Stregheria

Stregheria is a system of Witchcraft with Italian roots, and the term itself is of archaic Italian origin. Its most frequent contemporary usage indicates a form of ethnic Italian Italian Witchcraft originating in the United States, popularized by Raven Grimassi since the 1980s. Stregheria is sometimes referred to as La Vecchia Religione ("the Old Religion") The word stregheria is an obsolete Italian word in contemporary Italian for "witchcraft", the ordinary Italian word being stregoneria.

Grimassi formerly taught what he called the Aridian tradition in the 1980s. In his public writings he mixed elements of what is commonly believed to be Gardnerian Wicca with elements of Italian Witchcraft and lore, some of it reflective of the accounts of Italian Withcraft that earlier appeared in the writings of Charles G. Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899). The name "Aradia" is due to Leland, who claimed that Erodiade (the Italian name of Herodias) was the object of a " witch-cult" in medieval Tuscany. Since 1998, Grimassi has been advocating what he calls the Arician tradition, described as an "initiate level" variant of the religion, involving an initiation ceremony.

Stregheria has both similarities and differences with Wicca, and in some ways resembles reconstructionist Neopaganism focused on a specific nation or culture (in this case the folk religion of medieval Italy, allegedly containing traditions derived from Etruscan religion). Stregheria honors a pantheon centered around a Moon Goddess and a Horned God regarded as central, paralleling Wiccan views of divinity.