Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic
I’ve been looking into immigration to Italy.
As I research to see if immigrating to Italy is possible for me, I think about my ancestors and the cycles of life.
If I move to Italy, a cycle completes.
You see, Nonna arrived in New York in 1902 or 1903, when prejudice against Italians was rampant. Things have changed.
Things have not changed. They have become the same again because life is cyclical.
In rural Pennsylvania, from which I moved a few years ago, people used the N-word for me because my looks are typical Southern Italian (as opposed to the northern Italian blonde, blue-eyed, and very pale stereotype). I lived in fear for my life because my “nice white” neighbors did not want me in their “nice white” neighborhood. The growing fascism in the U.S. had emboldened them.
I’m not going into all the details because any intelligent person can imagine what they were.
But I’ll say these few things: Someone stood in my living room threatening me. They stood in my home, the place that should’ve been my safety. Toward the end of my time in Pennsylvania, as the hostility escalated, a friend visited a few times a week, so my neighbors would see that I was not an old woman living alone and vulnerable. I was driven from my home by racists. My home, which I worked decades to be able to buy, is gone.
I have no Pollyanna statement to make about what happened.
That does not mean I am without hope or optimism. Nor am I without useful, practical magic that makes all the difference.
A Good Life in All Seasons, with Help from Fairy Gods and Other Ancestors
Things come, things go. That is the nature of life. Always, the cycles.
And I have Fairy Gods. They have always backed up struggling individuals, lending powerful magic to fight oppression and other problems. In every cycle of my life, the good and the bad, the Fairy Queen and King and Their court stand by me.
I am part of the cycles of life, part of the cycle of the comings and goings. And my ancestors, which include the Fairy Gods, line up behind me in every season.
Nonna, whose picture is at the top of this post, arrived in the U.S. at the age of 15. The strength it took for her to settle in at that young age and build a life here is part of my heritage. It fuels my magical spells.
Mine is a good life. During my last three years in Pennsylvania, before I could get everything organized to leave, I feared for my life every day. Despite the terror and possibility of violence and death at any moment, it was still a good life.
The Fairy Gods Created Useful, Practical Magic for Us
I know my spells helped keep me safe and sane and helped me move from Pennsylvania as soon as possible. It is normal to be afraid in dire circumstances—even if you trust the protection magic you do. But Fairy magic mitigated the fear tremendously and kept me spiritually whole—instead of utterly traumatized—in other ways as well.
My sweet Fairy Queen and King offer us—Their children—practical spells for real life. They put Their divine power and down-to-earth wisdom into those spells.
My Gods, thank you for Fairy magic and everything else you give me.
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Francesca De Grandis, bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, trained from birth in a centuries-old Shamanic family tradition that includes both Italian magic (La Vecchia Religione) and Celtic Witchcraft.