{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Wicca and Neo-Paganism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err18_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err18_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err18_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/pag/err/err18.htm","summary":"This is a Victorian antiquarian essay \u2014 part personal memoir, part folklore scholarship \u2014 almost certainly by Charles Godfrey Leland, drawn from his immersion in Florentine folk magic. The central thread follows the author's acquisition of an ancient amethyst amulet in Florence and his consultation with a local strega (folk witch) about it, who provides a full Italian conjuration treating the stone as a buried talisman of exceptional power against intoxication and betrayal. The author then cross-references her claims against obscure Renaissance mineralogical texts \u2014 particularly Franciscus Rueus's *De Gemmis* (1608) \u2014 and finds remarkable convergence: both source attribute the amethyst with protecting memory and stimulating genius, not merely preventing drunkenness. A distinctive feature is the author's self-deprecating erudition: he frames his scholarship as cobbled together from penny bookstalls and cigar wrappers, insisting the folk-witch's oral tradition independently confirmed what learned Latin folios preserved. The essay ends by pivoting to a second Italian charm \u2014 the *guirlanda delle strege* (witch's ladder), a knotted cord of hen feathers used to curse a child \u2014 which the author connects to an English specimen published in the *Folk-Lore Journal*, arguing that Italian peasant tradition solved a puzzle English scholars could not. The work's distinctive claim throughout is that living Tuscan folk magic preserves the authentic continuity of Etruscan and Roman religious practice, a tradition the author positions himself as nearly alone in recognizing and recording.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Part Two: Chapter V--THE AMETHYST","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Wicca and Neo-Paganism","translated_text":null,"word_count":11274}