Aradia

Gospel Of The Witches

and as the deity to be especially invoked for such love-making. The one invoking says that the window is opened, that the moon may shine splendidly on the bed, even as our love is bright and beautiful...and I pray her to give great rapture to us.

The quivering, mysteriously beautiful light of the moon, which seems to cast a spirit of

intelligence or emotion over silent Nature, and dimly half awaken it - raising shadows into thoughts and causing every tree and rock to assume the semblance of a living form, but one which, while shimmering and breathing, still sleeps in a dream - could not escape the Greeks, and they expressed it as Diana embracing Endymion. But as night is the time sacred to secrecy, and as the true Diana of the Mysteries was the Queen of Night, who wore the crescent moon, and mistress of all hidden things, including sweet secret sins and loved iniquities, there was attached to this myth far more than meets the eye. And just in the degree to which Diana was believed to be Queen of the emancipated witches and of Night, or the nocturnal Venus-Astarte herself, so far would the love for sleeping Endymion be understood as sensual, yet sacred and allegorical. And it is entirely in this sense that the witches in Italy, who may claim with some right to be its true inheritors, have preserved and understood the myth.

It is a realization of forbidden or secret love, with attraction to the dimly seen

beautiful-by-moonlight, with the fairy or witch-like charm of the supernatural - a romance

combined in a single strange form - the spell of Night!

There is a dangerous silence in that hour

A stillness which leaves room for the full soul

To open all itself, without the power

Of calling wholly back its self-control;

The silver light which, hallowing tree and flower,

Sheds beauty and deep softness oer the whole,

Breathes also to the heart, and oer it throws

A loving languor which is not repose.

This is what is meant by the myth of Diana and Endymion. It is the making divine or

aesthetic (which to the Greeks was one and the same) that which is impassioned, secret, and

forbidden. It was the charm of the stolen waters which are sweet, intensified to poetry. And it is remarkable that it has been so strangely preserved in Italian with traditions.

CHAPTER X

MADONNA DIANA

Once there was, in the very old time in Cettardo Alto, a girl of astonishing beauty, and she

was betrothed to a young man who was as remarkable for good looks as herself; but though well born and bred, the fortune or misfortunes of war or fate had made them both extremely poor.

And if the young lady had one fault, it was her great pride, nor would she willingly be married

unless in good style, with luxury and festivity, in a fine garment, with many bridesmaids of rank.

And this became to the beautiful Rorasa - for such was her name - such an object of

desire, that her head was half turned with it, and the other girls of her acquaintance, to say nothing of the many men whom she had refused, mocked her so bitterly, asking her when the fine wedding

was to be, with many other jeers and sneers, that at last in a moment of madness she went to the top of a high tower, whence she cast herself; and to make it worse, there was below a terrible ravine into which she fell.

Yet she took no harm, for as she fell there appeared to her a very beautiful woman, truly

not of earth, who took her by the hand and bore her through the air to a safe place.

Then all the people round who saw or heard of this thing cried out, Lo, a miracle! and

they came and made a great festival, and would fain persuade Rorasa that she had been saved by the Madonna.

But the lady who had saved her, coming to her secretly, said, If thou hast any desire,

follow the Gospel of Diana, or what is called the Gospel of the Witches, who worship the moon.

If thou adorest Luna, then

What thou desirst thou shalt obtain!

Then the beautiful girl went forth alone by night to the fields, and kneeling on a stone in an old ruin, she worshipped the moon and invoked Diana thus:

Diana, beautiful Diana!

Thou who didst save from a dreadful death

When I did fall into the dark ravine!

I pray thee grant me still another grace.

Give me one glorious wedding, and with it

Full many bridesmaids, beautiful and grand;

And if this favour thou wilt grant me,

True to the Witches Gospel I will be!