Maddalena the Witch: An Unpublished Card Magic Ritual

“I don’t think anything in his life absorbed, enthralled him as did the witches of Florence.”

-Elizabeth Robins Pennell

Charles Godfrey Leland had never been a stranger to the odd and the out-of-the-way, but when he settled in Florence in the late 1880s, his life took on a distinctly magical bent. Like any newcomer he made fresh acquaintances. Some became his friends. A witchy few, however, became Leland’s closest contacts. “His chief friends,” wrote Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Leland’s niece, “were among the witches.” One cannot speak of this period in Leland’s life without mentioning his muse and principal folklore collector Maddalena, a Tuscan woman Leland claimed “inherited as a family gift from generations, skill in witchcraft”. 

In a way, she was Leland’s psychopomp — a guide who introduced him to a shadowy, spirit-haunted world, the scintillae of which Leland had, until then, only glimpsed through books and hearsay. Leland really believed that she had extraordinary powers of perception. These powers, he acknowledged, far exceeded those of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and one of the most famous occultists of the nineteenth century.

Yet, despite Maddalena’s contributions to Leland’s work, we still know very little about her origins. Hopefully, this may not be the case for much longer. I’ve started going through some of Leland’s remaining correspondence, a large part of which appears in the “Pennell-Whistler” collection in the Library of Congress archives. As you can see below, Leland’s handwriting is, to put it bluntly, tortuous. Progress has accordingly been slow, but I’ve already stumbled across a few interesting details.

In the following snippet, which appears in a bundle of letters dating from June to December 1893,  Leland recounts observing one of Maddalena’s card magic rituals, during which she performed an interesting incantation to a series of “damned souls”. Variations of the spell, which I’ve examined in my book, Aradia’s Hidden Hand, date to at least the seventeenth century. Here’s my transcription followed by the letter itself:

One of my last memories of Roma Lister is that I was drinking a [pure?] cup of good coffee and smoking a cigar — Roma taking a lesson — Maddalena with the expression of an inspired Pythoness or she-Devil or sorcière illuminée dashing a pack of cards on the ground with an incantation to five of the Damned — Five priests — five friars!

Cinque prete, cinque frate

Cinque anime damnate

This is a relic of a sacrifice to the Earth — Proserpina or Pluto — [whom?] Maddalena knows by names which were ancient when Rome was [young?]. Maddalena was once in an invocation to Juno or Bacchus or somebody — when the Holy Spirit became so very powerful that she went into convulsions and I had to call the people of the house and send out for two francs worth of brandy which restored the enchantress to her senses. If any artist could paint a witch really at work as I have seen it he would make a [rare picture?].

I’ll be releasing other letters in the coming days and weeks. Each reveals a bit more about how Roma Lister, Maddalena, and Leland worked together. In the meantime — and I’m especially keen to hear from palaeographers — feel free to share your comments on/interpretations of the text.