d it on Maddalena, my collectorof folk-lore, while she was leading a wandering life in Tuscany, to makean effort to obtain or recover something of the kind, I at last received from her, on January 1, 1897, from Colle, Val d'Elsa, near Siena, the MSentitled Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Now be it observed, that every leading point which forms the plot orcenter of this Vangel, such as that Diana is Queen of the Witches; an associate of Herodius (Aradia) in her relations to sorcery; that she borea child to her brother the Sun (here Lucifer); that as a moon-goddess sheis in some relation to Cain, who dwells as prisoner in the moon, and thatthe witches of old were people oppressed by feudal lands, the former revenging themselves in every way, and holding orgies to Diana which the Church represented as being the worship of Satan - all of this, I repeat,had been told or written out for me in fragments by Maddalena (not to speakof other authorities), even as it had been chronicled by Horst or Michelet;therefore all this is in the present document of minor importance. All of this I expected, but what I did not expect, and what was new to me, was that portion which is given as prose-poetry and which I have renderedin meter or verse. This being traditional, and taken down from wizards, is extremely curious and interesting, since in it are preserved many relics of lore which, as may be verified from records, have come down from days of yore. Aradia is evidently enough Herodius, who was regarded in the beginning as associated with Diana as chief of the witches. This was not,as I opined, derived from the Herodias of the New Testament, but from an earlier replica of Lilith, bearing the same name. It is, in fact anidentification or twin-ing of the Aryan and Shemitic Queens of Heaven, or of Night and of Sorcery, and it may be that this was known to the earliest myth makers. So far back as the sixth century the worship of Herodias an...
