Taboo

Nefas

Find your own way; seek your own path. Unless what you wish for disturbs the greater good, worry less about what others think. Speak about a difficult topic, or seek resolution for a difficult situation. Your body is your body: you have a right to make choices about its pleasure, pain, and health.

Do not touch,

Do not think.

Avoid at all costs,

Like poison to drink.

What is taboo one day,

May not be the next.

As we grow and change,

We cease to be vexed.

Witchcraft has been called one of the last taboos. During Aradia’s time, this was certainly so-witchcraft, and almost anything else that gave women power. Things as simple as riding astride a horse, owning land when single, choosing whom to marry, and receiving a formal education were all taboo for women of Aradia’s era.

Of course, Aradia followers broke many taboos in their practice of the craft. They met without men, danced in naked ecstasy at midnight, studied topics of interest to themselves, traveled without permission from their families, and rejected mainstream religion-and that’s just for starters! There is also evidence that streghe of the time used their herbal knowledge not only to help birth babies, but to arrest unwanted pregnancies, thus saving unmarried women abandonment and lifelong shame.

By breaking such taboos, the witches of Aradia’s time were actually striking at the larger constraints their society placed on women’s independence. The Gospel of Aradia-which helped women reclaim their power, advocated for the rights of the poor and oppressed, and supported the punishment of the oppressors-was quite subversive. Is it any wonder with the spread of such a philosophy, that the rebel credited with its propagation became such a legend?