheria, an "ethnic Italian" form of Wicca introduced by Raven Grimassi in the 1980s. Grimassi claims that there was a historical figure called "Aradia di Toscano", whom he portrays as the founder of a revivalist religion of Italian witchcraft in the 14th century. Grimassi claims that Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches is a "distorted Christianized version" of the story of Aradia.
Neo-Pagan narratives of Aradia include Raven Grimassi, The Book of the Holy Strega (1981); Aidan Kelly, The Gospel of Diana (1993); Myth Woodling, Secret Story of Aradia, (2001)
In 1992 Aidan Kelly, co-founder of the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, distributed a document titled The Gospel of Diana (a reference to Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches). The text contained a list of mother and daughter priestesses who had taught religious witchcraft through the centuries. Instead of Leland's goddess Diana and her messianical daughter, Aradia, Kelly's text described mortal human beings. The priestesses' names alternated between Aradia and Diana. Magliocco describes the character of Aradia in Kelly's accompanying narrative as "a notably erotic character; according to her teachings, the sexual act becomes not only an expression of the divine life force, but an act of resistance against all forms of oppression and the primary focus of ritual". Magliocco also notes that the text "has not achieved broad diffusion in contemporary Pagan circles".
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