What is "stregheria"

Stregheria is a form of Italian American witchcraft. Stregheria is sometimes referred to as La Vecchia Religione ("the Old Religion"). The word stregheria is an archaic Italian word for "witchcraft", the most used and modern Italian word being stregoneria. "Stregoenria Italiana" is a form of stregoneria that is Catholic-rooted folk magic having little if any relationship to authentic forms of Italian Witchcraft.

Author Raven Grimassi has written on the topic. Grimassi taught what he called the Aridian tradition from 1980. He mixed elements of Gardnerian Wicca with ideas inspired by 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 focussed on a specific nation or culture (in this case the folk religion of ancient and medieval Italy). Stregheria honors a pantheon centered on a Moon Goddess and a Horned God regarded as central, paralleling Wiccan views of divinity.