When Imagination Runs Wild
Whenever I come out to teach something on Italian Witchcraft, my critics and malefactors drag out old attacks on my character from the Internet. In recent times an old Blog from 2011 was paraded out.
It involves a character named David Griffin, who I had some initially cordial communications with that eventually went sour. These revolved around an Italian couple he brought to the U.S. who he was trying to establish as teachers of the Strega Path. He claimed that the Italian woman was a priestess from an unbroken lineage of 38 generations of priestesses at Lake Nemi in Italy, which is the ancient site of the Temple of Diana. This very bold claim naturally raised quite a few eyebrows.
At one point Mr. Griffin became upset with me, and he posted some very odd and unwarranted allegations against my character. Mr. Griffin’s turn-around and subsequent defamatory attacks against my name essentially began when I started pointing out things that people were saying and questioning about the Italian couple. He became extremely defensive and hostile.
In retaliation Mr. Griffin posted that his Italian visitors made a statement that none of the hereditary family traditions of Witches in Italy know my name as one of them. Two things are laughable here. The first is that “Grimassi” is a pen name, not a family name. The second is that the Italian couple was trying to claim that all family traditions in Italy know of each other and keep track of this. The idea that an organization exists that knows every hereditary Witch throughout all of Italy is completely absurd.
The fact is that Italy is comprised of regions with different dialects, customs, lore, ways, and so forth. Therefore, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to defining Italian Witchcraft. This idea of the “one and only true way” is complete nonsense.
If you are interested in my original rebuttal to Griffin’s blog back in 2011, here is a link:
http://raven-grimassi.blogspot.com/2011/05/when-imagination-runs-wild.html