What's a Witch and is a Strega a Strix?

La Striga 14x18 digital image Dee Rapposelli

Many neopagans self-identify as witches. And I did too at one point in my history, thinking myself a chip off the old block when my grandfather, after learning that I dabbled in palm- and card-reading, announced that I was following in the footsteps of his mother. He proudly announced that she was a strega—a witch.

Now, I knew that one of my maternal great grandmothers, who hailed from Bari, Italy, was a wise woman. Like many other people’s Old World great grandmothers, she divined and cast spells and was a living lexicon of folklore, folk healing, and superstition. Her philosophy was that of other Italian cunning folk: keep a positive attitude and not speak of disease or death lest doing so attract negative forces.

           

But my great grandmother was not a strega exactly. Perhaps she was a maga  (a lady mage) or a donna di fiori (an outsider), a fattuchiera (a fixer), or a myriad other regional names that people gave to local healers, diviners, charmers, and “unbewitchers.” No one in their right mind called him- or herself a witch anywhere in Europe until the latter half of the 19^th century when a romantic pseudo-history about paganism and the whole Western Occultist scene began to develop.

For a long blah blah blah about the history of the birth of Neopaganism, Wicca, and modern occultism (plus bibliographical references for claims made in today’s blog), see this post from an old blog of mine from days when I was “in the scene.” Yes, the geek alert is in effect.

Witches were thought to be malignant supernatural creatures that caused disease and ruin. They cavorted with demons and were dedicated to inflicting calamity and despair.  Their imagined human counterparts were bewitchers practicing malicious and coercive magic and diabolism. And the name for such practitioners was streghe.

Strega, the Italian word for “witch” (plural, streghe), is derived from the Latin word for screech owl,  striga. The Greek term, adapted into the English language, is strix (plural, striges). In Greek and Roman mythology striges were vampiric birds of prey that feasted on human flesh and blood—often that of infants. They also liked to seduce and destroy men. By the medieval era, they were equated with vampires.

Striga  14x18 digital print Dee Rapposelli

A strix may basically be a Greco-Roman version of the Semitic Lilith. Although Lilith is nowadays (misguidedly) positioned as an ancient suffragette and paean of female independence and sexual freedom, she originally was a demon responsible for miscarriage, crib death, maternal death, nocturnal emissions, and impotence. The myth of Lilith (beyond the “I wanna be on top” part) was meant to explain why these tragedies occurred. So it seems reasonable to conjecture that myths of striges feasting on human infants and sucking the life out of men were meant to explain infant mortality and emasculation--as the myth of the Semitic demon Lilith was meant to do.

I point this out as a contemplation on what is lost in translation and paradigmatic shifts. Memory, history, and labels are not fixed but fluid, malleable, and fabricated.

Striga/siren studies

For my sirens series, I developed a few pics of creatures that could also qualify as striges. Why? Because I simply have a fascination with mythological forms that, in part, are overtly meant to express something horrifically ambivalent about female sexuality but may have another meaning.  Although the horror of the siren may be a covertext for concepts about sublime spiritual mysteries, the striga is meant to be a monster and explain why monstrous things sometimes happen to human beings—male and female. Until very recently, historically speaking, the strega/witch was meant to explain the same thing.

Let's Get Digital with the Azoth Mandala

An interesting Western mandala, highly searchable on the Web if you type “Azoth” into a Google images search is the twelfth in the series of 14 plates within a 17th century alchemical picture book called Azoth of the Philosophers. It is traditionally attributed to one Basilius Valentinus, said to be a German monk and alchemist, but it is more likely the product of a chemist named Johann Thölde (1565-1614). Valentinus may simply be a legendary character.

Read more details about Azoth on my other blog.  Another one for the intellectually geekier among you.

I took a fascination with alchemy and this particular image several years ago. In fact, I painted a rough image on a board that I used as an altar table for a few years’ foray into Western Occultism. I recently decided to chuck the old, crudely painted image and make a new, improved digital rendering. I even contacted my friend Johnes Ruta, a fine arts curator who runs the Azoth Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, to ask if I could use his likeness as the bearded man who appears in the center of the original image.

Azoth of the Philosophers 24x24 inch digital print by Dee Rapposelli. Want one? Contact me via my Website.

Azoth is a term in philosophical alchemy that refers to latent, transformational energy. Some say that it is derived from an Arabic word for mercury and others that it stands for A-to-Z—a variation on alpha-omega.

The original mandala presumably was a meditation on alchemical laboratory processes as well as a meditation on the transmutation from death and decay to numinous perfection.

The image consists of a 7-pointed star, representing the 7 planets known to the medieval world: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Sol, Mercury, and Luna. Similar to chakras, the planets have symbolic themes that have correspondences with levels of human consciousness. Words that  describe the journey through the spheres are Visita, Interiora, Terra, Rectificando, Invenies, Occultum, and Lapidum (the Visit, the Interiorization, Earth, Rectification, Discovery, the Secret, and the Stone), which have meaning in relation to alchemical laboratory processes as well as the journey toward self-transformation and perfection.

Although the order of the process is intact, I did change the sequence of the planets from the sequence shown in the original image. My intent was to more closely pair the philosophical planets with the chakras of Eastern lore. Why? In part because modern Western folks are more onto Eastern chakra lore—however dummied-down and candy-coated--than their own mystical/Tantric traditions. Medieval alchemists and their forebears did see that planets as energies reflected in their own psyches that had to be journeyed through and transcended in pursuit of freedom and enlightenment. In some systems, Saturn was the viewed as the dastardly demiurge who barred the gates of Paradise and left humans wallowing in their mortality. In others, Saturn was equated with the transcendent godhead and divine ground. My lineup comes from my own personal work with the planets.

The triangle in the image depicts the alchemical trinity of sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur corresponds with the solar principle, mercury with the lunar principle, and salt with matter and the body. The solar principle is symbolized by a king astride a lion, and the lunar principle is symbolized by a queen riding a sea creature.

The doves at the top of the mandala represent the “quintessence”—the fifth element and divine essence to which the alchemical adept aspires. (The traditional image sports a salamander representing the element of fire in the left upper corner and an eagle, representing air in the upper right corner.)

Who is the bearded man in the center of the image?  It is your spiritual ideal and aspiration. Modern-day alchemist Dennis William Hauck claims that medieval alchemists meditated on images like this mandala and that they sometimes placed a mirror in the center of the image to remind themselves that, in the words of an ancient Hindu sage “That thou art.”

Visit Hauck's Alchemy lab  for a more in depth discussion on the Azoth mandala.

Visualizing Your Spiritual Ideal

In traditional religion, the spiritual ideal is the hallowed ideal or personage that a spiritual aspirant wants to emulate or otherwise identify with: Jesus, a saint, a bodhisattva, an avatar, a holy guardian angel, the “higher self” …

(Check out my essay on the Chosen Ideal in a separate blog) For the intellectually geekier among you....

That ideal is usually something treated as “other” although the point is to realize that we are or at least are meant to be that ideal. Most folks opt to idolize their ideal through religious posturing and devotional reveries rather than do the work to really “get,” integrate, and act from their spiritual ideals.

In any case, I tended to think of a “spiritual ideal” in the conventional sense—something having to do with God or angels, devas, avataras, bodhisattvas, or spiritual heroes. My Spiritual Ideal Project was even spurred by an image that popped up during a meditation sit in which I saw myself as a heavenly being—a graceful female entity clad in pink and lime green garb, festooned with flower garlands, sitting on a moon disc and glowing in a sun disc. I began to contemplate what it “feels like” to be that in hopes I could hardwire the thought form into my consciousness. To help solidify the image, I made a picture of it. Then, I began to ask friends what their spiritual ideal was and how I might portray it in portraiture.

I was surprised and impressed by how different folks interpreted the question. Presented here are the first few images of this Project.

My friend DT as The Goddess of Sensual Desire. I was kind of  surprised when DT's response to "What is your spiritual

ideal?" was "I want to be the goddess of sensual desire" because, before beginning this project, I equated "spiritual ideal" with some ethereal lofty religiously spiritual concept. But she honestly really does value the "good life,," and her response helped me get my feet back on planet Earth.  My first thoughts were to work her image into a Babalon Rising type of motif, but I wanted to convey the  luxury, joy, and hospitality that reflects her ebullient personality. I constructed this from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It prints as a 24 x 24 inch glicee.

My good friend EC, author of the blog Neognostica's Book of  Thoth--A Modern Translation Ed is into planetary magic inspired by work developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His response to my question was to say that he wanted the wisdom of the cosmos to be reflected in his actions--like the famous Hermetic adage:  As above, so below. H suggested I make an image of a fellow  walking on a lake in which the planets are reflected. This image, is constructed from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It includes pics of planets and landscape from NASA.  It prints as an 18 x 24 glicee.

SS is the head steward of the Scalzi Riverwalk Nature Preserve in Stamford, Connecticut. She intrepidly went into a neglected, overgrown, roadside riverwalk that had become a haven for drug activity and illicit loitering and cleaned it up for safe and thriving community use. Together with a band of volunteers and folks training to be gardeners, horticulurists, and land managers, she is restoring the area to its natural habitat--on a shoestring budget: weeding-out invasive species, planting and protecting native plants, and helping to restore native wildlife to the area.  When I asked her what her spiritual ideal was, she simply replied, " When I die, my remains must be placed in an oak grove." She proceeded to tell me that oak--and trees in general--do not naturally grow as singular plants but grow in groves where their roots intertwine so that that grove is actually one single organism. Her spiritual aspiration is to be one with that. This was the first image I ever made that is completely constructed from photo manipulation (no drawing) in PhotoShop Elements. She would never go for that glam shift I put her in--but I figured she could look a little sexy if she were an oak-grove sylph.  It prints as an 18 x 24 image on paper.