Food, Festival and Religion: Materiality and Place in Italy 9781350020863, 9781350020894, 9781350020887

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Food, Festival and Religion

Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion Series editors: Birgit Meyer, David Morgan, S. Brent Plate, Crispin Paine and Amy Whitehead Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion is the first book series dedicated exclusively to studies in material religion. Within the field of lived religion, the series is concerned with the material things with which people do religion, and how these things – objects, buildings, landscapes – relate to people, their bodies, clothes, food, actions, thoughts and emotions. The series engages and advances theories in ‘sensuous’ and ‘experiential’ religion, as well as informing museum practices and influencing wider cultural understandings with relation to religious objects and performances. Books in the series are at the cutting edge of debates as well as developments in fields including religious studies, anthropology, museum studies, art history, and material culture studies. Christianity and the Limits of Materiality, edited by Minna Opas and Anna Haapalainen

Food, Festival and Religion Materiality and Place in Italy Francesca Ciancimino Howell

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Francesca Ciancimino Howell 2018 Francesca Ciancimino Howell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Terry Woodley Cover image © Mike Booth / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Howell, Francesca Ciancimino, author. Title: Food, festival, and religion : materiality and place in Italy / Francesca Ciancimino Howell. Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Series: Bloomsbury studies in material religion | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018009118| ISBN 9781350020863(hardback) | ISBN 9781350020887(epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Fasts and feasts--Italy, Northern. |Festivals--Italy, Northern. |Italy, Northern--Religious life and customs. | Italy, Northern--Social life and customs. Classification: LCC BL590 .H69 2018 | DDC203/.60945--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009118 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-2086-3 PB: 978-1-3501-5086-7 ePDF: 978-1-3500-2088-7 eBook: 978-1-3500-2087-0 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Dedicated to Peter, Dylan and Morganne, fonts of inspiration, constant supports and persone straordinarie; also to the ‘other-­than-human’ community with whom we share this beautiful Planet.

Contents List of Figures and Tables Preface Acknowledgements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Materiality, Things and Power The Phenomenon of the Community Festival Community, Tradition and Festivals in Lombardy Community, Tradition, Food and Festival in Piedmont Feasting and Living Paganism in Northern Italy Theoretical Foundations and Diverse Perspectives Analyses and Conclusions Conclusion

Notes References Index

viii ix xi 1 27 59 97 129 143 157 179 185 187 199

Figures and Tables All photos were taken by the author.

Figures 2.1 Traditional Venetian Carnival masks on display in Milan shop window 2.2 Doorway decoration to headquarters of Siena’s Goose contrada 3.1 The Badalisc speaks, along with requisite masked male companions 3.2 The Central Tower of the Sforzesco Castle, in downtown Milan’s Parco Sempione 3.3 Piazza Duomo and Gallic re-­enactors 4.1 La Nigogliotta, the huge pan for risotto or polenta, named after the river 4.2 King and Queen Nigoglia sail in to open up Carnival season, February 2008 4.3 Sign at outskirts of village, ‘Village of the witches/healers’ 4.4 Apotropaic carved stone mask of protection on Paroldo church, looking across to its ‘partner’ carving 5.1 Pagan altar at a joint Druid and Wiccan workshop in Piedmont, May 2012

43 47 64 78 94 111 113 119 126 139

Tables 7.1 Scale of Engagement

162

Preface There are hundreds of festivals in Italy each year, throughout the twenty regions along Italy’s long peninsula and extending to the large islands of Sardinia and Sicily. This book addresses little-­known phenomena in northern Italy, including festivals and foodways, in communities that maintain traditions, folklore and lived religion through intriguing forms of place-­based materiality. The festivals depicted here range from rural corners of northern Italy to the fashionable heart of urban Milan. Some of these lived religious events have Christian origins, while others draw from vernacular Italian witchcraft roots or from contemporary Paganism, which is rapidly growing in Italy. Whether it is a festival in a remote village or a large city, a local food-­ celebrating sagra (generally used for an agricultural, local food-­focused festival) or a costumed festa (a term used for a traditional cultural or religious festival, which may also have related food traditions) those questioned have said they experience a sense of ‘returning home’. During these ritualized occasions, the sacred is located within the mundane, and communal feasting, pilgrimage, rituals and costumed events offer examples of lived religious materiality. Thus, by providing ethnographic accounts as well as varied critical lenses, the materiality of foodways, costuming, landscape and built environments are examined through the use of case studies which not only illustrate the performance of place, but propose that popular Italian festivals are ritualized, liminal spaces. The fieldwork focuses primarily on two regions of northern Italy: Lombardy and Piedmont. Drawing from interdisciplinary critical thought, including religious studies, environmental studies, philosophy, ritual studies, archaeology and performance studies, among others, the work examines how place can be honoured, experienced and embodied. The book reviews critical thought on the interanimation of place and society, demonstrating how the power of place can emerge in ritualized community celebrations, such as feasting and festival. The ritual actions and lived religious traditions observed and studied here manifest local or regional identity, with specific gastronomic and agricultural customs that offer uncommon performances of place-­ based traditions in annual community gatherings. Politics, history, identity and foodways are examined through the lens of engagement with place as well as with community. Theories on place as agent, on animism, materiality and foodways figure centrally in the argument, which illustrates how bonds and communication between place and humanity can exhibit a sometimes surprisingly profound relational epistemology in late modern Western society. The fundamental argument put forth is that in heterotopic space such as that offered by some ritualized gatherings and community festivals, a bridge spanning the illusory gulf between humanity and place can be created, allowing for a flow of deeper communication and awareness.

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Preface

The research concludes by offering a unique tool for analysis, a ‘Scale of Engagement’. This further tests the interfaces between and among the materialities of place, food, ritual and festivals in northern Italy, examining the profundity of place and community-­ based engagement. The Scale provides a widely applicable model for analysing grassroots events and community initiatives of all sorts and in all cultures.

Acknowledgements There are some particularly significant people without whom this work could not have been nurtured through the long months and years of gestation and creation, and ultimately brought into the light of the world. The first is my ever-­supportive husband Peter, and my marvellous listeners and constant inspirations, our children Dylan and Morganne. My editors at Bloomsbury have been extraordinary advisors and helpers. I must extend special acknowledgement and gratitude to the whole team at Bloomsbury and to the editors in the series of Studies in Material Religion; particularly to Dr Amy Whitehead, editor and supporter, for her patient encouragement and advice. I also want to acknowledge scholars Dr Graham Harvey and Dr Marion Bowman who were sources of excellent assistance in the original research, offering fine-­tuning and good cups of tea when we were in the same country. Gerald Parsons was generous in clarifying a number of points on the Palio of Siena due to his expert knowledge. I must thank Berghahn Publishers for their gracious permission to use research in Chapter 5, some of which I had contributed to in Dr Kathryn Rountree’s 2015 edited volume Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe – Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses. I am grateful as well to the editors of The Pomegranate for their permission to use some of the research included in my article ‘The Goddess Returns to Italy’, in Volume 10.1, 2008 pp. 5–20. That goes out similarly to the editors of Folklore, who likewise have given me permission to use my research published in vol. 124, no. 1, pp. 45–63. My dear friend and frequent travel companion in Italy during the original fieldwork, Barbara Cornell, provided kindly encouragement, insight and a calming presence, including on snowy mountainsides and in foggy, dark lanes. My later travel companion Maurizia Merati likewise supported and encouraged me, while patiently helping a jet-­ lagged researcher find coffee at odd times. Through a series of unexpected vicissitudes, my family’s path had led to years living in Lombardy, where northern Italy ‘gathered me in’ (Casey 1996), sharing its stories and its wisdom. Thanks to that good fortune, I am here writing this book. There are innumerable participants in Italy who gave generously of their time, opinions and imaginations, without making the perhaps rather eccentric-­seeming Italian-American feel unwelcome. Many of them do not even have names in the book, or have pseudonyms, as I met them for only a few minutes in a festival somewhere. Some have passed away, or their paths have led them on so I was not able to get in touch again. Italy’s chains of reciprocity and inherent, ingrained relationality generously offered opportunities for this fieldwork, as the many stories represented here told of liminal and numinous spaces, of historic tradition or tragedy, and of struggles to preserve traditions and home-­places. It is my hope that these communities – human and other-­than-human – in the lands and places studied, observed and heard in their diverse expressions, may also benefit in some way through this work.

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Place is powerful and active. It entangles intimately with lived religion, ecology, foodways and festivals. The Italian fieldwork and research presented in this book investigate how bonds with landscape and community are embodied sensuously and ‘placefully’ (Casey 1996), manifested through material religion, food and feasting, costuming, calendrical ritual gatherings and other traditions. Italy has an unusual plethora of festivals for a postmodern European country, for reasons that the book unpacks in detail. My aim is to enter the discourse on place, land and Nature, tracing how each exhibits similar aspects to personhood and holds significance in our lives. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary intersection among the fields of vernacular religion, festival studies, environmental studies, anthropology and philosophy, as well as other areas of study that impact the perspectives expressed. Its interdisciplinary weaving includes physics, cosmology, anthropology, ritual studies and philosophy among others. This introductory chapter presents some of the foundational concepts, theories and arguments to be engaged and tested critically, creating an underpinning before moving into ethnographic accounts in later chapters. The work uses the lens of specific northern Italian festivals and lived religious traditions, including examples drawn from the new religious movements of Wicca and Druidry; the aim is to examine how humanity expresses its bonds with place and community, in all senses – including that of Nature as part of that community. One of the fundamental arguments is that festivals are in many cases community rituals, as are the feasts and communal meals connected to the festivals. The theoretical precedents here come from both English and Italian critical literature, as well as from my more than a decade of academic study and ethnographic data-­gathering. You jagged, uneven peaks, which we who have grown up with you know so well, and carry impressed in our minds like the faces of our own family. [. . .] you streams, the murmur of whose voices we can tell apart like the voices of our closest friends. Manzoni [1827] 1972: 164

Introduction This chapter introduces such key theories here as materiality, sense of place, animism, relationality and the ‘other-­than-human’ (Hallowell 1992 [1960]; Harvey 2013). Specific

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aspects, such as the intriguing materiality of masks, costumes and ritual dress, of stone carvings, rock art and apotropaic symbols are presented and the intersection with related theoretical contexts is explored. The events and festivals studied are both secular and religious, examining the interplay of diverse gastronomic, seasonal, place or cultural traditions. In addition, Chapters 3 and 5 review interwoven elements such as these and others found in the emergence, or perhaps arguably, re-­emergence, of Paganism and Earth-­based traditions in Italy as new religious movements (Howell 2008, 2015). Cultures and communities can demonstrate and embody their intricate bonds with place and landscape through ritual, performance and feasting on the stage that festival creates. On that stage, sense of place is often exhibited and honoured. Keith Basso wrote: ‘Anthropologists have paid scant attention to one of the most basic dimensions of human experience – that close companion of heart and mind, often subdued, yet potentially overwhelming, that is known as sense of place’ (Basso 1996: 54). The Academy has begun to discuss these often ineffable, sometimes fleeting and perhaps seemingly atavistic senses in recent decades. My assertion is that, whether in academia or in the wider society, festive time in community offers a means for both personal and societal resilience as it halts our headlong rush through the year with celebrations of seasonal, place-­based, creative sharing. The festive, alternative time of a ritualized gathering can create a space where the often overlooked and silenced voices of the Other may be expressed and heard – whatever that Other is, whether of place, of Nature or of other marginalized communities. Michel Foucault called these ‘heterotopias’, the ‘other spaces’ where time can be experienced differently, sites which are real ‘emplacements’ found universally in world cultures, but which challenge and invert our perceptions of ‘normalcy’ (Foucault 1998: 178; Foucault 1966 [2010]); Sohn 2008: 46–47). The following sections introduce the many and various components of the book’s theoretical intersections; Chapter  6 resumes this with further examination of the theoretical structure.

Location and methodology In order to locate myself further in regard to this work, here are some personal details. I am an Italian-American with close familial ties to Italy; my time living in Italy as well as visiting and studying there spans various decades, as do my studies of Italian language, culture, history and art. I have lived in Florence, Milan and spent months in or near Rome. Consequently, some Italian cultural memes and long-­held traditions are integrated with the theoretical notions. Growing up with the Italian language and culture has given me an advantage in the research, as have my strong family bonds in Italy. In addition, previous to the experience of living in Milan with my husband and children, I had lived in the United Kingdom for five years and carried out earlier graduate work there (Cambridge University, Clare Hall). Consequently, I already had a large community of friends in England, Ireland and on the Continent, some of whom very kindly introduced me to a few key participants represented in the research when we moved to Milan. A number of the Italian participants have now become close associates and friends. Due to having been involved and working with the Pagan

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communities in the British Isles, on the Continent and in North America, as I have stated in other published work (Howell 2008, 2015), this research is both emic and etic. My methodology here (and in the previous doctoral and post-­doctoral research, which offers some of the foundation to the book) was founded upon a qualitative, heuristic philosophy of intuitive inquiry. The epistemology within which this work unfolded is post-­postmodern or late postmodern, feminist (while being universal), ecological and constructionist. My qualitative methods strove to maintain appropriate self-­reflexivity. One of the repeated themes of this book is hearing and being aware of the voice and power of place, and of the Other (whether human or other-­than-human). To be able to listen intuitively and holistically one must use all of one’s abilities, which is an appropriate approach to this examination. Like the mountaineer spending time in the wild, or the naturalist observing Nature, going out into the ‘field’ to carry out an ethnographic study is simultaneously becoming aware of one’s own perceptions, biases and cultural assumptions, if one keeps a self-­reflexive, intuitive stance, as well as being aware of the world around. The qualitative methodology framework combined both heuristic and hermeneutical philosophies, given the topic and the linguistic needs. Heuristic intuitive inquiry allows for a full range of emotions, dreams, intuitions and bodily awareness to influence the ‘knowing’. One example of my pursuing a self-­reflexive heuristic methodology is that I carefully kept a field journal, appropriate to the qualitative practices of intuitive inquiry. The research is phenomenological; it focuses on ways of being in and with the world, in Nature, through foodways and in community. It strives to understand the meanings that people give to Nature, to food traditions and to their sense of belonging in a place, with community, and to the feeling of connectedness or power from a certain place. Some of the language and discussions with participants regarding people’s relationships with place, material religion, foodways or community expressed a spiritual or metaphysical quality. Such discussions were somewhat out of the ordinary for some participants, expressing unusual and in some aspects intimate feelings, memories and sensations regarding place with an associate or sometimes new acquaintance who was in addition a foreigner. The next stages involved hermeneutical study of place, history and tradition of the locations chosen for the fieldwork; this was fundamental as was linguistic knowledge and sensitivity. The structure of the interviews utilized a mix of both heuristic and hermeneutic awareness and methods. My chosen criteria drew from a paradigm that is predicated upon caring for all the co-­participants; upon sensitivity to privilege, economics, gender and age. It also drew upon other criteria intrinsic to feminist and ethnic studies such as dialogue. It springs from a paradigm and ethos of awareness and mindfulness towards the human and the other-­than-human, as well as the mentioned self-­reflexivity holding awareness of my positionality while carrying out ethnography.

Further notes on language and on terms There are a few points regarding language that are appropriate to clarify, before going deeper into the arguments here. Various turns of phrase may be noted as somewhat

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unusual; one example is that I choose to capitalize Other and Nature. In my personal epistemology Nature is a being or community from which we who are Westerners are often alienated, an entity often overlooked or exploited, just as we are alienated from fellow humans in our daily lives. Berry’s statement that the world should be perceived as ‘a community of subjects’ (1988) echoes Aldo Leopold’s renowned ‘Land Ethic’, urging respect and protection of the ‘biotic community’ of soil, plants, animals (1949). Western society exploits, devalues and commoditizes relationships, individuals and time, just as it does place and Nature. Thus Nature can be discussed in ways that are similar to other communities or individuals which are also Other. Writing these terms with the uppercase highlights our need to reframe and rethink our relationships. The qualitative methodology of inquiry discussed earlier, which informed my fieldwork and relationship building with the study’s participants, was inspired by Rodman’s idea that: ‘Our goal should be to transform ethnography into a praxis capable of making the Other present’ (Rodman 2003: 212). In the case of Nature and the other-­than-human, as well as marginalized human populations, this acknowledgement is critical. Usages that additionally arise throughout the book, and that may appear unclear to those drawing on different theorists, are my use of liminal and of numinous. I intend liminal to reflect a distinctive sense of time and place that is at a ‘threshold’ (as the term’s derivation implies), a threshold where one crosses away from the conventional and into a different, distinctive awareness. Liminality implies that which is not conventional, mundane or everyday – rather it is ‘time out of time’. When it is used in a Turnerian sense in relation to his theories of communitas, this is specified. In this space of liminality an awareness of something Other, of something often not tangible or easily expressed, may arise that can include a sense of the numen or the spirit in a place. Liminality is a central concept to this discussion of festival’s engagement with place materiality and it is an essential component in the Scale of Engagement used for the final analysis. This book admittedly conflates Turner’s categories and uses liminal – not making Turner’s distinction with the ‘liminoid’ – in festival and ritual observations (1982b). Liminoid for Turner indicated a ritualized space or time that was optional, entertaining and perhaps involved in monetary exchange. ‘The liminoid is more like a commodity – indeed often is a commodity, which one selects and pays for – than the liminal [. . .] One works at the liminal, one plays with the liminoid’ (1982b: 55, italics as in original). In Tak’s view: ‘Rituals create a situation which has been called “time out of time” or “liminal”. It is a situation circumscribed in time and place in which the relations become different from those in everyday life’ (Tak 2000: 13). In this ontology liminality is itself a state of being and of awareness – it is not merely the opening or first steps to that new awareness. The change in relations that Tak refers to above in my view applies to our relationality with place as well as humanity. There may be spiritual implications, indicating that when liminal experiences and spaces emerge, we may experience something other-­than-human, something great, vast or unitive – something numinous. Numen is a term used across academic disciplines, with varied nuances. The original sense of numen in classical times was the spirit or deity that protected a certain place, its own genius loci. Today’s meaning of numinous refers to that which brings a kind of supernatural, mystical, other-­than-human feeling. Some theorists conjecture that

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numen and genius loci are the origins to today’s term sense of place (Jackson 1994, cited in DeMiglio & Williams, 2008: 16). However, the two should not be used interchangeably. This book offers both theoretical and concrete examples of how festivals may at times create a liminal space for awareness to arise in the festival participants – an unusual, out of the ordinary sense of the Other; this at certain times can be said to be numinous. This awareness may have to do with many of the qualities associated with rituals, for example an otherworldly ambiance created by a festival. In those moments the bridge uniting humanity and Nature strengthens; participants may experience a numinous quality to their time of feasting or revelling, and through the materiality of place its power slips through. As Gheorghiu and Nash wrote: ‘place, materiality, time and ritual are in many ways difficult to disconnect and are autonomous in their own right, since they form a sort of syncretism, an identitary syncretism which explains the topophily of human beings and the existence of genius loci’ (2013: 10). They are indeed difficult to disconnect – perhaps this is one explanation for the feeling of a powerful and palpable genius loci in certain places, such as the sites in this book.

Materiality, things and power Materiality is a new and yet old interdisciplinary area in the Academy, which has expanded greatly in recent decades, percolating and interweaving with disciplines such as religious studies, anthropology, archaeology and aesthetics. My view of place as agent draws from a likewise diverse cross-­section of academic fields but in a nutshell offers the view that the intrinsic, historically overlooked power of Nature in natural environments as well as built environments, is tangible, palpable and has impact. Pertinent to this discussion is the etymological lens showing from where our words ‘materiality’ and ‘matter’ draw their roots: at the heart of both terms is the word for mother, in Latin, ‘mater’ (Webster’s 1953). Appropriately, awareness of materiality of place and of food can return us to our earliest bonds and relationships with Nature, with Mother Earth. It is learned with mother’s milk, particularly in a place like Italy with ardent maintenance of bonds with home, territory and specific foodways. This perspective forms one cornerstone of my critical focus here, and draws from the growing discourse on materiality. In Western society the binaries of Nature/culture, inanimate/animate, dead/living, and so forth can seem to be indelibly ingrained in humanity. However, these binaries and divisions may actually be more illusory than we believe . . . an unfortunate legacy of post-Enlightenment thinking. In addition to being a scholar of religious studies and environmental studies, I am a longtime environmental campaigner and activist; consequently, I was fascinated while living in Italy to find evidence of the intersection of such philosophies and perspectives in certain Italian ritualized events such as festivals and communal feasting. One of the goals in this work is to explore how ritualized community or family time, such as that of a festival, can offer humanity a medium, a bridge, to help our consciousness and awareness expand, to span the seeming gulf between such binaries of Nature and humanity. Communities can be united once more in festival, both the human and other-­than-human.1

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Materiality studies span varied fields of thought, and scholars from perhaps unexpected areas are contributing to the materiality debate. Here is an illustrative quote from a religious studies scholar who is also a dancer and theorist on movement, Kimerer L. LaMothe: Evidence of how the materialist paradigm is overcoming itself appears in the world of philosophers and theologians concerned with its pernicious political, cultural, and environmental effects. New materialists, affect theorists, process theologians, feminist theorists, and others are drawing from forgotten streams of the philosophical canon to evolve conceptions of materiality that grant matter a kind of agency or vitality or plurality. They do so, eager to kindle a new appreciation of human others, as well as of the more-­than-human community. In promoting this justice-­oriented, ecological consciousness, a range of postmodern and post-­ postmodern philosophers are calling our attention to movements of becoming and relating, differing and deferring, as forces that constitute matter and subjectivity in relation to one another, allowing ‘us’ to experience any ‘it’ as real. In many of these accounts matter exists as its own cause in relation to human will in ways that humans can neither control nor predict. 2015: 23

This book argues that matter does have its own will, or its ‘own cause’ in LaMothe’s language, particularly matter as land and place. I also concur with her theories on dance in as much as they speak to the performative materiality representing and embodying place seen in festivals. This book refers to ‘new’ materiality in a similar sense and, additionally, to what some may know as ‘new animism’ (Whitehead 2013). I simply refer to these as animism and materiality, however, from here forward. Animism’s relation to this topic is discussed further below. These areas of study can be an enjoyable, or perhaps reassuring, path to rediscovery of the sense that humans are not alone in the world. Such awareness also helps to re-­ orient us to being ‘ineluctably place-­bound’ (Casey 1996: 19) beings who are sensate creatures – although it is easy to overlook that. We share our Planet (like Nature also in upper case in my work) with a host of living beings and persons – some in human form, some in other form. (Persons in lightning and thunder form, or in rock and mountain form are discussed below in the sections on animism, and in sections on Italy.) Conceptions of persons in statue or other religious form help us to understand why certain lived religious traditions honour and engage, sometimes in intimate relationality, with material things such as rosary beads, large and small statues, altar pieces, ritual tools or instruments and so forth. Amy Whitehead’s study on the Virgin of Alcalá in southern Spain and the Glastonbury Goddess Temple in the UK moves the debates forward with its punctilious unpacking of ‘The Problem of Materiality’ (2013: 23–33). Issuing from anthropology and folklore, from religious studies, visual studies and archaeology, we have today not only studies on material culture, but also on material religion. Whether a rosary or a Shiva lingam, a teapot, table or laptop computer, Cambridge scholar and museum Syndic Mary Laven writes of the ‘thingness of things’, their emotional pull and symbolism, over centuries and in our own era (2015: 20–25).

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As she notes, there can be a comforting quality to our cherished things: ‘Things provide comfort, security, familiarity and joy; they organize our lives, project our identities, mediate our relationships and protect us from the world’s sharp corners’ (2015: 25). Former US President Barack Obama carried a collection of special objects in his pocket as he went about his duties as Commander in Chief, in particular things given to him by people who had particularly left an impression on him on official visits. Whether a small Buddha, a rabbit’s foot, a flag, a coin or a polished stone, we all imbue things with meaning – we ‘make meaning’ through things as well as through places. They then reflect back to us, in a reciprocal exchange, that meaning. How we impart and exchange that meaning, that energy and feeling, is open to debate and discussion. Cherished places and also calendrical community rituals, such as festivals, can offer these reassurances, this sense of identity, this comfort and also perhaps sometimes these challenges. In the introduction to their 2013 edited volume Place as Material Culture, Dragos Gheorghiu and George Nash examine relationships with place and the material things in those places as actors within relationships. My work agrees with them when they state: ‘Place creates individual and group identity through a number of interconnected constituents that include agency, behaviour and of course, history’ (2013: 2). Like the material things in Laven’s studies, not only do we mediate relationships through things, we also mediate relationships through place. One of the critical intersections in the inter-­related fields of materiality studies is the concept of relating and relationship. Sense of place arises in persons experiencing the power of place, perhaps through its potent and palpable materiality, feeling a relationship and manner of relating, a relationality, with places. Sense of place is a key uniting component, as cables and steel girders are in a human-­made bridge, supporting the metaphorical festival bridge introduced here. For Whitehead, relationality is itself ‘the bridge which unites these dualisms, placing religious objects and performance on a generative continuum instead of at odds’ (2013: 186). Some studies of materiality in material culture and material religion take into account the actual physical properties of which a thing is made. For example, a strand of beads or a rosary that belonged to one’s grandmother may remind one of her, because they are pink, and there is an evocative image in the mind’s eye of how the beads looked on the grandmother’s pale skin or in her hands. If they are coral – a very typical stone in much antique Italian jewellery – it may also remind one of the sea, which the beloved family member loved, or where the family spent time. I have a silver ring that belonged to my mother, whose fingers were squarer and a bit shorter than mine. When I see the ring, in my mind’s eye I can visualize and in a manner of speaking feel my mother – seeing her fingers and how the ring appeared on them as well as seeing the silver and design of the ring. Not only do the materials of the honoured or symbolic thing matter – that root word again – they can have a significant element of intrinsic connection and evocative symbolism. Whitehead’s study of the Virgin of Alcalá in Spain notes the significance of the fact that the shrine’s beloved statue is made of cedar, which has powerful Biblical connotations; cedar is a precious wood in addition. Whitehead writes: ‘Arguably, the quality of the wood will reflect the preciousness of the statue within her community’ (2013: 127). When we test theories of animism, new cosmology and of place-­power in later sections, we will return to this idea.

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Sense of place and its intersection with materiality Let us go a bit deeper into the many ways of defining and expressing sense of place for human beings. Sense of place can tie us to a spot on the planet, bring a heart connection and perhaps incur a feeling of belonging, as with friends, family, clan or tribe. Knowing the natural forms of one’s home innately and intimately, such as the nearby mountains and hills, woodlands, rivers or streams is an ancient, natural gift all beings have. We are sensate, sensuous beings, as are all mammals and other Earthly species. We take in place through our senses, whether a slant of light on an autumn day, the smell of a fire on a summer evening or the crunch and crispness of snowfall on a winter night. However, in our Western society such embodied experiences and instincts are often underestimated or completely overlooked. We frequently use the term sense of place for these abilities and this often deep connection. This term may seem a rather cold phrase in comparison and contrast with the more evocative Greek topophilia – love of landscape. Sense of place, as it is used in our postmodern Anglo world, encompasses many ideas and terms, across disciplines and cultures. Similar but not identical to sense of place is the term genius loci, which was in classical times a minor god connected to a specific land form, literally meaning spirit of place. Among the sensory codes used for the evocation of sense of place, or also – as my later chapters on Italian Paganism illustrate, for honouring the genius loci or spirits of place – are foods derived from local sources. Sense of place is heavily nuanced by myriad emotions, senses and experiences that are anchored and embodied by physical sensations and memories, including those of food. Food and foodways are a central theme and discussion in this book, and help to illustrate the theories asserted here, central in my arguments and fieldwork. In essence we can eat – ingesting into our very cells – the sense and spirit of place; it can also be spoken, sung, performed, symbolized with clothing whether in communal settings, or simply felt at heart in a quiet, individual way. Therefore, while sense of place is often discussed in the branch of philosophy known as deep ecology, it is a term now used widely in such diverse disciplines as environmental studies, religious studies, archaeology and anthropology, even in healthcare, among the many (Capra 1996; Eyles & Williams 2008; DeMiglio & Williams 2008; Macy & Young Brown 1998; Merchant 2005; Sessions 1995).

Relational epistemologies The opening quotation here is taken from the Italian nineteenth-­century novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), a book known to every educated Italian. Lucia, a principal character, describes the northern Italian mountains as being ‘like the faces of our own family’. My Italian fieldwork’s participants, whose contributions are reviewed and considered in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, reported varied experiences of materiality and definitions of relationship with place. Some scholars go so far as to theorize that bonds with place form essential or basic needs: ‘To have a sense of place – to sense the spirit of place – one’s own place – is as indispensable to the human experience as our basic

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urges for food or for sex’ (Lewis 1979: 29 cited in DeMiglio and Williams 2008: 19). The power and materiality of place relay information. In the case of the Western Apache indigenous nation of North America with whom Keith Basso worked, places can impart wisdom (Basso 1996). Whether wisdom is passed on through a place or not, place is part of the network of relations for many indigenous cultures (Basso 1996; Ingold 2000), and bonds with place are like those towards human beings. All humans, like other mammals, are able to feel such bonds and to see place as a part of their relational network; all can have or develop a relational epistemology (Ingold 2000; Milton 2002) with place, regardless of race, ethnicity or historical period. The concept of relational epistemology runs throughout my work; I have found it articulates the cultural beliefs and practices of relationality observed in the fieldwork in Italy. The concepts of a relational epistemology and of relationality figure centrally in animism as used today to indicate respect for all persons, the human and the ‘other-­than-human’ (Harvey 2006a). In a relational epistemology we may see a reflection of ourselves. If the faces of our families are part of our relationships with Nature, as in the Manzoni character above, or if we have such deep bonds with place that we sense a form of personhood in Nature, perhaps Nature is a mirror in many senses. Indeed, many cultures emphasize that if we saw the world as a mirror, the world and our treatment of it would be different. The Buddhist teacher and scholar Joanna Macy has written on this in some of her numerous books; she has many enlightening and provocative exercises for students, one of which is ‘The Mirror Walk’. Students or workshop participants work in pairs and walk through a landscape, with one partner blindfolded. Guided by hand or arm, the partner leading stops the blindfolded person in front of a tree or flower, patch of grass or boulder, saying: ‘Open your eyes and look in the mirror’. As Macy writes: ‘(This) makes vivid the perspective of deep ecology – that is, our interbeing with the rest of creation’ (Macy & Young Brown 1998: 88). Sense of place in all human beings (and other beings as well, undoubtedly) is felt, embodied and experienced through one’s senses. It is a sensual experience and a sensually registered experience, whether that may be negative or positive: ‘to be in place is to know, is to become aware of one’s very consciousness and sensuous presence in the world’ (Basso 1996: 9). This awareness is made up of the physical: tactile, olfactory, visual, auditory and gastronomic. Some writers speak of landscape, where others occasionally refer to a place as a soundscape or auditory space (Feld & Basso 1996; Witmore 2006; inter alia). The festival, in all its multi-­dimensional, multi-­sensory, embodied experiences, offers a perfect stage for performing place, as well as learning to ‘dialogue with place’ and to see its possible personal mirror.

Place and its shadow Sense of place does not necessarily contain the nuance of loving a place, however, as topophilia does. Sense of place can provide a bond, a sense of identity and a capability for relationship, which like other bonds in human psychology may offer potent balancing and healing effects. If a person has never bonded with a place, has moved

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constantly and does not feel a loyalty to one place in particular, they will have a difficult time bonding anywhere – rather like a baby that does not bond with its birth mother, and therefore has impaired relationships during the rest of its life (DeMiglio & Williams 2008; Derrett 2003; Manzo 2008). It cannot be overlooked that there can also be negative sides to identification with home, with the ‘domus’ (Orsi 2002), where a ‘poisoned sense of place’ can surface, such as Relph wrote of (1997 cited in Eyles & Williams 2008: 24). There are embodied memories that actors and acting technique call ‘sense memory’, which can bring back positive, happy sensations and memories, or traumas, even causing actual physical sensations to resurface from one’s earlier life (Morris & Hotchkis 1977, 1979). Critical literature examines extensively the traumas and dangers that a woman can encounter in her own home or neighbourhood, and cautions against over-­emphasis of positive sense of place experiences of home (Rose 1993). Relph also describes politicized sense of place and writes how ‘an excess of local or national zeal [. . . can create] a tendency to become a platform for ethnic nationalist supremacy and xenophobia’ (Relph 1997: 222, cited in De Miglio & Williams 2008: 24). Chapter 3 reviews some of the potentially exclusionary and divisive political stances portrayed in one of the festivals, where a political agenda was involved. Beyond my awareness of feminist issues from my own experiences and earlier work, I became sensitized to the war memories that live on in the regions of Italy where my fieldwork took place, and the traumas that place gathers in (Basso 1996) along with the happy or fond memories of home. Some of my fieldwork participants, such as elderly Signora Castellano, had lived through World War II in Milan, with its bombardments and the German military take-­over of her own neighbourhood. Others in tiny Andrista and its neighbouring Cevo, other parts of Lombardy where my fieldwork was carried out, remember the executions of young partisans in the village square. Whether a Native American visiting the site of a battle or massacre, a New Yorker (like myself) returning to the former location of the World Trade Towers in Manhattan, or in whatever traumatized place, it is important to look in a clear-­eyed manner at sense of place and its related materiality. If we acknowledge our impact on Others’ stories and other places (those not perhaps of our own dwelling or culture), we will then be more likely to remember what Val Plumwood called the ‘shadow places’ of those less privileged. Many of these shadow places or ‘denied places’ may be those whose lives and whose own ‘places of attachment’ we impact with our consumer choices, developed world habits, our ecological footprint (Plumwood 2008: 2–3, 7). When exploring, ritualizing, feasting and honouring place, awareness can be – or should be – expansive enough to include sensitivity about everyone’s home places or beloved places, including those that make us aware of uncomfortable truths (Plumwood 2008). This was true for me in my work in Milan and northern Italy, as I became increasingly aware not only of war histories, but also of social injustice and poverty living closely alongside beautiful built environments or natural scenes. It is also a resonant fact for me as a citizen of the United States, with its history of oppression and genocide of the Native American Indian nations, its long history of Black slavery, and the on-­going violence and injustice towards communities of colour. As there is a shadow side to all emotions and human life, sense of place is no different. Consequently, as a complex human emotion, sense of place could easily

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require many more terms to encompass it. In environmental studies or natural science, it can include the idea of bio-­regionalism, the awareness of traits, features and components, which together mark a biological area or complex system of life zones. Bio-­regional awareness theoretically brings a heightened sensitivity to watersheds, wildlife, ecosystems and so forth, which may help humanity to live in a more ecologically sustainable manner in that region (Snyder 1995; Sessions 1995). It may also point out the destruction of ecosystems, or depletion of wildlife. As all awareness can be, consciousness of place and all it imparts to us often offers a two-­edged sword.

Reclaiming the agent in Nature Sense of place could be argued to be an anthropocentric sense, rather than ecocentric, or biocentric, meaning something we human persons are more likely to discuss than persons in other form, such as crow persons or mountain persons. One could argue that animism and the lens of place as agent takes the other view or, as my work might prefer to write it, the Other view. There is a colonialist heritage that permeates all we say and think, that which Native scholar and novelist Linda Hogan calls ‘cognitive imperialism’ (2013: 19–20). It permeates and influences us more than we might realize, whether we are the colonialists or the colonized. This imperialistic thought extends beyond disenfranchised and oppressed human communities and cultures, continuing to bias our views of Nature and the ‘other-­than-human persons’ (Hallowell 1992 [1960]; Harvey 2013). In recent scholarly literature the reintegration of animism into the canon of Western religious studies, of philosophy and other academic arenas, is part of a re-­orienting and rebalancing of this colonialist heritage (Harvey 2006a, 2006b, 2013; Hogan 2013; Whitehead 2013). Such a return is another example of ‘reclaiming’, a term appropriate to the theme in Chapters 3 and 5 of the rebirth of Paganism in Italy as a new religious movement (Howell 2008, 2015). Women’s spirituality circles and some ecofeminists, such as the well-­known author, leader and activist Starhawk, have used this for their reclaiming and reframing of the term witch or Pagan. We must not only reclaim, but reframe our view on Nature as alive and filled with a constantly renewing, restoring and rebirthing energy and vitality. Nothing is static, as much as our human senses may perceive it as ‘dead’, inanimate, solid. My contribution to the debates on materiality offers new evidence to the conception that places and things can act as agents, as subjects rather than as objects. Those objects, or as some prefer, things, can thus affect human behaviour in unexpected ways (Bennett 2004; Ingold 2013; Morgan 2010). The concept of ‘things’ is an elastic category that can include animate and (what we Western people may see as) inanimate objects, places, clothing, foods and so forth. Depending on one’s perspective, inculturation and ethos, Nature and place might be included in the category of the inanimate – or for others in with the animate (Basso 1996; Bennett 2004; Casey 1996; Ingold 2000, 2013). Ingrained and inculcated in Western society as it may be, the binaries such as that of object/ subject, or Nature/culture, and so forth, are an illusion, and all Nature, all that is around us and within, is alive with energy. Science and, in particular, physics have now shown that what appears to be solid is not, and what appears to be static is actually moving.

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Brian Swimme, mathematician and cosmologist, in the companion videos to his book co-­authored with Thomas Berry, The Universe Story (1992), elaborates on what they term ‘the new cosmology’. In a characteristically poetic way Swimme asserts that ‘the mountains are galloping’ (1990). It may seem to be an Alice in Wonderland perspective, too strange to be possible or acceptable. Yet, when one reads current science about Nature, our own bodies or our Cosmos, one realizes that it is becoming more and more established that human beings cannot gauge fully what is alive, intelligent, active and what is not. Our perceptions are limited, and sadly have been dichotomized in the last 300–400 years in the West, creating a gulf between Nature and humanity. One of my aims in this book is to show how we may begin to bridge this gap via – merely one method, admittedly – the medium of the festival or ritual, various component lived religious traditions, foodways, altered senses of time and the ensuing relationality. These perspectives are at the heart of the newest studies and arguments on materiality and on animism.

Animism, place-­power and festival Religious studies, a relatively new field in the Western Academy, is in essence a branch off the much larger parent tree of cultural anthropology. We observe, test, participate in and attempt to interpret how people live and perform religion. Consequently, in many religious studies texts, the discussions return to anthropological forebears or fieldwork from the past. This discussion of animism – or, as mentioned above, sometimes called the ‘new’ animism – must return briefly to some early anthropologists’ work. The root of ‘animism’ is drawn from the Latin root for spirit, anima. Early philosophers and hermeticists, important legacies in Italian culture and religious traditions, used this word when they wrote of the Anima mundi – the spirit, or even the soul, of the world. Our English words ‘animate’, ‘animation’ continue this etymological tradition. Ancient people from every culture, be they Eastern mystics, classical philosophers or indigenous First Nations of all the world, saw the world as alive and permeated, inhabited by living beings, by an intelligence and also by spirits. Nineteenth-­ century researchers and early anthropologists disparaged tribal and indigenous people worldwide, from north to south and east to west, for their ‘superstitious’ beliefs in alien spirits inhabiting and animating matter, particularly in Nature. Edward Tylor, often seen as the father of anthropology, gave us the term animism (1970 [1881]). Today many scholars are newly writing on animism contributing their own thought, ethnographies and scholarship. One who is well known in various circles is Graham Harvey (2004a, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b, 2013). He writes: ‘For Tylor animism is first a label for what he defines as the essence of religion, ie “belief in Spiritual Beings” [. . .] However, despite Tylor’s different intentions, he seems to have reanimated the earlier notion so that many references to animism at least blend “belief in spirits or souls” with “belief in life energies” ’ (2006a: 7). We in the so-­called ‘developed world’ have now used our own lens to persuade and to be persuaded that in fact, life – not spirits per se, but intelligence in a manner of speaking – does permeate and infuse all that is around us. It took our post-Enlightenment lens of science, through physics and biology to

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convince us. Yet many are still agnostic, Doubting Thomases, not believing that an intelligent force might actually be in the wood of the dining room table, or even in the green woods outside the town. (One may be particularly resistant to believing in an animate intelligence if that woodland is one that my company, or one I am invested in, is hoping to profit from by cutting it down for more dining room tables.) Nevertheless, many scholars today are once more ‘owning’ the term animism, to honour and discuss how not only life and intelligence, but personhood may be found in all forms. The term ‘other-­than-human persons’ was brought into usage by twentieth-­ century anthropologist Irving Hallowell and adopted widely today. (I am fond of this term and use it frequently in all my work. Hallowell did not hyphenate the term, but I prefer to write it thus.) Hallowell had the privilege of working and living amongst the Ojibwa of North America, where he personally experienced their discussions of Nature as person, as communicative and as active (Hallowell 1992 [1960]; Harvey 2006a, 2006b; Ingold 2000). Harvey has worked closely with the Maori of New Zealand, as well as with some of the First Nations of North America, and has experienced native perspectives on relationality and personhood in Nature. Animism intersects theories on place as agent and is a key part of the theoretical structure underpinning this book. An example of native Italian place-­based beliefs approaching animism is from Patrick Barron’s writings on a mountain in southern Italy, the Majella Massif, where he demonstrates the power a mountain can exert over local people. The Massif elicits awe, reverence and fear in local inhabitants and is venerated to the point of being deified: ‘(I)t is feared for the storms that come from it; it is almost worshipped by the Abruzzesi, but it is also loved’ (Barron 2006: 369). Ingold has carried out his own work among the North American Ojibwa people, and he too discusses their hearing thunderclaps as the voice of thunder speaking to them (Ingold 2000). In a passage that captures the relationship many cultures and philosophies can have with Nature, Ingold writes: ‘(T)he Ojibwa lifeworld is polyglot, inhabited by manifold beings each with their own particular pattern of speech’ (Ingold 2000: 106).

A new theory of place-­power ecology: Theory of Active Place or ‘TAP’ Ingold’s vision of a world in constant motion draws inspiration also from Deleuze and Guattari, reminding us that, ‘whenever we encounter matter, “it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation” ’ (2004: 451, in Ingold 2013: 220). Ingold evokes images similar to Swimme’s ‘galloping mountains’ (1990), when he describes the world as ‘perpetually on the boil’, like ‘a huge kitchen’ or the ‘laboratory of the alchemist’ (Ingold 2013: 220). Such theories and observations, Ingold’s as well as Bruno Latour’s and Jane Bennett’s among others, inspired me to coin the phrase ‘place-­power ecology’ for such theories and observations on materiality and agency of place, Nature, built or natural environments. I have entitled these ideas, woven in throughout this book, the ‘Theory of Active Place’ or ‘TAP’. This draws inspiration from Bruno Latour’s and Tim Ingold’s acronyms for their individual theories: ‘A NT’ – ‘Actor Network Theory’ of Latour (2005) and ‘EWO’ – ‘Environment without Objects’ of Ingold (2013).2

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In order to sense the power of place and of Nature we must use our intuition and a multi-­sensory embodied awareness – we must ‘tap into’, as the vernacular would have it, the currents and flowing life around us. As the world is ‘perpetually on the boil’, it should not take much if we can but slow down, quiet our minds and reach out to find those moving, flowing, connecting networks and ‘frequencies’. We are all able to feel and register the power of place, in different forms. Returning to Bennett, she has written of ‘thing-­power’ (2004) and her theories of materiality extend to include all material. In her discussion of ‘thing-­power ecology’, ‘place is a dynamic flow of matter-­ energy that tends to settle into various bodies, bodies that join forces, make connections, form alliances’ (Bennett 2004: 365). I share Bennett’s ontological view that we are ‘walking, talking minerals’ that can sense the ‘elan vital’ of the material world around us (Bennett 2004: 359–360). In a strange circling of new and old, like the reclaiming articulated by eco-­feminists and in the return to Paganism, concepts in ‘new’ animism intersect the new cosmology of late postmodern physics. Brian Swimme and the late Thomas Berry (who sometimes, as a theologian and historian, entitled himself an ‘Eco-­logian’) have described how we are in fact made from stardust. Like Bennett’s ‘walking, talking minerals’, we and all around us may in fact be derived from those same minerals and other substances that once spewed forth from the Universe’s original cosmic fireball. Bennett argues that we must acknowledge the thing-­power materiality constantly affecting us in order to combat the ‘violent hubris of Western philosophy’ (Bennett 2004: 349, italics in original): Like Thoreau, I hope to enhance the receptivity to thing-­power by writing about it, by giving an account of the thingness of things that might enable me to feel it more intensely. I pursue this project in the hope of fostering greater recognition of the agential powers of natural and artifactual things, greater awareness of the dense web of their connections with each other and with human bodies, and finally, a more cautious, intelligent approach to our interventions in that ecology. 2004: 349

There is an affinity between Bennett’s theories and Lovelock’s Gaia Theory (2009 [1979]), as well as Swimme and Berry’s new cosmology theories. All draw from studies in physics illustrating the intelligent life force that pervades the planet, human beings and all life. Bennett’s awareness of the ‘dense web of connections’ is not only agential but relational. This point is fundamental to animism: that all life is relational and our perspectives can have or can develop ‘relationality’. These theories affect the debate on place as agent and demonstrate our profound need for a much, much more expansive sense of relationship and community including place and Nature. It is the relational theories of thing-­power ecology, of place-­based perspectives and awareness that demonstrate how Nature and locations can influence and have impact. My Scale of Engagement examines this in the final chapters, a more quantitative tool of analysis I propose for the festivals and community gatherings. Using both TAP and the Scale of Engagement, one can observe and gauge how humans, communities and towns have engaged with place and its power. My TAP uses an animic, materiality

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perspective to support my argument that land, Nature and the other-­than-human can inspire ritual, foodways and place-­based festivals. Let us look more in depth at the new cosmology and its ‘Universe Story’.

New cosmology, Gaia theory and a living Planet Interweaving animism with Gaia theory restores a worldview acknowledging creative, acting subjects. Berry wrote: ‘The Universe is a community of subjects, rather than a collection of objects’ (Swimme & Berry 1992: 243). This sums up the view of new cosmology, and animism as well, that we are surrounded by living, animate beings – by persons of many forms – whether we humans choose to recognize them or not. If we were to recognize such life and intelligence, we would treat the world and Nature very differently. It is a premise of this book that we would regard community gatherings and festivals differently too, in many cases. They would not be merely commercial enterprises, such as many are in the United States, but much-­anticipated occasions offering important moments to engage with the energies of life around us, engage with our communities and celebrate the moving, evolving and sensate Planet. James Lovelock revolutionized science in 1979 when he first published what was then known as ‘The Gaia Hypothesis’. Gaia is the ancient Greek name for the Earth Mother Goddess, and although there are the more prosaic scientific names of Geophysiology, or Earth Systems Science (1995: xiii) for this theory, Lovelock chose the more poetic, mythological name. A NASA scientist at the time, he had begun to deduce from his planetary studies, including those of Mars, how seemingly full of purposeful intelligence our Earth must be. Lovelock was surprised that his Gaia theories were not repudiated and reviled by the religious establishment, but rather by fellow scientists. He had expected the opposite. Today his hypothesis has progressed to a theory, supported by mathematical models, and it is widely accepted now more than three decades later. At the same time that Lovelock was having his planetary metanoia, Swimme and Berry were likewise beginning to formulate a new vision of life on Earth that eventually they came to call The Universe Story (1992), also known as the ‘new cosmology’. It too postulates that the Universe is full of a purposeful, constantly evolving force, intertwined and interanimated, of which humans are a part. Their work reiterates the concept that all that we know here on Earth (or Gaia) has derived from the same source – the primeval fire ball, or so-­called ‘Big Bang’ (Swimme & Berry 1992: 7, 17–21). Swimme and Berry’s work, along with other scientists, ecologists and religious studies scholars (and other religious), like Prof. Mary Evelyn Tucker and Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis, has united living systems theory with natural science to bring us new humility in seeing humanity’s place in the Earth community. It should be a location of equals, not a hierarchy of domination with humanity at the top. As studies are showing today in many areas, perhaps the earliest and most intelligent life forms, to whom we owe our own existence, and still our lives and health today, are bacteria (Harding 2013; Swimme & Berry 1992). My assertions and theories on the intersections among animism, Gaia theory and materiality are furthered by the work

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of scientist/philosopher Stephan Harding. Harding writes of ‘animistic science’, a seemingly oxymoronic term no one in the West might have accepted some decades ago. According to Harding: ‘(W)e can no longer treat matter with disrespect because it is, after all, sentient in some sense by virtue of having a creative agency and capacity for experience that demands our ethical consideration. [. . .] we can conceive of matter as alive – as inherently creative’ (Harding 2013: 379–380, italics in original). This creative, active power of matter comes to us through many mediums and in many life scenarios – including through food and in feasting. I will test these concepts to show how they inform this book’s views on place as creatively active, and speaking to us – perhaps performing itself on the stage of ritualized, festive time and festival.

Foodways: relational, embodied awareness Italy’s gastronomic culture has myriad nuanced meanings; the volumes on Italian food, cooking and culinary traditions could fill an enormous library, without including texts on other significant cultural or historical elements. Food and human customs at table as well as in cooking, the choice of foods and recipes, of culinary traditions are all part of our world-­making. They are also part of how we embody place, ingesting elements of land, water, home, tradition. Italy’s foodways powerfully and eloquently represent home, village, native region and history. One of the highest compliments one can offer to a restaurant, a region or to someone’s hospitality is ‘Si mangia bene’ – this might translate as: ‘One eats well here’, or ‘It’s really good food’. Historian Claudia Baldoli argues that a particularly remarkable element of Italian foodways is that ‘Italian food has not been significantly transformed over the last two centuries, and Italians, by resisting standardization and Americanization more than any other European countries, still use the ingredients of the past in their cuisine’ (2009: 282). A cook in one region might add cinnamon to the pasta sauce; someone elsewhere might add walnuts. If either of those ingredients were put into pasta or risotto in a different region, it would taste wrong, out of place, a mistake. A Sicilian might add mint to a sauce, which would be jarring to someone from another region’s palate. People ingest and commemorate a world of thoughts and feelings with a simple ingredient in a recipe. We not only weave our world with formalized rituals, but also in the domestic rituals of culinary traditions and beliefs – most potently in a country like Italy, with each region’s passionate gastronomic mores. My fieldwork and discussions of Italy’s unique foodways elaborate on this, including discussions of Piedmont’s now famous organization ‘Slow Food’. Slow Food is known world-­wide for its environmental and social campaigns, honouring the determined maintenance of local foodways, traditional culinary culture, species, breeds and seeds. The organization now has more than 150 branches throughout the world; various cities throughout the United States and the UK, as some examples, have their own Slow Food chapters. Some of the cultural and traditional festivals and practices examined here demonstrate antidotes to ‘fast living’, to environmental and social degradation – a theory promoted by the literature of Slow Food (Andrews 2008; Petrini 2007; Portinari 1989). Pertinent to my northern Italian research is the fact that Slow Food originated

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in the Langhe area of Piedmont which figures prominently in Chapter 4. Carlo Petrini, original founder of the Italian Slow Food organization, believes that the kinds of practices (such as those discussed in the festival fieldwork) of conscious communal eating and attention to locally derived and prepared foods, can help to heal some of society’s wounds (Andrews 2008; Petrini 2007; Portinari 1989), and to preserve local communities. Many in the fieldwork expressed similar views, in their own words, voicing their sense of the sacred, and even the religious, which they have found in experiencing a landscape through gastronomic festival/rituals. Leynse’s fieldwork on France captures ‘the visceral and metaphorical consumption of a given landscape’ in France (Leynse 2006: 129–130). This is akin to the French concept of terroir in oenology and the winemaker’s pursuit of flavours, overtones and nuances from the specific vineyard’s landscape, which permeate a grape or wine’s ‘bouquet’. Consequently, in a similar manner, the sagre and feste (two names for the cultural and agricultural festivals in Italy) articulately perform place in a way that offers a specific local sense of identity and conveys Italian relationality with place. Foods and gastronomic traditions, such as traditional meals eaten at a festival or holiday celebration, bring interanimation through their place-­based materiality. We can experience place-­power and its materiality through eating or drinking, and thereby begin subtly, on an embodied level, to develop awareness of all that is encompassed in the human experience of place. ‘Si mangia bene’ has many nuances, but all of them are positive and convey profound contentment . . . perhaps even sacredness. David Morgan writes: ‘Materiality is a compelling register in which to examine belief because feeling, acting, interacting, and sensation embody human relations to the powers whose invocation structures social life. Most believers live their religion in the grit and strain of a felt-­life that embodies their relation to the divine as well as to one another’ (2010: 8). Let us look further at how foodways may sacralize.

Localizing the sacred, sacralizing the local Feasting and foodways are traditions that allow us to embody place. When examined through the lens of ingesting ‘topography’ (Leynse 2006), we observe that in eating and drinking – particularly local foods or wines from small, family-­owned farms, such as Italy’s traditions emphasize – we truly do ingest land and place. Perhaps more to the point, we eat the materiality of that place, and that in turn can create a sense of place in us. It is a subtle and yet deeply profound aspect of living and honouring a beloved place through its foodways or gastronomic customs. In the altered temporality, the ‘time out of time’ of the festival, a powerful awareness of its materiality can arise. For example, as in the Badalisc festival of the northern mountains of Lombardy, discussed in Chapter 3, a synthetic costume of a serpent with light-­bulb eyes still allows a festival actor to embody a mountain. In the space created and enhanced by festive heterotopic time, eating the traditionally prepared polenta of the Badalisc, or the sausages annually made for the winter festival – at specific calendrical moments, with one’s community – may be termed a sacramental ritual.

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How do we sacralize place and imbue it with meaning? Or is place already active and powerful, and it is our sensing that leads us to term it ‘sacred’? Why would a study of religion discuss popular festivals, folklore and foodways, interrogating how they honour or embody place? These are questions this book is testing, exploring unique ways in which humans experience and sacralize places or times perhaps not seen as sacred – eating them, wearing them, performing them. It is also because I would assert that these practices can lead to community resilience. Resilience is a topic frequently discussed in the Western United States, as in many rural or mountainous regions. For example, in a panel on resilience at a conference in Boulder, Colorado in September 2016, the celebrated Colorado historian Patricia Limerick made a statement with religious allusions that raised some eyebrows, but excited me: she commented that at times she feels supermarkets should have kneelers, as in church pews, so that shoppers could kneel and honour the abundant foods that we are privileged to enjoy. Limerick used the word ‘sacrament’ for the extraordinary abundance that we have in the United States, and which in Colorado is frequently sourced from local farms. Her thoughts suit Italy, in a number of senses. In this introductory chapter, among other foundational ideas, I am teasing out the origins of some of my terminology; thus a mention of the root of ‘sacred’ and of ‘sacrament’ is relevant. Both words come from the Latin root for sacred, or to make sacred, sacra and sacrare (Webster’s 1953). Beautifully apt, the word ‘sacrament’ also contains an original meaning of the oath or commitment that one makes with a group, a community, a congregation. A fieldwork participant in the small Piedmont city of Omegna, Riccardo Milan, is one of the city’s festival organizers. In discussing their food festivals, Milan spoke of how the act of eating together in communal groups at certain important times of the year has the healing (and even absolving) nature of a sacrament (2007). One can interpret his meaning of an oath or commitment in the festival foodways and feasting, a promise to time, to life and experiences shared, as well as a commitment to the maintenance of local food traditions. There is a fascinating connection here to the country-­wide, culturally ingrained Italian ethos of eating together, a deeply revered tradition of commensality – whether in a family, among friends or in the wider community. The Catholic Mass’ Eucharist began that way, at the canonical Last Supper meal with Jesus and his apostle companions. Given the profoundly inculturated Catholicism of Italy – beyond religious faith and practice to the cultural inculcation – there are resonant overtones of why commensality can be sacramental. A festival is the ideal scene and moment for exploring such themes, particularly in a country like Italy, whether north or south, where there are hundreds upon hundreds of festivals, where place and local foodways are honoured and occasionally held up as sacred. Kim Knott’s studies intersect such themes of festival and materiality with her work on space and place. She emphasizes the importance of a spatial analysis of religion and the sacred, emphasizing how we may sacralize the common, quotidian places of our lives: The aim here is not to focus explicitly and exclusively on sites which proclaim to establish what is sacred or holy about such places. [. . .] My intention is rather to

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look closely at contemporary everyday spaces in order to discern the location of religion within them [. . .]. By doing so, I think we shall see that there are no data that are irrelevant for the study of religion, and that there are no places in which religion may not, in some sense or other, be found. Knott 2005a: 2

Both space and place have ‘active potential’, says Knott, and ‘affect agency in those who experience and participate in space’ (2005a: 129). In her 2005 article Knott describes space as relational, social and multidimensional (2005b: 159–160). Indeed that describes the festival space well, and in that multidimensionality we can find elements of sacredness, as well as connection with Nature and place.

Dwelling perspectives that help to weave the world This book regards the many ways that religion, lived customs and embodied traditions help us to weave our world and develop meaning, even if – as in some cases here – they are newly evolving. Ingold’s critical work on place and relationships with the other-­than-human has had a significant impact on my work. One theme is the concept of the relational epistemology that ties humans and other-­than-humans together. He sees our bonds with land as relational, a way of keeping cultural memory alive through ‘a practice of remembering, embedded in the perception of the environment’ (2000: 148); ‘Reality is relational’ and ‘kinship is geography’ (149). These concepts help to articulate some Italian attitudes towards home, village and community that this book discusses. As in Paroldo in Chapter 4, or Andrista, Chapter 3, one’s bonds with a town or a festival tie one to place not only through the relationships in the town and in the family, but through the memories of history stored in that place, in food, in feasting. Through our sensory engagement we find embodiment and are grounded in place once more. Food and feasting also re-­create and re-­establish our bonds, as participants and fellow diners assemble at the table. All the fieldwork illustrates this, including that in Chapters 3 and 5 on the new religious movements (NRMs) of Wicca and Druidry. Ingold applies the concept of ‘poetics of dwelling’ (2000) to ways in which indigenous cultures live in the world, deeply conscious of the life around them in a relational way, learning or maintaining memory, history and tradition through their awareness of Nature. Italian festivals exemplify the artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals in poetics of dwelling, with uniquely local pageantry and community ritualizing, which is bonded to home, to landscape – perhaps even to a specific neighbourhood in a town, such as the contrade teams in Siena and other festivals demonstrate. The potent materiality in places can offer humanity the potential for communication with a natural place or phenomenon. Italian archaeologist Umberto Sansoni, in the northern Lombardy region of the Badalisc festival, said in a conversation (pers. comm. 2010) that it is necessary to use one’s intuition in seeking out petroglyphs and other important built structures. We must move out of our more doubting analytical brain and use our senses and intuition to find the bonds or the links in Nature, such as in archaeological traces

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or other built environment clues to a landscape. Embodied ways of knowing can help us develop awareness of what festival, food and land communicate. These are not concepts foreign to many European regions, while still being perhaps outside the conventional paradigms of discussion. Ingold’s discussion of how ‘we move along with’ the world in our lives, our development, our process (2000: 200–201) may state a less radical view of how humans can be affected by the world in such a way that they may perceive place as having power as an agent, not an object. It is illustrated by stories from Ingold’s fieldwork with the Ojibwa, the Inuit and other native nations (Ingold 2000). This perspective gives one a different view of a landscape from – my example – a more transient North American whose home changes every 5 to 10 years. Seeing with eyes informed by active place ecology and awareness, we can begin to experience a traditional Italian view, whereby a Tuscan vineyard owner looks at a field and sees where his ancestors made wine three centuries ago; or a Piedmont farmer can point to the church where his ancestors were baptized in centuries past. Ingold’s phenomenological ‘dwelling perspective’ demonstrates how a ‘landscape is constituted as an enduring record of – and testimony to – the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left there something of themselves’ (1993: 152; 2000: 189). My fieldwork depicts how this kind of testimony to relationship and rapport with land may arise through the language, foods and symbols of the festival or ritual. The dwelling perspective that they demonstrate forms a bridge connecting humanity and Nature, uniting society and place. Ingold uses the metaphor of weaving that I too find pertinent given my interdisciplinary work. Drawing a metaphorical parallel to life and dwelling, he shows how we may weave the world into being with our actions: ‘Dwelling in the world, in short, is tantamount to the ongoing, temporal interweaving of our lives with one another and with the manifold constituents of our environment. The world of our experience is, indeed, continually and endlessly coming into being around us as we weave’ (Ingold 2000: 348). Shamanism, magical perceptions of Nature and symbolism resonate through my work, as they have in Ingold’s research with native North American and also Australian nations he has studied. My work uncovered beliefs, customs and festivals that are little known or studied outside of Italy, and my Italian research has revealed a relational epistemology, where place can be interpreted as entering into relationship with human communities. For example, the relationality with place and Nature that certain fieldwork participants, such as Luigi Barroero in Chapter 4 expresses when describing the talking spring in Paroldo recalls Ingold’s evocative statement: ‘the animic world (is) dialogical’ (Ingold 2000: 114). Nineteenth- and early twentieth-­century ecologist and naturalist John Muir observed: ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe’ (1988 [1911]: 110). Our lives are woven strands, constantly being intertwined and inter-­animated with all that is in the world around us. Two metaphors I have used here are of a bridge and a tapestry. Bridges are often built with strands of cable and steel. Consequently the metaphor works in two ways: first it expresses the weaving together of diverse threads of different academic disciplines in the book. Next it demonstrates how events grounded in a place, or perhaps honouring a specific

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place – like a festival – can offer human beings a bridge, between cultures, between communities, generations, offering a means to span the gaps often found in late modern Western culture (Latour 1993; Tilley et al. 2000). Given the pageantry and colourful theatricality of Italian festivals – even those in small villages or on remote mountaintops – it is easy to imagine the multi-­coloured strands of a tapestry, depicting legend, folklore, religious tradition or conveying culture. Food is a basic component of that Italian festival bridge and its vibrant tapestries, allowing participants to interconnect sensuously and sensorily with place and lived religion by becoming ‘situated eaters’ who ‘ingest topography’ (Leynse 2006). There is a sensate materiality in the sights, smells and practices in foodways and culinary experiences. Basso has an apt term for the intimate interconnection with land and place, ‘interanimation’: ‘Interanimation relates directly to the fact that familiar places are experienced as inherently meaningful, their significance and value being found to reside in (and, it may seem, to emanate from) the form and arrangement of their observable characteristics’ (Basso 1996: 55). The animistic – or as Ingold uses the term, animic – profundity of our ingesting place, home, relationships and, essentially, life could not be more important. In the case of Italian festivals, it often is also entertaining and engaging.

Festival as ritual The festivals and rituals created in myriad towns and villages across Italy are ‘sensitive orchestrations’, in Victor Turner’s phrase: ‘Ritual, in tribal society, represents not an obsessional concern with repetitive acts, as Freud sometimes supposed, but a sensitive orchestration of many strands of symbolic action in all available sensory codes’ (1982a: 254). Manifested in these communal festivals and community rituals are sensory experiences wrought by symbolic costumes or cultural representations entwined with the history of that area. However, the messages conveyed by many of these ritualized festivals and feasts have often been missed. In the same essay Turner wrote regarding ritual and temporality: ‘Thus we have two kinds of anti-­temporality, the perennially sacred, rooted perhaps in the primordial manifestation of the eternal . . .; the perennially sacrilegious, human freedom to resist and even transgress the culturally axiomatic, the most sacred texts, the mightiest rulers and their commandments’ (Turner 1982a: 254). Some of the Italian community festivals examined here show aspects of what could have been considered sacrilegious, or perhaps still might be; indeed none of them is a Catholic festival in the traditional sense of the numerous feste throughout Italy. Italy’s festivals frequently venerate local Catholic saints or aspects of the Madonna (CrocianiWindland 2007; LaChapelle 1995; Orsi 2002; Parsons 2004; Tak 2000). Some of these are very famous, such as the Palio horse race of Siena, discussed in some detail in Chapter 2. In the towns where sagre and feste were observed, not one is a typical or traditional Italian community ritual, venerating an aspect of Catholic theology. The way that place is experienced and manifested in Italy underscores all that is reflected in the connotations of home, community and family, called the domus by Robert Orsi.

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Orsi’s work and other scholars specifically of Italy or of Italian-Americans cited in this work show that for many Italians, as well as Italian-Americans, family and all that signifies home-­place provide immediate manifestations of the sacred. In the fieldwork some participants spoke of the sacred, of healing, and in one case even of absolution in the power of the festivals’ communal feasting. This communal time offers a kind of ‘communion’ in a quasi-­liturgical sense, sometimes even with foods that have ‘apotropaic’, protective or healing powers, which for some of the fieldwork’s participants resonate with ritualized sacredness. One of the arguments here, that these festivals can be considered public rituals, is supported by the work of scholars such as Ronald Grimes (1982, 2000, 2006) and Catherine Bell (1997, 2007). They have defined certain categories of ritual, a number of which coincide with the festivals in this book. In fact, Bell cites that, for Grimes, festival is a category of ritual itself (Bell 1997: 93). Others delineated specifically include the calendrical and commemorative rites, civil ceremonies, life-­cycle rites, feasting and political rituals (Bell 1997: 94). Festive time, like ritual time, is often seen as a ‘time outside of time’. Some festivals, such as those in this book, as well as a myriad of others, create a sensation that one has stepped into a different age, society, or even dimension. Regular participants in the famous American ‘Burning Man’ festival are warned when leaving: ‘Don’t marry your parakeet!’ This refers to the altered senses, awareness and perspectives one can have after an extended time at a festival, particularly one that is remote and psycho­ spiritually powerful; it also indicates the unconventional or even unwise bursts of new behaviours one could experience. Many Wiccan traditions and some Pagan ones insist that there be no watches, phones or clocks in the ritualized space or the ‘Circle’ to emphasize that (as they teach) it is a ‘world between the worlds’. This is pertinent here given my discussions of Pagan communities in Italy, which are successfully developing large festivals and ritual gatherings in these recent decades. Chapter 5 reviews some of these in detail. French twentieth-­century philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory of the ‘heterotopia’ regards the alternative temporality that can arise in festive time and its particular culture (Foucault 1998, 2000). (Foucault’s theories of heterotopia are discussed in depth in Chapter 6.) Knott has also examined our relationships with time and with space, as well as with power structures connected with these relationships with space. The resonances from Foucault are notable, and in the conclusion of her 2005 book Knott acknowledges being particularly indebted to Foucault (2005a: 234). Knott developed a new approach where her research is ‘no longer confined to Cartesian concepts of the abstract and geometric, but (perceiving) time, as complex, dynamic and relational’ (2005b: 155–156). Some of the gatherings studied here are large and are promoted as tourist attractions, while others are extremely small and known only to a select community of people. Nonetheless, small or large, the pageantry and theatricality of some of these events expressing place or season offer examples of Ingold’s ‘poetics of dwelling’ (2000). The next chapter begins by exploring the phenomenon of the community festival universally, reviewing Italian history as well as the origins and meanings underlying the famous examples in Italy of the Palio of Siena and the Carnival in Venice.

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Phenomenology and philosophy meet animism and new cosmology If the interanimation of Nature-­humanity and the ensuing relationality are often ineffable, then it is through actions and through symbols, or through symbolic action, that the creative agency of Nature is most eloquently expressed. It is expressed often through ritual and ritualized gatherings, such as community festivals. The active engagement with place that Ingold describes as a ‘dwelling perspective’ (2000: 5, 185– 187) is a term revealing the immanent vitality in place (Ingold 2000: 149–150), and demonstrating its impact and ability to act. Land and place’s ability to influence human actions, beliefs, emotions and community traditions is a fundamental premise of this book’s interpretation of materiality: a materiality of place. Ingold derives some of his terms from Martin Heidegger; in German there is a term for a being’s – any being’s – experience of the world or environment around them, umwelt (Gray 2003; Heidegger 2008 [1962]). I do not speak German, so unlike the Romance languages that I do speak, I cannot fully give the nuances of umwelt from lived linguistic experience. However, as a Deep Ecologist in much of my thinking and earlier work, my interpretation of the phenomenological implications of umwelt can be appropriate to this book’s discussions, for it a) draws from European fields of phenomenology, philosophy and ecology, which influence Italians – including perhaps some of my study’s participants; and b) it interprets the sense, sometimes fleeting and easily escaping, of what a being feels and draws from its environment. It is one way of naming the meaning that we, as emplaced, embodied beings take from our surroundings. Casey’s phenomenological perspective is that ‘human beings – along with other entities on earth – are ineluctably place-­bound. More even than earthlings, we are placelings . . .’ (Casey 1996: 19). Self-­reflexively, I note that, when living in northern Italy for some years, initially feeling uprooted and unfamiliar with the north, the potent materiality of place and its many local festivals created a fragile new sense of place in me; little by little my own (and my family’s) bonds with the north began to grow. (My previous periods of living in Italy had been in central and southern Italy, and thus the place-­power of northern Italy was both a new experience and a new relationship.) The imposing beauty and majesty of the northern Italian mountains, the enchanting environments of the nearby Italian lake district and surrounding countryside, along with Milan’s historic architecture, all began to permeate my and my family’s hearts and senses. We were fortunate that through newly minted friendships, plus the privilege of travelling widely and exploring the north, we felt the stabilizing effect of little roots that began to gently push down, giving us nascent bonds and a growing love for those lands and cityscapes. Sense of place is often imbued with this sensual identification with place and all that its features or memories entail. It helps if one is young, or impressionable . . . or is in an altered sense of time. Central to my fieldwork is the theory that an altered sense of time and space, such as Foucault’s heterotopia (1998, 2000), are created in a festival’s distinctive temporality, and can allow new awareness to slip through – awareness such as that of place as agent, place as community, the other-­than-human as part of one’s family. A place can draw power from its solid, imposing and impactful materiality

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(Barron 2006; Bennett 2004; Ingold 2000; Knott 2005a; Plumwood 1995; 2008; Watson 2003). Liminality and ritual in all its nuanced forms can allow the awareness of that active place, that ‘place-­power’, to be felt, acknowledged and embodied. Thus, to sum up some of these theories in a sentence, one could speculate that the umwelt of a placeling’s experience is heightened and the interanimation made more acute by altered temporality and embodied experiences enjoyed in the heterotopia of a festival or community ritual.

‘Place is a family affair’: the many positive aspects of festivals One of my key assertions here is that festivals are, in many senses, community rituals. This theme is brought out in depth in the next chapter, which discusses specifically the phenomenon of the feast day, or festival. Rituals are deeply symbolic for human beings and their symbols ring profoundly in our deeper minds, in our unconscious. Through these symbols humanity can express the ineffable (Bell 1997). Thus festivals are more important to a community than perhaps they may appear at first glance. They are not merely an opportunity to see one’s neighbours, have a good meal or a few drinks and laughs; not merely the opportunity for economic return to a town. In a profounder sense they have an archetypal, psychospiritual significance that could be overlooked or underestimated (Grimes 2006). However, the practical economic benefits are significant and worthy of study as well. Derrett writes of tourism and community development, noting that place and landscape are ‘a medium for community values and beliefs that are celebrated in community cultural events’ (2003: 51). Later in this same article he notes a specific element: ‘festivals provide a vehicle to preserve and celebrate culture and facilitate family reunions’. Quoting from Ferris he states that ‘place is a family affair’ (Ferris 1996 cited in Derrett 2003: 51). Here the element of family returns in terms of relationality that echo Manzoni’s description of the mountains’ faces as being familiar as family or friends. Consequently, through different lenses one may perceive that festival can provide a space whereby place joins humanity’s chains of relationship and broadens its relational epistemology. The community festival or ritual can be a vehicle to demonstrate community in diverse visual or dramatized forms, to celebrate itself and its shared values. It ‘performs place’ in all its dimensions and nuances, and can also provide economic return to a depopulating village. Derrett observed in his work on four festivals in Australia: ‘Festivals serve the needs of residents. They can protect the natural environment, increase social equity, and provide a vision for participants’ (Derrett 2003: 49). Chapter  4 on Piedmont delves into the history of rural Italy and its depopulation through emigration, both abroad and into Italy’s urban areas (Ginsborg 2003; Sapelli 1995). The multiple gifts of festival include the potential to restore vitality and vibrancy to a village or city. This in turn can restore the bonds in the human community, and such neighbourly, person-­to-person experiences can aid in developing community bonds and resilience. Whether the United States, the UK, Europe or wherever it may be in our increasingly alienated, fast-­paced societies, such resilience through restored community bonds is much needed.

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Bocelli in Milan – a campanilismo anecdote This book demonstrates that Italian sense of place is commonly expressed and embodied in pageantry, music, ritual and food. A recurring focus here is expressed in the Italian term campanilismo, the fierce local chauvinism where passionate loyalties to home and local identity arise in Italy (Orsi 2002; Parsons 2004; Tak 1990). The word literally means ‘Bell Tower-­ism’ and expresses the Italian parochial regionalism, which is symbolized by the attitude of thinking one’s own bell tower is far more important or beautiful than another’s bell tower (or one’s polenta or pasta or whatever dish is tastier). Here is an anecdote from one of my research journals that artistically illustrates typical local fervour. One of Italy’s primary national holidays is 2 June, the feast of the establishment of the Italian Republic in 1946. One year, in honour of this important holiday in Italy, the world-­ renowned Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli sang in Milan’s principal square, Piazza Duomo, the heart of old Milan. This central city open space and meeting space is the square dominated by its grand cathedral, the Duomo. Later chapters will discuss this area more. This particular concert was a free, open-­air event, which opened with a poem about Milan, evoking the history and imagery of Hannibal crossing the Alps to the northwest (near the regions discussed here) with his elephants. When Bocelli broke into the national anthem, Fratelli d’Italia, the crowd accompanied him. After that his next song was a much-­loved opera aria from Rigoletto, La Donna è Mobile, with which the crowd likewise sang along. Then Bocelli sang a well-­known Neapolitan folk song, Funiculi, Funicula, and the crowd’s response was noticeably half-­hearted. However, when his next folk song was a Milanese song, the audience roared its approval and accompanied him loudly. In his study of Harlem’s devotion to the Madonna of Mt. Carmel, Orsi repeatedly uses the image of events taking place ‘In the company of the Madonna, within sight of her benevolent and encouraging gaze’ (Orsi 2002: xxiii). The huge crowd assembled that night in Piazza Duomo, fervently singing Milan’s song, was surely aware that they were standing under the gaze of the golden Madonnina topping the Duomo, the emblem of ‘Milanesità’ (to coin a phrase derived from Siena, Senesità (Parsons 2004)). This public ritual in Milan created by Bocelli’s free concert in honour of Italy’s national day displayed a vivid symbolic example of campanilismo, as well as the performance of place.

The domus and the paese – shared values, but not always positively viewed Hermeneutic awareness regarding language brings essential insights into the culture behind that language. Here is a linguistic clue to Italian sense of place: the word in Italian for a person being lost or disoriented is spaesato. This means literally to be without a country, paese, or in the sense that paese is used generally, to be without a town. This is in itself an interesting point: in Italian the word paese is used for the whole country as well as for a town or village. Therefore if an Italian discusses his or her hometown, he or she will say ‘my country’ – il mio paese. Identity and rootedness are themes that the fieldwork uncovered and illustrated, revealing how local communities

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strive to maintain their identity, and how the festivals they create often perform identity as they perform place. The unification of Italy took place in 1861, but what would truly unify the diverse regions and dialects cobbled together by its leaders has baffled governments and citizens ever since. The language known as ‘Italian’ was created at the time of Italy’s unification out of the Tuscan dialect (Penman 1972). It may be surprising to some to read that today there is greater uniformity in language across the country than there has ever been before in Italy’s past, due to the advances in education and to the national media. However, people’s allegiances and loyalties to their home regions and towns, to their paesi, remain passionate and long-­lived, a nationalistic type of loyalty. Their sense of place is connected to the region of their birth, of their families’ origins or of their personal history. Lucia’s sentiment in The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) gives literary validation to the Italian loyalty towards family and the extended clan, which can include home-­place. Having to escape from home and in dire straits, Lucia thinks of the land of her childhood as family; in another section of the book she calls the mountains ‘her mountains’ (Manzoni 1972 [1827]: 164, 386). Orsi writes of the domus in ItalianAmerican culture, a perspective that regards home and family as sacred, and that also honours values taught communally as part of that sacred domus. Orsi depicts this sacred temporal plane extending to and encompassing the neighbourhood of Italian Harlem, as well as the festival of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel itself (2002). Such shared values can live in the neighbourhood as in the land – intrinsically interweaving society and place in ‘chains of relationship and reciprocity’, as Giulio Sapelli has termed the bonds of relational thinking typical of Italian society (Sapelli 1995: 44–45, 64).

Conclusion Late postmodern Western society moves at break-­neck speed, often lost in ‘virtual’ communication, and not mindful of its actual placement on the Earth. We may speak casually of a place’s ‘energy’ or ‘ambiance’; or even more vernacularly of its ‘vibe’ – that is, how a place makes us feel or react. Nevertheless, the Western world is frequently unaware of the history or the multiplicity of influences at work, emerging from land and environment. This book argues that the phenomenon of the community festival can restore our awareness of the ‘sensuous placefulness’ of living on the Earth (Casey 1996: 19). Performing place through local and regional feste and sagre, Italy’s local festivals, gives evidence of loyalties and relationships within communities and regions. Such community rituals as those reviewed here in Italy offer expression of the embodiment of place demonstrating a relational epistemology. In the uncommon temporality of the fair, festivals (and other ritualized spaces) can at times metaphorically bridge the humanity-Nature divide. At these moments the power of place can act, not only on individuals, but on communities, as evidenced in the distinctively local traditions and foodways of Piedmont and Lombardy. Now the discussion moves on to an examination of the phenomenon of the festival, both universal and specific, regarding its varied foundations and influences.

2

The Phenomenon of the Community Festival

This chapter delves into the history and traditions of festival more universally; then moves on to focus on feste and sagre in Italy. The chapter gives a pertinent background to two of the best known and enduring festivals, the Palio of Siena in Tuscany, and the Carnival at Venice; it reviews how various elements, traditions and scholarly engagements with these renowned festivals intersect critically with this book’s festival and ritual fieldwork. Other pertinent historical forms are also introduced, such as Commedia dell’Arte with its archetypal, universal masks. Bakhtin and his theories of reversal in calendrical festival times, such as Carnival, are reviewed. Certain key theories from Latour, Sapelli, Tak and others are related specifically to Italian festival – such as the hybridity demonstrated in Italy’s festive forms and the reciprocity and relationality maintained in Italian communities. It also examines a fundamental question of why one would study festivals in Italy. When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea; My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, My brother in Mocharabuiee. I passed my brother and cousin: They read in their books of prayer; I read in my books of songs I bought at the Sligo fair. When we come at the end of time To Peter sitting in state, He will smile on the three old sinners, But call me first through the gate; For the good are always the merry, Save by an evil chance, And the merry love the fiddle, And the merry love to dance. William Butler Yeats 1976: 71

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Part one – festival forms and festive time The chapter opens with an examination of Italy’s two most famous festival traditions of palio and Carnival, as background, before moving into the book’s fieldwork. It then relates these two well-­known festivals to the critical thought supporting this study.

Meaningfulness through community festival and ritual In the poem cited above, Irish poet William Butler Yeats demonstrates the redeeming power that some believe music, such as the music of festivals and fairs, can offer. Participants in the interviews woven into the study here often expressed their view that the festival’s communal meals could have just such a potent effect. Whatever the perception and experience, it is universally evident that festivals create meaning and perform meaningful places. From time immemorial human beings have made meaning through ritual, through performance, through meals shared in community time. Knott wrote: ‘People sacralize themselves, others, objects, places. Ritual then becomes a central creative process by which people make a meaningful world that they can inhabit’ (Knott 2005a: 101). Ritualized time and festive time help people explore community and the bonds found there, with one another as well as with place and space. People stop their everyday lives – or in my view, enhance their everyday lives – by participating in a festival. Renewed community well-­being can evolve from the festival through the experience of a greater and deeper sense of ‘dwelling’ (Derrett 2003; Gardiner 1993). The concept that humans feel a desire, an urge, to make a more meaningful world relates directly to the theories reviewed above – such as why people celebrate public rituals like the Italian sagre and feste. Turner wrote that we create rituals and other community performances because we seek ‘to rest our restless minds in meaningfulness’ (1982a: 245). In a world suffering from a litany of woes, humanity uses such moments as these to construct a more meaningful experience of the world, seeking meaning, bonds, relationships, in a society that has diminished these. ‘Ritual is not an expression of or a response to “the sacred”; rather something or someone is made sacred by ritual . . . divine and human, sacred and profane, are transitive categories; they serve as maps and labels, not substances’ (Smith 1987: 105; cited in Knott 2005a: 101). This mode of creating sacred time applies to the repetition of ritual, festival or any event that can ‘sacrate’ and create meaning through this event. The sacred and the mundane, mundane and sacred, are inextricably intertwined.

Glastonbury The British town of Glastonbury dramatically illustrates the theories of place as agent and of community sacralizing of place. I have spent time in the small southwestern English town and can speak personally for the power of its landscape, as well as the fervent lived religious beliefs of various intermingled communities there – Christian, Pagan and spiritual seekers from diverse paths.

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Marion Bowman has written extensively on Glastonbury, and on nearby Bath as well, observing the forms of vernacular religious practices, rites and observances that take place there (Bowman 2007; 2006; 2005; 2004; 1998). Amy Whitehead, introduced in Chapter 1, has examined a particular community there, offering unique illustrations of religious materiality in ‘The Glastonbury Goddess religion’ and its Goddess Temple (2013). The city offers varied examples of meaning-­making and sacralizing through its communities’ honouring of unique natural features in the landscape where historical sites and cultural celebrations have been passionately sacralized by practitioners of many and diverse religions. The dramatic hill of the ‘Tor’ rises above the plains surrounding it; many spiritual seekers and pilgrims of diverse religions are attracted by its power, as well as to the enchanting history of Chalice Well and the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. In Bowman’s studies of the Holy Thorn Ceremony in Glastonbury, she notes that the Ceremony is an important local tradition, primarily for locals and not created to attract tourists (Bowman 2006). Similarly, my fieldwork looks at festivals that are directed towards local people and communities, and influenced profoundly by the landscape. As Bowman demonstrates in Glastonbury, sense of place can be exemplified and heightened by community festivals, which often create a greater cohesiveness and shared sense of identity in the everyday community. Glastonbury’s interwoven materiality of place, landscape, lived religious traditions and the festivals celebrating them exemplifies many of the theories this book offers, indicating – as the later analyses show – the universality of these theories. Now to look at another example from outside Italy before moving back to Italy.

Spring and the sloop Clearwater come back A powerful memory sprang to mind early in my journey towards this research interest and topic. Given the relevance of this memory, its illustration of place-­power, and in keeping with my use of a heuristic, self-­reflexive methodology, here is a personal account. The town of my birth and early life is on the banks of the Hudson River, Nyack, NY, in the rolling green Hudson Valley of New York State. When I was a young teen, in the midst of the burgeoning environmental movement in America, a festival celebrating the Hudson River began to take place. One spring weekend a striking sloop called the ‘Clearwater’ came to dock in Nyack. Its purpose (which is on-­going today, as it has continued its environmental advocacy for many years) was to educate people about the Hudson bioregion and ecosystems through the creation of a riverfront festival. Like many young people, I was invited to sail on the sloop, and this memory became significant for me. This was not only because of the chance to sail on the Clearwater, but because a well-­known folk singer and activist performed for us, Pete Seeger. Seeger lived into his nineties, and devoted his life to improving the health of the Hudson Valley through decades of environmental activism through music and innovative programmes with young people. That first experience of the Clearwater Festival made an important impression on me as a young girl. It was not the first time I had watched the Hudson’s shore from the deck of a boat, but it was my first time sailing while feeling engaged in a powerful movement and purpose. Each year when the Clearwater docked

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again, the town would hold a festival with the intention of raising awareness about the Hudson and its ecological needs. The festival developed into a rite of spring. An annual festival can ignite fulfilling feelings of consistency, of an atavistic reassurance that despite life’s unpredictable quality and many vicissitudes, some seasonal occurrences are dependable. However, the sloop Clearwater is more than that: it is today known as ‘America’s Environmental Flagship’ and, according to its own website, some 400,000 children have experienced the Hudson from its decks. The nonprofit’s progressive ethos of uniting sense of place with place-­based activism, through food, music and enjoyment of Nature, taking inspiration from the river itself, offer examples of some of the theories espoused in this study. As the organization’s website states: ‘Each summer the Clearwater re-­connects Hudson Valley residents with their cultural heritage and traditions by bringing them down to the river for the Great Hudson River Revival, the country’s oldest music and environmental festival’ (Hudson River Sloop Clearwater 2010). Art, symbol, metaphor and ritual are universals of human nature. So are festivals. All of these cultural, artistic and psychospiritual forms help humans find and express their world-­making. Heidegger’s term umwelt as described by John Gray applies here: ‘Dwelling refers to the creation of meaningful places that together form a surrounding world (Umwelt). It entails people’s relationship to the world, motivated by concern and consequent involvement’ (Gray 2003: 232). As mentioned in Chapter 1, Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ also draws from his understanding of Heidegger’s phenomenological view of dwelling. He too theorizes on meaning-­making, describing it as ‘acts of dwelling (that) are preceded by acts of worldmaking’ (Ingold 2000: 179). We make the world around us through our thoughts and our actions, as well as through symbol and metaphor. We perform our meanings through arts that express these metaphors. ‘Human beings, then, inhabit the various houses of culture, pre-­erected upon the universal ground of nature – including the universals of human nature’ (Ingold 2000: 179). We often express these universal languages through rituals where we ‘make a meaningful world’ (Knott 2005a: 101). The power of Glastonbury’s Tor parallels the power of the Hudson and Nyack’s own unique hill, Hook Mountain. It too is said to be a sacred site, ritually honoured in centuries past by the original Native American Indian tribes. Like Glastonbury’s festivals, like the Clearwater, these themes are relevant to my fieldwork in Italy: themes of community as intertwined with embodied experiences of place-­power, of identity and of purpose. The following sections in this chapter demonstrate how Italian festivals not only make, but also communicate meaning through embodiment of symbol and metaphor, to and from the world, conveying it on the two-­way bridge of the festival ritual.

Why study festival? Citing Ingold’s term as quoted above, festival culture is a ‘universal of human nature’ (2000). I assert that festivals in many cases can be community rituals; and as another universal, rituals of all kinds offer metaphors and symbols that resonate for human beings. Symbols ring atavistic, ancient chimes in the deeper levels of our human mind,

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resonating across culture and time through unconscious levels of consciousness. Catherine Bell (1997: 94) identified six categories of ritual action:

1. Rites of passage or ‘life crisis’ rituals. 2. Calendrical and commemorative rites. 3. Rites of exchange and communion. 4. Rites of affliction. 5. Rites of feasting, fasting and festivals. 6. Political rituals. According to Bell’s categories, the festivals observed in this book would generally fall into two categories; those of number two and of number five. Some of the gatherings offer a sense of communion in the commensality they demonstrate; this was articulated by the research participants. Therefore, number three could apply in that regard too. One of the festivals, Celtic New Year in Milan, fits with category six as well due to the political purposes of the organizers, who were prominent members and leaders of a political party. Fiona Bowie’s study on ritual (2006) breaks down various scholars’ opinions: ‘Bloch bases his understanding of ritual on a universal biological process. Rituals play on themes of vitality and mortality. They link time and transcendence’ (Bloch 1986, cited in Bowie 2006: 145). In seeing the universality of festival and ritual, it appears logical that the drive to honour a calendrical phase or moment could at its root be biological. Ancient cultures across the globe believed that they were obligated to honour certain phases of the year in order to ensure the fertility of the Earth and the community, the solar progressions or the wellbeing of their crops and herds. This urge to propitiate the Earth or the divinity, or whatever the belief system might be, springs from a biological need: survival. As Bowie states, these are themes of vitality and mortality. In the observations and experience of a number of my participants in northern Lombardy at the Badalisc festival, such needs and traditions were explicit. For example, a woman from a nearby family of farmers that came every year said the Badalisc represents Nature and the Earth, he is the symbol of the mountains there (5 January 2008). Another long-­time participant who also is a cook at the festival recounted that the villagers believe they must ‘maintain the festival to maintain the village’ (Stefano Ronchi, pers. comm. 3 March 2009); the bonds among the local people are integrally aided by the festival. The village’s bonds to the mountains are also maintained through the Badalisc, as the festival honours the extended family of place. Vitality, mortality, memory; honouring community and place through annual actions and rites: these are universals of humanity, which can be made place-­specific, as the following fieldwork chapters demonstrate.

The transformational quality of festival and community ritual The poetry at the head of this chapter from W.B. Yeats (poet, playwright, statesman and creator/practitioner of ritual) may be merely amusing, exaggerating the power of a

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country festival or carnival and its gay music. On the other hand, such community gatherings, when ritualized, can indeed have transformational power. The sloop Clearwater’s fifty years of environmental and artistic festivals give evidence of their successful history for Hudson River communities. Bell described ritual as: ‘the expression of paradigmatic values of death and rebirth; ritual as a mechanism for bringing the individual into the community and establishing a social entity; or ritual as a process for social transformation, for catharsis, for embodying symbolic values, for defining the nature of the real’ (Bell 1997: 89). The critical literature on festival that I have reviewed, as well as my own fieldwork, indicate that indeed the manner in which festivals and community rituals ‘bring the individual into community’ are health-­inducing and vitality restoring. Some participants in the Lombardy and Piedmont research saw the communal meals involved in Italian festivals as not only essential but sacred. Rituals or festivals create a space for a unique, out of the ordinary experience of time that allows awareness of the ineffable and the numinous to slip through. In this case the ineffable and the numinous include the feeling and the expression of one’s bonds with place. Discovering and acknowledging such bonds and intimate connection can have healing, transformational effects as they re-­weave the unravelled threads of relationship, with home, with land, with community. Festivals are more important to a community than perhaps they may appear at first glance. A festa or sagra is not merely an opportunity to see one’s neighbours, have a tasty – perhaps local food – meal or a good wine, and some laughs, maybe while wearing fun costumes or period attire. They are that as well as offering more profound experiences, and they also are commercial ventures. When we regard how a festival can aid in preventing depopulation, income and tourism are significant components. However, as visitors it would be easy to mistake an Italian festa or sagra as nothing more than a country fair, a costume party, or an unusual race. An Italian festa or sagra can have a deeply archetypal, psychospiritual significance that one may overlook, particularly those not from that culture or that region. Ritual can be ‘the expression of paradigmatic values’ (Bell 1997: 89). We must neither overlook nor underestimate the externalities but rather observe them carefully, for such features as masks, costuming and staging convey purposeful messages. In cultures like Italy’s where costuming and masking are manifestations of more profound aspects, where history is illustrated artistically, the admonition to observe carefully is particularly apt. A weaving together of some of the philosophical points already discussed here emerges in Grimes’ work, where he asserts that the embodied, sense-­based elements of festival offer an ‘exteriorization of phenomenology’ (1975: 508). In an example of exteriorization, Italy is the land of Bella Figura, where cutting the right figure and making the proper impression is paramount. It is a complex, deeply inculcated Italian cultural trait whose translation could simply be ‘making a good impression’. However, more than merely a fashion statement, externalities are significant, as they frequently are embedded and imbued with culture, politics and history. Similarly, going beyond fashion or theatricality, the aesthetics of the festival can become an exteriorization of psychological as well as spiritual, ecological or political factors.

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The ‘jolt’ we seek Festivals, like other forms of ritual, may hit us forcefully, jolting viewers and participants into a different state of consciousness or into a new focus. Michael Gardiner writes of the relationship between ecological awareness, place and festival. He observes that festival ‘jolts us out of our normal exceptations [sic] and epistemological complacency’ (1993: 799). This evocative turn of phrase, ‘epistemological complacency’, has many implications. Gardiner’s image of a festival as ‘jolting’ its participants into awakening to new epistemologies offers the capability for new or heightened awareness of place-­power, among other intriguing possibilities. This view of festival is in line with Foucault’s and Bell’s theories. Foucault’s theories on heterotopia indicate that heterotopias are universals, and crisis heterotopias are – (or were, since he saw such moments as disappearing or being transformed) – also a human universal (1998: 179–180). Bell included ‘life crisis’ rituals as one primary category of ritual. These moments bring enhanced clarity as we are jolted out of mundane, everyday awareness, and can signal or create new awareness. Turner’s well-­studied conceptions of ritual’s capacity for creating communitas were intertwined with his theories on the crises that arise in life and in community, which he termed social dramas (Turner 1982b: 61–87). Perhaps these ‘jolts’, or the desire for such jolts, like other rationales for festival also have a physiological basis. LaChapelle sees community ritual as an intimate part of the life of ‘stable “sustainable” cultures [. . .] refined through many thousands of years of experience’ (1995: 57–58). In her examination of ritual and festival LaChapelle describes how: ‘Festivals connect the conscious with the unconscious, the right and left hemispheres of the brain, the cortex with the older three brains [. . .] as well as connecting the human with the nonhuman: the earth, the sky, the plants and animals’ (1995: 59). These varied theories offer some reflections on the transformational quality of festival and ritual, for individuals and for communities.

All my relations, place included We have looked briefly in this chapter at a couple of representative cases from England and North America. Regarding his festival fieldwork in Australia, Derrett has claimed that ‘place is a family affair’ (2003: 51). Many indigenous spiritual traditions would agree that place is indeed a part of one’s family, and the occasions afforded annually to celebrate place and community and, perhaps even more symbolically, to celebrate ritual together with one’s community or loved ones, reconnect human beings to the ‘circle of their relations’. This expression is attributed to American Plains Indian culture, and is a Lakota Nation language expression. It is written by Anglos as mitakuye oyasin, and this is translated as ‘all of my relatives, all of us, everyone. This means all human beings upon this earth, all living things down to the tiniest insect, the tiniest plant’ (Lame Deer & Erdoes 1994 [1972]: 207). Ingold’s work among indigenous cultures has given rise to his theories on lands where the ‘relational model’ allows place to become active, vital and regarded as kin (2000: 148–150).

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While it may seem far-­fetched or even inappropriate to discuss European culture in northern Italy along with American Indian culture, my Italian festival fieldwork has revealed a perhaps surprisingly powerful relationality with place, with home, with fellow residents, that is held and cherished by certain communities in the north of Italy. In discussions over years with fieldwork participants, many spoke of coming home to their village or city, year after year, with the warmth and affection that other people or cultures may reserve for one’s most beloved companions. In particular, the villages and natural settings of Paroldo and Andrista are held in a relational and familial esteem and loyalty by the residents and returning natives.

Diverse regional forms of Italian ‘meaning-­making’ in festa and sagra The events studied here can be largely categorized as festivals based on either the calendar year cycle of Italian Catholic saints’ days, feste or ‘feast days’ – that is what they are called in the Church, echoing earlier customs; or these festivities are events based on agricultural celebrations. The more strictly culinary or agricultural events are known as sagre, where they have to do with particular products, local industry or local crops. In some cases, they are arguably both. Saint Martin’s Summer (L’Estate di San Martino) in November in Paroldo, discussed in Chapter 4, provides an example of this, where organizers have explicitly linked its origin with the end of the harvest season, as well as with their local patron saint, Saint Martin. Tak observes in his studies of Italian festivals (2000): ‘There are for example family resemblances between local and ancient festivals like Lupercalia, Martinis Marvos, Bona Dea, Lemuria and Diana, which should come as no surprise because the Fathers of the Church modelled holidays after these festivals and often as their substitutes’ (Tak 2000: 99). Tak primarily carried out his studies in the far south of Italy, in Calvello, Basilicata; however, he notes that many of Calvello’s festivals resemble ‘rituals of Northern and Central Europe’ (99). Since the Lombards (as well as other Northern rulers) created kingdoms in the south of Italy as well as the north, it is possible that their influence played a part in this similarity. We cannot make assumptions about their origins and, as Tak theorizes, should rather give the credit to agricultural traditions with similarity across a feudal Europe. Thus, even if we start – with a total lack of data – from the assumption that Calvello’s rituals were of Roman and Lombard origin, the nature of the ritual cycle still remains obscure. It is clear that a certain fusion of those sources took place at some point. [. . .] We are dealing with the same sort of models which derived from the melting pots of cultural inheritance from different historical periods. Local religions were local, but not local inventions. The survival of and the resemblances (there were also marked differences) between rituals, were not the result of isolation, but of contacts (and diffusion), and last but not least, the similarities in local circumstances evolved in a certain type of agrarian economy that dominated in Europe. Tak 2000: 100

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In my work in the north of Italy some participants in my study claimed ancient Celtic or Lombard heritage and survival of traditions. As an ethnographer whose focus is how a festival may or may not express materiality and place, Tak’s theory is pertinent and helped remind me to keep my focus on the present and on people’s experiences. Another useful assertion from Tak is that scholars studying rituals need to be aware of the whole picture and not take the festivals in isolation, as a snapshot frozen in time. He has been engaged with examining the power structures involved in Calvello and the other regions he has studied (Tak 2000: 11, 12, 14, 137–155, 209, 214–215 – inter alia). This is another way of keeping the study attuned to forces at work on the ritual or festival, as well as on the land and the people involved. I am interested in the larger political and sociological themes that surface at times in the fieldwork’s festivals and discuss these influences in the fieldwork chapters, particularly to do with Milan and the political party in power when I lived there, then known as Lega Nord (in English as the ‘Northern League’). As of writing the party has dropped Nord, which reflects the expansion of its aims and power. I will use the English ‘the League’, as well as the common Italian usage of La Lega. When discussing festivals with Italians, people begin to list their favourites and urge one strongly to visit. These usually are from the speakers’ own region of origin. This has happened in every case of my discussing my study with Italians, particularly in rural areas. It conveys their pride and great enthusiasm for their local feste and traditions. Many people from outside of Italy, however, believe that the most unusual customs persist in the rural or mountainous areas of southern Italy or Sicily. (This may stem from the fact that in the Italian diaspora of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries millions of emigrants left the south of Italy; and thus in America or elsewhere in Italian immigrant communities people typically have strong family bonds and nostalgia, as well as idealized views, of southern Italy.) Indeed there are many fascinating customs in the south and the cultural influences are very different from those in the north. For example, Greek civilization left an enduring legacy in its former colonies in the south of Italy, regions that at one time made up Magna Grecia. Region to region in Italy, across the long mountainous peninsula, there are remarkable place-­based events with unique regional differences; there are intriguing cultural and historical roots likewise in the diverse and fascinating north.

An Italian plethora of festivals In one of the closing chapters of Machiavelli’s renowned (and often reviled) classical theories on politics, The Prince, he exhorts the successful Prince to remember the essential nature of festivals: ‘(H)e should at suitable times of the year keep the people occupied with festivals and spectacles’ (Machiavelli 1985: 91). One guide to festivals in Italy suggests that it was always ‘considered an integral tool for managing the people’, and claims that the phrase used by the Bourbon rulers of Italy is well-­known to Italians: ‘that the people have need above all of three things – festivals, flour and the gallows’ (Saffioti 1997, 2009: 7). Whether due to the strategy of keeping the general populace satisfied by supplying panem et circenses, ‘Bread and Circus’, as used by many Roman

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Emperors, or whether due to some imposition of the Church in order to ensure that Church holidays were observed (Turner 1982a), whatever the reason, there is a staggering number of festivals, holidays and fairs in Italy. French academic and scholar on the ancient Celtic world Philippe Jouët participated on at least two occasions in the academic conference that introduced Milan’s Celtic New Year festival each year. One year, he commented that he was struck by the notably larger number of cultural, religious and gastronomic festivals in Italy, in contrast with France. Jouët attributed this to the anti-­clerical and anti-­religion movements of nineteenth-­century France that caused many festivals to be abolished, particularly those perceived to have any Christian or religious basis (11 October 2008). Internet sites specifically listing festivals in Italy give divergent lists for these events. However, a sampling of the sites in Italian suggests that there are thousands of sagre and feste each year in Italy. In Lombardy and Piedmont alone there could be anywhere from 100 to 500 or more in each region each year. For example, in Lombardy, one tourist guide that is edited and published annually listed eighty-­four different Carnival celebrations in Lombardy for Lent in 2009 (Lozzi & Rossi 2007). It is difficult to find a reliable source and reliable number. One tourism site dedicated to these cultural and religious festivals indicates that there may be over 400 in Sicily alone. Each town, city or village has numerous annual festivals and fairs, some of which are inarguably very old and – even if not ancient – are omnipresent, demonstrating fervent local loyalties. Tak writes: ‘In Southern Italy festivals are important local public events. [. . .] Festivals are expressions of fierce localisms’ (2000: 11). Tak observed approximately thirty holidays celebrated in one year of his research in Basilicata alone. His statements ring true not only in regard to southern Italy, but also to northern Italy. He notes that the festival cycle has grown in Calvello in recent decades, and that ‘this phenomenon of expansion is widespread’ in Italy (2000: 11). Thus in Italy, rather than asking ‘Why study festival?’, reasonably one can ask ‘Why not study festival?’ Whether north or south, it would be akin to living with blinkers on to ignore the multi-­textured sensory and cultural tapestry laid out in Italy’s festivals.

Catholicism, economics and late industrialization as influences on festival One part of the answer to the scholarly question of ‘Why are there so many festivals?’ must regard yet another aspect of Italian history and society, beyond territorial loyalties of campanilismo or the perpetuating of religious or agricultural commemorations. Festival culture in Italy may be more prevalent and longer-­lived than in northern nations, particularly those based on Protestant religions, due to the individual histories of Southern Europe. One may have to do with its Latin-­style capitalism and the legacies of the Counter-­reformation. The adherence to regional food traditions and gastronomic campanilismo are other factors that have also intertwined with Catholicism. Another aspect taken into account here are theories on Southern Europe’s late or weak industrialization (Sapelli 1995).

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Italian scholar and economist Diego Rinallo (2009) has studied the differences of capitalist views in Italy, drawing from classic work on capitalism by Max Weber (2003 [1958]). Pointing at the Protestant Reformation as one source of the difference in economic ethos and systems between Catholic and Protestant cultures, as well as between northern and southern Europe, Rinallo theorizes that the accumulation of capital and other market principles were not instituted in similar ways – or at least were delayed greatly – in Catholic countries such as Ireland, Spain and Italy. One intriguing aspect to his theories is the assertion that Catholic theology’s teaching of the innate dignity of man may have contributed to delaying the Industrial Revolution in those nations, through its promotion of the biblical concept that society must rest from labour on the seventh day (as in Genesis). Rinallo attributes the survival and preponderance of feste to this belief: that the obligation of keeping the Sabbath, days of rest, of family time and honouring the saints through festa maintained the sacredness of these occasions (21 March 2009). Turner likewise discussed this theory and its relation to Weber’s writings when he distinguished between types of ritual and play, looking at the origins of leisure and of Sabbath feast days (Turner 1982b). Turner reminds readers of Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’ and of English Puritanism’s attacks on ritual, performance and all that was ceremonial. ‘English Puritanism affected not only religious worship by its attack on “ritualism”, but also reduced “ceremonial” (“secular” ritual) to a minimum in many other fields of activity, including drama, which they stigmatized as “mummery” ’ (38). The delayed arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Italy is relevant here in various aspects, among them the survival of many agriculturally oriented and land-­based customs. This plays a part in the next chapters in regard to the specific regions studied here. Sapelli strongly suggests that Weber’s ‘capitalistic society . . . had little success in Southern Europe’ (Sapelli 1995: 13). He demonstrates how the theories of ruralization of the city and ‘modernization without development’ characterize Southern Europe (13). Lita Crociani-Windland’s work examines the survival of sharecropping in Tuscany and its impact on the festivals she studied there; likewise my research shows that the continuing existence of this ancient form of land use impacts the relationship that Italians in the countryside have to land, place and season. Leynse and CrocianiWindland both observe how French and Italian festivals strive to resist market forces and the pressure of globalization. There is a perspective of interconnectedness that permeates this work; in my methodology there also is a foundation based on the value of hermeneutics coupled with heuristics. Consequently, it is important to probe the economic histories that have impacted Italy, its rural areas, cities and its plethora of festivals. In addition, I find evidence for consistent themes of resistance – cultural, environmental, political, religious and even gastronomic – and these intersect economic concepts on many levels. Italy’s festivals convey more complex and deep-­seated messages than that which the casual observer may perceive, especially one who is unaware of the centuries of European history that the ‘feast day’ represents. Therefore, if one asks why a scholar would study festivals in Italy, the answer is more obvious now: because there are many, and their components and qualities reveal uncommon artistic, political, environmental and philosophical histories. These express not only history, but religion, folklore and more often than not, bonds with place.

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Comparing festivals – how many and which ones? A number of the scholars referenced in this book have focused on festivals directly, such as Crociani-Windland, Derrett, Grimes, Pike, and Tak. Two who theorize on themes such as festival’s relation to community wellbeing and its bonds with place are Crociani-Windland (2007) and Derrett (2003). They each draw on four festivals. There does not seem to be a particularly cogent argument for using four examples; however, four geographic areas or four festivals offer a baseline of sufficient comparison and variety in data. It is not uncommon in scholarship that a study may turn out in the end to prove the initial theory wrong; consequently, that is all the more rationale for having a broader sampling. As discussed above, Herman Tak (2000, 1990) has observed various festivals in two very different regions of Italy. One, which I discussed above, is Basilicata, historically known as the poorest area of the south; he also carried out fieldwork in Tuscany, one of the richest and best known of the central regions. Therefore, in regard to the question posed at the head of this section, a number above two or three, with variety in place, demographics or differing environments, is critical; otherwise it would be difficult to gain the perspective that observing more festivals has offered. My Scale of Engagement in Chapter 7 reviews ultimately six festivals, although the book discusses others. Those compared and analysed are varied in theme, lived religious practice and history, folklore and terrain, despite being in two neighbouring provinces.

Supposed modernity, local networks and festival Milan’s history has been, like much of Italy’s, a vast collection of inspiring artistic endeavours, along with a tragic history of invasion and warfare. From the initial waves of tribal people crossing south over the Alps to the first legions of armed Romans marching north from Rome, up and over the plains near the river Po, Lombardy and Piedmont’s fertile flatlands have attracted every possible conqueror. Without having to seek ancient histories, the twentieth century alone has seen the horrors of war, as much of the contributing research and many of the interviews conducted emphasized. One of my fieldwork participants in Milan, elderly Laura Castellano, lived through Milan’s Second World War bombings and gave personal accounts of the hardships and dangers her family overcame as she and her husband tried to continue their lives, operating a small grocery store in the heart of the city. The relevance of this point is to underscore, as does the fieldwork, that memories and bonds with place do not necessarily evoke happy or positive feelings and senses. Kathleen Stewart, in Feld and Basso’s collection Senses of Place (1996), expresses this in her contribution on West Virginia, describing ‘the shock of history’ that people had lived through (Stewart 1996: 145). That is a perfect phrase for some of my fieldwork participants (my neighbours and relatives as well) who had lived through horrors of the Second World War, the deprivation and starvation of the post-­war period, as well as the on-­going rural depopulation in the 1960s through today. Italy, while being a ‘first world’ European nation, has earmarks and statistics that are similar in many ways to a developing country. Ginsborg’s history of twentieth-­century

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Italy opens with a biting quote: ‘As one British officer commented at the end of 1943: “Collectively they (the Italians) are to us a beaten people who live in squalor and have made a mess of their country, their administration and their lives” ’ (Ginsborg 2003: 1). That is a harsh description indeed. Undeniably, the devastation of the Second World War left its mark in people’s psyches and hearts, as did the related starvation on their bodies. Contributor Michela Zucca, anthropologist of the Alpine regions of Italy, laughed bitterly in our interview when I asked about her observations on Milanese bonds with place and home. Referring to the devastation of the Second World War and the floods of migrants moving north, she said sadly that that was practically a bad joke (19 November 2007). As the country was, in Ginsborg’s words, ‘still predominantly a peasant country’ in 1943 (2003: 1), one realizes that the lens needs to be set appropriately to understand attitudes and perspectives a mere sixty-­five years later. Although at the forefront of Italy’s postmodern ‘persona’, Milan is still today, by many standards, a small city. For an important European centre it is surprising to note that the population is only approximately 1.3 million; however, the whole metropolitan region surrounding Milan is estimated at approximately eight million. The factories, restaurants and offices of Milan are staffed with those whose parents and grandparents were farmers, and perhaps were sharecroppers and peasant farmers (CrocianiWindland 2007; Marco from Mondovì, pers. comm. 9 November 2008; Laura Castellano, pers. comm. 17 February 2009). Sapelli was quoted in Newsweek magazine in 2008 describing Italy as ‘postmodern without ever having been modern’. Indeed, my research and experiences agree that Italy exemplifies the intriguing enigma of a Western European nation that, as in Bruno Latour’s thesis, ‘has never been modern’ (1993). Latour’s concepts of hybrids and of tightly woven social networks (Latour 1993, 2005) are well illustrated by many entrenched customs and traditions in Italy, such as Italy’s fervent maintenance of reciprocal bonds and ‘chains of reciprocity’ (Sapelli 1995). Sapelli writes on these and other customs in southern Europe’s late evolution towards modernity (1995). Some statistics help to paint the picture: Italy’s population in 1951 was approximately 47 million, six years after the Second World War had ended and the reconstruction of the devastated country began. At that time there were 2.5 million sharecroppers, or roughly 5 per cent of the whole population. The internal migrations of rural people in numbers never seen before in the history of Italy transformed large urban centres such as Milan and Turin. Sapelli cites that ‘Between 1951 and 1971 4,000,000 people left the south of Italy: half of them settled in the north’ (Sapelli 1995: 45). With them came their country customs and their place-­based traditions; to apply a Latourian device and theory, ‘the networks remained local’ (Latour 1993: 117–121). Sapelli describes the resilience of the local traditions even in the face of uprooting: Italian migrants tended to reproduce and strengthen the models of reciprocity and family ties on a local basis, in the cities where they settled. Summoned by the migratory chain of friends and relations, these models and ties became, from the moment of arrival to the moment of settlement, a strong and resistant cultural heritage. They were then grafted onto the city way of life with its modern consumer habits – the ‘affluent society’. Sapelli 1995: 44

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With these waves of migrants to the north came their place-­based and inculcated traditions – such as that of the sacredness of home and of family, and of the communion found in commensality: local, home-­cooked foods eaten at table together in shared meals. These mores and lived religious traditions of the domus in Italian-American immigrant communities in New York City (Orsi 2002: 75–79) are discussed by Ginsborg, who stated this ‘attachment to the family has probably been a more constant and less evanescent element in Italian popular consciousness than any other’ (Ginsborg 2003: 2). As an Italian-American and one who has also spent years in Italy, working, studying or visiting family, I can assert this is true: the culture is a colourful mix of vernacular religious traditions based on home and family, with a seemingly religious fervour directed to food and gastronomic customs. With the ruralization of the cities, newly constructed and organized festivals could maintain and preserve rural paradigms of behaviour and custom. My experiences and observations while living and working in Milan corroborated those theories. Even those created for market purposes or perhaps political purposes (as in the case of Milan’s Celtic New Year, in Chapter 3) can offer relational spaces that bring healing to the communities involved, combating the isolation and alienation typical of the postmodern urban or suburban world. Tak wrote of the restorative power of festivals he studied in southern Italy, showing how people come to the festival year in and year out ‘to refresh themselves at the well of local culture’ (Tak 2000: 27). My work illustrates how not only individuals but whole communities are renewed through the festa’s ‘reintegration’ (Orsi 2002: 172–173). Appropriate to my studies of masked festivals and street theatre in costume, Orsi states that the psycho-­dramas of street theatre in the Harlem festa offered people a sense of healing and of reintegration (Orsi 2002: 177). The feste and sagre offer a reintegration to one’s hometown, to one’s old friends and community, to cultural or religious traditions, and perhaps in both the secular and religious senses, a restorative feeling of being ‘grounded’ once more through place-­ based ritual. Some Piedmont participants go so far as to describe a sense of spiritual ‘absolution’ gained from the festival. These speak eloquently of the power experienced through an embodied materiality of place and community sharing. We will explore the street theatre, communal feasting and the related place-­power materiality that is evidenced further through the examples of my festival fieldwork.

Milan – built materiality in its sense of place and city festival Topophilia in Italy is often married with campanilismo, literally the love of and loyalty to a place’s bell tower (and of course, to that hometown). This term is appropriate indeed in reference to Milan, where nowhere could there be a more dramatic architectural expression than the main cathedral, its Duomo. Lombardy’s largest city has no natural landmarks within the city, such as a river flowing through it, and although bordered on the north and west by the Alps, the mountains are obscured most days. Therefore the Milanese view their Duomo as though it were a natural landmark by which to orient themselves. They also use it as a central gathering place – an agora for the Greeks, a forum for the Romans, a nemeton for the Gauls and

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Celts. Like the small village with one main square for villagers to meet in, Piazza Duomo has been a kind of central meeting place for Milanese to enjoy the company of one’s community, as has the nearby Castle Sforzesco. The famed Piazza and adjacent areas are beloved nuclei where locals put on their best, meet up, go for the daily walk – la passeggiata – and have a chat or a coffee. (After our three years of living in Milan, my family and I took these dramatic landmarks into ourselves and shared the Milanese identification with them as favourite meeting places, as well as markers by which to orient oneself.) These are also the central areas where city festivals often take place. Sapelli connects this importation of rural mores and habits to economic history in Italy, studying the impact of customs from the countryside as they were transported with the waves of migrants over decades in Italy’s internal migrations. ‘In Greece, Turkey, Southern Italy, Portugal and Spain, internal migration from the rural areas to the cities gave rise to urbanization without industrialization, and this produced the ruralization of the cities. This meant that the old family-­oriented models of behaviour were maintained’ (Sapelli 1995: 118). Although he writes southern Italy in this passage, Sapelli also discusses the millions who emigrated into the north from the south over decades. My argument is that the ‘old family-­oriented models of behaviour’ are maintained throughout Italy, in varying degrees due to education or economic status, even with industrialization, and that ‘ruralization’ of the cities has occurred throughout the country (Ginsborg 2003; Sapelli 1995). Even if the place of original loyalty is far off, bonds of affection and of relationality are maintained. The ingrained ethos of the network and of relationship are both maintained and created in the community, and re-­found in the festivals discussed here.

Festivals of universal significance A book on festival in Italy must discuss, even if briefly, two of the most famous and historic traditions in Italy: the Carnival and the Palio. The best-­known Carnival celebration is the elaborately planned and performed month-­long celebration in Venice, and the best-­known Palio are the likewise elaborate summer horse races in Siena. It can indeed be confusing, for festivals using the same name take place throughout Italy in myriad towns and cities. The word palio actually means a strip of cloth or a banner, given as a prize in a competition. It is used in Italy to mean various sorts of competitions or races and applies to different varieties of festival. (The Palio of Siena is discussed more in detail in a section below.) Generally speaking, the uppercase name Carnival signifies the traditional winter events prior to Lent, and likewise the Palio when capitalized often signifies Siena’s internationally renowned horse race. As an example, in Lombardy alone there are thirty-­one different events called palio throughout the spring and summer, some of which are races on mules or donkeys – a common style of palio competition. Others have nothing to do with animal racing but are medieval re-­ enactments of historical battles, or royal events in the region. Some palios do involve races and have well-­instated contrade (these are specific neighbourhoods, each with

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their own symbol and race traditions, banners, etc.) in their cities or towns, who create the detailed historical re-­enactments and competitions. One of the most elaborate and colourful in Lombardy is the Palio in Legnano, a small city near Milan. The city has eight contrade and does involve a horse race; the city claims its palio can be traced back to the fourteenth century (Lozzi & Rossi 2007). As mentioned above in this chapter, my estimate is that – as an example – in 2007– 2009 there were more than eighty different Carnival celebrations in Lombardy alone (Lozzi & Rossi 2007). (This is drawn from Italian tourism websites, from official guidebooks and from the tourism offices interviewed.) Some are larger and longer than others, some involve elaborate processions and parades with costumed, decorated floats, and some are more private affairs with parties in homes, clubs or schools. One of the most elaborately organized Carnival celebrations in Lombardy is in the city of Bagolino, Bagoss (its dialectal name), that prides itself on its well-­known company of dancers, with traditional costuming and week-­long festivities. The city upholds Rabelaisian customs in the rough and noisy street parties that take place as well as the more elegant dance company performances; as the Lombardy festival guidebook says: ‘To those in masks, all is conceded and all is forgiven’ (Lozzi & Rossi 2007: 29). I observed the tamer, but distinctly place-­based Carnival traditions in Omegna, one of my Piedmont fieldwork cities, which lasts six or seven days. These two very different forms of festive time, despite their differences, demonstrate human universals, which perhaps are the most cogent rationales for their long and enduring existences. The Italy-­wide customs of Carnival and palio exemplify some of the principal themes of this book: how festivals perform place and demonstrate the materiality of foodways, masks, costumes and the festival personae, as Carnival participants honour community and identity.

Some theories on the origins of Carnival The word ‘Carnival’ has many theories as to its etymology, but the most common one encountered in my research is based on Catholicism’s Lenten traditions of fasting and abstaining from meat: ‘carne – vale’, or ‘Meat farewell’. However, like Carnival’s many traditions, the custom of fasting and abstaining from meat at this time of year may well predate Christianity (Gallo Pecca 1987: 17). The days of abstinence in pre-Christian times may have been longer than the forty days of Lent. Luciano Gallo Pecca writes, drawing from Roman Carnival scholar Filippo Clementi, that Lent was initially seventy days, starting from the beginning of February. Thus the traditions of winter festivities were well ingrained in the populace of the Italian peninsula already by the Middle Ages, with the heritage of the Roman festivities of Saturnalia and Lupercalia – so much so that even papal orders could not seem to eradicate them. While delving into differing theories of festive time such as one encounters at the famous Carnival season, Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories on reversal come into focus. Italy’s many festivals offer clear examples of Bakhtinian merriment, materiality, Rabelaisian ribaldry, carnival reversal and occasionally even a hint of the violent festivities highlighted by Bakhtin. This is perhaps not unexpected, due to the medieval

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nature of many of Italy’s festivals, which purposely carry forward the feast of fools to contemporary times, as well as the Carnival, the carnivalesque and various other traditional forms of festive or ‘gay time’, well known in the theories of Bakhtin (1984: 219). Gallo Pecca writes that: ‘In 1207 Pope Innocence III issued a decree which ordered an end to these blasphemous demonstrations; however it was not obeyed and the “Feast of Fools” continued for a long time, until 1400 when various Vatican Councils condemned them’ (1987: 17). The Feast of Fools was the traditional name for the Festum fatuorum – another form of Saturnalia that was tolerated by the Church, and that Gallo Pecca places between 26 December (or St. Stephen’s Day), and Epiphany (1987). In contrast, Bakhtin uses the term Feast of Fools for revelry at various times of year, Carnival as well as other times, when the traditional travesties and reversals of power and authority went on (1984). One clear illustration of ecclesiastic reversal is the Episcopeilo or Episcopus puerorum: a boy chosen from the choir or other sources who would play the role of a priest or a Bishop. The boy might celebrate the Mass and preach a sermon, often making fun of the priests and bishops, asking them searching or ridiculous questions. The reversals common at this time of year have identifiable resonance in my Chapter  3 fieldwork study of Andrista, Lombardy’s Badalisc festival where a forest-­ dwelling serpent monster becomes a kind of moral compass for the town. Whatever the actual origins of Italian Carnival, however old its pedigree, one can see remnants in these numerous related traditions that Bakhtin describes in his studies of universal

Figure 2.1  Traditional Venetian Carnival masks on display in Milan shop window.

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carnival culture (1968, 1984). Bakhtin sees Carnival as maintaining other traditions that were dying out with the industrialization and modernization of the countryside (1984). Arguably the American custom of Halloween has similar overtones – a time when the universals of popular revelry with masking, travesties, reversals and even violence are thrown together.

Materiality and festival reversals It is not surprising that in a heavily Catholic country like Italy, many of its festivals are still today linked to an ecclesiastic calendar, such as the local saints’ days or, in the case of Carnival, Lent. As such, motifs and themes of reversal persist as well. As Bakhtin noted: ‘Carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter. It is a festive life. Festivity is a peculiar quality of all comic rituals and spectacles of the Middle Ages. All these forms of carnival were also linked externally to the feasts of the Church’ (1984: 8). This book examines various forms of materiality in Italy, and therefore it is appropriate to mention the grotesque realism that Bakhtin demonstrates in Rabelais. His grotesque realism emphasized the importance of the bodily and earthy elements of life – often to the point of being sexually graphic or scatological. This correlates in many ways to the embodiment and sensuously placeful elements of the festival fieldwork. Reversals of authority in surprising manners are a key part of Bakhtinian carnival or festive time, and even in the grandly celebrated Sienese Palio there are elements of popular festival reversals and grotesque realism. One example is that the horse has as much authority in a sense as the rider: the horse can win the race, even if the jockey has fallen off. In my fieldwork there are examples of these reversals and of the earthy humour, of parody and laughter, and of festival gay time that one finds in Bakhtin. In the Badalisc festival in Lombardy, a correlation with theories of reversal is demonstrated by the fact that, despite being the Church Feast of Epiphany, a swaying phallic image of a horned serpent scolds the village for its peccadillos – not a priest or town official. In the autumn festival in Paroldo, the village celebrates and honours its folklore and history of local witch/healers, the masche, but the market, feasting and festa are actually set on a saint’s day, the Feast of St. Martin (L’Estate di San Martino). There is an undeniably liberating quality to such holidays and community gatherings, with their alternative sense of temporality and the ensuing newly refreshed senses, awareness, their permission to stretch the boundaries. Also, as many know from studies, from theatre or film, and perhaps their personal experiences of masked revelry, the covering up of one’s identity offers a new sense of freedom to explore other personae, or modes of behaviour. In the US it is a constant of Halloween that people lose themselves in their costuming, and even the most retiring of people may take on another character for the Halloween party or night. These examples show how in contemporary life there are still colourful – and more than merely surviving, actually growing – examples of festive memes and mores from time immemorial, still valid today in our late postmodern era.

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Materiality and the masque The history and representation of Carnival and palio in general varies substantially from region to region in Italy. However, the masques are integral to Italian Carnival overall. These are masked characters, dramatis personae so to speak, that are specific to each region and yet which also often bear resemblance to Italian early theatre forms, the Commedia dell’Arte. The Italian work mentioned above by Gallo Pecca specifically studies Carnival customs in Piedmont. He describes how each town has its own traditional masques, specific to the place. Once again the interweaving of place and festival emerges in a nuanced materiality and performing of place, where for example the masques of Omegna are not the same as the masques of nearby Asti or Biella – Piedmontese cities within the same geographic region (Gallo Pecca 1987). This is true, regionally; and, yet, to underscore the universality of these archetypal celebrations, despite the regional differences, some of the characters fall into similar categories. Typically there are The Young Woman, The Young Man, The Crazy Woman, and The Old Woman. In the Badalisc, across the north in the neighbouring region of Lombardy there are nearly the same archetypal dramatis personae. There is no Crazy Woman character; however, there is a an intriguing element to the role-­playing in the Badalisc, which will be discussed further in Chapter 3 – that no women may impersonate the characters, only men. Venetian masks, with their extraordinary artistry and ornate beauty, have become synonymous with Carnival. Many are universal, archetypal masques, such as Carlo Goldoni and other Italian playwrights used widely in the set stage characters of the Commedia dell’Arte. While Goldoni was from Venice, and the masques are often associated with Venice, or with Venice’s Carnival, they draw from diverse European roots and are used throughout Italy as they were throughout the Commedia theatre (Ferrone 2006). The universality of mischievous Harlequin or sighing Pierrot, the pairs of lovers, the bumbling old man Pantalone and many other instantly recognizable Commedia characters over-­rides restricting regionalisms as they touch shared human experience. I have had the privileged opportunity to participate in various workshops and trainings with a Master (in the Old World sense, a teacher of the highest calibre) from Italy, Antonio Fava, who directs one of the premier Commedia dell’Arte schools in Italy, ArsComicA. In my experience of his training, and also from my own studies, it is clear that there is extraordinary materiality in the power contained in the treatment of and the performers’ regard for the masks. The mask is the character; it bestows or entrusts the character to the performer. When the actor puts it on his or her face, he or she embodies the power of the mask and then becomes the character – whether it is Colombina, Il Dottore (The Doctor), Il Capitano (The Captain) or whichever of the many mask/characters. The profound materiality of the mask – its leather, wood and other artisanal, hand-­structured components, which are styled from the ancient, unchanged forms of Commedia passed down over generations of performers and instilled through centuries of seeing the characters on stage – transmits the character into the actors’ hands, legs, voice, body language. It is an extraordinary transformation to observe. The costume and head-­dress of the Badalisc is similarly powerful. It would

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be unthinkable that someone portraying the fiery-­eyed serpent would use another character’s ways or not carry out his role, according to the festival organizers in Andrista who participated in my fieldwork. Like the Commedia masks, even when the Badalisc costume and mask is at rest, awaiting his festival (and his performer) in the special room in Andrista, he is honoured. These are archetypal universal elements of performance and ritual that transcend time and culture, resisting the fragmenting forces of our society. Fava’s website declares that the power of theatre and the Commedia is enduring, and ‘will not switch off. We are what it is made of ’. Let us turn now to another beloved and enduring tradition, carried forward through ‘the night of time’ (la notte del tempo – an expression I heard often in my fieldwork): Siena’s Palio.

The Palio of Siena We have looked at the more general and widespread forms of Carnival and of masks. Let us discuss the renowned Siena Palio horse race now as festival background and foundation. The Palio horse races that take place each summer in the central square of Siena are remarkable, even within Italy itself with its diverse festivals. They have gone on century after century with historic adrenalin-­charged pageantry, fervent place-­based loyalties and both religious and civic symbolism. When I returned to live in Italy in 2006, after many years away, I was pleased to learn that the remarkable Palio of Siena still existed. That idea is actually laughable, I soon realized, for the mountains of Colorado could disappear before the Sienese would allow their ancient Palio to be disbanded or discontinued. I likewise had forgotten much of what I had learned regarding the many Italian ‘palio’ when previously studying and living in Italy in the 1970s – i.e. that numerous ‘palio’ of every sort take place annually throughout Italy. As described above, the word ‘palio’ actually means a strip of cloth, and referred originally to the artistic banners that accompany the horse race, each conveying the ardently protected symbolism of the teams or neighbourhoods, called ‘contrade’. Jackson and Nevola (2006) give the etymology thus: The word ‘palio’ derives from the Latin word ‘pallium’ meaning a rectangular length of cloth; it also describes the banner that constitutes the prize for the victor, and gives its name to the race itself. In the past, the term also had the meaning of baldachin or canopy, such as that used for ceremonial processions and entries. The Palio then brings together these meanings in a highly ritualized contest that is played out in the city’s streets and central square, the Piazza del Campo. 2006: 137

I soon saw that throughout Italy there were also many more of various kinds, including new festivals of a similar sort being developed. The race is doubly exciting, for it is very dangerous and requires huge daring and equestrian control. For one thing, Siena is

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built on a hilltop, so the square is slanted; furthermore the riders are bareback, an additional challenge requiring skill and courage. As noted earlier, it is significant that the horse may win the race without his or her jockey – a further testament to the power of the contrada identity, and the great respect given the racehorses. There is an interconnected placefulness (Casey 1996) that makes the Palio’s materiality and place-­based history particularly striking. The seventeen contrade can be described in many ways. In an extremely simplified description they could be called carefully delineated neighbourhoods where the teams live, which they are. However, the natives and residents consider themselves to be ‘city states’ with their own flags, governments and constitutions (Dundes & Falassi 1975, 1984; Parsons 2004). The geographic areas designating these seventeen remaining contrade (reduced from many more in earlier centuries) were established in 1729, and ‘have remained constant to this day’ (Parsons 2004: 48). The contrade combine elements from medieval guilds and from military organizations, maintaining the fervent loyalty that could define them as a city-­state unto themselves within the former city-­state of Siena. ‘In Siena, it is now routinely said, each contrada is indeed like a city-­state, exciting and inspiring a loyalty from its members that is comparable only to patriotism or to a deeply-­felt sense of national identity’ (Parsons 2004: 106). Within the streets of each contrada confines, the members create their costumes and have their ceremonies; their loyalties and rivalries are extraordinarily intense. Alan Dundes and Alessandro Falassi wrote in their now classic work: ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the contrada to all those who belong to it’ (1975, 1984: 19).

Figure 2.2  Doorway decoration to headquarters of Siena’s Goose contrada.

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One could spend a lifetime studying the symbolism that goes into each Palio – (and indeed, many have done so) – whether focusing scholarship on the ornately painted banners that each contrada preserves in its museum, their drappelloni, or the rituals and traditions that each contrada carries out. (Thank you to Gerald Parsons for clarification on the drappelloni traditions.) The materiality and place-­based power illustrated by the Palio belief systems and living religion is intimated as well as demonstrated in the traditions around the honoured drappelloni, the animal symbols and other images that represent each of the contrade. On one visit I had the privilege of an inside tour with a member of one of the contrade, the Oca or goose. Among the Nature-­based symbols that define these communities inside the Palio are the goose, snail, panther, eagle, female wolf, owl, caterpillar, forest and wave.

‘Terra in piazza’ – materiality of place, object, dirt and manure Other elements, objects and auspicious events exemplify the potent placeful and senseful quality of this event. For example, Piazza del Campo can be translated as the ‘Square of the Field’. The fountain in the piazza is called Fonte Gaia, ‘Gaia’s Fountain’ or ‘Gaia’s Source’ (Dundes & Falassi 1975, 1984: 200–201, 229; Parsons 2004: 23, 62–63). This ancient, vibrant heart of Siena is the place where centuries of ritual – in addition to the Palio – have taken place. Parsons writes, ‘So central to Sienese civil life did the Campo become that it has even been argued that the history of the Campo is the history of Siena’ (2004: 23). As the race approaches, the piazza is filled with earth from the countryside, and this annual moment is felt profoundly by the Sienese as an auspicious, happy signal. LaChapelle pointed out in her studies of Siena that a local vernacular saying to cheer someone up or express optimism for the future is: ‘There will soon be dirt in the piazza!’ (1995: 161). The earthy relationship with place and its very soil is evidenced by this evocative Sienese saying, which Dundes and Falassi’s book is entitled, La Terra in Piazza (1975, 1984). The phrase’s popularity and importance are supported by my own inquiries in Siena. Sienese materiality is shown in their identification with the actual soil from a specific location: when a baby is born, to mark or claim him or her for a particular contrada, earth from the specific family contrada is placed beneath the mother and baby’s bed in the hospital (Dundes & Falassi 1975, 1984; Parsons 2004). LaChapelle examines how we can learn to communicate at all levels with our fellow inhabitants in a location – including between the human and the other-­than-human; she sees ritual as key to this communication. Through ritual an eco-­psychological healing element emerges as we become embodied, in place, finding and locating ourselves through eating and performing place in festival. Certainly, a Sienese contradiolo, a contrada member, who has lost her or his membership, or moved too far away for it to be part of life, would lose a huge part of her or his identity. The term mentioned in Chapter 1 would apply, spaesato, without a home, nation, identity. This remarkable identity with place, with a neighbourhood – its streets, churches, fountains – is reinvigorated and performed once more each year through the Palio preparations and races.

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The physicality of the Palio is heightened by the dangers already mentioned for horse and rider as well as by the surging masses of people: ‘The crowd must be first of all concrete and sensual. Even the pressing throng, the physical contact of bodies, acquires a certain meaning’ (Bakhtin 1984: 255). A point highlighted by Parsons has remained a benchmark for me in gauging the power of a festival’s place-­based connection – whether a festival is for tourists, or for the residents and natives themselves: The purpose of all these activities is far from being anachronistic or backward-­ looking, nor are they for the benefit of tourists, however much modern tourists may be charmed or fascinated by them. On the contrary, these are profoundly contemporary rituals; and they are the rituals of a city and of a people who perform them for themselves and their own purposes and who would do so whether tourists were present or not. 2004: 159

The renowned race and festival has been studied, examined and idealized by a host of authors. Many have focused on the devotion to the Madonna that is at the heart of the Palio, or the dedications to St. Catherine of Siena in some contrade. However, not many have specifically reviewed the Palio’s fervent identification with and embodiment of place. The Palio is remarkable in many aspects, but also in that there is a well-­ documented historical consistency in this enormous community ritual. The horse race as we know it today was based on earlier types of festivals and competitions. Dundes and Falassi give 1238 as the first documented race, but note that it is almost undoubtedly much older. The events that triggered the enduring Sienese Madonna devotion go back to the thirteenth century, to the Battle of Monteaperti, September 1260, fought between Guelph and Ghibelline forces. The Sienese citizens’ awareness of this event is similar to the Battle of Hastings for a British person, or perhaps the Battle of Gettysburg or the Alamo for an American. The site of the Monteaperti battle has been conscientiously preserved in the Tuscan countryside. The depth ecology (Kohák 2000: 114–122), materiality and relationship with place that their Palio gives the Sienese is highlighted in the sacredness that the Sienese attribute to every symbol connected with their contrada and elaborately theatrical ritual of the Palio. Everything connected with the districts or contrade has an integrally sacred meaning, which still may contain a deeply ‘earthy’ aspect: even horse manure is deemed sacred or at least fortuitous in the contrade. If the horse that is being blessed in one of the contrade chapels defecates, that is celebrated as a good sign for the success of his or her running. It is observed in silence, as well – no cheering or raucous recognition is permitted. The manure is left in the chapel and is duly noted as an auspicious sign of a good race (Parsons 2004; Amberti, pers. comm. 26 October 2007). The attention to manure is a Rabelaisian element; however, the silence and reverence it receives is less so. Nonetheless, it is an eloquent symbol of how the sacred and the mundane in the Palio festival are interwoven. (Some regarding this with a conservative Catholic eye might say not mundane, but the ‘profane’ (Parsons 2004: 113–115)). There is another particularly striking symbol of deeply held materiality in Siena, which is the power imbued in the drapelloni. These are the magnificent and elaborately

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decorated banners that each contrada creates newly every year, which they hold dear, process ceremoniously before the races, and then keep from year to year on exhibition. The simple act of touching the drapellone can confer a blessing and good luck to the whole contrada, or to the individual rider (Parsons 2004: 134–135). Siena’s ritualized materiality and embodiment of culture, across centuries, offer a particularly powerful combination in its fabled and enduring Palio. The horse races and their myriad rituals involving the earth, the created environments and objects of each contrada ‘state’, demonstrate profound materiality and relationality, which weave together Nature, community and the sacred.

Embodiment and exteriorization The various events observed for this book illustrate that some festivals are more theatrical and more elaborately ritualized than others. Some of these involve traditional costumes, or costumes and masks; some do not. In the case of Paroldo, no elaborate costuming is involved, but there is an antiquated style of dress often worn voluntarily by participants, including the masche black cloaks. These signal local heritage, awareness of local traditions and support of the village’s history brought back by some village nonprofit organizations. Some of that same tradition of dressing in costuming and in cloaks was reflected in Milan’s Celtic New Year, as the following chapters discuss. In the case of the Pagan community in Italy, as elsewhere in the world, ritual dress and stylized garb contribute to the creation of communitas from which this emerging new religious movement derives its sense of identity or belonging. In Italy this is a form of belonging that is also highlighted by feasting with certain recipes, local foods, in specific Pagan calendrical gatherings. However, whether elaborately ritualized or not, whether expressed in costuming or not, as Grimes points out, there is embodiment, even in the most ‘ordinary’ of ritualization (2006: 35). Bonds with place and community, combined with loyalty to home can be perceived in the simplest of forms; some of these traditions or rituals may express authentic embodiment and materiality, with little or no commodification. In his early article on masking (1975), Grimes looks at four possible interpretations of ‘masking’ where he delineates ‘a phenomenology of exteriorization’: ‘concretion, concealment, embodiment and expression’ (1975: 508). To venture a further step, this book theorizes that not only the mask or costume, but also the festival with its rituals and foodways, all become part of the phenomenology of exteriorization. Grimes’ categorization of embodiment expresses the celebrations of community and place made real and tangible in the festivals observed. As Grimes discusses, the performer can achieve an embodiment of the truth of his mask (1975). Costumes or ritual garb exteriorize the locals’ sense of and bond with place and home, not through exact historical representation, but through symbolism. The costumes and masks, the personae represented in essence, become archetypes or metaphors for the place itself. This echoes a concept that Gardiner cites: ‘Carnival itself was often personified as “nature” ’ (Burke 1978 cited in Gardiner 1993: 771). It was clear that in some of the festivals observed in my fieldwork – whether through the medium of the local foods,

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pumpkin, truffles, risotto, or through sausages and polenta, whether through a serpent costume or a witch’s cloak and hat – materiality of Nature was personified and embodied. Through this embodiment of place, Nature as the other-­than-human became a participant in the festivals in one form or another. Watson writes on his theories of performing place (2003) that: ‘a focus on embodied practices through which people engage with the materiality of a site gives a means of transcending the dichotomy of nature and culture as it can be applied, in different formulations, to our understanding of place’ (2003: 148). These festival embodiments speak to the power of the place and its potential to act: place and the other-­than-human show themselves to us through the festival forms. The human experience of place can be made visible and exteriorized through the materiality of dress, costuming and of food. The next section now looks specifically at foodways.

Part two – food and feasting – eating and drinking to sacralize place Ingesting place in France and Italy We have discussed food as a component of festival and its materiality; we have regarded the domus and the domestic nuances of eating well, ‘Si mangia bene’. Now the focus comes onto foodways from a larger perspective. When we eat anything, its elements enter deeply into our cells, organs, taking all it is made of integrally into ourselves. Unlike so much that we take for granted and that we speed through mindlessly, or commercialize and commoditize, eating should instead be a sacred act. At the very least, food preparation and eating should be thoughtfully and mindfully enacted. The local food movement has highlighted and underscored this idea and ethos, as have the internationally known Slow Food organization, the philosophical and environmental fields called Deep Ecology and also certain spiritual or religious traditions. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches how to practise mindfulness while eating a piece of fruit – chewing slowly, holding awareness of the rains that fed the tree and the soil, the sunlight that danced on the leaves of the tree, the hands that worked the Earth, picked the fruit, transported it (1991: 21–24; Zen retreat, London March 2012). Others in the academic realm also have written on how one may ingest place, such as in traditionally food-­aware European countries like France. Leynse’s ‘Journeys through Ingestible Topography’ (Leynse 2006) describe French children as being socialized into this awareness at a very young age, a theory that is applicable to my observations about Italian food customs; there is a sacredness in Italy found in eating together, honouring the experience of commensality, being tutti a tavola (at the dining table together). Leynse describes people with gastronomic awareness of the geography of their food as ‘situated eaters’ (2006: 129), and she observes how food festivals offer opportunities for learning a bioregion while relaxing and savouring its flavours. ‘Food-­festivals are particularly suited to this task, as they

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often combine nostalgia for “simpler” days with entertaining, convivial community gatherings’ (2006: 148). Awareness and politicizing of food production is a mode of consciousness that has grown in Italy as well as in France. In Italy the gastronomic sagra has become a popular arena for these situated eaters’ leisure times. Leynse also makes pertinent points regarding the commercialization that can occur at such festivals in her French fieldwork, capitalizing on the ‘nostalgia’ people feel in the West for simpler foods and greater contact with food at its point of origin. Beyond the political aspects, as Leynse observes about France, ‘The overall ambiance lends itself to an enjoyable performance and experience of a given locale, and is, thus, an excellent site for socialization of place-­ based food habits and an overall sense of place’ (Leynse 2006: 148). This statement applies equally to Italy. Many of my fieldwork participants referred to economic and socio-­political themes throughout our interviews. Piedmont’s Slow Food organization began with a philosophy and ethos of ‘slow living’, which founder Carlo Petrini and others saw as an antidote to the destructive patterns of post-­postmodern lifestyles (Andrews 2008). Its origins were as a means of cultural resistance, before moving on to the maintenance and restoration of heritage seeds, plants, varieties of produce or breeds. Therefore, gastronomic awareness of place gives rise to embodied sense experiences of place through food, which in turn can offer other diverse gifts to a community as well as to individuals. Some of those gifts may not only be physically nutritional, but fortify the spirit with lived religious traditions.

From Slow Food to ‘Eataly’ Baldoli has emphasized, and rightly so, that two prominently enduring poles of influence in Italy, Communism and Catholicism, had helped for some decades in the latter half of the twentieth century to restrain consumer habits and runaway American style development (2012). Nevertheless, consumerism and development have made advances. Consequently, it seems a book on Italy and food in the twenty-­first century should have at least a brief mention of the enterprising Italian initiative, ‘Eataly’, born in 2007. Italian businessman Oscar Farinetti began the run-­away commercial success in Turin (Torino) in 2007. Despite having been conceived and created by an Italian, Eataly ultimately brings ‘Italianness’ in an Americanized fashion to the world, originally with a food mega-­store, born in Turin, in the Piedmont region. (This region is a focus in this book, another reason why a mention is warranted.) Farinetti has ultimately teamed up with a well-­educated Italian-American chef, Mario Batali, who has contributed enormously to the enterprise’s success with books, a television show and so forth. Despite its commodification of Italian foodways, Eataly reveals the influences of its birth in a region with not only deep Communist and Socialist roots, but also with the well-­known Piedmont neighbour, Slow Food. Eataly prominently offers its ‘Manifesto’ on the walls of the stores and cafes, on its glamorous website and in its proliferating books. Among the tenets espoused by Eataly are two that relate very much to themes of Italianità, Italianness and to eating well – ‘Si mangia bene’ – some concepts

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elucidated in this book and by my research participants. Here is an excerpt from the Eataly ‘Manifesto’: 0. WE’RE IN LOVE WITH FOOD. We love high quality food and drink. We love the stories about it, the people who produce it, the places it comes from. 1. FOOD UNITES US ALL. Good food brings all of us together, and helps us find a common point of view. We believe that one of the greatest sources of joy is what happens around a dinner table. https://www.eataly.com/

As of writing Eataly had spread its megastore supercentres across the world, from numerous new sites in the Americas, to Asia and throughout the Middle East. Among its initiatives the organization offers classes and publishes a magazine. It plans to open a Disney-­like food theme park, sprawling over twenty acres, with thousands of fruit trees, twenty-­five restaurants, children’s rides and so forth. This is taking shape near Bologna, in another Italian region renowned for its historic culinary traditions and history, Emilia-Romagna. Perhaps these twenty-­first century developments demonstrate how the themes of this book are all the more needed and significant – even in Italy.

Food and the sacred Finding the divine in the kitchen, in the home and in the fields is an idea that is innate culturally, if not religiously, to Italians. This is perhaps part of the classical inheritance from ancient Paganism, and also through the profound Catholicism of the country. The ritualizing of food and eating in semi or fully religious terms is a theme that returned consistently in my fieldwork at the festivals – even with diverse communities such as the Catholic organizers of the Badalisc and the Pagans of the Druid and Wiccan communities. Similar sentiments on the sacredness of communal sharing of local food were expressed by many of my fieldwork participants. Alchemy is likewise a familiar theme to Italians, whether Pagan or Catholic, in this land with a heritage of Renaissance and medieval magicians; the same applies to the theological components of the Catholic Eucharist. Some of my fieldwork participants spoke, as have author Stefania Bettinelli’s research participants (2002), revealing that they perceived a kind of transubstantiation of the foodstuffs via communal feasting; others perceived a religious symbolism and mystery in how grain is milled, risotto and polenta made. These are powerful and pertinent metaphors for this study, with its focus on the power of the material. Cibi rituali are ritual foods involved in certain feast days such as Easter or winter feasts (Tak 2000), as well as in the Italian Pagans’ feasting. Bettinelli’s published thesis brings in pertinent associations between food and the sacred, themes that constantly emerged in my fieldwork. Bettinelli discusses a popular Italian folk singer, Francesco Guccini, and the powerful influence on his music from

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the rural countryside of his home (2002). Bettinelli’s work illustrates a literal case of performing place and identifies certain sites that have a particularly profound sense of place for Guccini; one is the river where he spent so much of his childhood and its old mill, focal points of the community there. Bettinelli’s work underscores not only the sacrality the singer found there, but the strong genius loci with which others in the community there identify as well. Bettinelli offers insights into Italian culture by using alchemical symbolism; her descriptions show how the immanent divinity or genius loci permeates and imbues food. She writes of the mill: ‘The symbolism in situ of the quasi-­ alchemical transformation of the wheat kernels or the chestnuts into flour, (is) an operation which is otherwise quite everyday’ (Bettinelli 2002: 107–108). There is religious symbolism in the mill’s architectural structure, which she calls altar-­like (2002: 108), and through its movement as the grain is milled. Milling grain or chestnuts for such staples of the rural Italian diet as polenta, pasta and bread becomes an alchemical act: ‘All four elements (water, air, earth, fire) combine together with other symbols including those of a religious type to give place a metamorphosis, where the energy of the water represents birth, the loss of form represents death, flour is resurrection, and bread is communion’ (2002: 108). I have frequently been intrigued by the alchemical symbolism one can observe in gardening and in cooking. An example that has always struck me, as a gardener and cook, is to see rich, dark compost emerge from kitchen clippings and waste. In my mind it depicts alchemical symbolism of gold coming from lead, the richly nourishing compost, sprung transformed from the simplest of leftover food scraps. There is a profound and earthy materiality, locating sacredness in a mill, in making flour, in enriching the soil with composted waste. The sacred and the religious are found intertwined in the most ‘ordinary’ of places and actions, particularly when a community or a whole society stops and focuses its attention on simple acts, such as preparing food and eating together. Foodways include many nuances, which can involve history, inculturated traditions – and the sacredness of that which sustains life.

Ritual as festival, festival as ritual The embodiment of place and engagement with place through food and eating are even more potent when done in an annual, ceremonial manner. For example, in the festivals in Omegna, northern Piedmont, the imagery of the food cooked on or beside the lake in an enormous pan adds to the placeful symbolism there. The pan is in a sense anthropomorphized and its materiality is celebrated as ‘she’ (the word for pan in Italian is feminine) is given a name from the river that flows into the lovely mountain lake beside the city. The pan’s name is ‘La Nigogliotta’; it plays on words with a double meaning, as it is named for the river but also for the Italian term for greedy or eager eater. (Omegna, its festivals and the pan are discussed in Chapter 4.) Further enhancing this ritualized sense of food, communal eating becomes sacred in some of the participants’ points of view. In a Catholic country, where food plays a potent social and symbolic role, one can easily envision a correlation arising between ritualized commensality and communion in the Catholic Mass. Orsi gives many examples of food’s power in relation to bonds with home and family, the sacred domus,

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as part of community festival in his study of Italian-Americans in New York City’s Harlem (2002). Bettinelli’s observations make the religious relationship to foodstuffs very clear by using the terms ‘transmutation’ and ‘alchemy’, while seeing symbolism in the bread flour being milled as ‘resurrection’ and ‘communion’ (Bettinelli 2002: 107– 108). Chapter 4 on Piedmont looks at perspectives on food where it is perceived to have a ‘redeeming power’, a phrase used by one of the participants in the Omegna festival, and applicable to many of the festivals discussed here. Grimes makes the distinction and observation that ritual happens anywhere and everywhere (2006), seeming to bristle at the idea that rituals only take place in ‘sacred places’ or hallowed halls or landscapes. He points out that rituals and ritualizing often take place in very ordinary places and times, as much as we late modern cultures might like to deny it or squash it. ‘For most scholars the gods lurk in the details; for ritual studies scholars, sometimes in quite ordinary details. [. . .] One of the great difficulties in studying ritual is that participants, as well as scholars, miss the utter ordinariness that suffuses rites, even those that are formal and elevated’ (Grimes 2006: 89). Some of the festivals in this study elevate this ‘utter ordinariness’. Such a mundane quality has a groundedness, an authenticity that, far from diminishing the power of the ritual meals, rather enhances the potential for engaging with materiality and with place. Other factors could dispel the deeper sense of place, or cut the connection made by the newly constructed bridge of ritual and festival, allowing it to drop back into a perceived human/Nature abyss. These might be such factors as insensitive tourism, commercialism and commodification, or the drawing of exaggerated numbers of visitors who have no clear understanding of what the event expresses. It is obviously a delicate balance for the festivals: how to nurture authenticity and place-­power, while still developing markets, processions, performances – whatever will draw the numbers of participants that rapidly de-­populating rural areas desire. Some of the research participants have revealed their search for this balance. An annual community festival can – and often does – have elements of a ritual, but a ritual is not always a festival. There are rituals or festivals that express sense of place, that offer poetics of place more distinctly or consciously than others. The delicate moment of crossing the human–Nature gulf can occur even in an urbanized setting like central Milan. Whether an urban place or a rural one seems to have less importance. Festivals can create liminal space and time with heterotopic temporality, due to the qualities of the individual events themselves, as well as the specific agency and materiality of place, its place-­power.

Campanilismo as seen in foods and environments of home Certain areas of Italy have ingrained reasons for seeing their traditions, their dialect, their foodways, as far superior to any others – establishing where it is that ‘one eats well’. In Italy each region was in ancient times not merely a distinct region, but a city state, where within even a small geographic region like today’s Tuscany, Siena made war on Florence, Lucca on Siena, and so forth. Venice itself was a Republic for 1,000 years – a source of enormous Venetian pride and regional loyalty. Florence has an equally elevated sense of superiority derived from aspects of its history, including the linguistic

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achievement of its dialect having been the model for the creation of the Italian language in the nineteenth century. Italian foodways may convey a more deeply inculcated cultural sense of identity than simple regional differences. Remembering how often Italy has been criss-­crossed and traumatized by legions of invading tribes, cultures and armies, Baldoli, in her fine history of Italy, argues that ‘Local cuisine distinguished Italians from their invaders. [. . .] Gastronomic guides of Italy appeared from the thirteenth century onwards. It was food more than language that unified Italy in the nineteenth century’ (2009: 289). Nonetheless, fierce campanilismo is also a keystone and earmark of divisions and rivalries existing within Italian culture. This concept was mentioned in Chapter 1, and understanding it is key to understanding Italy. Campanilismo consistently emerges in Italian bonds with place, traditions, foodways and community. Tak describes in an earlier article: ‘campanilismo can be seen as a non-­institutionalized and quasi-­mystic notion that involves the expression of positive sentiments towards one’s own community’ (Cohen 1977: 107, cited in Tak, 1990: 90). Consequently, the potent materiality of both natural and built environments contributes to the sense in residents of their festivals’ power and deep significance. As in my Piedmont fieldwork,‘apotropaic’ structures – protective icons and images – abound in Italy, north and south. Foods prepared and eaten within these protected spaces reverberate with a quasi-­ecclesiastic and certainly a religious resonance. There is a powerful belief complex that one’s own protective structures, places, icons, are more effective than the neighbouring towns’ or regions’. This is a form of built or natural environment-­derived materiality and place-­ power. I argue that these beliefs and philosophies offer a form of European animism; we will see this emerge in the festival interviews. Tak’s studies point out that the genius loci of southern Italy is different from the classical understanding of an immanent deity or spirit in a place, which enhances the aura or power of that location. In the traditional southern Italian framework, one’s connection with the countryside may come through a sense of its genius loci being a guardian spirit that protects a community from evil. Tak examines popular or indigenous traditions there (243) regarding ghosts, witches and spells, such as those involved in Evil Eye, and he shows how these required their own rituals: ‘Townsmen saw Nature and country as dangerous and uncivilized, the result being that country chapels and saints were considered a form of ritual protection. [. . .] In winter the town surrounded by an empty and dangerous countryside, was protected by a belt of chapels of saints-­protectors against illness’ (Tak 2000: 79). In Chapter  4, Paroldo’s folklore asserts that there is a ‘belt’ of protective materiality woven through centuries-­old belief and ritual around the little village, issuing from the gaze of carved images on two church towers. Their ancient circle of protection is bound and held, so to speak, by their church towers. What greater illustration of campanilismo could one find, than protective bell towers, watching over a community? The power of campanilismo to suggest what is superior in one’s own community also applies to foodways and all that is involved with culinary traditions. Even the smallest element of how a dish is prepared can change from small village to the next small village, and cause huge debate and disparagement. For example in Omegna, the native green gourd, la zucca (which we translate as pumpkin), is honoured and

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incorporated into a variety of recipes: risotto with pumpkin, ravioli stuffed with pumpkin and so forth. In other parts of the north, the ubiquitous chestnut is celebrated. Cakes, pastas, sauces – all can be made from chestnuts. These are only two examples of local, easily-­found foods that saved communities from starvation in times of war and famine. In the Second World War, to use only one example of from Italy’s long history of war, invasion and devastation, Italians learned to cook and eat – beautifully and tastefully – anything that was at hand. Thus eating is valued and indeed considered sacred when within living memory there are well-­known histories of extreme want and deprivation. These histories had an impact on Petrini as he and his colleagues founded Slow Food with both political and culinary goals: resisting the destruction of Italian culinary mores, traditions and sacralized commensality made evident in dining, as well as trying to protect small farmers across Italy. Today, as an international organization, they are working to develop that awareness abroad. As Petrini announced at a public conference in Colorado: ‘This is the incredible thing: we influence politics by how we eat’ (Denver, 16 July 2017). Foodways are a celebration of one’s own society, as well as one’s own recipes. These loyalties are enduring enough to survive diaspora, as Orsi has shown in his work in New York City and Sapelli discusses in his studies of Italy’s internal migrations (1995). A community looks to preserve a sense of identity through remembered, shared traditions emphasizing home, place, history and, individually, their Mamma’s or Nonna’s (Grandmother’s) kitchen and family tavola, table or dining habits. One of my Piedmont fieldwork participants, Ossian D’Ambrosio, observed ‘We are tribal people’ (pers. comm. November 2016).

Conclusion Community festival is a vibrant means of accessing, reinforcing and promoting performative genres that celebrate place, lived religious tradition and home. The heterotopic and heterochronic (Foucault 1998, 2000) time-­out-of-­ordinary-time experienced in annual community rituals offers possibilities for phenomenologies of exteriorization and materiality. These deliver permission to postmodern society to move into states of mind allowing other knowledge – or perhaps, Other knowledge – to slip through. This is one remarkable gift of festival that can easily be overlooked in the quest for commercial return or development in a town or region. This chapter has examined the following questions: Why study festival in Italy? How is this linked to discussions of materiality, animism and lived religion? Why are festival foodways likewise worthy of research? The next chapters further these discussions through thick description of my festival fieldwork in northern Italy. These illustrate the theories and themes of place, vernacular religion, materiality and embodiment, through food and other experiences, which have been introduced and explored in these two opening chapters.

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Community, Tradition and Festivals in Lombardy

This chapter moves into the thick description from the ethnographic research. It is split into two parts, however both are rooted in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. Two festivals are reviewed here, testing the intersections between fieldwork research and critical theories. One is a small community festival in a tiny village on a high Alpine mountainside, held in January each year: the Festa del Badalisc, the Badalisc Festival. It is a traditional festival, perhaps the longest consistently running and most ancient of all that are reviewed in the book. Part two provides a sharp contrast, as it discusses a large urban festival in the heart of Milan, Capodanno Celtico, Celtic New Year. It ran for twelve years but is no longer held due to the underlying political organization and motives that gave rise to the festival. However, the engagement with place and materiality of both natural and built environments and lived religion that are central in the research are valid and ongoing. Therefore both Lombardy festivals remain part of the discussions. The new religious movements of Paganism, specifically Wicca and Druidry, which contribute in large form to Chapters  4 and 5, are introduced in this chapter. These communities were involved in Celtic New Year in Milan, Capodanno Celtico, thus illustrating critical theories on networks, the ruralization of the city in Italy and multivocality of the Other, both human and other-­than-human. Foucault’s theories of the heterotopia and other festival theories are illustrated in both the Badalisc and Celtic New Year. Theories of civil religion as related to Italy and in particular to the festivals discussed in this chapter are also examined here. Civil religion is a sociological concept examined extensively by Robert Bellah in his well-­known essay ‘Civil Religion in America’ (1970). A theme that runs through civil religious discussions, whether about America, the UK or other nations, is the idea that such traditions are ‘a collection of beliefs, symbols and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity’ (1970: 175). The chapter tests these concepts in regard to Milan’s Celtic New Year due to the involvement of a political party, the League (Lega).

Part one – Sense of place, relationship and identity in Lombardy We ‘montanari’ here, mountain people, we have a huge sense of place. Marco Casalini, pers. comm. 5 January 2008

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Food, Festival and Religion Milan is a city where instead of stars you have words . . . words in Piazza Duomo . . . where people talk to each other. Valentina Minoglio, pers. comm. 18 October 2008

This chapter discusses two areas of Lombardy: a tiny village to the north of Milan in the mountains, called Andrista; and then the city of Milan. One case study, that of Andrista, theorizes that a possible source of the potent local identity and interanimation with place may derive from pre-Christian rock carvings in the area, and the folklore inspired by them. The chapter explores other concepts such as the nuanced experience of the Other and related theories of awareness that arise through the heterotopia of the festival (Foucault 1998; Rodman 2003). Communities reveal their bonds with place through carnivalesque exteriorization of place embodied in performance, costumes, masks and food. The materiality of place and of certain elements such as the festival foodways, the actual mask and costuming, exemplify some of the foundational theories discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. We begin with the highest and smallest village in the fieldwork, Andrista.

The annual festival of the Badalisc1 Perched precipitously on a high Alpine mountainside, above the long glacial valley known as ‘Valcamonica’, in the far north of Lombardy, is a hamlet called Andrista. Its population is approximately 100 or so inhabitants year-­round. Despite its small size, Andrista is rich in folklore and festival traditions. One of my participants claimed that no matter where natives are, on 5 January each year their hearts will be turning towards home, knowing that townspeople are cooking traditional recipes, lighting torches or bonfires, preparing to celebrate the return of their beloved serpent, the Badalisc. The first year I made the journey up through the snowy valley to attend the festival, as the road turned sharply to climb upwards towards the towering peak above, l’Adamello (under which tiny Andrista hangs), I realized that bonfires dotted the hillsides. The fires were easily visible on the valley floor miles below, and amidst our surprise my companions and I laughed at first, saying that they were preparing to roast the mysterious creature caught at the hunt. We did not realize we were about to enter a liminal space, nor that the bonfires in fields and barnyards were in fact part of the festival traditions. The snow began to fall more heavily on the narrow mountain road and the darkness grew deeper in the Alpine night. As we arrived in the tiny village, it became quickly apparent that this was not a large, commercialized event, but rather a small, entirely local one. From the outset we had the sense that we were entering into an ancient custom in the high mountains. There was no place to stay in the tiny hamlet of Andrista, where the festival was being prepared – not due to hotels or inns being full, but rather because there were none. We continued past it up the mountain to the next village, Cevo. At our inn, literally in the last and highest corner of town before a mountainous nature preserve, the innkeeper enquired, obviously curious, if it were the festival that had brought us there. The innkeeper was Marco Casalini, native, resident and business owner, whose mother later cooked for us; he gave two interviews during this and another visit,

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contributing helpful background on the traditions. We had a chat and a hot drink, preparing ourselves for the snowy trek back down the mountain to Andrista. (It helped my fall and winter fieldwork in the mountains and rural areas of northern Italy enormously that I am accustomed to driving in Colorado’s mountains, and also have lived and worked in the Andes. Some of the roads the fieldwork led me on were at times treacherous going.) During our first interview, I asked Mario about people’s bonds with their village. As cited at the head of this chapter, Mario was passionate about their profound connection: ‘We “montanari” here, mountain people, we have a huge sense of place’ (pers. comm. 5 January 2008). He described how in other valleys, when people are asked where they come from, they will identify themselves with the valley. He asserted that in Valcamonica, when asked that, locals will answer instead with the specific name of their village or town. An interesting linguistic note Mario pointed out was that their dialects are entirely different from one village to another, to the point of being unintelligible to outsiders. He made a statement that captured the strength of this regional identity and sense of place: ‘The dialect brings its history from very ancient roots. It’s literally a paradigm unto itself that the dialect expresses, which contains the history of a place’ (2008). As another example he spoke of Cevo’s own masked character, giving a succinct portrayal of embodiment and cultural identification where campanilismo and sense of place merge in interesting forms. Despite the close proximity – 5 kilometres – Mario claimed he had never seen the Badalisc celebration. Cevo’s winter festival character is called the ‘Basilisc’, and it returns each year during their Carnival season; Mario made an interesting observation on their creature, which silently shows his materiality and embodiment of place: Ours is a big goat, rather than a serpent. While theirs walks, ours leaps, cavorts around and jumps. While the Badalisc in Andrista talks and gives this collection of gossip from all the community, ours remains silent. People can look into their own hearts and see if their behaviour has been good or bad. Theirs talks and talks, but ours is silent. It’s more in touch with or in keeping with the mountains and with mountain people’s culture, which is very silent. pers. comm. 5 January 2009

When we asked about the snow falling that night, Mario remarked sadly that it had been ‘rotten snow’ in recent years – not the kind that used to fall in decades past. Its wet texture had prevented the development of ski facilities in the area, which understandably, as owner of a high country inn, he seemed disappointed by. Mario predicted that the snow wouldn’t settle. His prognosis was correct: the next day the snow did have a strange quality to it, dripping off the trees in unusual patterns. We ended the interview and Mario drew a little map to show the way down the mountain to Andrista.

The hunt of the Badalisc and his sermon Icy Alpine fog and mist obscured our way to the village below, all of which enhanced the feeling of a ‘time outside of time’ there on the frosty hillside, as well as the bonfires

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blazing here and there. We felt that we were about to witness an ancient winter rite with a seeming ring of authenticity. After the long drive up into the mountains from Milan, we were also looking forward to warming ‘comfort food’; the festival posters advertised their traditional meal of the ‘Polenta del Badalisc’ and its accompanying sausages or locally made stew. One of my principal informants on the Festa del Badalisc is Paola Maffessoli, who is a fundamental part of the festa’s organization. Her family appears to be central in the Badalisc festival as her brother Marco has played major roles in the planning and creation of the ritualized street theatre of the Badalisc’s speech for many years. No matter what, the 5th of January, (people) try to be in Andrista. They keep other commitments and bonds with the town, such as the festivals at the end of July (the patroness Madonna) or in November for the Day of the Dead when we all go to the cemetery. These are times for coming home. We have young couples who have moved away, but they come back on the 5th of January, with their children, sometimes travelling miles and miles, to be at the Festival of the Badalisc. pers. comm. 5 January 2008

However, some in the village may feel a certain sense of dread regarding the evening’s ritual, if they have some peccadillo to hide, or have fallen out with fellow villagers – particularly those involved with the writing of the Badalisc’s speech. The horned serpent constitutes a surprising form of communal conscience for the hamlet. The modern community centre in the middle of the tiny hamlet contrasts sharply with the ancient church and churchyard, as well as with the rustic old mountain village. As we approached it, we realized that a crowd was waiting in the freezing night, chatting amiably while trying to keep warm and waiting for the hunt of the monster to commence. As the ritual commenced, people began to climb the alleyways of the old village, following the costumed, masked characters with their torches, and so we followed along. No one seemed to realize we were foreigners, or, if they did, it did not seem to matter. There was an excited buzz of mixed dialect and Italian, with costumed little children accompanying their families, as we all trailed behind the ‘hunting party’. Some villagers peered out the windows of their warmly lit homes, participating from inside. There was an evocative sense of ancient street pageantry – in a simple form – as the ritualized liminal space enveloped the wintry Alpine night and the hunt began. The traditional annual characters were dressed in their specific costumes, that must be part of the ritual – the townsfolk as well as Paola described the ‘cast of characters’ as being absolutely required. The costumed figures climb the mountainside holding their torches and calling out in guttural tones, looking for the monster. Women traditionally were not even allowed to observe the hunt, and that has only been changed recently. However, no women may play roles in the rigidly choreographed ritual. The masked characters, which annually are required to be present, are: The Old Woman or Grandma (Nonna or La Vecchietta), The Young Woman (La Signorina), The Old Man or Grandpa (Nonno or Il Vecchietto). These are the archetypal figures that accompany the hunt. An intriguing character is a figure who

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purifies the village pathways, ceremoniously clearing them for the Badalisc’s entrance. He grandly and sombrely sweeps the cobblestones with a huge, old-­fashioned broom. In one of our interviews, unbidden, Paola explained that ‘the first part of the monster’s hunt and capture is “a purification rite” ’. In essence, the Badalisc purifies the village with his annual appearance and the requisite anticipatory sweeping; as we will soon see, he is a sort of communal conscience to them, teaching morality lessons to all in his speech. Finally there are wild shouts, signifying that the Badalisc has been caught. They lead him down to the community centre and across to the sort of square, with a chain around him. Although he appears strong and is a large ‘creature’, he submits to the captors and to being led on a chain. Now the denouement of the hunt and annual appearance: after the ritualized hunt and procession, the Badalisc unveils the foibles, peccadilloes and the naughty adventures of Andrista’s townspeople in a speech for all to hear. His ‘handler’ is the masked character known as the Old Man or the Grandfather, Il Nonno, and it is he who reads out the speech. I witnessed a turning point for the village: for centuries, logically, as this is an authentic local festival for its own villagers, the speech was read out in the local Andrista dialect. As Mario had noted in the interview mentioned previously, they believe the dialect to be so unusual as to be unintelligible even to those who are natives of areas 5 to 10 kilometres away. In 2009 the organizers decided to alternate years when the speech is given in dialect and when in Italian. I had mixed feelings about this change; the tiny village needs to combat depopulation, which these traditions can theoretically aid them in. It was obviously a sign that the organizers are hoping for more outside visitors and wider participation. However, it seemed a dilution of ancient customs and true authenticity. Stefano Ronchi, an interview participant, mentioned that there was dissension in the village over the decision to give the speech in Italian, instead of in dialect. Recent enquiries have discovered that it is always given in Italian now. In addition, the festival now has a website, and grows cornmeal locally for a small commercial venture related to the festival’s traditional recipes. For example, the organizers now package the polenta mix, Polenta del Badalisc, with a stylized logo of the horned serpent, to sell on its website, as well as locally. The first festival night we attended, we had returned to the community centre slightly ahead of the ‘hunting party’. It was interesting to see how the local children cavorted and ran back and forth in front of the Badalisc, both frightened and delighted – but as though seeing a well-­known family member. The adults walking along with the group took pictures, as did those leaning out of the ancient village houses. There was a jolt, a frisson, of excitement, of danger and of strangeness at seeing these masked characters in a concentrated, altered state, loudly carrying out the Alpine rite on the frigid January night. Although I generally feel at home in Italy, here I felt like an outsider; obviously we did not speak the local dialect nor know the local mores. In addition we were the only foreigners in evidence. It was a sense of having strayed into another community’s inner sanctum. On my second festival visit the following year, giving validation to my assertion that Andrista’s festival becomes a heterotopia with its liminality, a feeling of danger arose during the hunt. There was a heightened sense of danger and ‘jolt’ of drama or crisis

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that are universals of festival and ritual (Gardiner 1993; Turner 1982b), as they can also be of the heterotopia (Foucault 1998). The liminality of the hunt is heightened by this transition into non-­ordinary time, into the heterotopia of unique festival time. That night I decided to follow the hunting party masked figures up the mountainside, to video them. As the hunting party disappeared into various fields, I became separated from my travelling companion, and found myself suddenly alone in a snowy field with one of the black-­cloaked men. It shocked me when he seemed purposely to throw his torch at me. (The fire danger was slight – it went out immediately on the snowy ground.) Was it that we were female and American as well? And consequently perhaps our presence was a double intrusion: women and foreigners? One must remember that women have only recently been permitted even to witness the festival ‘hunt’. His costume was a threatening one, thus the Badalisc street theatre instilled hints of danger; perhaps, like an actor, he had embodied his character well, taking on fully the threatening role. I spoke to him in Italian, with humour, and he later apologized. Nonetheless, his act appeared symbolic, if not directly representative of the fact that only very recently had women been permitted to attend this part of the ritual. Hearing the guttural cries of the men hunting the monster by torchlight on the mountainside, scrambling up and down the trails, added to the liminal quality of the event. The mysterious heterotopic ambiance of the night was enhanced by the sounds from horns and conch shells that people from neighbouring villages were blowing as they accompanied the hunters.

Figure 3.1  The Badalisc speaks, along with requisite masked male companions.

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A local Alpine tradition in full swing The monster’s speech in 2008 was in dialect; therefore, although my Italian is nearly native fluency and I often can understand regional dialects in the north where they are mixed with French, this was (as Mario Casalini had said) unintelligible. The content had an impact on the locals listening – their body language was expressive (and conveyed that they were truly locals) as they laughed and hooted at the speech. The rather formal, oratorical cadence of the speech was interesting to hear, even if we could not understand the words. The next year it was in Italian, and so we were able to join in the humour – although the humour was at some local person’s expense, which was clear from the crowd’s reactions. Soon we all moved into the community centre, to enjoy the party and dinner there; a band of musicians was setting up, and there was a small cafe selling the advertised local foods. Approximately 100 or so people had crowded into the two rooms of the newly built centre, in the years that I observed. The second year seemed to have a bigger crowd, as the weather was cold, but not snowy. People were obviously curious about who we were and why we were there; however, the first year there no one came up to ask questions or to introduce themselves. (The second year I attended a number of people did approach me.) Watching people with ruddy, outdoorsy complexions, dressed in mountain-­style clothing as they laughed and visited, families sitting down together and couples dancing, the elderly cheerfully watching the dance, all provided a pleasant sense of witnessing an authentic Alpine winter tradition. The festival did not seem commercialized or commoditized. There were merely a few posters and local foods named for the Badalisc. It was a celebration involving local, traditional foods; however, unlike Paroldo, Omegna, or the Druid festivals in Piedmont, there were no long tables for communal dining. People ate on their laps at the side of the dance floor, or at small tables with individual families. The Badalisc was clearly a kind of important personage, perhaps like a family member not often seen, or an official or celebrity: the costume had been set in the corner, where the children would go to have pictures taken with it. It was reminiscent, as is the role that the monster plays in the village, of a kind of Father Christmas figure who appears once a year. In this remote part of northern Italy there are no McDonald’s fast food restaurants, no other chain or theme restaurants where children may encounter a life-­size costumed figure; it is possible, but fairly unlikely that many children from this area of the Alps go to Disneyland or Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck and so forth. Therefore in their life world and childhoods, the Badalisc and the festival’s other traditional masks hold a special place and significance. As sections further on in the chapter will discuss, the Badalisc’s symbolism and materiality of place are deeper and more resonant for locals than one initially might realize. People were enjoying the dinner and dancing, many glowing from the fragrantly spiced wine, and it was clear they had likewise appreciated the traditional sausages and polenta of the Badalisc. It was easy to see why the community had built the new centre as a haven and comfortable space for the village to gather and celebrate, whether on a snowy night, or on a hot July afternoon, as the festival of their Patroness

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Madonna could be. On our 2008 visit, Paola very generously invited us to her home. It was just up the hill, past the trail of the Badalisc’s arrival. While we spoke, her brother Marco came in, still in his make up and costume as one of the monster’s ‘handlers’. As sections below detail, she and her brother are concerned about damage to their traditions as notice of the festival grows. For example, they spoke of outsiders wanting to mix their traditions with other towns’ and cities’ festivals, or to combine the Badalisc with other festival characters in differing calendrical events such as Carnival. A bubbly, out-­going person, Paola grew rather exercised in these discussions, both that first night in her home, and also later when I visited on other research trips. The passion with which she and her small community are safeguarding their customs is intriguing, as well as admirable. They, like other places, are trying to walk a knife-­edge of preservation, safeguarding the authenticity of traditions, while needing to create publicity and draw participation – undoubtedly a concern in other festivals with carefully prescribed traditions.

Badalisc as representative of materiality of place My fieldwork in Andrista revealed that the lifeworld of Andrista’s residents is interwoven with the Badalisc monster. The horned serpent could arguably be seen as a ritualized embodiment of Andrista’s genius loci – not only linked with the ancient past, but embodying the Earthy materiality and power of the mountainous region. On my second visit to the festival people seemed warmer and more open, introducing me here and there. Consequently through a series of conversations, upon hearing about my study, some friendly locals led me through the party to meet people they said ‘could truly tell me about sense of place and the mountains’. They introduced me to a family of local farmers and shepherdesses, including two sisters, in their late twenties or early thirties, Eliana and Elisa Maffeis. Eliana and Elisa were weathered, wiry people with slim frames and warm, dark eyes. Their little niece was a small replica of them, as their mother was an older version. They spoke with moving eloquence – not in dialect, but in proper Italian – of the Badalisc’s exteriorization of place through the materiality of the festival and the masque: The Badalisc is a symbol of the land and is a connection to Nature. He is the Man/ Animal. He comes from the land and is captured by peasants, so it’s all from Nature. If the Badalisc were missing, the festival would have no meaning. The party and the dinner aren’t anything special – it’s the symbolism that makes it special and that gives it meaning. The Badalisc makes it! He gives it all the sense of place. pers. comm. 5 January 2009

The family was very friendly, and invited us to visit their farm. I found this experience moving, as they seemed to not only understand what bonding with and exteriorizing place meant, but embodied it themselves. I visited their farm the next day, and it was a most striking and memorable experience. The family’s interanimation with Nature, with their mountains and animals was nuanced with a sense of history and their place in it. Small, quasi-­subsistence farming and herding such as theirs is disappearing in

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Italy, as in much of the industrialized world. As we toured their barns, they described how they follow their herds through the mountains for months each summer, the ancient Alpine ritual of the transhumance. The Maffeis family, their whole style of life, of dress, their actual faces, seemed to symbolize and bring the heart of the Badalisc to life. There was an impact in the physical relationality and authentic materiality that the Badalisc festival represents for its townspeople, with its specific foods, traditional costumes, sounds, customs. One of the gastronomic traditions illustrates this. Once upon a time, the flour used in the Badalisc’s traditional polenta was gathered door to door by the village children. The materiality of that physical sharing of the cornmeal and the community bonding through the flour itself is evocative and symbolic. Even though, sadly, contemporary concerns with food safety have changed the custom – the communally gathered polenta flour is not allowed to be used in the actual meal anymore – today it is grown and milled there so as to still contain the place-­power. Like the Madonna for Harlem, as Orsi describes: ‘the festa and the domus, the sense world, was shaped and presided over by a powerful woman’ (2002: 172). For Andrista’s residents and returning community members, the Badalisc is alive, an integral part of their woods, mountains and home place. He presides over not only the festa but the whole village all year long. His costume and mask symbolize all that home represents to them, even when set carefully away as though in a museum, quiescent during the rest of the year. Despite the earthy physicality and embodied materiality of the Badalisc, there is a morality element to the Badalisc’s presence. The qualities he represents are paradoxically both transcendent and immanent to villagers and participants. Stefano, a long-­time festival participant and now a cook in the festival cafe, described the Badalisc’s speech: The Badalisc stays in the woods all year, taking note of all that happens during the year. He gathers the notable things – the betrayals, the disagreements, everything – and he tells the town about them. Without using surnames, of course! He’s not a god, but he does open up the doors to show what loyalty really is, what sincerity is. He allows people to have the courage to recognize they did wrong and to try to put things right with those they have offended. pers. comm. 5 January 2009

Both Paola and Stefano have separately described how the Badalisc plays the role of a guide to behaviour and a sort of moral compass to the village all year long. The townsfolk literally warn each other when someone says or does something inappropriate or out of line, reminding them to be careful because the Badalisc will hear or see. Stefano added more of his views in our second interview: Once upon a time, long ago in ‘the night of time’, the ritual was carried out to propitiate the ‘forces that be’, to keep the village safe and bring fertile harvests in the year to come. Now there are no true peasant farmers any more, really, and the festival is very different from even my childhood and my parents’ time. However,

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As Orsi recounts, regarding Harlem’s Madonna, there is a similarity in her role during New York’s July festa. The religious experience of July 16 had the power to evoke memories that were extraordinarily basic: the people seemed to be returning not only to their paese, but more profoundly, to their mothers. The devotion summoned the people into the sacral domus and surrounded them with the familiar tastes, smells, sounds, colors and textures; in this way, in the presence of their ‘mamma’, the people returned to the world in which they had first learned, from their mothers, what reality was, what was good and what bad, what their basic values were, and the values of their community. The festa and the long-­passed [sic] intimate moments of moral foundation smelled, tasted and sounded the same. 2002: 172

It is interesting to note that the Patroness of Andrista is the same aspect of the Madonna that Orsi studied in Harlem, the Madonna of Mount Carmel, also celebrated in July. Although obviously the Badalisc is a very different figure from the Madonna, there are similar resonances for example in the theories of materiality and relationality integral to my work with festival, food and place: When we consider what was taking place at the festa – the integration of young people into the traditional values, the communal reaffirmation of these values, the establishment of the nexus between individual and family, family and community, and so on [. . .] we can see that the creation of this sense world as the environment in which all this occurred was an effort to structure a very basic point of orientation. [. . .] The food, noise, smells all established the necessary precondition for the absolution, resituation and reintegration that took place at the festa. Orsi 2002: 172

In the discussions of other festivals in this fieldwork, in both Lombardy and Piedmont, we will see how those festivals have no explicit relationship to the re-­assertion of traditional mores or familial values (although some organizers do express value-­laden views about their motivations for the festival in interviews). While the tiny community’s festival in Andrista does in essence re-­assert traditional mores, alternatively other festivals in Milan and Piedmont discussed later allow spaces for non-­traditional identities and values to emerge. Paola was adamant that the Badalisc must always be connected with Epiphany. From an etic view it would be easy to interpret the Badalisc figure and his group of requisite masks as either a sort of harbinger of Carnival, or a Saturnalia form carried over from traditions of Solstice-­related winter merriment. A wild serpent monster giving the town a lesson in morality could certainly appear to be a Carnivalesque

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reversal tradition – a Bakhtinian element with sexual or risqué overtones and elements (Bakhtin 1984). Whenever an Italian audience from outside Andrista area hears my account of the festival, they predictably interject: ‘and then they kill him!’ as the end of the story nears. Bakhtin’s study of Rabelais, with its uncrowning, debasement and thrashing, seen in medieval/Renaissance carnivalesque traditions, is somehow ingrained in the Italian psyche. Perhaps it is also a culturally inculcated memory of the physical comedy style of Commedia dell’Arte. Paola’s perspective is decidedly an emic view – she fervently rejects any connection with the pre-Lenten Carnival, or the Commedia dell’Arte. On two different occasions I heard her tell the story of Andrista locals being invited to participate in a Carnival parade in the nearby valley, where there is a larger resort town, Darfo Boario Terme: One must remember that ours is not at Carnival time. It’s a winter tradition. One year they asked us to be part of the big Carnival parade and celebration at Darfo Boario Terme. We weren’t at all sure we should go, but we decided to go that year. However, we stipulated that there were conditions for our participation: the Badalisc was not to be on a float with other costumes or traditional Carnival masks – no Pulcinella or Arlecchino were to be with him! He is a costume and mask from the mountains of Lombardy, yes – but not a Carnival mask. He had to be alone with his usual companions, the Old Lady, the Old Man, The Young Man – in other words, the same masked characters that go with him in our festival. I see it as key to keep it in context. pers. comm. 6 April 2009

We have discussed in Chapters  1 and 2 the passionate identification with place and hometown that is called campanilismo. Here is an illustration of campanilismo and all its composite aspects in relation to festival forms, with a typical implication of superiority, not unusual in campanilismo. However, what is less usual is the implication here of a moral high ground, regarding the Badalisc in Paola’s adamant opposition to a connection with Carnival. It must be in the winter and definitively at Epiphany. She also was opposed to any identification between the Badalisc and the horned goat figure of the neighbouring village, Cevo, whose traditions might seem to an outsider to be similar to the Badalisc. As mentioned earlier, Cevo is the larger neighbouring town above Andrista; many of Andrista’s townsfolk must go there to shop or work, as in fact Paola does. In my interviews with innkeeper Mario Casalini, he described Cevo’s Basilisc and how their horned genius loci comes down from the mountains at Carnival time: Given that we are not in Andrista, we don’t even pronounce the name of the monster the same. In Cevo we say ‘Basilisc’ and they say ‘Badalisc’. This monster of ours is in the form of a big goat. I remember in my childhood that this monster came down from the mountains, or so they told us, in Carnevale. We went into the barn and it was a big wooden mask with horns and skin over the top. For us in Cevo this is the most traditional mask. He is a big goat like a devil or demon, something dark and scary that goes around at night – not to harm anyone – but just to scare people. pers. comm. 5 January 2008

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Catholicism and the Badalisc The Catholic influence on the festival was much stronger at one time (a point that most of my participants mentioned). Until very recently, women were not merely banned from the festival enactment, but any women who participated were excommunicated by the local parish priest. Paola told me (in two separate interviews) that she is disturbed by the fact that the Festa del Badalisc does not today have the same strong Catholic underpinning of past generations. This comment seemed somewhat ironic given the fact that, if the festival had maintained the same staunchly Catholic foundation of past decades and centuries, she would not have been able to participate. In any case, as examples of how certain components have changed, she mentioned in our various interviews in different years that one of the ancient traditions involving the village children had disappeared in the last two decades. At one time the children would collect cornmeal throughout the village to make a traditional recipe of polenta. They then would take the specially cooked Polenta del Badalisc, the local cornmeal dish, to the Church to be blessed, and to leave by the manger scene depicting the infant Jesus. (Today apparently not only do the participants not go to Mass for the feast, they do not use collected polenta.) According to Paola, as well as other local sources, there is a traditional sausage that people make specially for the festival, un salamino, called strenucce, that also was blessed in the Epiphany Mass. Paola is nostalgic about the old traditions and worries that the Epiphany Mass does not today have the same connection to the older Badalisc traditions; she seemed especially sorry that the children do not now offer their traditional foods to the statue of Baby Jesus. She mentioned in two interviews how in the past the children kissed the statue, which seemed especially important to her. However, she stressed that the second day of the festival is still primarily for children, and the Polenta del Badalisc is made for the children. Consequently, while the Badalisc has become somewhat divorced from the Church’s traditions of Epiphany, the festival still maintains its gastronomic customs.2 Among the remaining questions is why Andrista’s townsfolk and festival organizers are so committed to keeping their monster an Epiphany apparition. Is it pure campanilismo? Or is there a denial of things seeming too earthy or sensual that the carnivalesque reversals and ‘uncrownings’ could bring to the festival, a rejection of the profane that much of Carnival seeks to instigate? In her Tuscan festival research Crociani-Windland finds much in certain costumes that seems ‘suggestive, profane and which favours the lower body over the upper [. . .]; at once in touch with the earth, and yet not stuck to it, as plants are, its closeness to instinctual urges, pleasure and procreation that makes it more body than the rest of it’ (2007: 202, 203, 205). Indeed the swaying serpent monster could be easily seen as phallic, and additionally has animal horns – all symbols identified with the sexual and sensual. Bakhtin and Rabelais show no squeamishness over any form of bodily function, nor do the Tuscans in CrocianiWindland’s studies. My understanding is that Paola has a close connection with the parish church; she and Stefano both gave accounts of the festival of the Madonna of Mount Carmel in Andrista, which led me to believe that they would like the Badalisc to remain a chastely moralizing monster, and not a ribald carnivalesque or Saturnalian reveller. This may be

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their goal; however, the Badalisc’s speech made it apparent that ‘he’ has some pointedly sexual things to say about the adventures and escapades in the town each year. If their insistence that he remains tied to Epiphany is an attempt to deny other historical Italian mid-­winter holiday traditions, such as the Lord of Misrule (called in Italy Il Signore di Sregolatezza), it is somewhat misguided. Epiphany was known historically as a traditional time for broad humour and bawdy revelling, as were Christmas and Easter (Bakhtin 1984). It is interesting to note that in a discreet way there is possibly a nod at sexuality and virility: in a recent interview, Paola’s brother explained that the Badalisc absolutely must be personified or played by an unmarried young man (Marco Maffessoli, pers. comm. January 2017).

Embodiment and exteriorization through costuming The embodiment of place evident in Andrista’s performing of place is a palpable form of materiality as all the elements join. Whether cornmeal from local gardens, sausages cooked with meat from village animals slaughtered for the festival, or a costume sewn by hand in an ancient stone home, the materials encompassed in bringing the Badalisc to life give their own energies and potency to the ritualized community time. There are certain local foods gathered and prepared by hand; exact costumes and masks, utilized in specific, traditional ways; and rigid requirements allowing only townsfolk to play central roles. As the previous sections’ descriptions of the fieldwork have demonstrated, the festival participants live, breathe and sweat place in a sensual way through the elements of chase, surprise, humour, laughter, dance, food, fire, and communal reunion that make up this ancient annual festival. Grimes describes the ‘phenomenology of exteriorization’ that comes through the use of masks and costumes (1975). He writes of: ‘the embodiment of meanings in social contexts . . . about meanings embodied in posturing and gesturing’ (Grimes 2006: 35). These points are clearly illustrated in the street theatre, the costumes, the ‘posturing and gesturing’ that are portrayed in the Badalisc festival. As described above, the case for seeing a religious component here is evoked by the deeply ritualized behaviours, by the strong moral component and the ardent dedication to maintaining carefully orchestrated traditions. The Badalisc offers examples of Grimes’ embodiment and exteriorization (1975) where, through the feasting and food choices, locals also ‘ingest topography’ (Leynse 2006). As the introductory chapters discussed, relational models of dwelling are intertwined with conceptions of animism and animic relationships with place (Ingold 2000); these tie humanity together in community while simultaneously bonding community to place. Ingold argues, as do others like Basso (1996), that humans keep cultural memory alive through ‘a practice of remembering, embedded in the perception of the environment’ (Ingold 2000: 148). This epistemology becomes clear in Andrista. One may add a hyphen, as some of my writing has done, to say it is also a practice of re-­ membering: a re-­integration and re-­weaving of community bonds such as Orsi recounts in New York City and that my festival research has revealed. In Andrista, as Tak saw in Calvello, native festival goers return to ‘refresh themselves at the well of local culture’ (Tak 2000: 27). Parsons’ comment on the Palio, that this festival would happen even if

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no tourists were present (2004: 159), is also relevant in Andrista. While they do indeed wish to encourage tourism in order to generate income for the tiny village, that is not the primary motivation for the Badalisc. He symbolizes far more than profits or numbers of visitors. However, despite all the foregoing, it is important to remember that sense of place is relative and can have deeply stored memories; one person’s associations with a mask, a festival, a symbol can be very different from another’s. While Paola is adamant about the Badalisc having certain associations – at Epiphany only, a Mass connected with the festival, and so forth – there are others in the area who find different connections. Some researchers on folklore and local lived religion find similarity between the Badalisc and ancient Pagan serpent cults, or also the horned gods of early agrarian religions. My own research has found local evidence in the nearby petroglyphs, as well as among nearby professional archaeologists’ work (S. Gavaldo, pers. comm. 2 April 2010; Danesi et al. 1999; Barozzi & Varini 1990). The petroglyph parks are discussed below. There is a nearby town with a February festival where the Badalisc was at one time invited to perform. The festival is decidedly carnivalesque and is called ‘The Witches Ceremony’ (Ceremonia delle Streghe). Perhaps not too surprisingly, Paola’s reaction was vehement: ‘The Badalisc has no part in the Witches’ Ceremony at the end of February in Saviore, or these others at Carnival time. If we put the Badalisc there, it could destroy the traditions passed down from our great-­great-great-­grandparents’ (pers. comm. 6 April 2009). There are a variety of possible theories as to why the Andrista organizers and festival committee members may shy away from altering their festival or associating the Badalisc elsewhere. One theory is a rejection of any Pagan associations in the Badalisc festa. Another possible theory is that they are resisting the Badalisc being ‘diluted’ or overshadowed by better-­known Italian masks, such as those of Harlequin and Pulcinella, from the Commedia dell’Arte. Grimes (1975) notes that with a mask like the Commedia dell’Arte characters, ‘such a character becomes so familiar to the audience that he is predictable, frozen as it were, despite the liveliness with which roles are imaginatively played by actors’ (1975: 511). This loss of power through humour also happens in traditional comedic portrayals of Catholic priests or medieval monks, where the clergy were morally disempowered due to mordent vernacular satire. This is known in Bakhtin as ‘the mighty realm of the travesty of the low clergy’ (Bakhtin 1984: 86). Paola and the other organizers and portrayers of the Badalisc may not want their magic monster of morality to become stock, staid or to lose his power to influence the townspeople. In Grimes’ theory of ‘concretion’, ‘otherness resides in the mask; in concealment otherness is generated and used by the mask’ (1975: 512). Perhaps part of the Badalisc’s transformative influence in Andrista is his nuanced otherness, Other and yet not. He is not only a symbol and embodiment of Andrista’s identity, but their monster and genius loci compass.

Relationality and materiality in the festival masques Bennett’s phrase ‘thing-­power’ (Bennett 2004) succinctly expresses such materiality. The Badalisc mask and costume exhibit a form of embodied materiality that is heavily

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endowed and inter-­animated with place in Andrista. It has both thing-­power and place-­power. The locals are invested in protecting the mask and character, because its power is tied integrally with them. If the Badalisc were to disappear and not return to critique the village on Epiphany Eve, the village would lose part of its heart and soul: its identity, and perhaps also its economy, would suffer. Andrista’s Badalisc exemplifies a theory in my work, of place as the Other, portrayed in festival. Paola and fellow townsfolks’ objections to the Badalisc being seen as nothing but a performer, a simple funny mask, speak to their belief in him as an embodiment of the unique genius loci of their village. He is not a mere theatrical character, but a real being whose Otherness is precious to them. The organizers’ protection of the date for the festival, Stefano’s reminiscences and comments on the guidance the festival offers the town, their efforts to resist the surrounding villages on the isolated mountainsides from incorporating the Badalisc into their festivities, all speak of a passionately ingrained sense of place. There is a dramatic relational epistemology in Andrista residents: endeavoring to make the same polenta their grandparents may have made, or to find materials to build the masks in the traditional manner. These elements demonstrate the potent materiality involved in the festival. For example, some participants spoke critically of the Badalisc costume not being entirely made from natural skin or other locally derived materials anymore, but being partly synthetic. There is a poetic sense of deep dwelling in their determined commitment to keeping the traditions alive, despite hardships, war and the social fragmenting wrought by internal migration. It is significant, in terms of eating and drinking place – the ‘terroir’ of French vineyards – that some local residents are now making wine and other alcoholic spirits for the Badalisc festival (P. Maffesoli, pers. comm. 6 April 2009; Scarduelli 2008). The relationality of the festival offers a glowing strand of interconnected lives between village and emigrants, among generations, among residents of the area, all interwoven through the materiality of Epiphany’s serpent monster.

Place as actor: Valcamonica’s extraordinary petroglyph parks One morning in early spring some years ago I was pursuing research on the Badalisc and was en route to spend time in Andrista with Paola. My route led me through the small city at the foot of the mountain, Capo di Ponte. I stopped in a little shop advertising local crafts and antiques. While conversing with the shopkeeper, Cati, I commented on a dragon statue. She remarked: ‘Yes, dragons are not usually very Italian, but we do have a kind of dragon here in the area’ (pers. comm. 6 April 2009). This was a startling remark, unbidden, so I enquired more. She divulged that her family were amateur folklorists and archaeologists and that they had carried out their own research on the nearby rock parks. She drew directions on my map, showing how two of the petroglyph parks I had not yet visited at that time, Seradina and Bedolina, were near Capo di Ponte, on the hillsides at the north end of the valley. This was a startling and happy discovery for my research, as Cati said with a great sense of certainty that her family’s research found a definite connection in their minds between the ‘dragon’ – as they call the petroglyph – in the rock art and the

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Badalisc (pers. comm. 6 April 2009). Who could restrain themselves, even though I had other interviews to carry out? I drove up the hillside, parked and then climbed the quiet mountain trails to explore. One hillside particularly caught my attention; not only is it covered in petroglyphs, but when carefully taking in the view, it was clear that the petroglyphs lie directly across the valley from Andrista and Cevo – the homes of long-­celebrated festivals of the horned serpent Badalisc and the goat-­like Basilisc. Grimes has written of the land and place being not a ‘backdrop of action but rather a force that forms actions and actors’ (2006: 107). This thought is a perfect description of the place-­based festivals intertwining with and celebrating the unique Earth art carved millennia ago in the renowned archaeological areas of Valcamonica. I have subsequently interviewed and discussed these place-­based associations with professional archaeologists working in the area as well, and they confirm the interconnection. Sansoni and Gavaldo are Italian archaeologists working for the State of Lombardy in Valcamonica, the ‘Valcamonica Department of the Camun Centre of Prehistoric Studies’ (Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Dipartimento Valcamonica e Lombardia); their findings state that there are horned serpent figures in the petroglyphs carved in the valley below Andrista, and also on to be found on high mountain areas at the opposite side of the valley (Sansoni & Gavaldo 1995, Sansoni, Gavaldo, & Cerri 2010; Gavaldo 2001; pers. comm. S. Gavaldo, 2 April 2010; Sansoni 2006; U. Sansoni, pers. comm. 12 November 2010). Some are Copper Age and some are later Bronze Age carvings of horned figures, and others are of serpents. Having hunted for the carvings myself, hiking up trails in the high country, rooting through underbrush, tracing the carvings and so forth, I understand their statements that much is speculative about the carvings. However, both believe that there are (what could be interpreted as) horned serpents, on rock faces and other surfaces straight across the valley from Andrista (2 April 2010; 12 November 2010). In my fieldwork interviews, I have met other amateur archaeologists and folklorists, also local sources, who study these carvings and other archaeological remains in the mountainous areas. One is a nonprofit called Amici del Sentiero Etrusco Celtico (Friends of the Etruscan Celtic Trail) whose literature describes serpent figures in ancient carvings at a nearby village just above Andrista, called Androla (Danesi et al. 1999). At the actual festivals, there were participants who also shared their theories and the locals’ beliefs about the connections among the different horned figures and the valley’s myriad petroglyphs. For one thing, there are local beliefs about an ancient water cult in the valley long ago that venerated serpents; there are others, including local archaeologists, who have discussed the horned gods of later agrarian cults (Gavaldo 2001; Danesi & Cervelli n.d.). Remembering that the Badalisc can be seen as a dragon, but also as a serpent, and clearly has horns, it is logical that local residents discuss both when searching for his origins. Andrista’s festival offers an exceptional example of how place can be both backdrop and actor – a clear depiction of my ‘Theory of Active Place’, TAP. If one keeps in mind how seismically active the mountainous country of Italy is, how very frequently there are tremors and earthquakes, it is understandable that people have traditionally envisioned their mountains as active and as having power. Barron (2006) observed that

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the revered Majella Massif mountain in southern Italy is living and active for local people. Tak wrote that: ‘Local landscapes [are] germane to the particular ways of how ritual constructs identities and meanings’ (Tak 2000: 252). Using performative language and casting Nature into a role with theatrical impact, Grimes reviews Smith’s perspectives (1992) on place and its potential to act: ‘It is not just the context or backdrop of action, but rather a force that forms actions and actors. For Smith, place is not only central, it is active. As he imagines it, a place is not a mere empty or passive receptacle. [. . .] he (casts) place as lead actor’ (Grimes 2006: 107–108). Thankfully, these remarkable areas in the extensive glacial valley below Andrista and Cevo are now protected as a world heritage site by UNESCO. Though the valley is unknown to many even in Italy itself, in northern Lombardy the rock carvings manifest a powerfully evocative place-­based connection between festival and landscape, demonstrating the potent and yet often overlooked power and influence of place.

Possible dates for the festival origins While nothing in my research up to the current time firmly dates or confirms the origins of the festival, internet research indicates that the parish at Andrista has records going back to 1686 on the festa of the Badalisc (Barozzi & Varini 1990). Yet the librarian in Cevo, where a collection of books on the Badalisc is held, did not know where this parish hall might be, and there was no evidence of it in my research in Andrista. I let it go, as this is primarily an ethnographic study, and focused on the accounts of the people at the fair and those who are involved in the fair, as well as on the local resources such as newspapers and the library. The festa is certainly ‘very ancient’, and appears from all sources to be the longest running festival in this ethnographic festival research.

Time folds: polychronic views of performing place The multiple relationships with time, space and place in the Badalisc at Andrista are an example of other theories relating to performing a landscape. Lymer, Olivier and Witmore have discussed theories regarding their own archaeological work, as well as their criticisms of archaeology’s failings. Witmore and Lymer theorize on non-­ linear perceptions of time that at some moments and in some places become polychronic (Lymer 2010; Olivier 2004; Witmore 2006). Other times and influences seep into the present, ‘percolating’ it as it were: ‘Landscape is multitemporal. Its polychronic reality is not the result of passing time, but of its percolation’ (Witmore 2006: 280). Laurent Olivier likewise uses the term ‘multi-­temporal’ in describing the constant intersections of past with present around us in the world (2004: 205). They and other archaeologists have written on time as sometimes ‘folding’, thus enfolding the coexisting present and past as demonstrated by people’s interactions with the landscape (Lymer 2010; Olivier 2004; Witmore 2006). In his research on rock art areas in Central Asia, Lymer wrote: ‘The rock art images were intricately related to complex values and beliefs embedded in time, place, society and culture. Their spaces are entangled in a nexus of relationships related to the experiences of local community

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with the landscape and mediated through sensual engagements, visions, dreams and encounters with other times’ (2010). These ‘sensual engagements’ can emerge in performances, like Andrista’s. In Witmore’s view, performance through ritual and other expressions offers an embodiment of place and time that can bring the distant past into the present in a polychronic as well as multi-­sensory manifestation (Witmore 2006). Lymer asserts that rag-­tying traditions in a rock art area of Kazakhstan likewise show that popular religious practices help communities negotiate the interactions among popular tradition, established religion and engagement with landscape (Lymer 2004). His work took place in a Muslim area heavily influenced by Sufism, where a mystical relationship with the landscape and its indwelling spirit or spirits outlived the homogenizing effects of Soviet oppression and other destructive philosophies (Lymer 2004). My work in Catholic Italy bears a similar resonance where likewise a ‘mystical relationship with the landscape’ endures, despite the potentially disenchanting effects of industrialization, globalization, emigration and other factors.

Conclusion The customs exhibited in these little communities evoke other centuries as multiple eras percolate through into contemporary moments (Witmore 2006). Lymer wrote in his paper’s abstract for the British Association for the Study of Religion in 2009: ‘Contemporary folk rites [. . .] are not the fossilized remains of “primitive” customs, but dynamic engagements that create polychronic realities which intimately entwine the past with the present. [. . .] these rock art sites demonstrate a remarkable persistence of liminality in the landscape as people over the centuries have actively interacted with these special places since prehistoric times.’ If and in whatever way the nearby petroglyphs may have resonated in the minds of the creators of the Badalisc, if and when in history that could have occurred, and no matter whether he appears at Epiphany, Carnival or any other time, I maintain that there exists a dynamic bridge between place and community in Andrista. It is sensuous and placeful, re-­creating aromas and images of polenta and sausage by firelight, and re-­integrating long-­standing relational epistemologies of place and kinship. The Badalisc ‘presides over a sense world’ (Orsi 2002: 172–173) that even today can still impact the village’s perspectives and behaviours. Swanson’s phrase cited by Grimes neatly captures this evocative moment and dramatic natural setting: ‘Rituals are irreplaceable responses to . . . irreplaceable places’ (Swanson 1994: 262, in Grimes 2006: 111). Whatever the deeper reasoning behind Andrista’s protection of the Badalisc, in whatever way the dialect or dance may continue adapting in years to come, this ritualized festival offers a potent example of materiality and an embodied poetry of dwelling. The Badalisc performs the land and community in the polychronic time of the festa in Andrista. Next we engage questions of materiality of place in an urban setting, along with a different view of lived religion and a politicized festival: Capodanno Celtico, Celtic New Year, which for over a decade reverberated throughout downtown Milan each October.

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Part two – Lombardy The Goddess of Milan is Celtic and her name is Bellisama. Her spirit is here and it’s Druidic. Valentina Minoglio, pers. comm. 18 October 2008

Celtic New Year at Milan’s Sforzesco Castle For over a decade a remarkable event took place each October in the centre of chic, urban Milan: Celtic New Year, Capodanno Celtico. This huge festival was perhaps the largest of all those covered in this book. The actual site of the recently organized festival, which began in 1999, was already meaningful: it is the central downtown site of a dramatic castle, built originally by the early rulers of Milan, the Visconti family. The Castle was later taken over by the next dynasty, the Sforza family – hence its name: Sforzesco. There is reason to believe that the site has been used since Roman times and perhaps even previous to them, when the Gauls ruled northern Italy. In fact, this is a central point in the discussion below. The grand, dark structure appears to be Renaissance, but it is a reconstruction, as it was fully rebuilt in the nineteenth century. It looms about 2.1 kilometres (1.3 miles) from the imposing and ornate main cathedral of Milan, its Duomo. The Castle is a point of pride, of campanilismo-style loyalty and identification for the Milanese, as well as (like the Duomo) being a rendez-­vous point and a place of enjoyment for its museums, concerts and green space. The Castle can have a powerful and placeful impact on visitors, as it seemed to have on festival participants. One Celtic New Year re-­enactor said to me as we chatted at her reanactment site: ‘When I came here and saw all this, with the Castle surrounded by mists, I felt like I was home for the first time’ (Chiara, pers. comm. 25 October 2008). My first awareness of the fair came when jogging through the park; to my astonishment I discovered posters describing a fair celebrating ‘Samhain’, the Celtic festival of harvest’s end, theoretically the end of the Celtic calendar year. It is called in Italian ‘Samonios’. At that time I had no idea that there were people in the general public and in the government who might know of the Celtic tradition or the term ‘Samhain’. (Even with all of the Irish and Scottish heritage in North America, that is not a well-­ known name.) When I returned to investigate what this festival might offer, I discovered a remarkable transformation had taken place in the city park: cloaked warriors on horseback and on foot people in costumes of every description evoking ancient eras, encampments with Iron Age and earlier tools, and the like. There were craftspeople selling their wares, with every possible sort of both New Age and Pagan jewellery, statuary, artwork, and so on; Tarot card readers, face painters – all reminiscent of what in America would be seen perhaps as a ‘Renaissance Fair’. However, what made this festival notably place-­specific, is that there were posters and artwork, crafts, foods and drink dedicated and derived from the pre-Roman tribes of northern Italy. Even the very twenty-­first-­century cafe wagon was offering geographically appropriate sausages, pastas, polenta, drinks, wines and puddings. It was not like any Renaissance Fair (or ‘Faire’ as they are often termed in America) that I had ever encountered. The music,

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Figure 3.2  The Central Tower of the Sforzesco Castle, in downtown Milan’s Parco Sempione. dance and other performances offered were bands and soloists from all over the related cultures of the Celtic world, including Bretons, Irish and Scots. For three nights the grey centre of stiffly elegant Milan, its central park and environs, reverberated and vibrated with music and dance like an Irish or Scottish Ceilidh. The very trees seemed to sparkle, as materiality and place-­power emanated from the Castle and its grounds.

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Over the following few years I returned to observe and carry out interviews, both at the festival itself, at other locations with organizers and participants, and by phone. The interviews were on different occasions with organizers, participants and re-­enactors; then during the festival as well. I also attended the conference and art exhibition connected with the festivals themes, both offered by the festival sponsors. Those interviews are included in sections below. During the festival I randomly interviewed people wandering past or sitting down to eat, and chatted with groups who were visiting or roaming through the market stalls – young, old, foreign, native, male and female, and also spoke with re-­enactors in their Gallo-Celtic styled encampments. As the fieldwork interviews reveal, many engaged in the festival spoke directly to their experience of sensing the mysterious, place energies honoured in and perhaps unleashed by Celtic New Year. Chiara, the young woman quoted above, was a re-­enactor who was not native to Milan, but to Lombardy. She belonged to a group called the ‘Lions of Brescia’, drawing their name from the Roman phrase for what they regarded as uncivilized places one might want to avoid, ‘Hic sunt leones’ (‘Here there be lions’). (Arturo – pseudonym – the chief organizer of the group told me this in a spontaneous interview, discussed below.) Chiara (also a pseudonym) was a petite blonde in a light-­coloured gown, who was practising various crafts in what the group believed were correct historical representations. In our conversations she did mix periods somewhat – for example, her loom was modelled on one from 700 CE, which would have been the Lombard period. Chiara claimed that in fifteen years living in Milan she had never felt at home until she came to the park at the time of Celtic New Year, with the costuming, vendors and the Castle surrounded by it all. One of her points exemplifies the unifying bonds of relationality that can arise through a festival, through certain involvements such as this one: ‘Here there was no fashion world, there was no religion. We all have our own lives, our own private lives and professions – one person is an architect, another is a doctor, from all parts of the culture, but we live as one great family. We get together at the fairs or camps, and live as one’ (Chiara, pers. comm. 26 October 2008). (Her comment was interesting since she may not have been aware of the new religious movement, NRM, also finding bonds and a sense of communitas in Celtic New Year. These aspects of the festival are discussed below.) The leader of the group, Arturo, came over during our interview to contribute as well, a dark haired figure in chain mail, which he said had all been made by hand – 16,000 metal rings of mail. He explained that they re-­enact both the pre-Roman period, such as their third century BCE camp that day at the festival, and the medieval period. Arturo seemed to resonate to my questions and expressed why they feel historical awareness is important: ‘People need this, this sense of being connected to their region, their place. What we have now is not from us, it’s from those who lived here before us. It’s important to study them and know who left us all this. It’s like a present. And then we must give it to the next generation’ (Arturo, pers. comm. 25 October 2008). Other spontaneous interviews expressed a similar feeling of contentment and of ‘belonging’ that arose through their involvement in Celtic New Year and its historical re-­enactors. One formal interview was with Silvia Formentini, a young woman re-­ enactor from another historical group and a native of Milan. One sunny afternoon a

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month or so before the festival we chatted in an interview in a sidewalk cafe. In discussing place-­power materiality and awareness of the land, she brought up that she has observed how children in particular feel the sense of place offered by the festival: In my opinion people literally have to learn to listen, to feel. Depending on the person of course. Most people come for the merchants and the crafts, some do come for the underlying reasons of the Fair, for the culture behind it. There are always more and more people coming, but there still are not many who really ‘feel’ the true sense of it. The little children feel more. The Scouts for example – I bring my group of young Scouts here. They are fascinated by the way that people lived, and are interested in the traditions that remain today. Like Samhain. S. Formentini, pers. comm. 18 September 2008.

These interviews demonstrate that there are diverse experiences of belonging that arise in festival, which may differ from other forms of relationality such as those observed in tiny Andrista. Yet, despite the difference in these two festivals, the experiences of belonging and of place-­based communitas arise in both. The materiality of place experienced in Milan’s Celtic New Year offered a kind of ‘coming home’ and a sense of personal re-­integration, as various participants recounted.

Cloaked materiality It was interesting during my research at Celtic New Year to realize that, inadvertently, the festival had become an annual venue at which the newly growing northern Italian Pagan community and movement could meet (Howell 2008; 2015). (Paganism’s growth in Italy is reviewed in depth in Chapter 5.) Walking through the festival, it would have been difficult to miss the overtly Pagan presence, or so it seemed, to those aware of this new religious movement (NRM): men and women in flowing robes, men with long beards and shoulder-­length or even waist-­length hair, esoteric symbols on broad display. The sight of so many people in robes, cloaks, flower crowns, Celtic torc jewellery around their necks and so forth, in the middle of Milan, portrayed vividly that this festival had a different tone and concept from those of others. Various participants in Celtic New Year who were interviewed for this study are involved in some tradition of Paganism, such as Druidry or Wicca. These interviewees, many of whom had participated in Celtic New Year from its inception, described to me how they took advantage of the networks and social milieu enhanced by and present in Celtic New Year. Valentina Minoglio is a participant in the fieldwork who is a native of Milan, with a long family heritage in Milan and Lombardy. Each year she was a vendor and Tarot card reader at Celtic New Year. She is a member of the Pagan community that was engaged in the festival and generously contributed to Chapter 5. Two of her evocative comments are cited at the head of Chapter 3, parts one and two. I visited with Valentina before the festival in 2008 for a formal interview, and also spoke with her at the festival during various years. Our formal interview took place at a monthly gathering in Milan, known as ‘The Witches’ Cafe, held in what was formerly a Communist meeting club,

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and is today a lively ethnic food restaurant. Valentina spoke poetically of her love for her hometown and how the festival expressed Milan’s origins: People who come can sense that it’s a rather unusual festival, due to the re-­ enactments, etc. In part it is due to the merchants and the stalls, which are chosen specifically for the sort of crafts they sell. However, Milan already has this feeling! For example, last night Milan had a very powerful air of Samhain. It had entered into that phase of feeling! It’s a bit because of the darkness coming on now, but also for the smells, the leaves and the colours. It’s hard to say why Milan would have more of a magical sense at this time of year, but it does. It becomes very magical, in the sense of the things that people believe. Milan is a secret, mysterious place – its courtyards, its alleyways. I don’t know but my intuition is that Milan has a Celtic spirit. In other words, it isn’t Roman. It wasn’t founded by the Romans. pers. comm. 18 October 2008

Diverse cultures were represented in Celtic New Year, unified by the theme of people wishing to re-­enact ancient history, or to live out (what they believe represents) a Pagan past for a few days, all the while in the middle of a postmodern urban centre. The Other became present, with multiple senses of the Other. There was the Other of a new religious movement, the Other of place-­power emanating from the Castle and park – of urban Nature; perhaps even that of an ancient nemeton, a meeting place or a sacred grove for worship for the Celts and Gauls, that some have claimed lies beneath the park and castle grounds (Jones & Pennick 1995; Emanuela Magni, pers. comm. 23 September 2008). It could also have offered space for the Other of a new Italian identity. There arose exteriorization and embodiment of place that is uncommon within Milan. Valentina expressed these attributes, describing how she sensed that Celtic New Year brought back a community feeling Milan had lost. If you go into any little town there are festivals – nearly every Sunday. There are festivals where they celebrate the harvest or whatever, but not in Milan. Not anymore. We’ve lost it here. Well, maybe some little neighbourhoods have them. But generally the city has lost them. So Capodanno Celtico and Samhain can be that for Milan. Even though the festival of the patron of Milan should be the festival that expressed Milan most, St. Ambrose (San Ambrogio) in December, it doesn’t anymore. It’s become too commercial, not local anymore. So in my opinion, Celtic New Year is the festival that really is Milan. 18 October 2009

On a specific note of deriving a sense of belonging and of identity, for the Pagan community the festival was a time when they could liberate their identity in a culture where being Other is not well accepted. Italy’s convention of Bella Figura, the social more of having to present a perfect image and elegant façade holds sway powerfully, in what is additionally a Catholic culture. Thus the alternative culture of Pagan Otherness could cause one to be looked down upon, ostracized or worse. Chapter  5 in its discussions of Paganism’s growth in Italy looks at the further nuances found in Bella

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Figura in relation to imagery of strength, power or resistance, however, for women. Valentina made the connection between the festival as an opportunity to exhibit resistance to conventional culture, as well as for developing sense of place together as a Pagan community: It’s very nice, since in Milan it’s one chance to be able to meet all together in a Milan park. For these three days we can come to Milan in our cloaks. We go around Milan in our cloaks, and it gives us a huge sense of pleasure. We Witches have our own style of dress, it is meaningful to us, and here we have permission to – we could do it all the time, we don’t care! Seeing so many people dressed that way for three days is special to us. We see all these Pagans, all these Wiccans, and this time is lovely because we see in some way that together here we can put down roots. pers. comm. 18 October 2009

One Wiccan man, Gerardo (pseudonym), said of Celtic New Year: ‘At least at Celtic New Year, we finally have a place where we can put on our cloaks and be free’ (pers. comm. 25 October 2008). Other Pagan participants who are visitors to the fair each year but not vendors, also spoke of how they enjoyed the chance to garb themselves in colourful costuming. I stopped a group of young women dressed as Halloween witches there one afternoon. Their comments agreed with Valentina and Gerardo’s sentiments: It’s lovely to be able to share this experience. This makes it all very real, and you do it all as a community. We come to the fair because it is an excellent reunion place, a meeting point for the Pagan community, which is also a beautiful event with great significance. Making it more Italian, and less a Halloween event imported from America, makes it more native and less commercial. That makes the fair much better. pers. comm. 25 October 2008

Other members of the Pagan community whom I met there told me they dressed in ‘witchy’ gowns and cloaks, and gave out flyers depicting what Paganism is, and what it is not – in other words, they admitted that they were taking advantage of Celtic New Year to try to dispel some of the negative conceptions about Paganism. The materiality of the park and Castle is itself cloaked – hidden and disregarded by late postmodern industrial society, as is the Pagan identity of many in Italy who must abide by the (somewhat) rigid rules of social and religious convention in Italy. Therefore there is a poignant yet poetic double sense of the cloaks’ symbolism in the Pagan stories of sensing the Castle grounds’ place-­power, coupled with their delight in feeling ‘free’ there.

Samhain, but not Halloween There is a journey that one could call an underworld (or otherworld) journey underlying the archaeological profile in the studies. Through diverse collaborations

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with many areas of study and scholarship we’ll hopefully manage to solve various things that are still unknown, to resolve questions about this work, through the archaeology. For example, in terms of what’s known about the foundations of the city, we want to find where the burials were, to establish the exact spot of the city’s founding. Emanuela Magni, pers. comm. 23 September 2008

The organizers of Celtic New Year, Emanuela Magni and her husband Luca Lepore, were dramatic personages who played their roles well of politician and celebrity-­style wife. Emanuela is a petite person, with long blonde hair and a penchant for high heels, despite often having a baby on her hip or at her breast. Luca is tall and serious, with a steely glance. They created the Celtic New Year festival: among their aims expressed overtly was the hope to instil in the residents of Milan the belief that the Castle is close to, if not built precisely upon, the original location of Milan’s Celtic settlement’s central meeting place – a nemeton (pers. comm. 23 September 2008). At the time of my first studies, Emanuela and Luca had the financial and political ability to promote this agenda, and any other they may have less overtly held: Emanuela’s husband was a prominent member of the powerful Italian political party, the League. The couple was gracious in accepting my request for an interview, and invited me into their home prior to the conference and festival in 2008. (Since that time, however, other than a brief phone conversation some years ago, I have had no response to my numerous emails requesting further interviews or information.) Their home was an elegant but comfortable apartment in a residential neighbourhood of Milan, and their three children and enormous cat joined our interview. Emanuela was eager to talk about their creation of the festival, and spoke ardently about the Castle and its grounds. She stated that being at the Castle and park was absolutely a priority for them in choosing a place for the festival: The choice of where to hold this fair, the place to locate it, was not a casual choice. We wanted to enclose it inside what seems to be from the archaeological studies the nucleus of where ancient Milan was founded. The sense of belonging, the bonds to the origin – there couldn’t have been any other place. Anyway, it had to be significant to the ‘journey’ – had to be part of the experience. [. . .] Obviously it’s hard to be sure, but most (scholars) seem to be quite certain that the first nemeton was here. Thus we chose the area that had deep significance to us for these re-­ enactments, this celebration. 23 September 2008

Therefore the Castle was more than a symbol, more than a particular historical setting. Perhaps unbeknownst to many of the Pagans who themselves sensed an ‘underworld’, or (a better translation, so as not to have any connections with criminal networks) may be an ‘otherworld journey’ in the Castle environment, and, at the festival, organizer Emanuela had alluded to this potentially magical quality of the fair in our interviews in describing their archaeological explorations. In describing their process of choosing how to ‘place’ the festival, where and when exactly to hold the festival, Emanuela used discourse and phrasing that can be

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interpreted as spiritual or metaphysical, if not religious. Yet other participants shared with me that Emanuela and her husband made it clear that they did not wish to be connected with the newly visible Pagan movement and religions growing in Italy. The Pagan community of Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, and other northern regions near Milan had come to view this festival as an annual reunion, whether the organizers overtly condoned and supported it, or not. Vendors interviewed during visits to the fair on three different years recounted that the organizers asserted their disdain of the imported customs and commercialism of Halloween. Emanuela, a recognizable figure at the festival in heels and an elegant outfit, personally came to the vendors’ stalls one year and demanded that the orange North American-­variety pumpkins or other directly Halloween-­related objects be put away. (Chapter 4 examines a festival in the Piedmont city of Omegna, which instead develops the theme of pumpkins and their connection to this period of the year, even to Halloween.) Yet the Milan festival was called Samonios, the Italian translation of the pan-Celtic word for the festival at this time of year, Samhain, or Samain (Hutton 2007; Kruta 2007). It was consciously timed for the end of October, while entitled Celtic New Year (Capodanno Celtico): ‘It seems from the analysis of the orientation by the stars, done by archaeo-­ astronomers – from the way the city was laid out according to the correspondence with the rising of certain stars, those coming up then – that it could link, could position the foundation of Milan with Samhain’ (E. Magni, pers. comm. 23 September 2008). Our interview pursued this theme further, as Emanuela had initially brought up the Samhain connection. In terms of location for the festival, since Emanuela and Luca were at that time in the city government and could have chosen any number of places, their choice was significant. Our interview returned to the theme of power of place. Emanuela’s answer was precise once more: If I think of how this (project) was born, of the way this festival evolved over the years, for me the journey was in a way unforeseeable, irrational – but it was always there, at the Castle. It is the best adapted place for Celtic Milan. It has a magic all its own; it has a deep significance for the Celtic history as well as for the later history of Milan. 23 September 2008

This festival stands out among the others studied here, not only in its size and its focus, in an urban setting, but due to another feature of its organization – the point mentioned above that the organizers had the power and financial ability to pick from various possible locations at which to place the festival. Due to the archaeological, historical and sense of place considerations in their own minds and goals, they consciously chose the Castle and Sempione park. As the sections below discuss, it is likely that there were also political and commercial motivations. Despite the dramatic contrast in size and setting of the two festivals described in this chapter, a similar aspect arose as both organizers interviewed, in Andrista and Milan, rejected identification of their festival with other widely known calendrical celebrations. Both attempt to manage the timing and the calendar associations, as well as the cultural and religious associations with which ‘their’ festival is associated and

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could be linked. For the Badalisc it was the rejection of Carnival; for Celtic New Year, it was their denial of Halloween. There is a similarity in this sense of organizers who are trying to manipulate the portrayal and image that they themselves perceive and wish to present. However, the research begs the question: at what point does the festival stop being a child and a creation of the organizers? If the materiality of place is strong enough to create a tangible effect and to develop sense of place in the participants, if there is an ambiance of liminality available where the voice of the Other can be heard, the community and the land itself can take over; then the power of the land and community, their energies, will, desires and visions may come through more strongly. Contrary to what the organizers might realize when they begin to draft the plans for an event, when they put it in motion, set it free out into the world, and offer it to the community, then other forces begin to have a say and a sway in the outcomes. Italy’s nineteenth-­century playwright Luigi Pirandello, in Six Characters in Search of an Author, depicted how an author may not be aware of what he or she has given birth to, how he or she has allowed other desires, dreams, tragedies, to spring into life (Pirandello 1977). My metaphor of the festival as a two-­way bridge expresses the materiality of the Castle grounds, whose ‘deep significance’ may move in more than one direction. Basso (1996) has discussed this potential materiality and agency of place, Gray (2003) refers to it, and so do Grimes (2006) and Barron (2006). This festival research illustrates how place can be an actor, not merely a backdrop. Ingold has also written on the ‘temporality of the landscape’, which is pertinent in this chapter’s discussions of Milan’s landscape and the innate history embedded in its materiality. Like the land surrounding the mountain village of Andrista, examined in the previous sections, the place where Celtic New Year’s ‘journey’ (Emanuela’s words) was situated may have acted with more agency than Emanuela and Luca realized. It is interesting to try to sense a moment in which we ourselves can ‘move along with the world’ and become ‘part and parcel of the world’s transforming itself ’ (Ingold 2000: 200). The festival bridge, woven and constructed between culture and Nature, may have a certain unpredictable power; in the style of fantasy literature it may suddenly turn and weave its own way to a destination not foreseen. Emanuela said of the effect created by the festival: ‘We must remember that behind all of this there is a journey, a voyage of discovery which has been re-­awakened, re-­awakened in people’s unconscious and in their awareness’. Druid leader and teacher, Ossian, albeit from a very different perspective and interviewing months apart, nevertheless spoke in exactly the same way of the festival. Perhaps both Lombardy festivals are, in Ingold’s terms, ‘moving along with the world’, which is progressing in its own transformation. In sacralizing the place as they have done with Celtic New Year and their vision of its ‘otherworldly journey’; in establishing its calendrical regularity, Emanuela and Luca caused the festival to become a ritual, and thus re-­awakened profound creative processes. I would argue that Celtic New Year became a calendrical community ritual and festival; perhaps even a political ritual. Lived religion is just that – it is living, and thus takes on many forms, shifting according to the place and participants. Paganism in Italy has demonstrated that concept in its evolution in recent years, and so has festival culture.

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Sunday in the park with the Druids The Druid leaders of one large northern Italian community of Druidry practitioners, Ossian D’Ambrosio and Maria Feo, had been involved with Celtic New Year since its inception. We had a formal interview in 2008, I visited them at their festival booth during various years, and then we had more time together in 2009, 2012 and 2016, in Milan, in Parco Arcobaleno and at their home. (Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the interviews and fieldwork with them, as well as with the extended Pagan community.) Ossian and Maria make a striking couple, wearing robes elaborately decorated with Celtic designs, abundant jewellery and tattoos, and both with waist-­length hair. Ossian is a master craftsman, jeweller and musician; he creates intricate Celtic-­style jewellery in silver and pewter, which he and Maria sell at his stand; they also sell other crafts made by other artisans, books and recordings. Ossian expressed how in the final years of the festival the energy of Milan had impacted it: It’s hard for Milan to have a people’s fair, a traditional cultural fair. Milan is big business, and so now Celtic New Year is business too! But the important thing is that there is still a message behind it all. Another good thing is that today there is more involvement in the fair from people of other paths. For example some years ago there was this new ‘wave’ of Wicca in Italy. So, it’s been very nice that there are more crafts now there with Pagan things – Druid and Wiccan – and it’s become a place for Pagans to meet. Ossian D’Ambrosio, pers. comm. 26 January 2008

At that time Ossian veered away from criticizing the commercialism towards a more positive view of it being a community festival despite the business-­like ambiance and political underpinnings discreetly behind it. In our first interview Ossian had described how the organizers had contacted him, during the period when they were first planning the festival. He already knew that the organizers had a political agenda and that the idea had sprung perhaps out of a political ‘discussion or need’, as he put it. ‘The political discussion is not of interest to me – I’m interested in the spiritual or magical discussion.’ He could sense that the timing was right for the festival and he saw the desire in northern Italians to know more about their Gallo-Celtic history: ‘It was as though people had had a rebirth in their genes. People woke up again, saying “Ah, here is a voice I hear in my soul!” And it began a whole series of events’ (pers. comm. 26 January 2008). As is mentioned above, Luca and Emanuela were prominent leaders of the conservative League party, which held power in Milan at that time. The party is known for its anti-­immigration policies and its fervent criticisms of the Roman government; it has in the past called for the north of Italy to secede from the south. Ossian does not share the views of the League. However, he realized the significance of the financial backing that it would provide. Ossian had remarked in our early interviews that the financial support was a good thing for both the participant-­visitors as well as the vendors, as it meant lower fees for vendors and no entrance fee for the visitors. This continued to be the case throughout the ensuing years that Capodanno Celtico was

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staged in downtown Milan. For example, their government funding was such that the festival was open to the public and no tickets were required for any of the events, even for well-­known international performers. This situation speaks to the power and financial support provided to the festival by having the League’s integral participation. Ossian wove in his perceptions of the energies of the environment surrounding the festival impacting the event, in a blended dance of the cultural, the commercial and the community. His comments show the way the energies of place and its materiality can flow in a festival space: from organizers to environment, from environment to participants, from culture to participants. Sapelli theorizes that Italians take their networks with them from place to place, or if not the actual network itself, then the ‘models of reciprocity and family ties on a local basis’ (Sapelli 1995: 44). Ossian and Maria’s presence at Celtic New Year drew other Druidry, Wicca and Celtic spirituality practitioners to it. They were an example of the networks in action, as their extended families (who were not necessarily Pagan) also participated in the festival; their community followed them into Milan, which it otherwise might not have done. Cultures find bonding through food and shared culinary experiences and interests, and the Italian Pagan community is no different. People delighted in the specifically regional dishes and drinks that were available at the festival – no doubt carefully planned and chosen by the organizers. Pagan, Celtic-­spirituality and diverse alternative communities offered examples of networks and cultures that found both their home and a form of freedom in Celtic New Year. It provided a liberating environment of festive time where the Other was able to experience communitas and place-­power through the ambiance and materiality of the castle grounds, the festival music, foodways, arts. This festival, despite not being specifically a Pagan gathering – quite to the contrary, a public one where the organizers wanted no connection with Paganism – demonstrated interesting intersections with theories discussed by scholars of Pagan festivals, such as Sarah Pike. In her work, on what she prefers to term Neopagan (or ‘neo-Pagan’) festivals in America (2001, 2004), Pike has observed the sense of belonging Pagan festival goers may feel, while still being aware of their marginality; these were perceptions and ideas the Italians expressed about Celtic New Year.

Amidst the market stalls, finding commodification or rediscovering materiality of place Nineteen people stopped and were interviewed spontaneously by me during the Celtic New Year festival one year – that is, not participants interviewed formally before it or afterwards but, rather, on-­the-spot surveys of visitors. Among those spontaneous interviews only one person completely rejected the ideas of place-­power or Celticity, stating that there was no meaning in the festival beyond the commercial. He felt that the festival was too new and too commercialized to allow a profound or meaningful place-­power to come through, nor a sense of intermingling time periods. This interviewee felt other festivals in Milan offered more, although he did not specify which ones.

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Four long-­time Milanese residents and natives whom I interviewed formally, elderly Laura Castellano the near-­by grocer, Gallic tribal re-­enactor Silvia, Pagan craft vendor and tarot reader Valentina, and American ex-­patriate Melinda Kapor, all discussed another festival, the traditional December Milanese patron saint’s fair of Saint Ambrose, San Ambrogio, contrasting it with Celtic New Year. Three of them, Valentina, Laura and Melinda, stated that, despite Saint Ambrose being the festa of the city’s patron saint, it had lost its singularly Milanese sense of place. Their reasoning seemed to be that it had become an enormous commercial marketplace, and – referring to discussions of what embodies place best – that it had lost its authentic Milanese flavour. Valentina had visited the saint’s day fair many times, from childhood, and felt it had once been the most typically representative of a traditional Italian festa. She noted that the name still is Milanese, ‘O Bei, O Bei’, the dialectal name for the arts and crafts market that accompanies the saint’s day celebrations. Valentina, Melinda and Laura, the three older women, felt that by offering crafts and products that were not local the fair had lost its meaningfulness. (In fact they all separately, not knowing each other at all, mentioned how it was now full of cheaply made imports.) All four women reported the loss of local, bio-­regional identification through the vendors, crafts, foods, and art being the same as those in any market on any given day. Silvia was a re-­enactor at the Saint Ambrose festival as well as at Celtic New Year; she still believed that it maintained a certain Milanese identity and sense of place, through its street theatre depicting the saint’s life. I attended the Saint Ambrose market also that same year, although I did not see the performances about the saint in which Silvia had participated. The contrast with Celtic New Year was very clear. The market takes place on the same grounds, at the Castle and the Sempione park but does not seem to offer local or regional flavour, and thus it neither offers the materiality of place and foodways that Celtic New Year offered. There was the sense of it being, as the vernacular expression goes, ‘A victim of its own success’: the large crowds at the Saint Ambrose festival were so tightly packed that one could barely see or approach the vendors’ stalls or the food stands. Of all the people who stopped and gave interviews spontaneously at Celtic New Year that year only three denied that the festival had helped them to experience Milan’s sense of place in any meaningful manner. Another surprising source of criticism of the festival came from Ossian and Maria. In communications after the festival, they criticized the commercialism that they felt had taken root strongly: ‘I have to tell you sincerely that for us Celtic New Year was mostly a commercial endeavor now and nothing more’ (15 September 2009; 13 November 2016).

Temporality in flux enhances embodiment of place-­power At the end of the October festival one Sunday night, the dark drew in, the crowds diminished and the Castle grounds began to take back their customary night-­time quiet. I took advantage of fewer crowds at stalls to have some final interviews. In contrast to Ossian’s feelings above, another married couple who work each year at the fair as vendors of Pagan-­style and Celtic-­style statues and jewellery spoke of their enthusiasm for the festival:

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There is a great sense of place here, and it helps people to relax. This fair is more open, more welcoming than the fairs we do in our hometown of Turin. Even though this fair is big, it has an intimate feeling. People talk to each other. We only do Celtic fairs, because of the ambiance and the community that is represented. The important thing is the human contact and the relating, the communicating. pers. comm. 26 October 2008

The night darkened, the strains of Celtic music here and there filtered through the shadows and the Castle grounds became enveloped in autumn mists; it was hard not to feel an otherworldly liminality emerging from the Earth, trees and ancient stone of Milan’s old centre. The afternoon had likewise offered such an ambiance, as the Gallic re-­enactors like Chiara, Arturo and Silvia performed traditional activities in Iron Age-­styled settlements – they sang, performed music, fought, trotted past on horseback, wove garments and so forth. Lymer, drawing on Olivier (2004) and Witmore (2006), describes how multiple time periods meet and ‘percolate’ together (Witmore 2006); this happens constantly in our lives, and is particularly due to ‘the polychronic nature of special places in the landscape as well as their percolations through time that still influence the activities of the present’ (Lymer 2010). This theory captured the scenes that unfolded at Celtic New Year for over a decade. As in the ritualized performance of materiality and place at the Badalisc, these re-­enactors created dynamic engagements representing multiple time frames. Witmore phrases it thus: ‘While the past does percolate through its material traces and memory, it can also do so through the liveness [sic] of performance and physical re-­enactment’ (Witmore 2006: 281). The above interviews and reflections indicate that communitas can emerge, as well as materiality and sense of place, in a commercial festival. The surprising finding is that one can find the kind of community re-­integration that is usually experienced in a more traditional festa (like some of those reviewed here). In my three years’ experience of observing the Celtic New Year festival (and of living very near to the Castle and park) I assert that it resisted a diminishing of potent materiality of place and fluid temporalities, despite it being a city festival with a commercial and political underpinning. On the contrary, the fair aided different communities of people to develop awareness of place-­power and the materiality of the ancient Milanese downtown, offering a complex polychronic engagement with space.

Nationalism – an alternative aspect to campanilismo This study has demonstrated how devotion to one’s home place can be felt towards a built environment as much as to natural settings, and particularly to the community connected with that place. This book also asserts that bonds with place are not only natural, but healthy and restorative for a community. When a festival or ritual can help to nurture and maintain these bonds, it too can be healthy and offer renewal for a community (Bell 1997; Orsi 2002; Tak 2000). My work in small communities, such as that reviewed above in Andrista and in the next chapter, Paroldo, demonstrates this

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aspect. There can be, however, another aspect to fervent campanilismo that raises new questions. In recalling Relph’s phrase, ‘poisoned sense of place’ (1997 cited in Eyles & Williams 2008: 24), one may want to examine fundamental purposes a bit more. The beliefs of the organizers of Celtic New Year have had both negative and positive impacts on its development. On the positive side is their belief in the significance and place-­ power of old Milan: ‘Due to the ancient history in each region, which left its traces there, we Italians are very attached to our past and our history’ (E. Magni, pers. comm. 23 September 2008). However, the ‘meaningful world that they are creating’ (Knott 2005a: 101) may have nuances some visitors overlooked. Many attendees may not immediately have recognized the political symbolism in the street theatre re-­enacting of battles and sword-­play. There were multiple layers of significance in processions of armed Gallic warriors marching into the cathedral square of Piazza Duomo. As this is a study with materiality and place as foundational ideas, it is interesting to engage the questions about what it can mean that a powerfully place-­based party, such as the League, was intertwined with a large urban festival. For example, the League maintains anti-­immigrant philosophies as a fundamental policy; another consistent plank in the past was their harsh criticisms of the national government based in Rome. Historically they had campaigned for the Northern provinces to secede from the Italian federation and form a separate state. The League calls this region Padania, identifying itself with the arable, productive regions surrounding the Po river valley. ‘Free Padania!’ (Padania Libera!) was their rallying cry. Tuan wrote on ethnocentrism in Topophilia and observed that it is ‘a common human trait’. He examines how various cultures throughout history have put themselves at the centre of the world and thus felt superior: ‘The illusion of superiority and centrality is probably necessary to the sustenance of culture’ (Tuan 1974: 31). In a similar way the organizers of Celtic New Year, like the League itself, wish to show the centrality and superiority of the north of Italy, of Milan and its ancient legacy as the centre of a superior culture. In Tuan’s studies of the ancient world, he notes in a later chapter how the idea of the ideal city emerged. It relates to the purposes expressed by Celtic New Year, particularly in the conferences that accompany the festival. When urbanism is traced back to its primary centers and into the distant past, we find not the marketplace or fortress, but the idea of the supernatural creation of the world. The agent is a god, a priest-­king or hero; the locus of creation is the center of the world. That center is usually marked in some way. Beginning perhaps as a tribal shrine, it develops into massive and extensive ceremonial complexes. Tuan 1974: 151

For the purposes of this study and the discussion of the Celtic New Year festival, there are a number of points that are significant about the festival’s relationship with the League. As a scholar of Italy my goal is to examine how it demonstrates the bonds created by the power of place, examining also how a political thrust impacts a festival. Power is always an important aspect in studies of place and space, of the Other – even of food. As Margaret Rodman asserts: ‘Places are not inert containers. They are

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politicised, culturally relative, historically specific, local and multiple constructions. [. . .] Places are socially constructed’ (Rodman 2003: 205). Tak’s scholarship in southern and central Italy has kept a constant focus on intertwined issues of power and economics regarding their influences on local ritual (Tak 1990, 2000). Likewise Petrini and Slow Food have kept a close focus on the nexus of food and politics, illustrating how our food choices can become forms of resistance. Multiple sources of interweaving and interlocking influences on place and lived religion can be identified in the involvement of the League in the Celtic New Year festival. This illustrates how the experience of materiality, like sense of place, is relative, coloured by one’s acculturation, perceptions and ethos.

Theories on the Celtic origins of Europe and ‘Milanese-­ism’ This book tests how religion is intertwined with festival and materiality of place. In the Lombardy research, and in this case in particular, my research found aspects of the theories identifying civil religion. In the Palio of Siena, Parsons has studied the importance of historical symbols in fuelling the maintenance and on-­going development of what he argues is a form of Sienese civil religion. When specifically relating this concept to historical local patriotism in other Italian cities, Milan tops the list (Parsons 2004). The organizers of Celtic New Year felt a powerful sense of place regarding Milan and its Castle, which this study reveals to be politicized bonds with place, pointing towards a symbolic evocation of civil religion. The organized orchestration of symbols of power related to Milan’s history is systematic. The League’s manipulation of symbolism through the Celtic New Year festival was a bid for power, a well-­financed effort dramatized through powerful images that strove to create perceptions of superiority over Rome and the south of Italy, as well as to any of those not ostensibly Gallo-Celtic themselves. This is an example of a government’s efforts to develop civil religious pride in being Milanese, of ‘Milanese-­ness’ – to coin a phrase drawn from Siena, and Siena’s evocation through the Palio of symbols of their former power. Tuan (1974) has discussed the evocation of power through symbolism in regard to the ideal city: ‘Power is seldom expressed directly as a physical force even in the animal world. In the human world it is exercised through the recognition and acceptance of the symbols of legitimacy’ (Tuan 1974: 151). The festival organizers put dramatic and financially demanding efforts into finding and using symbols that would help to retrain the population’s thinking. My theory is that their efforts were – whether consciously or not – aiming to create a form of civil religion based on ideas and symbols of Milanese Celticity. Remembering Tuan’s comments on the ideal city and its religiously inspired ‘symbols of legitimacy’, the organizers quite effectively represented Milan as an ancient centre of power, worship and superiority. The League’s purposes may also have been to give Celticity an element of ethnocentricity and racial superiority – albeit from a mistaken view of imagined homogeneity. Rather, scholars have shown how the GalloCeltic world was extremely diverse, as the organizers’ often-­quoted scholar Kruta himself wrote (2007).

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In addition to La Dolce Vita, fine food, film and scenery, Italy is known for volatile governments. Milan was the city of Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to importance in politics and the media, as well as in the construction industry. At various periods in history Milan has held a prominent seat of power; for example, it was the capital of the Roman Empire for about a century, as well as the home of the powerful medieval and Renaissance dynasties of the Visconti and later the Sforza. Thus, like other former Italian city-­states, Milan has had a sense of its own civic religion from early in its history, with a founding myth and locally revered figures (Howell 2012; Parsons 2004, 2006). In the pre-Lombard, pre-Roman period, the Gauls who dwelt in this region of northern Italy are believed to have been the Insubri. In recent years their foundation myths caught the imaginations of many, including the League (la Lega). The party focused on Milan as their capital and symbol. The now retired leader of the party, Umberto Bossi, declared in 1993 that Milan ‘belongs to the Northern League. It is the federal capital of the North and it is ours’ (Passarelli & Tuorto 2012: 139). Bossi has been right on more than one occasion, and la Lega returned to power in parts of Lombardy in February 2013 (although the party lost control of Milan itself). At the heart of the Celtic New Year festival was Milan’s foundational myth, espoused and publicized by the Lega. The Castle and park were central to their locative materiality: it had to be (by their own statements) situated near the supposed place of Milan’s original founding in the fourth century BCE, an actual geographic location the organizers believed to be sacred. The Castle stands near to the main cathedral, with the inherent symbolism and centrality. At the time I began my studies on the festival in 2006, the national Italian government had maintained a centre-­right liaison with the then Northern League, despite general surprise initially at Umberto Bossi and Silvio Berlusconi finding common ground in their first alliance in 1994 (Sapelli 1995). The party largely maintained the seats gained in 2008 into 2011 in both houses of the Italian Parliament (59 deputies and 26 senators), as well as having representatives in the European Parliament. It maintained its power over Milan’s city government until 2012. In later Milan city elections, the Lega kept control of two zones or municipalities of the city, one of which gave Luca Lepore, the former organizer of Capodanno Celtico, the office of ‘Commissione Programmazione e Bilancio’, the Commission on Programmes and Budgets; now Lepore is a City Councillor for ‘Urban Security and Public Works’, among other duties. More importantly perhaps, Roberto Maroni, a prominent Lega politician was elected President of Lombardy in 2013, and though Maroni has retired, the Lega still holds that seat at the time of writing. Politics in Italy frequently holds the last word. After losing the mayoral election and leadership of Milan in 2012, the festival lost its footing and its hold on the Castle site, as well as other venues where events had been planned. The whole event was cancelled for some years; it seems to have regained its footing, with the Lega having grown in national power and some zones of Milan being under Lega majorities. Consequently the festival was held again in 2014, but on the outskirts of the city. Internet sites promise that it will be held again in the next few years, although at the time of writing, none as large as the festival at the Castle have manifested.

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Religious deliberations In terms of religious affiliation, it is unclear from our interviews if the organizers are Catholic, as are other leaders in their party, and whether there is a spiritual basis to their purposes in the festival. It depends on one’s interpretation of the phrase used a number of times in our interviews, ‘an otherworld journey’, which they expressed as an ‘experience’ they wished to evoke in the three-­day event. Emanuela also expressed their belief in the existence of a nearby ancient Celtic nemeton and spoke of how they wanted to hold the fair on the Castle grounds because ‘it was the nucleus of ancient Milan and we felt a sense of belonging there, of bonds to the origins’ (23 September 2008). The connected conference held in 2008 was conceived with the purpose of showing the relationship between Samhain and the founding of Milan, as well as to explore the celestial alignments validating the date. Despite this connection in the organizers’ minds to Celtic traditions taking place at the end of October, they were loath to have any association with Halloween, as their party leadership likewise made clear. This stance could be merely a rejection of things that are imported, given that the heavily commercialized Halloween is seen as an imported American custom. In 2007 Umberto Bossi, the former national head of the League, his second in command, Angelo Alessandri, and other national figures in the party were quoted in Milan’s primary newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, discussing not only Samhain, but also the other pre-Christian festivals that they openly commemorate, such as the summer and winter solstices. (The League websites from local offices around northern Italy give elaborate discussions of Pagan traditions, such as the solstices.) Despite these celebrations, Alessandri was clear about the Lega divorcing itself from Italy’s emerging Pagan movement. He told Milan’s principal newspaper, the Corriere: ‘The Northern League stands at the confluence of the two traditions. However, the fact of recovering our Celticity is certainly not Neo-Paganism’ (2007). Roberto Calderoli, another League leader, was quoted in the article as saying: ‘Certainly the traditions of the ancient inhabitants of Padania have influenced us, but we remain solidly Catholic – perhaps some of the few remaining. Halloween? It’s just stuff to boost merchants’ sales’ (2007). These words seemed to echo the beliefs and mirror the behaviours of the organizers of Celtic New Year. In closing this discussion of politics, religion, location and emotionally charged symbols, it is interesting to mention a visual image utilized by the party. Posters distributed widely by the Lega in Milan, as well as exhibited on their website, show a large portrait of what appears to be a Native American in plains Indian-­style headdress, with the caption:‘They suffered through immigration and now they live on reservations!’ The League’s use of this image attempts to draw parallels between an oppressed indigenous nation (in America) with the people of northern Italy, referring to the ancient Gallo-Celtic tribes of the region. The symbolic messages utilized by the festival itself are eloquent. Photos from my fieldwork depict the impact created by Celtic New Year’s daily processions, where people dressed as pre-Christian Gallic warriors amass and battle outside the central Milanese cathedral, the Duomo, with spears, swords and other weapons.

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Figure 3.3  Piazza Duomo and Gallic re-­enactors.

‘The Eyes of the Night’ Materiality and symbolism were on display in an elaborate and well-­financed art and archaeology exhibition, called ‘The Eyes of the Night’, displaying precious artifacts from Celtic civilizations in various regions of Europe. The exhibition was held inside the Castle, in its upstairs galleries. Emanuela had been forthright about the fact that their goal for the exhibition was to rival that held in Venice in 1991 on Celtic culture and art, ‘The Celts – The Origins of Europe’: ‘In my opinion that one was a bit poor in the way it was done. Ours will be more complete, better organized and we’ll have the same curator-­archaeologist, Venceslas Kruta’ (23 September 2008). The annual conference also held by the Celtic New Year organization was held in a spectacular Renaissance palazzo in one of the most elegant sections of Milan, Piazza della Scala, opposite the world-­renowned opera house. Frescoed Renaissance palazzi are not common in Milan, unlike other Italian cities, due to Milan’s Second World War bombings. The conference held each year prior to the festival invites academics and scholars from around Italy and Europe. I did not attend the Venice exhibit in 1991, so I cannot compare personally. However, my experience of both the conference and art exhibition in Milan in 2008 was that impressive levels of scholarship, art history and archaeology were displayed in the papers presented and in the exhibition. Both exhibition and conference took a turn into spirituality, exploring metaphysical symbolism and archaeo-­astronomy, which according to the scholars and artifacts represented would place the ancient founding of Milan in late October. The conference’s title was: ‘The face of the Gods and the breath

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of the Cosmos – Divine iconography and cosmic symbolism in Celtic art’. The 2009 title of the Milan conference was ‘The Celtic Roots of Europe’ and it invited many of the same scholars and archaeologists that had participated the previous year. Like the festival itself, taking over the central park of Milan for three days yet not requiring tickets for entrance, the elaborate nature of the conference spoke to the power, focus and financial background that the organizers held in Milan during those years. A hard-­bound volume of the exhibition was published in 2009, edited by Emanuela. The organizers were very shocked, judging by statements published in 2012, that their ‘star’ had set so thoroughly when they lost the local election. Adding insult to injury, another extensive exhibition they had organized on the Celts was abruptly tossed out from the beautiful downtown Renaissance Palazzo Reale. Once more underscoring the political nuances of all in Italy, they were replaced with an exhibition on well-­known left-­wing artist, writer, theatre producer and performer, Dario Fo. (I attended this – there were no Gallo-Celtic references, though there were classically oriented ones.) The networks hold, in politics as well as festival, food and religion.

Eating and drinking the North Among the unusually place-­based food and drink offered at Celtic New Year were honey products and meads. Such local products are frequently seen at folk festivals or farmers markets in the UK, the United States and Italy. However, at Celtic New Year these were identified with the early Gallic tribes of the areas the products came from; for example, some mead was named after the ancient native culture of the northwest, the Salassi – ‘Idromiele degli Salassi’. One could easily frame that as a clever commercialization of place and history. However, these vendors knew the history of their home in the Aosta valley, Valle d’Aosta, in depth, and spoke articulately of the original Salassi people as well as of the genocidal Roman oppression of them. The wines and beers on sale were also from specific regions of the north. One year Italian friends and I bought dinner at the food wagon, where there were traditional northern Italian pasta dishes that also represented specific Gallic regions. One was a pasta from the northern lake district, pizzoccheri, short tagliatelle-­type noodles, that are typically made from a specific northern variety of wheat, together with buckwheat flour. We ate communally at long tables outside in the traditional Italian custom and manner of sharing food ‘properly’, a tavola, a commensality that differs considerably from a more American or Anglo-Saxon style of eating while walking. At US or UK fairs, one sees people quickly (and perhaps rather messily!) consuming a sandwich, burger or turkey leg. The recipes and foods available all underscored the focus on Northern Italian geographic regions exhibited by the festival.

Conclusion The Badalisc, reviewed in part one of this chapter, reveals the festa to be a liminal, heavily symbolic and ritualized annual festival, which could not happen elsewhere;

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which would happen ‘whether tourists were present or not’ (Parsons 2004). The Badalisc gives evidence of Grimes’ phenomenology of exteriorization (Grimes 1975) as well as Ingold’s theories (2000), showing how festival can move along with the world in an intertwined communion with materiality of place. Regarding Turner’s theories of community ritual, communitas does arise, despite the social dramas – or maybe due to the resolution of the disputes about the festival that my participants Paola and Stefano (as well as others) described in the little village. The Badalisc illustrates interanimation with place, where the residents of Andrista celebrate a form of lived religion in the festival. Materiality of mask, foodways and place emerge powerfully as time shifts, percolating with past eras, in the festival heterotopia. Urban Milan is a society experiencing all the complexities of a postmodern European nation, yet one that perhaps never has been modern – if we believe Sapelli’s theories on Italy (1995). It suffers the urgent and sometimes frightening urban issues typical of a city of about one million, thus becoming a kind of microcosm of the macrocosm – the macrocosms being the larger urban centres, like London, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Tokyo and so forth. With a large percentage of the population not being native to Milan, questioning how residents experience bonds with place in Milan could seem a quixotic quest. However, the campanilismo of Italian loyalties bonds people to their neighbourhoods as well as to Milan’s spectacular Gothic Duomo. The cultural trait of maintaining chains of reciprocity that move along with migratory social networks (Sapelli 1995) bonds people to their local merchants, their coffee bar meeting place, and to such aspects of community and lived religion in the otherwise alienating city-­scape as those represented by some festivals. Part two has demonstrated how Milan’s Celtic New Year also provided a bridge between Nature and culture. The festival did not offer profoundly ritualized, liminal space in the most formal sense, and though it offered community evolution and integration, it could not be the same re-­integration to hometown community that a small village festa provides. However, there are various factors that meet the criteria of ritual, as well as there having been – at least for a time – evident communitas and re-­ integration. My ethnographic work on Celtic New Year supports the theory that it represented a ritualized festival and shows engagement with place including a politicized engagement that approached a form of civil religion. The locative materiality of land and built environment spoke to participants through the festival, moving in processes of expression and transformation; humanity moved with it. As the festival space opened each late October, as the aroma of traditional northern foods began to flavour the open air, with Celtic melodies on bagpipes and tin whistles filtering through the park, a potent polychronic place-­power began interweaving place, human communities and the past. I wonder in the absence of the festival who misses it each Samonios? Perhaps the Sforzesco castle, its abundant trees and the Sempione parkland themselves do. The following chapter reviews other unique festivals in the neighbouring region of Piedmont, examining aspects and features of the other festival relationships with materiality, place and lived religious tradition.

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This chapter is broken into two, divided geographically between northern and southern Piedmont. Piedmont has historically been a prominent agricultural region for Italy, at times called ‘Italy’s breadbasket’, therefore the chapter opens with historical background to set the stage. Part one returns to the discussion of the new religious movement Italian Druidry, delving into the festivals and rituals organized by Druid leaders (introduced in Chapter 3) near a city called Biella. Then it moves to a secular, gastronomic festival on the banks of Lake Orta, one of the smaller of the northern Italian lakes, Lago d’Orta, that takes place in the autumn celebrating local produce, in particular the pumpkin. Part two focuses on one small village in the area known as the Langhe, where there is a long-­held folklore tradition of vernacular witchcraft. In essence it is a harvest festival, named for a Christian saint, but that also celebrates the history of their Masche, the local dialectal word for healer/herbalist witches. Theories and themes introduced previously are tested against Piedmont’s histories and this ethnographic material. Among the themes are materiality of place-­power, from natural as well as built environments; local foodways intertwined with lived religion and folklore; community ritual, bonds and animic relationality. Food brings something back to people. Food talks to you, it communicates. Ossian D’Ambrosio, pers. comm. 28 January 2008 People here really believe the mountains are part of their soul. It’s very spiritual. Michela Rastellotti, pers. comm. 20 October 2008 This chapter moves now to Piedmont, a region in Northern Italy to the west of Milan and Lombardy, at the foot of the mountains (as the name implies). Piedmont has traditionally been known as the breadbasket of Italy, and so the chapter opens with a brief history of farming and foodways. It uncovers how food and festival feasting are interwoven in Piedmont. These concepts are placed against the backdrop of Piedmont’s histories of migration, agrarian struggle and its Second World War partisan Resistance movement (Ginsborg 2003; Sapelli 1995). The chapter also offers further background on the international organization Slow Food, a critical part of the rapidly growing local

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food movement. As mentioned earlier, Slow Food originated in Piedmont, and has important cultural resonance in the book’s fieldwork. The chapter will look specifically at three areas, the towns or villages of Biella, Omegna and Paroldo. Food festivals in Piedmont, known as sagre – as in all of Italy – offer local gastronomic traditions that exemplify the idea of ingesting topography (Leynse 2006). The chapter begins with northern Piedmont, visiting the cities of Biella and Omegna. In Omegna materiality merges with foodways; one clear indication is that the Nigogliotta, the large pan used to cook the communal risotto festival meal, has a personal name and identity connected with the nearby landscape. In Piedmont’s festivals, the materiality of costume, of foodways and campanilismo combined with community identity offer examples of potent interanimation with place (Basso 1996). In Omegna’s Carnival, for example, the Carnival King and Queen embody the river and lake for the locals. In part two the chapter returns to a more rural area and a tiny village, Paroldo, where lived religion, folklore and seasonal traditions are displayed through their festivals. Examples of the embodiment of materiality and of liminality return to the discussion, as the locals don traditional cloaks and hats, underneath the apotropaic carvings on the local church towers. The area claims a history of an indigenous witchcraft tradition, rooted in local beliefs; the festival exhibits its open-­minded cultural Catholicism by honouring the ancient ‘witch/healers’, called ‘masche’ in the local dialect, who historically lived in and protected the village. One example is the November harvest festival with religious roots, St. Martin’s Summer, L’Estate di San Martino. In addition to the folklore of the witch/healers, of particular interest is the involvement of Slow Food in Paroldo’s growing festival cycle, and its ritualized feasting.

Materiality of place communicated through food and festival Embodied, sense-­derived experiences of place-­power and materiality arise through the altered temporality, the heterotopia, of the festival. Food becomes a key component of that bridged place–humanity relationship, as this book and in particular this chapter explore. This view of Piedmont also engages other forms of materiality and embodiment related to belonging and identity as made evident in the Piedmont fieldwork. Ingold’s concepts of a relational model bonding humanity and Nature are pertinent in regard to materiality derived through place-­based experiences, such as foodways in festival: The relational model, on the other hand, does not counterpose the land to its inhabitants along the axis of a dichotomy between the animate and the inanimate. A founding premise of the model is that life, rather than being an internal property of persons and things, is immanent in the relations between them. It follows that land, comprised by these relations, is itself imbued with the vitality that animates its inhabitants. The important thing is to ensure that this vitality never ‘dries up’. Ingold 2000: 149

A festival can convey not only relationality, but with it the immanent energy and distinctiveness of place as it offers space and opportunity for a ‘sense-­ful’ awareness of

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the land’s energies. Food has been shown in Andrista in Chapter 3 as a symbolic piece of the bridge that the festival builds. Ossian D’Ambrosio, Druid leader in Lombardy and Piedmont, (introduced in previous chapters) expressed in our interviews how he sees traditional foods as a cogent way to convey the power of place to his community of practitioners and students of Druidry. As the quote at the head of the chapter demonstrates, he – like so many Italians – senses its ability to communicate. As mentioned previously, Slow Food sprang up originally in Piedmont, in the rich vineyard and agricultural region called the Langhe, near Paroldo (the second village covered in this chapter). The philosophies and campaigns of Slow Food are significant in these discussions, as they recognize the importance of sense of place and of ‘situated eating’ as an embodied experience of place and community (Leitch 2003; Leynse 2006).

War, farming and sense of place Themes of depopulation and emigration figure in the questions engaged here, highlighting how a festival maintains the vitality in a place, for example in Paroldo, a depopulated rural village. Referring to Christian’s observations on depopulation in rural northern Spain, the village festival helps prevent ‘the magic’ of the rural village from ‘leaking out’ by holding population in the rural areas and fighting the lure of the city lights (Christian 1989: 40–41). Harvey wrote that ‘To destroy is to de-­story’ (2004b: 261). Place-­centered stories emerge in festival culture, celebrating and honouring place and people. Omegna and Paroldo’s stories are being maintained both privately and publicly – by government supported organizations, individuals’ own research and small local nonprofit organizations. When one conducts ethnographic interviews in Piedmont, many participants will have farming in their recent past or in their family history; in the cases studied here, some may be smallholding farmers themselves or children of farmers, including some subsistence farmers. In Piedmont some will undoubtedly have direct experience of the Second World War in their families, or their own lives, and there may be a familial memory as well as community memory of the Resistance movement (Ginsborg 2003; Sapelli 1995). Emigration’s notable impact in Piedmont confronts the ethnographer with stories of people transplanted, who left their homes under painful circumstances to relocate to the city; others who struggled to maintain their homes and livelihoods in the rural areas. Thus, sense of place in the region, as previous chapters have discussed, may express bitterness and pain, memorialized in toponyms heavy with memory: ‘Remember all the named places in the hills that mark the space of accidents and tragedies’ (Stewart 1996: 148). We must be conscious of the history of a place, rural or urban, for the place speaks of its history (Basso 1996; Stewart 1996). ‘Bodies and places are connatural terms. They interanimate each other’ (Casey 1996: 24). Thus we are always ‘emplaced’ and embodied on the Earth, but it is particularly significant where the landscape is of our family, or our genetic history, and communicates these memories somehow. When my fieldwork participants in both Lombardy and Piedmont spoke of the war-­time traumas they knew or people near them had gone through, having lived in those places myself, their communication with the deep language of place was palpable and authentic.

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The fieldwork interviews reviewed in this chapter, in parts one and two, come from both urban and rural Piedmont, from people as varied as aristocrats, government employees and peasant farmers. Their contributions reveal experience and expression of the many-­sided awareness of and bonds with place in humanity. Piedmont contains much of the fertile plains of the Po river and has traditionally been one of the richer regions of Italy, both in agriculture as well as in industry. Previous chapters have discussed Sapelli’s theories on Italy’s late industrialization (1995), a phenomenon that has had far-­reaching influences throughout Italy. Piedmont is a major part of Italy’s ‘Industrial Triangle’ (Ginsborg 2003: 214–216, 219), given this title due to the significant industries in and around Turin, Piedmont’s largest city. The Savoy monarchy ruled there for centuries (Cardoza 1997; 2008: 10, 16, A221/04; Street, 1998: 397–398), and its agricultural areas underwent agrarian reform earlier than central and southern Italy (Cardoza 1997; 2008). Despite these reforms there is a long history of sharecropping and of small holdings, which could be termed subsistence farming. As in the Lombardy section, some of my Piedmont participants called themselves contadini, peasants, or described that as their family heritage. Peasant is not a word often used in America or England to describe one’s background or family heritage, at least not in a positive light – in English the term can carry a negative connotation. However, beyond the implications of poverty and minimal schooling, the nuances in Italian also connote a country person’s inherent understanding of Nature and a simpler, quieter lifestyle. This self-­reflexive description by participants was among other factors that were taken into account; it often did signal an awareness of land and Nature that long-­time urban dwellers may not hold.

Food, wine and communal meals – multiple symbols, multiple meanings The Slow Food organization, its symbol a snail, has its headquarters in the Langhe region, at Bra (the region discussed next in part two). Today it has a gastronomic university there as well. Its founders wrote in their ‘manifesto’: ‘Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavours and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food. [. . .] Slow Food guarantees a better future’ (Portinari 1989). Defence, banishing degradation, guaranteeing the future: these are unusual promises from a culinary organization. However, Slow Food is much more than a culinary organization: its campaigns are political, local as well as global, and expanding into all areas of media and publishing. In addition, one must consider the history of invasion and subsequent rulership by the French monarchy in Piedmont, along with other factors of the political history that together have given the region a distinctive identity, attitude and philosophy (Cardoza 1997; Leitch 2003). Piedmont’s foods reflect its history and geography: ‘This geographical proximity is reflected in similar methods of food production and culinary traditions influenced by French and Swiss cuisines. The cooks of Valle d’Aosta and Piemonte [. . .] use mushrooms, truffles, berries and nuts foraged on the southern mountain slopes’ (Katz & Weaver 2003: 301).

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Orsi makes clear how deeply embedded the sacredness of home, the domus, and the value of eating together is for Italians and Italian-Americans in his studies of New York City; Cinotto has discussed this in Italian immigrant culture as well (2001). Specific practices in regards to food preparation, eating and the values of commensality enshrined in familial or communal dining are fundamental in Italian culture. Riccardo Milan, one of the interview participants and festival organizers in this chapter, interpreted the religious symbolism of a sacrament taking place through the festival sharing of food, similar to the absolution that Orsi discusses in relation to the Madonna festa in Harlem. This phenomenon surfaces in Italian as well as Italian-American culture, where the ‘bridging’ of the Nature-­humanity gulf comes through the consumption of local foods, in traditional manners, with familial recipes. This was described in a notable fashion by the participants who spoke of the healing power of food, particularly when shared in community. Milan said in our first interview: ‘The purpose of the sagra is to be united once more, to collaborate and connect deeply with the Italian spirit. We all sin every day, even though we have the desire for sanctity’ (20 October 2007). With this Milan implied that the commensality of a festival’s communal meal helped participants to find greater sanctity, even a sort of absolution or reconciliation. Ossian also commented on the spiritual quality of dining in company: In Italy there is this great affection for eating together, for being together at table. If you manage to get people to sit down together and have a dinner, we have seen that food became a ritual, a rite. [. . .] Food brings something back to people. Food speaks to you, it communicates. You see how people react. Therefore, eating the foods of a place all together is a form of communication with the food and the place. Ossian D’Ambrosio, pers. comm. 26 January 2008

Whether Christian, Pagan or secular, the participants’ comments agree with Orsi’s observations in his studies of Harlem (2002), finding spiritual gifts in the communal re-­integration that the festival can bestow. Other kinds of symbolism arise in such meals, as Leynse observed in France: ‘Food-­festivals are particularly suited to this task as they often combine nostalgia for “simpler” days with entertaining, convivial community gatherings. The overall ambiance lends itself to an enjoyable performance and experience of a given locale, and is, thus, an excellent site for socialization of place-­based food habits and an overall sense of place’ (Leynse 2006: 148). Her work in the Loire valley observes how local bread, wine, strawberries, mushrooms and so forth become ‘another example of a food with a specifically local, symbolic value’ (2006: 149). There is ‘local, symbolic value’ with a placeful emotional charge in many foods. It is important to the fieldworker or observer to divine what the food symbolizes in order to clearly interpret the sense of place being conveyed. It may be a simpler, less-­polluted time in the world, as Leynse hypothesizes about nostalgia in ‘Loireville’; or it may evoke a socially or psychologically healthier era of close family bonds and family meals, meanings that my participants imparted to their communal festival meals. Slow Food strives to combine the symbolism of overall health, societal and individual, with the practice of eating

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slowly and in community with others. It is evident that my fieldwork participants share this ethos as well. However, among the symbols and memories conveyed to some there may also be memories of hunger, grindingly hard work and of poverty. Memories arriving through the experience of ‘sense memory’ may be of any genre or flavour (sense memory is also the name for a theatrical acting technique (Morris & Hotchkis 1977, 1979)) and may not always convey feelings that are sweetly reminiscent, romantic or positive. For example, Paroldo participant Franca Vadda reminded me of that in our interviews, calling the sanitized, idealized memories that some prefer to convey about Italy ‘tourist postcards’ (pers. comm. 26 April 2009). One food that may impart such memories to northern Italians is chestnuts. Chestnut trees cover the north of Italy; the smell of roasting chestnuts in autumn is likewise ubiquitous. However, that aroma may remind some that chestnut flour and other such products were at times a last resort in the battle against starvation.

Part one – Druids in Biella, pumpkins in Omegna This section will introduce points pertinent to materiality of food and place in the Druid community of Piedmont. The following chapter then goes into detail on the evolution and growth of Paganism in Italy.

The language of the oaks – ritualizing place in Italian Druidry As the passion for all things Celtic grew in the rest of Europe and in the United States in the late twentieth century, a search for Celtic identity in Italy likewise began to grow. A milestone year in Italy may have been 1991 when (as mentioned in Chapter 3) an extensive exhibition in Venice attempted to ‘prove’ the Celtic roots of all Europe (McCarthy & Hague 2004). In the 1990s, with the slow arrival of books and news from abroad in Italy, local groups and teaching ‘Groves’ (boschi) of Druidry began to grow (Il Druidismo Moderno del Cerchio Druidico Italiano, the website for Italian Druids, 2014). Clans, creative re-­enactors and organizers of festivals began to research tribal heritages of certain areas of Lombardy, Piedmont and other areas, many began to hold workshops, camps and trainings, and the fervour for Celticity grew. Chapter 5 unpacks the history of Italian Paganism’s evolution. Ossian and his wife, Maria, generous participants in my fieldwork, conceived and created a northern Italian tradition of Druidry that is ecological and place-­oriented. Their school is called ‘La Confraternita dell’Antica Quercia’, the Confraternity of the Ancient Oak; the supporting organization is the ‘Associazione Culturale Antica Quercia’. With a lifestyle that is close to Nature, the couple and their children live their Earth-­ honouring ethics and mores admirably. Ossian makes a living making and selling esoteric jewellery, art and artisanal crafts and has his own local metaphysical shop and website offering his products. The family’s rituals and ceremonies, as much as possible, are practised in the local oak and chestnut groves dotted with ancient archaeological

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sites, all of which they know intimately. An ancestral altar is permanently set up in their home, and every ritual or ceremony honours the spirits of place there, as well as the ancestors and spiritual teachers. Ossian and Maria are well-­known local figures in their northern Piedmont area of Biella. The couple puts on large and well-­thought-out festivals at specific times of year – primarily Beltane (May Day), La Festa Celtica di Beltane, another smaller one at Autumn Equinox and also at Samhain, at the end of October. The foods involved have symbolic meaning and are always as local as possible. Their rituals and the related feasts insist on local foods, made by hand or prepared at home; cakes or breads, dishes bought at the local supermarket are not encouraged (pers. comm. 13 November 2016). It is their regular practice to make ‘libations’, that is, offerings, at the end of their rituals to the spirits of place and the spirits of the elements; they are vigilant that all the offerings be bio-­degradable, organic and safe for the environment.

Materiality of food and land as contact with the ancestors and spirits of place There is a potent materiality in Maria and Ossian’s tradition, which demonstrates great bonds with land and place, in a clearly disciplined way. In Piedmont overall, there is a powerful tradition of eating, drinking and living place – demonstrated by Piedmont’s Slow Food organization. During my time with the Pagans and Druids there it became clear how ingrained and central in one’s life such an awareness can become. Maria and Ossian know their food sources, their watershed and their lands, as do many Italians. However, beyond nutrition or tradition, their focus also weaves in a spiritual understanding of the power of food and all we ingest. When we spoke of recipes and of gastronomic traditions, there was an impressive understanding of the seasonal dishes that would complement a ritual feast best, of what local farms, markets or butchers offer, and how to find all that is quality, homemade and original to the area. The gastronomic points made by Omegna participant Michela (in the section to follow) regarding the importance of trusting one’s local butcher or farmer’s market were shared by Ossian and Maria. However, the Druidic spiritual nuances additionally connected the ethos of eating locally to the Celtic Wheel of the Year, and to the ancestral or symbolic meanings in ritual foods. It seemed appropriate that the most recent interview took place in Ossian and Maria’s kitchen, with pots and pans banging in the background. (It included a very humorous but tongue-­in-cheek conversation about the spiritual merits of eating raw broccoli. Humour is a big part of Italian culture, north and south.) To illustrate their answers to my questions, Ossian and Maria spoke of the local cheeses and milk products they wind into their rituals at Imbolc, the February festival in the Celtic world, which commemorates the pan-European Gallo-Celtic Goddess Brigid, as well as the season of the first lambing. (Imbolc is mentioned in the section following on Paroldo as well.) It was anathema to them to think of using cheeses that were not absolutely local. I asked about the energy of the ‘territory’ – a frequently used word in Piedmont for the region’s lands – and how they feel it is expressed with foods, such as their land’s own chestnuts, which we had gathered in the woods and eaten that evening, roasted on a campfire:

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Yes, it’s that sort of idea, food of the season and of the place. We have cheeses from the season; here we have ours and at Bergamo they would have theirs. (Another friend present was from Bergamo.) For example, at Candelora – Imbolc – we eat foods that have a milk base. I bring toma (a very local cheese, made in Biella itself) or something of that sort. I wouldn’t go get mozzarella from Calabria! [Everyone laughed.] You try to align yourself with the moment of the year and also with the territory. Ossian, pers. comm. 13 November 2016

At the summer ceremony for Lammas or Lughnasa, all in their ‘Grove’ (the Druidic term for a spiritual community that is also a training group for Druidic students) are required to make the ritual breads at home and by hand. Again at Samhain a particular type of sweet, or nutty, chocolate biscuit eaten at the Day of the Dead, the pan dei morti, must be made. (Pan dei morti is more typically a Lombardy tradition, but today there is always some merging of tradition, given the close proximity and the number of people from Lombardy in this community.) The personae and images that the Druids present in ritual and festival are not only beautiful but resonate with symbolism. The robes and embroidery, ritual tools that are worn, all impart power and significance through the flowing, evocative Druidic attire. Whether a head-­dress, a crown, a robe, tunic or cloak, all are covered in Celtic and other ritual or religious symbols, and all are nearly entirely made by hand, as are the instruments, magical ‘tools’ (wands and so forth). In my experience of their community and festivals, this seems to be true for all. It is stressed with students in their esoteric school of Bards, Ovates and Druids that they must endeavour to make as much as they can by hand of their ceremonial items – or to buy from those who do make such, intentionally and by hand. This ethos is pervasive throughout the Pagan world generally – in the UK and the United States as well. However, the commitment to cooking, designing and creating ritual dishes, offerings, tools, ritual components and so forth held a sense of engagement I have not encountered quite as strongly elsewhere. Materiality pours forth from their powerful sense of what each element represents in a ritual, in what is eaten or drunk, in what is offered to the ancestors and the spirits of place.

Bagna Cauda An eloquent example of materiality in foods and in feasting associated with home, land and history is the well-­known dish, traditional in autumn in the north of Italy, the Bagna Cauda. (It also can be spelled Bagna Caoda and the literal translation is ‘hot bath’, in dialectal form.) This ‘hot bath’ of anchovy-­rich soup is an example of the piatto povero – a poor food dish; the piatto povero has become a popular trend in Italy recently, in a search to recover traditional recipes from the past representing times of hunger, of scarcity and the creativity needed to make a nutritious meal from very simple ingredients. Bagna Cauda is primarily a Ligurian dish, whose origins may in fact be from the south of France – some theorize it is originally Provençal. However there is a long tradition of eating it in both Liguria and Piedmont. As festival and food writer

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Carol Field put it: ‘When the air in the vine-­covered hills of Piedmont was thick with the aroma of newly made wine, workers once used to gather to share a pot of bagna cauda set over heat in the middle of a table. They would dip crisp raw autumn vegetables into the steaming garlicky mixture of oil, butter and anchovies’ (1990: 205). The following section on Paroldo also discusses Bagna Cauda, where it is served in conjunction with the end of the harvest festival in November, ‘L’Estate di San Martino’ (St. Martin’s Summer). What is unique to the Druids and the magical materiality in their food choices and customs is how they (and other Pagans) have conceptualized Bagna Cauda as a ‘magical ritual’ (Ossian, pers. comm. 13 November 2016). Bagna Cauda is traditionally a communal dinner, and ‘must be’ as such – all the research participants in Biella, in Paroldo and in Lombardy agreed on this point. As Field notes, eating Bagna Cauda celebrated the end of the autumn harvest season in the agricultural community, when the wine barrels were finally sealed, signalling an end to field labour as the winter comes on. Its sense memory also recollects times of hunger, eras when food was scarce and communities had to share what small portions they had. Here it can become a ritual act: no matter how spare or paltry the fare, the friends, family and extended community sat down to table together, or stood around a central dish, in the very original style of eating in the fields. The point was to eat a traditional meal together with specific elements and ingredients, each with historic and ancestral symbolism. Italian-Americans whose ancestors or parents came from Piedmont today still re-­enact this with traditional ingredients, oftentimes eating outside while standing around the table (Rick Gerardo, pers. comm. 11 May 2017). Here are some of the elements that make Bagna Cauda a calendrical, community ritual: all sit (or stand) at one long table; the meal occurs at a specific date or season. The group shares all they have with gratitude and with memory, even if a mere array of vegetables. It also involves the sensate act of eating with one’s fingers. Thus, with shared memory and awareness, the Bagna Cauda re-­enacts and ritualizes a simple rural seasonal festivity. To hear them discuss it, Ossian and Maria’s creation of Bagna Cauda is a ritualized act of food-­based materiality in multiple senses; for a start, they know their local food producers or distributors personally. Then, the act of cooking is sacred and magical – as Maria discussed, her grandmother, la Nonna, would chase anyone out of the kitchen who was angry or in a negative mood that could infect or infuse the food with harmful energies (pers. comm. November 2016). As Maria, Ossian and their community cut and chop the local raw vegetables, which must ‘play a part’ in the ritualized meal – Jerusalem artichoke, cardoons, celery, garlic, anchovies, breads – the magical act already has begun, in the lengthy preparation of the shared meal. The table is likewise set in a traditional manner: either with one central pot for all to share from, or more often today with each place having its own small cooking dish where one dips the vegetables in the anchovy-­rich, garlic-­flavoured broth. The materiality of Bagna Cauda is as richly redolent of ancestors, memory and rural agricultural history as it is of garlic and anchovies. We will return to Bagna Cauda in the section on Paroldo, where its relationality with place and tradition is also interwoven with another community, southern Piedmont’s ‘Masche’, the witch/healers commemorated in Paroldo’s autumn festival.

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The research now heads further east, but still along the foot of the Alps, to the old industrial centre of Omegna, a small city on the banks of the northern lake Orta, Lago d’Orta.

Festa in the shadow of the saving mountains Omegna lies on the northern edge of Piedmont, looking up at dramatic pre-Alpine foothills, beside Lake Orta. Its roots are Roman and earlier; in more recent history the city had become a manufacturing centre, playing a role in Italy’s late industrialization. The lake is not as grand as its more famous lake cousins, Maggiore and Como; it is smaller but still impressive, its mountains rising steeply from the lake banks. Although close to glamorous Lake Maggiore, being only 8 miles distant (13.1 km) at one of the closest points, Omegna is a world apart in culture and economics. With its populations and industries declining in recent years, and the downtown growing increasingly dilapidated, in 2002–2003 Omegna began a beautification programme for the lake. The initiative began cleaning the lake waters of manufacturing-­induced pollution, building bike paths and hiking trails, and so on. The local tourist office, the ProLoco, (from Latin, meaning ‘for the place’), teamed up with a town teacher and ProLoco volunteer, Riccardo Milan, to create initiatives that support local businesses. Their vision was to draw revenue and life back to the town through attracting tourism as well as new residents. Like Milan, others who work with the ProLoco on the festivals and other projects are all volunteers; nevertheless they have continued the work for some years, designing projects to bring new life to the old city. In 2004 they founded a new October festival celebrating the local autumn harvests: the Pumpkin festival, ‘La Sagra della Zucca’. Along with a farmer’s market (mercato contadino, or peasant market) that sells regional produce, cheeses, honey, wines, sausages, pastas and other culinary products, there is a large communal outdoor meal. The festival also integrates a bit of Halloween flavour by bringing in orange pumpkins, along with other foreign knick-­knacks, creating juxtapositions between the rigidly local and the obviously imported. The fair and markets all take place in the old town, under medieval market porticoes, near the edge of the lake. When the tourist office decided to create the autumn festival, it partly was intended to fill the gap between the summer festivals and Christmas. Although the imported orange pumpkins were the choice of themes for the fair, primarily due to being more colourful than the native green ones, the native pumpkin is used in northern Italian recipes, such as pasta and risotto. As Milan mentioned, they grow there and in many parts of Italy. He admitted that it was attractive to link the fair to the growing interest in the imported traditions of Halloween in Italy, to make the fair appealing to children and their families as well. Among their creative gastronomic ventures, Milan and others authored a cook book of local recipes, which uses regional, lake area ingredients, including fish from the lake and the local green pumpkins (Milan et al. 2007). In his work on Siena, Parsons uses the term Senesità for that specific sense of what it means to be Sienese. No one used a term for ‘Omegnian-­ism’ in the interviews; however, all my participants at one point or another discussed the particular details that they believe distinguish their region from other parts of Piedmont, ‘lower Piedmont’ particularly. On a more universal level,

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Italianità (‘Italian-­ness’, in essence, or the deeper meaning of being Italian), figured into Milan’s conceptions of what festival-­goers want and, moreover, what they benefit from. My first visit to the Pumpkin festa was on a splendid autumn day; in the market stalls the orange of the pumpkins and produce almost seemed artificially painted to match the brightness of the autumn foliage against a brilliant blue sky and lake. The somewhat run-­down old manufacturing city looked as though it had put on its best autumn finery, and there was a quiet gaiety in the air as people milled about the market stalls in the ancient centre. I had located Milan through a full-­time city employee and fellow organizer, Michela Rastelloti, who has given generously of her time as a participant in this research. Milan is a tall, imposing figure, with a sonorous voice that was obviously used to calling attention in a classroom. He invited me into their busy office, as the festival got underway; entering the office, I noticed the massive pan sitting in the piazza nearby awaiting the communal lunch of that Saturday. This was the first time I had met Michela, although we have had a number of phone conversations and ultimately various formal interviews. Both Milan and Michela were born in Omegna or the nearby villages, and chose to stay there. They both are fervent in their beliefs about what makes these festivals special and how they best can convey a sense of Omegna. The festival offers an embodied materiality derived from eating local produce and traditional recipes in communal meals in the old town centre, all of which build a shared sense of identity. These concepts were all very clear in Michela’s and Riccardo’s descriptions of Omegna’s festivals and foodways. Milan used the term Italianità – ‘Italianness’ one might translate it as – in discussing the immigrant groups now populating Omegna from other nations and continents. He said in our second interview in February 2009 that some who come to Omegna, such as the Senegalese, would understand ‘the magical feeling we have’, referring to the Omegna natives’ love of their lake and mountains. (He did not explain why that group in particular.) When Michela was interviewed on such themes, she stressed the profound relationship locals have with the mountains and the lake. She drew often on the intense relationality and historical associations that townspeople hold with the mountains and region. Michela answered the question of ‘What would you tell someone about this area, someone who really wanted to understand it?’ with the following account: ‘When I am talking about the mountains here, I often say to my tourists that the mountains are really important. People who come from here, they feel at one with the mountains. For old people, for example, if they look at the peak of the mountain, they can tell you what the weather will be tomorrow’ (20 October 2008). She spoke further of people’s deep bonds with the landscape: During the Second World War, there was this big movement here, the Resistance movement. The women and the wives of the Resistance were very important characters. They knew the wild mountains and were able to cross the wild mountains. Consequently they could cross into Switzerland and the Germans couldn’t find them. They crossed the mountains directly – that’s not a legend, that is true. So, you realize why people here feel that they are part of the mountains, especially the people who lived then. 20 October 2008

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Again, up came the spectres of war, struggle and Resistance so poignantly omnipresent in Piedmont. In Omegna the memories hover in the toponyms, the streets and piazze, the ubiquitous war-­related statues and memorials. Basso captures this: ‘Place-­based thoughts about the self lead commonly to thoughts of other things – other places, other people, other times, whole networks of associations that ramify unaccountably within the expanding spheres of awareness that they themselves engender’ (Basso 1999: 55). In my northern Italian festival research the Resistance movement has come up a number of times – most markedly here in Omegna and also in Cevo, which figured in the Lombardy fieldwork on the Badalisc. Cevo was also a home of the Resistance movement and suffered atrocities committed against the townspeople, which are memorialized constantly. Marco Casalini in Lombardy, whose interviews were discussed in Chapter 3, at one point also spoke of how people from Cevo also had escaped on foot through the mountains from their valleys and mentioned that some of his own family had done so. Michela reiterated in our 2016 interviews how in the Second World War people had used their knowledge of the mountains, their trails and hiding places. In Omegna the elderly walk through town, sit by the lake, drink coffee in the local bar, and look up at the mountains; perhaps they see, as Michela recounted, how the weather will change tomorrow, where they loved to gather chestnuts; or maybe they remember the ancient paths there that led them or their loved ones to safety. If they send a thought of gratitude to the mountains, perhaps some vitality returns, softly, subtly, to the land. The ‘expanding spheres of awareness’ cannot be entirely measured and understood, but such awareness of the ‘networks of associations’ may be healing and reinforcing to all present (Basso 1996). This ethnographic enquiry demonstrates, in a Piedmontese example, how history can be said to live on in the land. Ingold has a powerful phrase for this quality: ‘Land is not so much a stage for the enactment of history, or a surface on which it is inscribed, as history congealed. And just as kinship is geography, so the lives of persons and the histories of their relationships can be traced in the textures of the land’ (Ingold 2000: 150; italics in original). Land as history congealed – an evocative phrase, and apt indeed, whether remembering our planet’s origin in the Big Bang fireball or our individual human memories.

The place-­ful experience of the Pumpkin festival One of my areas of focus, as well as a goal, for my festival research is to show how festivals provide an aspect of sustainability for such small cities and villages. Michela discussed this in her expression of the city’s goals for the festival: ‘We hope to help the shops, the restaurants. It would be good to help them – you know, especially in this economic crisis. Here we really felt the impact of the arrival of shopping malls and supermarkets. So we want people to rediscover the little town centres with their small shops’ (20 October 2008). Michela’s views echo Leynse’s (2006) findings in France as well as the Slow Food organization’s goals of resisting globalization through promotion of local foods. In the age of meat-­borne diseases, consumers in Europe want to know the source of their food, including their meats. Eating locally is seen as related to the wellbeing of the individual consumer as well as that of the town and region. Leynse

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discovered that in France resisting ‘Europeanization’ can be linked in consumers’ minds to resisting disease through knowing your butcher, your local family producers and your grocer – all important features of sourcing one’s foods. Michela discussed these values in Omegna: For example I go in and buy in the small shops. I go to the butcher in the small shops, I want to buy cheese and so I go to the family shop. We want the tourists to know these shops and businesses too. People ask me about them! I can tell they want to discover how to shop at the small family businesses. We want them to help each other. And that way we can help the centre of the small town come alive again. 20 October 2008

Leynse wrote, regarding France: In the wake of food scares in France (including listeria and BSE, or ‘mad cow disease’) and the spectre of genetically modified foods arriving in France, people in France became concerned and many started to talk of ‘la traçabilité’ (traceability). In other words, people wanted to know where exactly their food was coming from and wanted this information listed on product labels. 2006: 147

As in France, this study has demonstrated the importance to an Italian consumer of rintracciabilità, the ability to trace or track one’s food to the origin. The concept is advertised widely on food products in Italy. However, it is important to note here that this ability to track one’s foods is not simply a form of sleuthing the health of the products one consumes, it is also a form of relationality for Italian consumers. Michela spoke of this belief in the interviews. My neighbours, family and friends in Italy (as in the United States and the UK, too) often commented on how they spent extra time to go to the producers themselves, or bought from the butcher they trusted since they knew where the farms were and knew the source. Ossian and Maria spoke of this ethos in our interviews. In London we saw how Italian friends bring their own olive oil, cheeses and so forth from their home places in Italy in order to ‘know what they are getting’. It is not merely careful consuming, it is about relationships that are specific to place: materiality and relationality evidenced in food consumption. There is, as Casey observed, a sensuousness to living intertwined with place and allowing ourselves to sense place in an embodied way: ‘Not only is the sensuous senseful, it is also placeful’ (Casey 1996: 19). A good word! Omegna is an example of a festival offering placeful awareness through local foods, local crafts, local folklore, and through the cultural ritual of communal eating. In the spontaneous interviews at the fair in 2008 a group of participants were from Arona and Maggiore; they had the opinion that Omegna was both striking and authentic: The pumpkin is just an excuse to come! Oh yes! Without a doubt this sagra expresses the place best because the fair is so full of their traditions. It helps people

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to have a sense of them. Maggiore is very different – for one thing the valleys don’t come down so steeply to the water there. The vistas are different and so are the fairs there. 26 October 2008

In this group’s manner of discussing the lake, the mountains, the fish, contrasting Orta with their own home of Lake Maggiore, there was a vibrancy in their place awareness. This same group of older visitors knew in detail about the fish stocks in the lake; they explained carefully how the cleaning process had oxygenated and purified the lake so that the freshwater species – which they knew by name – had been revitalized and made edible again. The next group I spoke to, beside the lake, among the stands of produce, had bags of chestnuts in hand. They had come to gather chestnuts in a secret place they knew of, above the lake, and were now exploring the fair’s produce and products. As discussed previously, chestnuts are more than an isolated addendum to diet in northern Italy, more than an evocative sensory detail in an autumn festival – they were a staple for centuries for northern Italians, and particularly in times of deprivation. This group lived in Milan, but had come all the way here specifically for the chestnuts and the festival. Their impressions were that they felt ‘more comfortable here than in Milan and found the town evocative and picturesque’ (26 October 2008). They came each year, they said, to gather chestnuts and eat the local food. Witmore theorized that in our work, be it archaeological, or ethnographic, we must overcome our society’s propensity for ‘ocularcentrism’ in order to allow other senses to add to the story of place and relationship (Witmore 2006). Citing Latour and Foucault among others, Witmore advocates ‘a turn to the ear’ to combat Western ocularcentrism (Foucault 1994, 1995; Latour 1986; inter alia cited in Witmore 2006). While this is certainly needed, as mammals ourselves it will enhance our lives and our work not to neglect, not only the auditory, but also the powerful messages of the olfactory and gustatory. In Piedmont, north or south, the autumnal aromas of roasting chestnuts waft from every piazza and harvest fair, evoking a meaningful placefulness that has nuanced weight. In other parts of Piedmont, such as the Langhe in the next section, the scent of truffles is intertwined with chestnuts and autumn fires. Of the approximately sixteen people with whom spontaneous interviews were conducted, on the street or in the festival, only one family criticized the Pumpkin festival’s authentic expression of place. Interestingly, despite having said that, this same family had come for the food, that year as in past years. While we talked they were encouraging their little son to eat a traditional local dish, frequently on the fair’s menu: polenta with donkey meat. The mother, who is a medical doctor, said they loved horse and donkey meat and commented on how she believed it was good for children, due to its high iron content. As these were people whom we knew from Milan, encountered there unexpectedly, it was evident to me that there may have been a religious component to their opinions on the festival. They said that they believed that Omegna’s patron saint’s day in August, Saint Vito, was more ‘authentic and heart-­felt’. The wife in particular said that this is a very religious area, and thus Saint Vito is much more significant. They felt the Pumpkin festival was too commercial. However, they were the only ones in my sampling who felt that way, and in fact a few people explicitly

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contradicted those opinions, saying that Saint Vito was the commercialized one, that it had lost its true sense of place due to its enormous size now. (This was similar to the criticisms of the Saint Ambrose fair in Milan, Milan’s patron saint festival.) Some disagreed, saying that Omegna was traditionally a leftwing town, and therefore not a typically religious area.

La Nigogliotta – the food-­loving big pan named for the river To appreciate the embodiment of place through food manifested by the Pumpkin festival, it is important to recognize the symbolism of their massive pan. There is an interesting materiality in the town relationship to the pan, which has a name and is practically a local personality. She is called (in Italian the word for pan is feminine) La Nigogliotta. Her name is derived from eliding two terms, ghiotteria, meaning greediness or gluttony, or less negatively, big appetite or big eater, with the name of their local river, the Nigoglia – hence La Nigogliotta. This notable pan is used both for the Pumpkin festival and also for Carnival. Consequently, people indulging in the sensory delights of local food, traditional regional recipes, cooked by locals beside the lake – or sometimes in the past literally on the lake – eat dishes prepared in the town’s celebrated Nigogliotta. A quintessentially Italian form of experience, this conveys a particularly strong place-­ power in a concretely sense-­oriented manner where memory, senses, conviviality and specificity of place all combine.

Figure 4.1  La Nigogliotta, the huge pan for risotto or polenta, named after the river.

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Some of the dishes that La Nigogliotta has served up to her festival fans are both unique to the region and illustrative of its history. Over the decade of my fieldwork the dishes changed somewhat. The menu has included: polenta with frogs; polenta with snails; almost always polenta with donkey – either in Tapelucco, a traditional Piedmont recipe with ground donkey meat, or also in Spezzatino (a stew with braised chunks of meat); plain polenta or with the strongly flavoured northern cheese Gorgonzola; risotto with pumpkin; pasta with pumpkin. The meat dishes often also include venison. With their meal ticket, diners receive bread, wine, water or a soft drink. Three different years we sat outside in the piazza on long picnic tables and ate alongside the locals and also a number of tourists, including a few foreign ones. Despite the chaotic crowding as people got their food, when it came to finding seats people were warm and inclusive. Like other festival meals, the shared dining experience was welcoming. We were the only English speakers we heard in three years there but for a small group of British tourists one year; the market vendors were generally surprised to meet Americans, and said we were the only ones who had ever come, to their knowledge.

Carnival and the King and Queen Nigoglia return In the frosts and snows of late January or early February, as Carnival season arrives, Omegna has a weeklong celebration. There are both children’s and adults’ celebrations, parties, parades and feasts, private and public. I returned for Carnival in Omegna for two years to observe the opening ceremony, when the keys of the city are delivered formally to the Carnival King and Queen of the City. La Nigogliotta is central once more in the communal lakeside feast, serving up polenta, risotto and other local dishes, from local recipes such as those from Milan’s cook book. In years past a truly grand symbol of Omegnian place agency and materiality was enacted: the ProLoco built a kind of stage for the pan on a platform over the water, and so the dishes for the communal dinners were cooked literally on the lake. The King and Queen of Omegna’s Carnival likewise are examples of embodiment and interanimation among humanity, ritual and place: the characters are named after the river, the Nigoglia, and some years they arrived literally from the lake by boat. Local people play the personages that personify the river. They are dressed in character, and are attended by a ‘courtier’; all take their roles quite seriously. According to the interviews conducted spontaneously at the opening of Carnival in 2008 and 2009, they perform this ‘duty’ all through the week before Lent begins. Their duties include visiting schools, hospitals, homes for the elderly, offices and so on. The River Royals also ‘officiate’ at parties and dances that are held in the town in honour of Carnival. My research indicates that this is an Omegna tradition that hails from at least the early twentieth century (Fantoni 1979); the local tourism office believes it has run in continuity since the 1880s. During the fieldwork I met a local librarian; he stated that it is a typical component of Carnival in Italy’s northern regions to have a man and woman character, often said to be the local ‘royalty’, visiting the town during Carnival. The Nigoglia flows against the norm in flowing north, an aspect of the landscape that is mentioned frequently by Omegnians, and is meaningful to the local people. The river’s unconventional direction is written up in local lore in a rhyme with political

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overtones: La Nigoglia va all’insu’, e la legge la facciamo noi! That is the Italian version; it rhymes in the local dialect, and means: ‘The Nigoglia goes upwards, and we make the law’ (Fantoni 1981: 3). Thus it is clear that the Royal masques embody a dual form of traditional Carnival reversal (Bakhtin 1984): they are commoners, average locals, portraying ‘aristocracy’. The librarian was aware of this symbolism and pointed out their honouring of a Carnival reversal tradition (30 January 2009). When asked about it, Michela had exclaimed enthusiastically: ‘They are the only Royals we want!’ Various participants in the interviews mentioned the traditional leftwing political bent of the town, and people’s comments about the Royals were in keeping with that aspect of Omegna history. More forms of resistance, perhaps, stemming from the period of Savoy domination? The two Carnival mornings I attended, a handful of locals watched the handover of the keys of the city, accompanied by lively groups of schoolchildren in costume. Speaking to some of the observers in the old city’s main square they told me that these were new portrayals of old customs. Two elderly women said they remembered Carnival from their childhood and that it was a welcome ‘breath of fresh air’ in the middle of the winter. Upon being asked what she felt expressed Omegna best, one of the elderly women said with enthusiasm in her voice and sparkling eyes that it is the lake itself, with its remarkable colours. She felt that the colours are different there, and exclaimed: ‘I’m in love with my town and with our lake!’ Three middle-­aged men standing nearby said they enjoyed the Carnival weekend parties and parades with

Figure 4.2  King and Queen Nigoglia sail in to open up Carnival season, February 2008.

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costuming and floats, and that they had always brought their families down to the lakeside for Carnival. Two of them agreed that the big pan, La Nigogliotta, was an important feature and liked it very much. However, they all seemed to think that Carnival was not as ‘felt’, not as important to people any more as other festivals. They liked the Pumpkin festival very much and felt it expressed the sense of place of Omegna very well – more than Carnival, in these men’s opinions. These two autumn and winter festivals express immanent energies and memories stored in the land, as well as ‘history congealed’ (Ingold 2000: 150). While these two festivals do not offer the kind of heterotopic liminality and polychronic temporality of other events, the materiality of place, of local foods, land and water percolate throughout, making the lake and mountains agents with constant influence.

Ethics, identity and situated eating as shown in foodways There exists a complex and nuanced relationship in regard to food choices, identity and ethics in Italy. Leitch (2003) discusses this correlation in respect to Slow Food and the politics of artisanal pork fat production, or lardo, in Tuscany. Participants in my northern Italian fieldwork echo Leitch’s findings, as well as what Leynse learned from her study’s participants in France. ‘Eating locally [. . .] was a way for people to “situate” themselves based on ethics’ (Leynse 2006: 148). Situating oneself through gastronomic traditions and mores is a deeply ingrained and embedded value in Italy; thus when campanilismo is wedded to what Cinotto calls ‘the cult of cooking, or of the kitchen’ and ‘the cult of the family’ (2001: 31), we find powerful motivators and attractions for a festival, for bonds with place and for proposed continuity of tradition. Milan and colleagues’ cookbook of Lake Orta recipes was a creative initiative to sponsor greater bonds with the town and lake. There arises a positive association of food choices and localized eating with ethics and identity, which Leynse underscored in her research in France, and which also came through in my fieldwork in Italy: Anthropologists are now turning their attention to ways that food habits can anchor a collective identity in relation to specificities of place. As eating is often a social experience, food habits and memories of specific dining/tasting experiences in particular places, using particular ingredients and production/preparation techniques can be used to build or maintain community through the development of collective memory. Sutton 2001 cited in Leynse 2006: 132

The ethical values imparted derive from goals of resistance, both ideological and psychological. Communities seek to resist globalization on a macro level, and alienation on the more personal level, finding these benefits through locally derived choices in food: ‘By imbuing locales and local products with extra ideological and affective value, people marked them as revered or sacred – perceived, at least, as safer and morally preferable. Eating locally, in effect, was a way for people to “situate” themselves based on ethics’ (Leynse 2006: 148). These concepts are reiterated by Leitch in her study of Slow

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Food’s impact on certain communities’ traditional foods in Tuscany (Leitch 2003). She quotes from Carlo Petrini: Through Slow Food, which is against the homogenizing effects of fast foods, we are rediscovering the rich variety of tastes and smells of local cuisine. And it is here, in developing an appreciation for these tastes that we will be able to rediscover the meaning of culture, which will grow through the international exchange of stories, knowledge and other projects. Leitch 2003: 455

The idea of being situated through food choices, through knowledge of where one’s food comes from, and of deriving a ‘collective identity’ through eating habits, is one approach to the concept of relational epistemology. It exemplifies another form of the relational model of dwelling, which aids humanity in building new or healing damaged bonds with place and with each other. Like the French in Leynse’s observations, the Italians interviewed at food-­related festivals, sagre and fiere (fiera is another name in Italy for a festival that is not primarily religious and is more gastronomic or cultural), find both a sense of identity and of place through the local foods and traditional recipes, or those perceived as traditional. Once again, people were anxious to know that the cheeses, wines, truffles, pastas or breads, and so forth were both local and handmade, or made as at home. Artigianale or fatto in casa (artisanal, or home made) were labels very frequently attached to various foods. Meats have the specific farm, location and names attached to them – including place and date of slaughter. As in France, the maintenance of chains of reciprocity and relationship within a town or village is strengthened by food choices: [P]eople I interviewed in Loireville felt it was very important to know where their food came from. [. . .] [M]any preferred to develop relationships with local butchers and food producers. They felt they could trust them and felt reassured by this. In addition many shopped at local farmers’ markets and used personal connections (family, friends, friends of family, etc.) to obtain foods directly from area producers. Leynse 2006: 148

My own experiences in Italy, both as a resident and as a researcher, also found consistent evidence of these practices. Sapelli’s observations on post-­war Italy’s process of ‘ruralization of the cities’ (1995: 43) was evidenced in Piedmont, where millions of rural people poured into the Industrial Triangle from all over Italy, not just the neighbouring northern farm areas (Ginsborg 2003; Sapelli 1995), bringing with them traditional mores and values. This had an influence on mores regarding food as well as on consumer habits and on eating, as one can observe in Italian-American communities in the United States. In Italy maintaining one’s chains of relationality is of primary importance, whether as a food choice, an ethical or other choice. To echo Latour, the ‘networks remain local’ (Latour 1993). The foods at Carnival and at the Pumpkin festival, cooked on or beside the lake, represent the region. Petrini has illustrated with Slow Food’s campaigns how food, like

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the land it comes from, ‘congeals history’ (Ingold 2000). Certain recipes have political as well as historic overtones. Omegna’s dishes such as donkey stew and frogs with rice or polenta are a traditional part of the festa menu. Venison, wild boar and other game items are often included too, as are fish dishes from the lake itself. These could easily originate in Tuscany, Lazio, Liguria or other regions as well as Piedmont. The symbolic, traditional dish of donkey meat from this northern area is prepared in various forms and is a favourite dish and a favourite purchase at the farm stands. (Donkey sausages are also eaten in the mountain area of Lombardy discussed in Chapter 3.) These sorts of piatti poveri, historic peasant food, can symbolize survival and forbearance to those who lived through Piedmont’s times of scarcity, or perhaps continue familial traditions. Michela mentioned in our interview when asked about the frogs that country people had always had a custom of going out to catch frogs in the many streams and marshes of Piedmont and thus held childhood memories of eating them (pers. comm. 2008; 2016). Likewise, the widely consumed northern Italian dishes using chestnuts and polenta carry such weighted and nuanced meanings. As squeamish as some non-Italian palates may be about eating frogs, horse and donkey, or other easily obtained wild or domestic protein sources (such as cats – also once upon a time an ingredient in northern Italy due to meat shortages), it is key to remember what a society does in times of deprivation or starvation. Politics can never be left out of consideration in Italy; Leitch (2003) wrote about the politics of traditional foods such as pork fat. The festival activities become buffers against homogenization or protection from the destructive effects of globalization. Along with the goals previously seen in this book of political or cultural identity, of lived or civil religion, the creation of a festival may arise from the goal of recreating and retaining memory, from a vision of instilling a ‘practice of remembering, embedded in the perception of the environment’ (Ingold 2000: 148). Maintaining collective memory, collective history, helps to garner awareness of the land’s agency where the land itself gathers us in. However, this awareness becomes increasingly difficult under the mounting pressures of postmodernity and post-­industrialization. Part two, on the Langhe, discusses more on Slow Food’s endeavours to honour memory and bio-­regional food awareness in all the areas in which it has now grown up, spreading out from Piedmont.

Conclusion In Omegna it emerged that immersion in and impact by place and its power are both individual and communal, personally held and community-­held. This sense can be nurtured and created through experiences shared in common, which is what many of the organizers interviewed here seek. This discussion of the values imparted to food and to eating local foods, particularly in communal settings, demonstrates the deeply embedded significance that foodways have in Italy. Food and festival feasting take on ritual symbolism, and render a ‘placeful’ (Casey 1996) embodiment of land and home through multiple nuanced components. Carnival in Omegna echoes one of Parsons’ observations on Siena’s Palio: the residents of Omegna would enact the ceremony of bestowing the keys of the city on

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the costumed King and Queen ‘whether tourists were present or not’ (Parsons 2004: 157). In the sense of Omegna celebrating its own identity and place-­based materiality, the Carnival delivers an annual opportunity for creating meaning for its residents, as Omegna’s festival participants ingest topography and become situated eaters (Leynse 2006). The Pumpkin festival and Carnival clearly convey local bonds with place and a dwelling perspective. In the festival the bridge to place is constructed symbolically and in direct embodiment – talking, celebrating, cooking and eating together, using regional, traditional recipes, all of which communicate the materiality of the mountains and lake. This perspective is relational, engaging energies immanent in the land itself, bridging the perceived gap between place and humanity. We have seen here how foodways and place are acknowledged and integrated into community in Omegna’s way of ritualizing festival time. The focus moves south now to Piedmont’s Langhe region, to further explorations of materiality and place-­power, but here very much intertwined and engaged with vernacular religion.

Part two: Le Langhe – Paroldo Lived religion in Paroldo’s summer solstice and St. Martin’s Summer Our ancient ancestors lived amidst the beech trees, and were named after them. So, we are the people of the beeches. Romano Salvetti, pers. comm. 21 June 2008 The next area studied in this chapter is the rolling, rural southwestern region of Piedmont called the Langhe. To set the scene, here is some specific historical and agricultural background on this area. Piedmont’s eastern plains and fertile Po valley have traditionally been home to Italy’s large-­scale rice production, begun in the nineteenth century. However, despite the Langhe being internationally lauded for its gastronomic delights – prestigious truffles, renowned wines and other specialities – this southern Piedmont hill country is surprisingly poorer, drier and more difficult to cultivate than the fertile northern areas. One of the Paroldo study’s central participants, Romano Salvetti, is a native of the Langhe and a folklorist there; he calls the Langhe ‘a desert’. He used the term to refer to both depopulation and water scarcity. Other interviewees confirmed that the water sources are shallow and sparse; in my most recent return fieldwork visit a conference was held in Paroldo’s tiny village hall regarding water conservation issues in the region. The Open University has a course on Italy, where among its materials is a documentary film made in tandem with the BBC and various English and Italian scholars. The film paints a picture of how difficult subsistence farming was in the Langhe: ‘What peasants could do with their land was limited. What they aimed to do first and foremost was feed themselves and pay their rent’ (1996: A221/04). Providing another dimension of the diverse layers in relationships with place and the stories gathered in the district of the Langhe is its rich literary history. Leitch

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mentions this in her study of Slow Food, marble quarry workers and artisanal food producers: ‘Made famous in the literature of distinguished literary figures such as Cesare Pavese, the area surrounding the city (is) known as Le Langhe (and) is also acclaimed for its fine quality agricultural produce, truffles, and for the production of one of Italy’s most prestigious wines, Barolo’ (2003: 449). (There are other famous wines from the region, where both reds and whites are delicious and much esteemed.) One cannot work in the Langhe region, speak to locals, conduct a study on the place, without encountering the names of literary luminaries such as Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Beppe Fenoglio, Nuto Revelli and, in photography, Aldo Agnelli, a colleague and friend of Fenoglio’s. These writers and artists have helped to keep alive precious memories and outstanding stories of Piedmont’s remarkable figures and events, otherwise forgotten by time and the on-­rushing century. Their subjects are local people such as peasant farmers, partisan resistance fighters, anti-Fascists forced into internal exile and many others who generally are not celebrated. Revelli’s encyclopaedic endeavour of interviewing hundreds of peasant farmers over decades is a precious ethnographic archive. Fenoglio’s semi-­autobiographical account of his Second World War partisan years in Piedmont, Johnny the Partisan (1995 [1968]), is a moving account. Novelist Carlo Levi was a painter as well as a medical doctor and much-­loved writer. Of the list given above of southern Piedmont’s and in particular the Langhe’s literary figures, only Aldo Agnelli was still alive when I was carrying out my early fieldwork in Piedmont. I met him in Paroldo in 2008; though elderly and blind, he was still passionate about the messages he wished to impart to the world about the Langhe, animals and about Nature. The Langhe fieldwork participants frequently referred to these men, and their pride in this literary and artistic heritage was very evident. Besides a typical national or regional pride, their pleasure derived from knowing that their stories were acknowledged, celebrated and memorialized. When Paroldo participants, such as Franca, Luigi, Romano and others spoke to me of these writers, of the current documentaries made on Piedmont and of Agnelli’s photos, they expressed a sense that their Piedmont history, often of pain, hunger and suffering, had been ennobled by these artistic and cultural remembrances.

Witches, healers and dialogues with place in Paroldo Paroldo is another tiny village on a hilltop – this time not amongst dramatic peaks like Andrista in northern Lombardy (Chapter 3), but appearing amidst mists, fields and forests on a rolling Piedmont hillside. Its annual population is no more than 200–300, and it must fight to maintain residents. Like Andrista, despite its small size, its folklore is richly vibrant and its festival lifeworlds likewise. Each November in the tiny rural hamlet of Paroldo a multi-­faceted and nuanced community ritual occurs. The harvest festival of ‘The Summer of Saint Martin’ (L’Estate di San Martino) is a three-­day event that fills the village with life once more, stirring the visitor’s senses with a symphony of placeful elements in a gaily traditional celebration of autumn’s harvest season and the end of the grape harvest, the vendemmia. The festival fulfils three of Bell’s six categories of a ritual: it is calendrical and commemorative, and it involves feasting and communal festival (Bell 1997), as do many of the delightful (and delicious) communal meals held

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then, such as the Bagna Cauda. The fair is named after one of the village’s patron saints, Saint Martin of Tours, as is the Baroque church standing on one of the hillsides overlooking the village. Martin of Tours, from the fourth century CE in Gaul, is known in Catholic legend for having given his cloak to a beggar, who then appeared in a dream as Jesus himself. Lovely as this legend is, there are poignant ironies entwined with this association, which are discussed further below. Paroldo can be perceived as a place of mystery and of hidden magic. It could be seen as a place that time forgot, a tiny village amidst chains of hills and thick truffle-­bearing forests that rarely draw attention – a zone that is rapidly emptying. However, some years ago local inhabitants launched a small campaign to bring life back into the little village. Amateur folklorists and historians from the area began to study Paroldese folkloric traditions telling of a magic circle of protection laid around the village, created by the village’s traditional witch/healers in centuries past, its masche (Salvetti 2004; pers. comm. 2008; other local interviews, 2008 and 2016). This circle supposedly protected Paroldo from invasion, plague and even the Church’s oppressions. Masche is a regional dialect word for witch and for the traditional folk healer, male or female; it is used in this region, but does not extend even to the other sides of Piedmont – for example I had asked about it in Omegna when at the Pumpkin fair. The folk beliefs about the circle of protection are related to the apotropaic stone faces mentioned below, carved onto the two village churches – one on each side of the village. In the village’s collective folklore, the churches and their stone masks play integral parts in the

Figure 4.3  Sign at outskirts of village, ‘Village of the witches/healers’.

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protective ring of magical energy, supported and reinforced by centuries of ceremonies by the local witch/healers. The mysterious carved stone faces gaze at each other across the tiny village. There is oftentimes a conference held to coincide with Saint Martin’s festival – but, unlike Milan’s Celtic New Year conferences, Paroldo’s are small, local events in the village hall. The topics discussed are widely varied, but all are local in context: they range from studies on the area’s geology to the history of farming or archaeology. In 2016 it was to do with concerns about the local water utilities and conservation. However, also often discussed are the proudly commemorated masche. Thus the conference as well as the festival poses a juxtaposition of Christian and nonChristian, traditional and alternative: amidst the farm stands, chestnut-­roasting fires, hay rides in horse or mule drawn carriages and craft displays, there are also posters and signs for the local nonprofit organization, Le Masche di Paroldo, the witch/healers of Paroldo. Romano has written various books on the subject of the masche, as well as other folklore of the village and area. He has written up various legends and accounts of personages involved with Paroldo’s popular religious traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His efforts have inspired other books from fellow local folklorists and historians, nonprofit organizations and conferences, and have brought a farm life museum to Paroldo. Due to his small nonprofit organization’s efforts, the village sign at the outskirts of town proclaims it to be (in local Piedmont dialect): pais dër masche, village of the witches. I initially met Romano when I had read his first book and planned to come to the Saint Martin festival in 2007; I returned in 2008, and again in 2016. He has been very generous with his time, with introductions and interviews. Romano is an outgoing man with sparkling eyes, a well-­clipped beard and a penchant for the dramatic. His family lived for generations in one of the oldest houses in the village, which is now a restaurant run by his sister and brother. For many years it was the only cafe or restaurant in the village. The quote at the opening of this section from Romano indicates the extraordinary place-­centred oneness with the landscape and the ancestors that he and many of his Paroldo community feel – a camaraderie that extends to the land, the trees, the local springs. When visitors come for an event, at harvest time, at summer solstice, or at Candlemas in February, Romano tries to enable them to sense in an embodied way the materiality of this unique place – the voices speaking in the landscape, the power emanating from the fields, the churches, the ancient houses. One of Romano’s favourite activities is to take people on night-­time walks to listen to the voices emerging from the land in the quiet of the evening, leading visitors to the loudly gurgling spring at the edge of town to hear it ‘speak’, and introducing guests to massive old trees as to respected village elders. I have participated in this evening ramble a number of times, with my family and other travel companions. At the summer solstice observances in June 2008, before the traditional feast and musical celebration his organization had put on, Romano described the evening walk: ‘After dinner we’ll make some reflections upon our environment, and then we’ll go to hug an ancient chestnut tree. We’ll look for the paths of the autumn truffle hunters, the Trifolau, and we’ll see the remains of a house where fairies dwelt at one time, before

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returning to the forests.’ I asked him if he could describe for me what sense of place means in Paroldo and to him: It means memory and a sense of belonging; it also means the ability to listen. The signals the land sends out are weak, and we need people who help us to listen to these sounds. We need people who can amplify them. We need to do this together, in the company of others, because others help us to see things we may not have seen. They help us to see that which we see everyday with different eyes and thus to realize something new about it. Sense of place for me immediately goes towards the sense of spirituality too. It has a magic, a great magic, and messages (that are) often difficult to decipher.

Romano’s personal perspective on the bonds one holds with place illustrates the locals’ relationality and reciprocity with the land. There is an embodied materiality in the little village that truly, as he and others assert, has a ‘great magic’. Having visited Paroldo a number of times now, for nearly a decade and at various seasons, I agree.

Luigi, the Langhe shaman and the Micun’s healing bread No one who is well acquainted with Paroldo’s or the Langhe’s folklore will have missed hearing of Luigi Barroero. Luigi is a well-­known local figure – big in stature, vocal ability and reputation in the rural areas near Paroldo. We first met Luigi as we arrived in Paroldo for a first night of communal dinners one February. He helped my travelling companion and me to find our way through the thick fogs that – typical of Paroldo in winter – had settled into the area. As one man performing in the piazza at Saint Martin had said: ‘In Paroldo it is easy to feel the presences around you in the mists and in the woods – mysterious and haunting, but not threatening.’ Indeed, Luigi seemed to be one of the unearthly presences that had come out of the woods for a night, for the celebrations that night of Candlemas, or Imbolc, as Romano called it, on 2 February. (In Italian the feast is called Candelora, as Ossian also called it. It appears in Salvetti’s works on local traditions (2004, 2007).) Luigi claimed to be descended from Sami wanderers, a nomadic family that long ago had crossed the Alps and made its way into Piedmont. He plays the accordion and the traditional frame drum, calling himself a shaman. He seems to have a native animism and relationality with Nature and the land, which is particularly evocative. It was Luigi who together with Romano introduced us first to the Gargarota, the talking spring of Paroldo. Luigi and Romano spoke of their relationships with the burbling spring, which they believe communicates (Salvetti 2004; pers. comm. 2008; 2016). In Paroldo there is constant evidence from the townsfolk for Ingold’s theory that ‘the animic world (is) dialogical’ (2000: 114). On my return to Paroldo in 2016 for the autumn festival of St. Martin’s Summer, Luigi once more seemed to appear out of the mists, for a Bagna Cauda communal feast. As in years past, Luigi prides himself on keeping traditions and folklore alive, and is renowned in particular for performing traditional songs. He sings folk songs in dialect,

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and all were delighted to sing along with him at all the various communal dinners we attended, as he accompanies himself on the accordion or drum. He is known in the area for his association with street theatre in the neighbouring village of Belvedere Le Langhe, whose mysterious parish church at one time depicted various Christian legends and Biblical stories at Easter and other liturgical feast days. Other fieldwork participants all knew him and his work, and found his talents and life to be quite unusual and magical. Whether he could rightfully be termed a shaman, I do not pretend to know; however, Luigi’s relational epistemology was clearly interanimated with land and place in Paroldo, with its materiality of spring and tree and landscape. Although we did not have a formal interview, I had more than one long conversation with him – at Imbolc, at summer solstice in Paroldo, and at various dinners. We also talked during a spring visit to a nearby village Belvedere Le Langhe’s for their Micun rite and Mass. In a seemingly Bakhtinian reversal, Luigi has been involved with a conservative Catholic order’s Easter tradition: the Micun is a local ritual that has a unique form of materiality. The rite is ancient, and kept alive by a local fraternal Catholic order in the village near Paroldo, Belvedere Le Langhe. I have not studied it formally but did attend the annual Mass and ceremony once. It is a ritual in the local parish church where locally made breads are blessed, consecrated during a lengthy Mass, and imbued with what is believed there to be healing and protective energy. The bread is said to be, like the faces carved on Paroldo’s church towers, apotropaic: a kind of amulet of protection. The order is called the Battuti Bianchi della Confraternita di San Sebastiano (The White Flagellants of the Confraternity of St. Sebastian). The bread’s materiality is part of their special form of local lived religion: it must be grown and milled locally, the Order guards the secret recipe; parishioners carefully hold onto the breads all year, putting great faith in the bread’s healing power. The locals bake dozens and dozens of the breads – Luigi’s family is part of those who guard the recipe. According to various participants, people keep them all year, putting them under the beds of those who are sick, giving them to those in special need and so forth. To underscore this belief, Luigi took one to Lower Manhattan’s ‘Ground Zero’ to aid in the healing of that land. These conversations with Luigi, along with Romano’s more formal interviews, gave testimony to the profound bonds with community and place, as well as the unique materiality of place and foodways exhibited there. Place, community and ritualized vernacular religion live vividly at seasonal moments in the Langhe.

Depopulation and the danger of commodifying place The concern that one must keep the vitality alive in the land can confront residents with a two-­edged sword, a situation in Paroldo today. Romano has discussed in interviews the challenges of trying to find sustainable means of development to prevent depopulation. Romano is one of various participants who spoke a number of times of the impact of depopulation on Paroldo and the Langhe. The nonprofit organization he helped to create has a double purpose: to bring people back to the otherwise soon to be deserted little village, as well as to create new appreciation of the eighteenth- and

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nineteenth-­century Paroldo women (and men) whose magical and healing traditions his research has uncovered. His quest to keep both the magic in the land and the people in the village brings to mind Christian’s work on rapidly depopulating villages in northern Spain: ‘Its magic leaks out year by year. With the city as the focus for attention, the village is without hope and its ceremonies empty. Its own peculiar theatre has lost its audience’ (Christian 1989: 40–41). Some years ago Paroldo would have been experiencing a situation presaging an empty village, through emigration to the cities. There still are only approximately 200 inhabitants in the small village, and no local school or shop. The children, what children still live there, must travel to school in a nearby larger town. However, real estate in the area is becoming increasingly valuable and foreign buyers are beginning to arrive, many purchasing second homes. With its much-sought-­after white truffles and wineries gathering acclaim domestically and abroad, the cachet of Piedmont, its vineyards, restaurants and working farm inns, agriturismi, has spread. Christian’s observations on Spain are over twenty years old, however the situation described still fits rural Italy: What may eventually happen to these villages, since they are blessed with a setting so beautiful, is the kind of wholesale exchange in population that has taken place between New Hampshire and Vermont, on the one hand and Boston and New York on the other. The villagers will go to work and live in the cities and well-­ heeled disenchanted city dwellers will take over the villages. Christian 1989: 42

My sincere hope is that the local people will survive, with their families and their lands’ traditions – rather than merely creating high-­priced second homes and businesses for visitors. Romano and his colleagues in the folklore associations are striving to bring business and life to the village again, but sustainably. He was disheartened when a motorcycle racecourse was built on a nearby hilltop in 2008. The two-­edged sword of development had cut into Paroldo’s rural peace. Despite all of the beauty and the sense of place here in our hills of the High Langhe, despite all of that, some people constructed a motocross course here near town. It means terrible pollution of the environment, with the noise, with chemical substances; it will have a huge impact on that corner where the motocross course is. Some friends and I tried to stop it, but the majority of people in the village wanted it, and some speculators saw they could make money with the business from the motocross. Now the whole village is intersected by these loud motorcycles and ATVs. pers. comm. 2008

His loyalties to the human community as well as the natural were evident, as he returned to happier themes. ‘Fortunately they don’t have competitions here, since that makes so much noise and pollution. I say fortunately, because the great old chestnut tree doesn’t live too far from the motocross.’

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Another local man, Alessandro (pseudonym), likewise has powerfully interanimated bonds with the land, and interest in the local histories of the Paroldo healers. His deep connection with Paroldo led him to write his BA thesis on topics of tourism, the witch/healers and how to prevent depopulation. He describes his own sense of place as ‘atavistic’ and calls Paroldo his ‘sweet refuge’. His soulful emplacement with the land in Paroldo was vividly expressed in our interview: ‘There is a sense of Nirvana that comes with walking on that land.’ Alessandro expressed his belief that the festivals and traditions in Paroldo, such as those exhibited at the autumn fair of Saint Martin, are truly unparallelled; in his words they are ‘unique and peculiar’. He described the masche healer women as people who were forced to live on the e dges. Another of the Paroldo participants, Paolo Ferraguti, echoed his sentiment: ‘The masche are not really witches . . . but healers, with a deep knowledge of medicinal herbs, like a midwife. Fundamentally these were little places without much medical help or attention. Above all the masca was a solitary person, alone and marginalized.’ Paroldo’s witch/healers offer another example of the unheard and unacknowledged or even silenced Other – as many feminists and feminist scholars have termed women historically, as well as Nature. Romano and his colleagues in folklore studies of the area are endeavouring to recover the women healers’ stories and through them return a deeper sense of the history of the Langhe hills. Through honouring and celebrating the masche with story telling, conferences, re-­enacting the costumes, foodways and traditions of past eras, Romano, Luigi and others celebrate place through lived materiality. Paroldo’s is a unique example of lived religion, from native Italian traditions, grounded in place. There is always a danger that commercialization may bring a commodification of land and place, of tradition and of nostalgia. My companions and I were somewhat dismayed by signs of greater commercialization in our recent visit. However, the goals that Romano and various others represented in their interviews are expressed well by Leynse’s (2006) observation in that they aim to ‘build or maintain community through the development of collective memory’ (Leynse 2006: 132). Despite the organizers’ best intents, it is a delicate balancing act to resist commercial reification of place and avoid ‘Disneyfication’ (Relph 1976). Slow Food has brought its politicized evocations of sense memory and cultural preservation (Andrews 2008; Leitch 2003) to Paroldo and is involved there. Time has yet to tell the outcome of that association, but my prediction is that it will prove to be a positive one for Paroldo.

White truffles – Langhe treasure from the woods Truffles have fascinated people from time immemorial, whether for their mysterious underground dwellings, their earthy, complex fragrance or flavours – or for the purported aphrodisiac gifts. Before moving back to Italy in 2006, I knew next to nothing about tartufi, truffles. I knew that in the past they were ‘hunted’ with pigs, and learned quickly that today they are found by trained dogs. I also learned that truffle hunters, Trifolau, tend to search in the ‘wee smas’ of the night. While they are related to mushrooms, being fungi, truffles grow underground in a symbiotic relationship with

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certain tree species and thus are of the genus tubers. The variety in the Langhe region is the most prestigious, the white truffle – Tuber magnatum – said to be the most expensive food in the world. Some have called it a ‘white diamond’, where a weighty one could be thought a kind of ‘Hope Diamond of its species’ (Field 1990: 209). It would be hard to avoid the scent of truffles or the ubiquitous recipes at every meal in Lombardy and Piedmont each autumn. (Other regions of Italy have their own truffle traditions and varieties, such as Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany, where varieties of both white and black truffles grow.) In 2006 I had a synchronicitous encounter in the picturesque and ancient city of Alba, at its now world famous Fiera del Tartufo, the truffle fair. My family and I were invited to tour and be hosted at various fine meals. While wandering through the aisles of truffle displays, observing the astronomical prices listed for the tubers, I spotted a book stall. Being more of a bibliophile than a truffle-­hunter, I was drawn immediately. There I found the book that led me to Paroldo: Romano Salvetti’s first book on the masche, Il Cerchio Magico (2004) (The Magic Circle). Paroldo’s autumn Festival of ‘St. Martin’s Summer’ always has market stalls selling both white and black truffles. I have bought them from locals at the market, talked with the Trifolau and met their dogs; I have also visited their homes where one can find prized selections. For example, Romano’s brother is a local truffle connoisseur, and his family’s Paroldo restaurant serves a delectable array of truffle dishes in the autumn, along with creative chestnut dishes and desserts. There is an enchantment to the search for these woodland treasures growing underground beside oaks or other native trees in a thick forest, as one follows ancient paths in the dark of night with an animal companion as guide. Thus somehow they seem appropriately intertwined with the folklore of Langhe witch/healers whose profound knowledge of the land, its hidden paths and place-­power, is likewise mysterious and enchanting. Changing perspective to a less glowing one, the international market’s prices for truffles have commodified an ancient, place-­based, local tradition. Let us hope that these lauded culinary specialties, like other Piedmont gastronomy, bring conscious, sustainable development that augments needed population and economic stability for the region – and not destruction to the ancient woodlands of the Langhe.

Faultlines and materiality of place Earth energies were a topic of conversation on my return to Paroldo in 2016: I met a scholar investigating the power of the land from a ‘geophysiological’ perspective. Marino Zeppa is a geologist by training who researches geologic phenomena that affect individuals and communities. He had drawn elaborate maps of Paroldo showing its system of geologic faults, which, most intriguingly, create a circle around it. Having found Romano’s first book (as I had done), he came to see Paroldo and to map out its peculiar geology. His discovery was that faultlines run in paths similar to those of the folklore maintains that were the masche’s places of magic and ritual celebration, as well as other local legends of ‘power places’, such as the unusual siting of ancient chapels and so forth. As this is an academic book and not a manual on geomancy, ‘divining’ or ‘dowsing’, I will not elaborate on his work. However, Marino’s studies raise intriguing

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questions on all that may contribute to place-­power and materiality, in Paroldo and elsewhere. Morgan wrote: ‘Spaces are the arenas erected in different times and places for certain things to happen, for performances to take place, for the sacred to become sensible, for discrete modes of possibility to prevail. [. . .] Spaces render worlds from the environment, making the unknown familiar and wresting order from chaos’ (2010: 15; italics in original). Marino’s theories of geophysiology in Paroldo speak to the idea of space becoming an arena, raising questions about what can create or enhance the palpable and potent materiality of space and structure. Does a rural space with less development and a strong sense of history create it? Is it made more richly expressive by such elements as massive old oak and chestnut trees, or perpetually burbling springs? Or in this seismically active country, is part of Paroldo’s unique folklore and power due to active fault lines underlying the rolling hills and fields of the village, which ancient people may have been aware of? These are questions we perhaps cannot answer; and, yet, as scholars and researchers who honour the stories held in a place, who observe what space contributes to those stories, the questions resonate. Materiality of place takes on new meaning when one ruminates on possible fault lines running below that could have influenced Paroldo’s lived religious traditions, its festival foodways, and participants’ embodied experiences of space.

Figure 4.4  Apotropaic carved stone mask of protection on Paroldo church, looking across to its ‘partner’ carving.

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Conclusion All the research and fieldwork interviews reviewed here indicate that there is, in Paroldo, as well as in other Italian regions, an elaborate intertwining of Catholicism and ancient pre-Christian thought as intricate as the multi-­laced, interlocking designs of Celtic art. No one in my many fieldwork visits, emails and conversations about Paroldo identified as Pagan. However, many did identify as Celtic or as involved in the traditions of the Gauls being recalled and resurrected, the ancient cultures of this ‘Cisalpine Gallic’ region. Whatever their actual religious tradition and identification, thanks to the efforts of various locals, a significant narrative honouring traditional festivals, foodways and history is being sustained in this quiet corner of rural Piedmont. Each year its festivals return to animate its village theatre, celebrating vibrant and sensual materiality of place and of food, with unique traditions of vernacular religion. In the next chapter we engage research and ethnography with a community that is clear about their religious practice not being Christian: the religions of Wicca and Druidry, paths of Paganism seen now in contemporary Italy.

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Feasting and Living Paganism in Northern Italy1

This chapter focuses on the newly developing Italian Pagan movement and religion. The movement draws much inspiration from its place-­based folklore and history of Cisalpine Gallic tribes. The placeful nature of the movement is especially underscored at annual Beltane (May Day) and Autumn Equinox festivals near the ancient city of Biella, as well as at large and small Wiccan and Druid gatherings throughout the North. Samonios, or Samhain, the festival and feast of the end of October is honoured in many places and communities as well. (The origins of Samhain were discussed in Chapter  3 on Milan’s festival formerly taking place at that time of year, Capodanno Celtico.) As introduced in Chapter 4, the Druid community of northern Piedmont shows particularly localized and place-­based materiality and traditions. Their religious lifeworld reveals the heterotopic, hybrid nature of certain festivals. The chapter also unpacks pertinent histories behind the emergence of the Pagan movement in Italy, those involved, and the movement’s historic roots. Every Druid must perform rituals tied to his or her territory, his or her place. You’re from here. Your place is here. And you must honour this place. Ossian, pers. comm. 13 November 2016 In the cities of Turin, Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Palermo and more, there is a growing movement involved in traditions of Paganism, such as British Traditional Witchcraft, Wicca, Druidry, Goddess spirituality and feminist Witchcraft of varying sources. This Italian Pagan movement is young in two senses: it is young in years of existence, and represents largely a youthful demographic (Howell 2008, 2015). This chapter now explores the intertwining questions of materiality, foodways, sense of place and lived religion, which are animated colourfully in the northern Italian Pagan lifeworld. The community creates meaning actively with its feasts, festivals and rituals. The Northern Italian Pagan movement and religion2 draws much inspiration from its place-­based folklore and history of Cisalpine Gallic tribes. I was extremely fortunate to have been able to work together with the diverse Pagan communities across the north for over a decade and to experience the aesthetic materiality evocatively portrayed in celebrations and feasts, as the leaders and participants honour, wear, eat and perform lived, localized practices of Celticity and Italian vernacular religion.

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Materiality in dress, objects, living immanence A creative lifeworld of lived religion has grown in northern Italy, which is not only performed at the seasonal or lunar calendar times for ritual, but which permeates practitioners’ lives. As Morgan aptly articulates: ‘the sacred [is] a relational process that constellates people, spaces, objects and the divine’ (2010: 16). The Pagan communities of Italy demonstrate this relationality with the material and their conceptions of the divine as they live and perform Druidry, Wicca or other Pagan paths day in and day out. It is not a religion that practitioners perform on Sunday, or on Friday, or at certain times of the year. Rather, Paganism in Italy is a daily practice and identity as well as a lifestyle. Whether the more intellectually oriented urban conferences once or twice a year, or whether the rural Druid and Wiccan encampments such as the Beltane festival, the Festa Celtica di Beltane, where participants pitch tents in the chestnut and oak woodlands, performing daily rituals in groves and amidst standing stones, practitioners are consistently deepening their bonds with place and tradition. Ossian may insist on home-­made breads and pastas or local cheeses for Imbolc or Lammas in his Druid grove, whereas Wiccan covens may allow store-­bought ritual foods (given that many coven members work outside the home). Nonetheless, whether ritual foods are homemade or bought prepared, all know of the festival’s ancient significance in the Druidic or Wiccan ‘Wheel of the Year’ and no participants would consider participating in a ritual in blue jeans or a tee shirt. Symbolic garb, esoteric jewellery and ritual objects are deeply imbued with meaning, and their materiality is underscored in the focused manner of their selection or creation and magical consecration. Sacred spaces inside a home or outside in Nature are likewise conscientiously created and consecrated, where offerings are left after a ritual for the ancestors and the spirits of place. The materiality of Italian Paganism is not a mere aggregate of beliefs or occasional practices: it is a sensately embodied lifeworld that uses place-­honouring local recipes, celebrating ancient Italian (or Gallic) Gods and ancestors, with incense, candles, altars or food offerings, and an on-­going relationship with the other-­than-human. As practitioners point out, it is a religion of immanence, not of transcendence; thus honouring matter, Mater – in all senses of Mother – anchors materiality firmly at its foundation.

The return of the Goddess Paganism is a religion of many paradoxes and some puzzling conundrums. Its re-­ emergence in Italy is no different. Many in the world would perhaps not view Paganism as a religion at all, and yet the world’s oldest religions are also the newest, pre-­modern and postmodern all at once. The twentieth century’s globalizing forces, its march of industrialization and spread of English speaking and publishing have aided the world’s oldest religion to return to – or perhaps to re-­emerge – in one of its native homes. A formalized, postmodern religion of Witchcraft, including Pagan clergy, has returned to the land where folk traditions of witchcraft and respect for the classical priestesses and oracles of ancient times never entirely disappeared.3

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In the lands associated with the Roman Empire’s legacy, one might perhaps expect contemporary Pagan worship of Diana or Minerva, Vesta and Venus, and indeed one may find – particularly closer to Rome – veneration and ritual practices honouring these Goddesses. However, my years of studies and work in Italy introduced me to deities, mythology and traditions little known outside regional areas of worship. For example, in Milan there is a massive golden Madonna atop the majestic main cathedral, the Duomo, and as mentioned in Chapter 1 Milanese tradition teaches that only those born within the sight of the majestic Madonnina may rightfully call themselves true Milanese. Today there are more than a few in Milan who claim that the maternal figure watching over Milan may not be the Christian Madonna, but rather a Gallo-Celtic Goddess called Bellisama. Bellisama was worshipped by the ancient Gauls (also known as Celts more frequently, their Greek-­origin name) in Lombardy and Piedmont, as well as across continental Europe and as far away as northwestern France. This growing interest in the Gauls or, as I often term them, Gallo-Celtic peoples, has been covered here to some extent in the discussions in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 opens with a quote from Valentina Minoglio, a Milanese Pagan participant, who, in trying to demonstrate the enduring local influence of Milan’s Gaulish history, stated: ‘The Goddess of Milan is Bellisama; her spirit is here and it’s Druidic’ (pers. comm. October 2008). Although it is debated in some scholarly circles, I hold with those who assert that many classical feminine deities, like perhaps Bellisama, were synthesized into what eventually emerged as Christianity, becoming part of the ubiquitous Madonna of the Mediterranean (Chidester 2000; MacCulloch 2009).4 Nor was a powerful religiosity and propensity toward magic erased, as Sabina Magliocco (2004a; 2012) has discussed in various ethnographic studies on Italy; the practice of magic has lived alongside and within Christianity for centuries. Italy is a relatively recently united country (1861), created purposefully out of the mountainous peninsula with its numerous islands and widely diverse regions; it also shares its land with the Vatican State. Thus it is a nation inculcated profoundly in Catholicism (Magliocco 2004a; Orsi 2002), while being united in passionate attachment to its regional differences. Kathryn Rountree (2011) has written on the flow back and forth between Madonna veneration and Mother Goddess veneration among Wiccans and Pagans in Malta. However, while there are some clear parallels between (particularly southern) Italy and Malta, where there is a profound enculturation of Italians into Roman Catholicism from birth, Italy presents its own unique evolution in the emergence of contemporary Paganism. Its evolution towards an Italic Pagan movement differs considerably from the United States, the British Isles and other countries where Paganism emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sections below help to illustrate with some theories why this may be.

Italy’s indigenous practices meet twenty-­first century Paganism Regional vernacular religious traditions remain strong in Italy; for example the Evil Eye complex of beliefs is widespread, particularly in southern Italy. Many families have

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stories of folk or indigenous traditions that have survived war, intermarriage, emigration and now industrialization. I argue that the survival of indigenous magical practices has had more to do with the development of Wicca and Goddess religion than one might at first surmise. For one thing, the Italian predisposition towards embodied, lived religion and materiality has kept many traditions alive; some examples are the use of candles for rites that approach forms of vernacular magic, the veneration of statues and their use in achieving intentions through prayer and ceremony, and the wearing of consecrated talismans and amulets (Magliocco 2004a, 2012; Orsi 2002). Having grown up in a devoutly Catholic family myself, I have experienced many of these traditions in my childhood, our home and extended family. The list is long: the consecrated scapular with a picture of a saint, which we children would wear under our shirts for protection; or the ‘Miraculous Medal’ depicting the Virgin Mary, to the household statues and votive candles of saints with particular importance in our family (such as Francis of Assisi); the ‘holy cards’ and Mass cards with prayers and prints of sacred art that filled our prayer books and Bibles. These practices live on as intrinsic elements of Catholicism throughout the Catholic world. Catholic materiality and lived religion make the world seem a more enchanted and alive place, where the saints and the Madonna are not only accessible, but empathetic and responsive. Similar to Rountree’s findings in Malta, I have found that in Italy ‘Catholics grow up familiar with sacred, extraordinary events being interpreted as miracles or “mysteries of faith” by the Church, interpretations which outsiders to Catholicism, especially Protestant Christianities, might see as “magical thinking” ’ (Rountree 2011: 860). Italian lived religion and magical complexes still today bear much resemblance to that which the American anthropologist and folklorist Charles Leland (1824–1903) encountered in Tuscany in 1886. The meeting and subsequent exchanges between Leland and a young woman called ‘Maddalena’ are for students and scholars of Wicca and Goddess religion a famous series of events. Years later she delivered a manuscript to him of supposed gypsy and witch lore from ‘Romagna toscana’, a wild, mountainous area of Tuscany and today’s Emilia-Romagna, known by that name in the nineteenth century (Hutton 1999; Leland 1990 [1890]; Menegoni 1999). Leland’s encounter with Maddalena gave birth to some of the foundational beliefs of contemporary Pagan Goddess practice and Wicca through his book Aradia, Gospel of the Witches (1990 [1890]). Beyond the voluminous debates on the authenticity of a surviving witchcraft cult in Italy, it is clear that Leland’s book, drawn in part from Maddalena’s stories and spells, influenced Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), the British ‘founding father’ of Wicca (Hutton 1999; Marrè 2012; Menegoni 1999). Poetic pieces drawn from Leland’s accounts appear in every Gardnerian-­derived ‘Book of Shadows’ (the collection of rites and material that guide magic and ritual used by Wiccans), including those now translated widely into Italian. In Milan there is a tragic history of two women, Sibillia Zanni and Pierina Bugatis, who were executed on accusations of witchcraft in the fourteenth century; they purportedly celebrated rituals along with their companions, honouring a figure they called Herodias. It is possible this was the name given by her accusers and not by the women, who primarily called her La Signora del Gioco (The Lady of the Game) or La Signora del Oriente (The Lady of the East) (Murano 2006 [1976]). Intriguingly, Leland’s

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Maddalena also wrote of a Goddess called Herodias, sometimes attributed as the origin of the Goddess name commonly used in international Wicca, ‘Aradia’ (Leland 1990 [1890]; Marrè 2009; Menegoni 1999). This is a topic of debate and controversy. Nonetheless, these are critical points for Italian Pagans, as well as for the growing numbers of practitioners beyond Italy: that a central tradition of the international Pagan and Wiccan movements may be seen as having its roots in Italy. I have witnessed practitioners in Milan leaving offerings at a little memorial to Sibillia and Pierina at Samonios or Halloween. This Italian heritage is a source of pride both to those who practise traditional Italian witchcraft, as well as to those who have recently espoused initiatory British Wicca or more informal British Traditional Witchcraft (BTW). In regard to active materiality of place and potent relationality for Italian Pagans, these are critical points as well.

Ingrained mores of resistance Some of Italy’s nuanced, culturally ingrained traits contribute to the character and recent growth of the Pagan community in Italy. As discussed earlier, important elements come from Italy’s historic and cultural forms of resistance. Resistance to domination by foreign invasion, to political oppression and to hegemonic structures, is deeply ingrained in the Italian psyche and culture. Also ingrained in the populace that does not practise Catholicism is a resistance to the Vatican, as well as to conventional social structures related to Italy’s cultural Catholicism. Previous chapters gave details of the partisan resistance movements in Lombardy and particularly in Piedmont, where many stirring examples are found in the history of Italy’s partisan movements and its Communist Party.5 Alternative spiritualities such as Paganism, shamanism and other new, non-Christian religious movements currently emerging in Italy not only offer empowerment and new senses of identity, but are also embedded with avenues and mores of cultural, social and spiritual resistance. The section below on new consciousness and new rites discusses more on these diverse forms of resistance, including those possibly balancing – and perhaps altering somewhat – the deeply inculcated Italian convention of Bella Figura. The history of witch trials in Italy may also be significant. While witch-­hunts and witch trials in the medieval and Renaissance eras have frequently been a motivating and galvanizing factor in the adherence of women particularly (and sometimes men as well) to Paganism and Witchcraft movements in the twentieth century, it can be argued that modern Witches’ and Pagans’ beliefs about historical witches and witchcraft are misplaced. Studies in recent decades have generally found that among those persecuted and/or executed in the bloody years of the European and British witch-­hunts, there were few practitioners of an authentic pre-Christian Pagan religion that had survived into the Christian era (Hutton 1999; Pearson 2002). I want to return here to the two examples of medieval vernacular Goddess worship recorded in Lombardy, mentioned above: Pierina Bugatis and Sibillia Zanni, burned in one of Milan’s main piazzas in 1390. Their case illustrates some of feminist historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s arguments: in a seeming paradox, despite the existence of the Inquisition, Italy did not

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have the kind of bloody ‘witchcraze’ that tore through other parts of Europe (Barstow 1994). It is a tragic irony that, if Sibillia and Pierina’s case had remained in the hands of the Inquisition, not those of the secular authorities, they might have been spared. The women’s early testimonies are fascinating in light of Italy’s growing Pagan and Goddess traditions, and they are frequently cited by contemporary Witches and Pagans. Sibillia and Pierina’s transcripts described activities much more similar to contemporary Goddess worship than that consistently described in other witch trial accounts. They celebrated rituals honouring a divine feminine figure at certain times of the month; they healed animals and feasted – the classic commensality of worshipping, eating and drinking together (Murano 2006 [1976]), which is seen today in late modern Pagan ritualizing. Despite Sibillia and Pierina’s horrific fate (and that of others persecuted in Italy), one can argue that the existence of the Inquisition and the Vatican may have aided Italy’s folk traditions to survive into contemporary times, as there was not the same level of persecution of folk healers and vernacular beliefs as in other countries (Barstow 1994; Rountree 2011). Relating to the perspective of Paganism as a religion of resistance – as it still may be seen in the twenty-­first century – Sibillia and Pierina’s accounts offer a poignant element of pre-­modern cultural and economic resistance to the early forms of capitalism and industrialization taking place in northern Italy in that era. In one documented example of their rites that I find particularly significant (and touching), the animals such as mules or horses that their Lady or Goddess healed and resuscitated could never be put to work again.

A rural country and an enchanted land In the mid to late twentieth century the rapid growth and spread of esoteric practices and mystery religions such as Wicca, Druidry and others in northern Europe and North America did not reach southern Europe. For one thing, language in Italy was a barrier to the arrival of northern European, North American and British traditions of Paganism, as much Pagan literature, if not most, was published in English. It is still not uncommon in the second decade of the twenty-­first century to find educated people across Italy, even in the more sophisticated cities and towns, who do not speak or read English, or at least who speak it only minimally. This delayed the diffusion of many Witchcraft and Paganism books of the twentieth century. Some examples of the best-­ known American and British books now translated into Italian are Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979; published in Italy in 2006) and Janet and Stewart Farrar’s A Witches’ Bible (1996, 2013, 2014); other books by Janet Farrar, written with Gavin Bone, are now published in Italian (2013, 2014). Vivianne Crowley and her husband Chris Crowley’s books are now also published in Italian. The delayed arrival of contemporary Paganism in Italy may have had to do with other complex sociological and historical reasons. One was the earlier industrialization of northern Europe, Britain and North America, and the ensuing romanticizing of Nature in those regions in the early nineteenth century. Another was the emergence of the study of folklore, native traditions and witchcraft connected with an idealized view of rural practices that flowered in rapidly industrializing nations such as England,

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Germany and the United States in the early nineteenth to mid-­twentieth centuries (Bendix 1992, 1999). This came as a reaction to the loss of countryside and rural lifestyles and was intertwined with the profound sense of loss wrought by industrialization. The Romantic movement of the British Isles is often seen as a direct reaction to industrialization in England (Hutton 1999). The study of folklore, newly developed in the nineteenth century, is significant for Wicca and perhaps also Druidry in Italy, as it can be argued (as discussed above) that there is a direct line from Charles Leland to Gerald Gardner, and subsequently to the arrival of Wicca and Druidry in Italy in the twenty-­first century (Hutton 1999; Marrè 2012). Hunger for a re-­enchantment of Nature and the search for enchantment in the post-­industrial era may have also contributed to the growth of Nature mysticism and esoteric spirituality in northern Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Berman 1981; Von Stuckrad 2002). However, in order to have a hunger for rediscovering enchantment in nature, a newly urbanized society must have already lost contact with Nature and its rural societies, with native beliefs and indigenous magical practices (Rountree 2011). This was not the case in Italy, which, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, retained an extensive agrarian and peasant economy into the latter half of the twentieth century (Ginsborg 2003). Like other countries in southern Europe, Italy’s late industrialization helped maintain rural structures, traditions and mores well into the twentieth century (Sapelli 1995). This is exemplified by the enduring belief in vernacular religious complexes that include the creation and use of protective amulets, varied traditions of healing and the lifting of – or protection from – the Evil Eye (Magliocco 2004a; Rountree 2011). As Magliocco points out, ‘there are literally thousands of spells to turn back the evil eye in Italian folklore’ and ‘much of Italian vernacular magic and healing centres around the evil eye belief complex’ (2004a: 158–159). These are sometimes synthesized with Christianity – not only in Italy, but also in Italian immigrant communities in other parts of the world (Orsi 2002). Over the many years I have spent on these studies, a wide number of participants have spoken freely of their Evil Eye knowledge and the practices they had witnessed in their families or communities, particularly those originating or still living in Italy’s southern regions. The Evil Eye traditions (as many observe when travelling in Greece or Turkey, to give two examples) are not only Italian, but pan-Mediterranean.

New movements, consciousness and rites The late industrialization of Italy and its ‘modernization without development’ (Sapelli 1995) relates to this discussion, not only regarding the later arrival of Paganism there but also as to the delayed emergence of feminism and the environmental movement. I have argued elsewhere (Howell 2008) that the emergence and spread of Goddess religion, Wicca and Druidry (among other paths of Paganism) is as much a sociological phenomenon in Italy as a religious one; it is integrally connected to the emergence of other movements such as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) rights, the environmental movement and personal-­consciousness movements. In this regard, Paganism’s rebirth in Italy is linked to the growth of Paganism in other areas of

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southern Europe, as well as in other nations in the same phase of late industrialization such as those in South America. Another significant element of the hunger for alternative forms of worship and communal celebration in Italy was the desire for new rites of passage. In the late-­ twentieth century there was an increasing sense of alienation from the traditional rites of Catholicism in the educated, newly urbanized, younger generations and also in the large Italian left wing. This lack of fulfilment in and growing movement away from Catholicism’s traditional ceremonies, particularly those marking life transitions, caused an increasing need for new ways to ritualize these occasions. Was the engine for the rapid growth of Paganism in Italy the women’s spirituality movement? Was it the increasing awareness of the environmental woes arriving in tandem with industrialization? Was it these factors together with more widespread education and greater opportunities for women? It is hard to pinpoint what may have been the ‘prime mover’. However, as the women’s spirituality movement took shape in Italy in the last ten to fifteen years, new creative expressions likewise emerged, promoting the designing of innovative rites of passage such as infant blessings, young girls’ coming of age, marriages and women’s rites honouring menopause. If one were to couple this with the fervent sense of new empowerment offered by different Pagan traditions, particularly for women raised in patriarchal Italian society, it could give new meaning to Liberation Theology. Graham Harvey articulated this association in his study of Paganism in the British Isles; it applies pertinently to Italy: ‘Goddess Spirituality is perhaps the most explicit “liberation theology” – more properly thealogy – of contemporary Paganism. By various approaches it explores the past, the present and the future hopes for intimations of other ways of living. It proposes that the honouring of the Earth must go hand in hand with the honouring of women’ (Harvey 1997: 85). The hunger for new rites of passage, the knowledge of what was taking shape abroad, as books arrived and were finally translated into Italian, and the delayed but now fervent social and psychological awareness movements together meant that the end of the last century and the beginning of the twenty-­first offered Italians a potent mix of ideas ‘whose time had come’. These phenomena marked a new flowering for Italy in alternative thought and creative expression, and also reaffirmed the Italian propensity towards resistance with a new sort of cultural and spiritual resistance movement. Like other societies, Italian women find a sense of empowerment in Goddess spirituality (Adler 1981; V. Crowley, pers. comm. July 2013; Magliocco 2004b). An important nuance of this movement in Italy is that they may also find power in the particular sense of Bella Figura conveyed by Goddess spirituality and Paganism. As discussed in earlier chapters, the nuances are extensive and socially significant; a very interesting aspect of Bella Figura is in regard to women claiming their place in the world. Italian anthropologist Emanuela Guano (2007) has offered insightful discussions on Bella Figura as more than merely a style of presenting oneself, of dressing and walking. Bella Figura becomes a manner by which a woman can create a persona with greater confidence in herself, one that offers a form of resistance; it becomes a way to carve out a place of belonging in an ‘oppressively masculinized’ public sphere (2007). My observations and ethnographic research find a direct relationship between the

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Pagan persona of Goddess Spirituality and priestesshood with Bella Figura, as some Italian women experiment with new and nuanced forms of empowered identity. Piercings, tattoos, ‘witchy’ or Celtic-­style forms of dress not typically seen in Italian society can make a political, sociological and psychological statement that contributes to new forms of empowerment and identity. (However, these may still be combined with a stylish handbag, hair cut or the latest trendy footwear.) Carlo Petrini discussed choices in eating and foodways as political; indeed those are – but likewise are one’s choices in attire and one’s style of presenting oneself in Italy.

Stregoneria or Stregheria It is pertinent to make a linguistic note on the difference between traditional Italian witchcraft, whose native practices have their roots in a long historical trajectory in Italian culture, and the terms often heard today in contemporary Pagan Witchcraft. The Italian term for the practice of traditional vernacular witchcraft, according to scholars of Italy (such as Magliocco) and also to Italian practitioners like the participants in this ethnographic research, is Stregoneria. There are regional dialectal forms that differ throughout Italy for ‘witch’, such as stria and masca – as in the masche in the witch/healer tradition encountered already in Chapter  4 on Paroldo. However, the most commonly known and used in the general Italian language is strega. Some readers may be familiar with the term Stregheria. This applies to some modern vernacular forms of ‘witchcraft’, to the subject of the nineteenth-­century studies of Charles Leland in central Italy (Leland 1990 [1890]), and in particularly to Italian-American magical traditions within postmodern Paganism (Howell 2008; Magliocco 2004b; Marrè 2012; Menegoni 1999). The usage was also popularized by the American teacher of Paganism and spirituality, writer Raven Grimassi (Grimassi 2003; Magliocco 2004b). There are complex differences between traditions of Italian Stregheria and Stregoneria, and yet there are also profound interlacings. In a nutshell, Italian-American Stregheria has drawn from Gardnerian Wicca and from the creativity of ItalianAmericans, as well as from authentic regional Italian beliefs carried over in immigrant culture. Some Italian scholars, such as Menegoni (1999), stand by the use of Stregheria for the local Tuscan worship of Diana and ‘Aradia’ that Leland encountered. Consequently, there are contemporary Italian witch societies that stress their claims to hereditary ancient origins and insist upon that name, as opposed to Stregoneria. It is a matter of ongoing debates both inside and outside Italy, sometimes ardent ones.

Il sentiero della Dea – the path of the Goddess The years 1999, 2001 and 2002 were significant dates in the history of Paganism’s return to Italy. In 1998 one eclectic tradition of deconstructed Wicca, Phyllis Curott’s Temple of Ara, which includes elements of Michael Harner’s Core Shamanism, took root in Italy (P. Curott, pers. comm. 9 June 2013; Harner 1980, 1990). Curott’s bestselling book, The Book of Shadows, was one of the first English-­language Pagan books to be translated

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into Italian; it was published in 1999 with the title Il Sentiero della Dea (The Path of the Goddess). Curott, a New York attorney and well-­known figure in the international Pagan world, had felt a profound spiritual connection to Italy after an earlier visit there in 1987. After travelling to various ancient classical Pagan sites such as Lake Nemi, she discovered a sense of mission in Italy (pers. comm. 9 June 2013). Her book’s biographical account of a woman’s discovery of Goddess religion and of a deeper ‘calling’ found through a profound relationship with nature, through magical practices and community, both validated Italy’s native love of such topics and created an explosion of interest. In Curott’s talks and seminars in Italy she makes her tradition’s bonds with Italy explicit. Davide Marrè (who sometimes goes by ‘Cronos’), Italian author, psychologist and founder of a successful Pagan society in Italy, Il Circolo dei Trivi, today also a teacher of British Traditional Wicca, described Curott’s book thus: ‘it created a lively interest in the religion in an adult audience, and one that was prevalently feminine’ (Marrè 2007: 57–58). Prior to Curott’s Italian publication there had been very few Pagan and Wiccan books translated and published, and none had such a reception as Curott’s (1998, 1999). The bonds between Italy and the United States are strong and Italians were receptive to a compelling American spokesperson for Goddess religion, a classically styled priesthood and priestesshood, and Curott’s message of healing, beauty, love and, of course, magic. Curott continues to travel throughout Italy, to teach and publish in Italian. Her Temple of Ara tradition, founded in the United States in the 1980s – translated easily into Italian as Il Tempio d’Ara, The Temple of the Altar – has a wide following throughout Italy. One of the tenets of her practice is a focus on meditation and ceremony with the spirits of place using shamanic techniques drawn from her training with Harner’s Core Shamanism, and her work has a focus on healing – healing of the human community as well as the land. Curott’s tradition offers a kind of magical Depth Ecology (Kohák 1984, 2000) whose acknowledging and honouring of place and ancestors resonates strongly with Italians.

British Traditional Witchcraft, Wicca and other contemporary lineages of Paganism There are also Alexandrian and Gardnerian lineages of British Traditional Wicca present in Italy, coming from England and Ireland. One example that has had success recently is the Gardnerian ‘Whitecroft’ lineage taught by the Crowleys. Vivianne Crowley is a prominent British Jungian psychologist and author. Her recent teaching and publishing in Italy (in collaboration with her husband) has rapidly drawn students and initiates. The research participants in Italy who are part of their tradition reported that there were approximately seventy regular members of the Italian Crowley Wicca Study Group classes, in nine cities throughout Italy (at the time of writing). The Crowleys’ successful UK book, Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Millennium (1996), was translated and released in Italy as I Poteri della Wicca: La Più Antica Religione del Mondo nella Società Contemporanea (2013);6 consequently one may predict that these numbers will grow.

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Another example of the cross-European dissemination of Wicca and Paganism from Britain and Ireland is the tradition of trance, ritual and magic taught by Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, now grown into an eclectic practice incorporating, like Curott’s, shamanic techniques. Farrar is very well known internationally in the Pagan and Wiccan world for her earlier publications and teaching with her late husband, Stewart Farrar. Together with second husband Gavin Bone, Farrar has developed a branch of Paganism that is less structured, more inclusive and less formally initiation-­based than

Figure 5.1  Pagan altar at a joint Druid and Wiccan workshop in Piedmont, May 2012.

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the stricter traditions of Alexandrian/Gardnerian Wicca that she and her husband Stewart taught and wrote on prolifically. Like Curott and the Crowleys, Farrar and Bone are drawing students from across Italy in all walks of life and socio-­economic ranks. Farrar and Bone’s books began to be translated into Italian in 2013, and as of 2017 there were six books available in translation. In August 2013 they estimated there to be five covens from Milan to Palermo that drew initiation from them, plus ongoing Study Groups (G. Bone and J. Farrar, pers. comm. June–August 2013). At the time of writing, they have developed an increasingly native and locally rooted tradition in Italy, which is now led by Italians. The practitioners chose an Irish Goddess name of Tempio di Callaighe (Temple of the Callaighe) to give evidence of their heritage from the Irish-­ born tradition of Bone and Farrar (G. Bone, pers. comm. February 2017). However, their material (and websites) avow the tradition’s adherence to ancestor honouring and local Earth honouring practices. There are other traditions present in Italy today that can be described generally as ‘eclectic’, like Curott’s and Farrar/Bone’s. Given that it was Curott’s influence that arguably prompted the initial flow of followers in Italy towards contemporary forms of Paganism, Wicca and Goddess religion, it is not surprising that she would have a steadily growing number of followers and dedicated devotees throughout Italy. She estimated twenty to thirty active groups throughout Italy, led by Italian initiates and teachers (P. Curott, pers. comm. 9 June 2013; 1 February 2017). Other eclectic Pagan teachers and authors from the United States offer workshops and trainings, such as Silver Ravenwolf (1998, 2002), and also Starhawk (1979, 2006); their books too are now available in Italian. In recent years their Italian programmes have been taught by Italian teachers whom they have trained.

Druidry reborn As discussed in Chapter 4, for some years ‘The Confraternity of the Ancient Oak’ held a stimulating conference each autumn in collaboration with the Wiccan community, often focusing on the topic: ‘From Folk Healers and Medieval Alchemists to Postmodern Paganism’. This was an ongoing theme in the conference’s talks, seminars, guided walks and workshops, which I also attended for some years. The workshops and talks, as well as the growing ritual practices, demonstrated a belief in the heritage and succession from traditional folk healers practising vernacular magic and healing, and from medieval alchemists and magicians, to Italy’s current religions of Wicca and Druidry. Prominent Druid writers and teachers such as Philip Carr-Gomm and his wife, as well as other Pagan writers or well-­known esoteric figures are often invited from the UK or Ireland to Italy to teach and hold workshops for them. Consequently, from the first endeavors in the latter part of the twentieth century to recent years, new communication and collaboration has grown between the well-­known British Isles Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) and various Druid groups in northern Italy. However, despite a camaraderie, sense of fellowship and Antica Quercia (Ancient Oak) having made community visits to Stonehenge or other British Isles sacred sites for solemn festival days such as Summer Solstice, Ossian differentiates clearly what he,

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his wife Maria and their students practise. He explained in our fieldwork conversations that – following the model of his Druid teachers and elders – he has created an Italian Druidic tradition and ‘esoteric school’, which he sees as more specifically place-­based and focused on all that is local. Its own website describes the tradition as a: ‘movimento eco-­spirituale d’ispirazione druidica’ – an eco-­spiritual movement with Druidic inspiration (http://www.anticaquercia.com/public/). He also has stated emphatically that it is an authentic and exclusively Pagan path – not one that can be intertwined and practised simultaneously with Christianity, Judaism or other religions.

Conclusion Historian Ronald Hutton observed that his experiences with Pagan communities in Britain were positive and personally meaningful: ‘I was repeatedly provided with examples . . . of the majesty, wisdom, eloquence, and creative power of otherwise ordinary people, and the capacity of religious ritual and ritual magic to exert powerful transformative effects upon them’ (Hutton 2004: 175). My experiences working with and interviewing the Pagan movement across Italy could be described similarly. By the last years of the twentieth century the increasingly globalized, English-­speaking younger generations in Italy were ready for a message that had caught northern European and American imaginations and hearts in earlier decades: that of a lifestyle, combined with a spiritual path, that was empowering to women and other marginalized demographics, such as the LGBTQ communities; more inclusive philosophically; Earth-­based and holistic. Despite the fact that many Pagan teachers and authors discussed above had come from outside Italy (many of whom – like the Italians – have generously contributed to this research), they have now trained local, native Italian leaders who are quickly taking over the group management and dissemination of the traditions. What we might call ‘indigenous’ forms of Paganism are growing – and in my opinion – returning to and being re-­ignited in their native lands. Italians find a natural, instinctive home in the creative, aesthetic expression of ritual, as well as the evocative materiality of seasonal commemorations with the richly place-­based foodways of locally derived feasts. As Paganism in Italy continues to grow with ongoing interregional liaisons and dialogues, collaborative conferences and seminars, unlike the discussions in Chapter 3 of politicized Celticity my research did not find wide evidence of racial or ethnic prejudice. There do not seem to be biases due to age, education, sexual preference, social status nor geographic origin. My observations found aesthetic materiality and profoundly place-­honouring practices that, like Hutton’s citation above, showed the ‘eloquence and creative power of otherwise ordinary people’ (2004: 175). Such festival and ritual creations unleash the imagination and artistry innate in Italian culture, where themes of food, festival, religion and materiality are underscored by the embodied traditions manifested in Italian Paganism. The following chapter leaves the thick description of the research fieldwork and returns to theoretical explorations, reviewing the range of interdisciplinary studies underpinning the book.

6

Theoretical Foundations and Diverse Perspectives

This chapter turns to a discussion of the critical theories engaged in the foundation and background of the research. Some of the theorists’ work underpinning the research ethnographies is reviewed and their theories are unpacked further. The chapter explores notions from an interdisciplinary range of fields such as philosophy, ecology, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, ritual studies and more traditional religious studies. Among the theories unpacked are notions on place-­power, Foucault’s theory of the heterotopia, as well as Latourian devices of cultural hybridity as applicable to Italian festival.

Critical foundations from various disciplines As the foregoing chapters have depicted and unpacked, the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of Religious Studies draws from critical theorists from across a variety of fields; thus this book likewise draws from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary foundations. Disciplines as diverse as philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, geography, ritual studies, history and performance studies are represented here. Notions on material and objects, places, Nature as agents; relationality, local foodways, festival and ritual all flow throughout this book. My goal has been to create a tapestry depicting a new perspective on food, on festival and on twenty-­first century forms of lived religion. I also am interested in themes of resilience and sustainability, and argue that the teamwork and community integration involved in creating a festival can lead both communities and individuals to greater psychological and emotional health. Pertinent to this work is how the deep bond with family, which is so very evident and central in Italian culture, can incorporate place and Nature. If human beings have a ‘relational epistemology’ with Nature (Milton 2002: 47) or, as Ingold phrases it, if humanity has ‘relational thinking’ (2000: 3–4), which goes beyond species differentiation, this will affect not only humanity’s perspectives on Nature and environment, but also on materiality and perceptions of power of place.

Relationships with place, objects, food and Nature Milton’s work (2002) discusses various themes integrated with the ideas that gave rise to this book. Among them is her treatment of the local versus the global, and how the sacred is rooted in the local. In drawing an intersection between the local and personal identity,

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she writes: ‘This leads to the judgement that the local provides a secure sense of personal identity, while the global provides alienation and anxiety. [. . .] This implies that it is possible to experience sacredness only in local contexts, where personal identity is defined in terms of local associations’ (Milton 2002: 107). The local then becomes an irreplaceable, which offers specific community through landscape, kin and neighbour relationships, with handicrafts and heirlooms as objects factoring into that identity (Hornborg 1993: 133, cited in Milton 2002: 107). These are local ‘reference points for identity’ – identity-­ creating factors which are grounded, and in that sense ‘real’. This is contrasted with abstractions, like money or one’s professional position in a global marketplace (Milton 2002: 106–108). Italian festivals can offer a grounded means of resisting the loss of the irreplaceable local, identified by Italian culture in its foods, folklore, traditions or religious symbols. Milton articulates how bonds with place are maintained and become, in a sense, sacred, through her examinations of what local culture offers. Ritual, lived religious traditions and certain societies’ care in keeping a reciprocal relationship with place and Nature contribute to relationality. This is a fundamental point in all its potential nuances, for discussions of materiality and bonds with place, such as this work demonstrates in Italy. Milton demonstrates the intersection with animic notions of personhood: ‘It is responsive relatedness that constitutes personhood, not humanness’ (Milton 2002: 48). Like Ingold (2000), Hallowell (1992 [1960]) and Harvey (2006, 2013), she explores the ‘perception of personhood’ (Milton 2002: 47) often shown by indigenous people in relation to Nature or to the animals they may hunt, their ‘relational epistemology’: ‘In the western modernist tradition, personhood is part of what something is, an individual; in relational epistemology, personhood emerges out of what something does in relation to others’ (Milton: 47; italics in original). In regarding the agency and materiality of a mountain, a hillside, a lake and ‘what it does’ to a town, a community, a festival-­ritual, what it does may well be portrayed through a certain dish or means of preparing a dish, a costume or a procession. Family and community bonds in Italy express relationality and reciprocity. Nature and place are seen as being part of our ‘circle of relations’, a concept often attributed to non-Western perspectives; this term is, often, cited as originating with the Lakota North American Indian nation. As various fieldwork participants expressed in Lombardy and Piedmont, through our bonds and the kind of communion found in commensality, a sense of kinship and of sacredness evolves. It is a form of lived religion or ritualized practice when seasonal celebrations bring communities and families together, in ritualized foodways. I would assert that such quasi devotional attention, which in Italy is often attributed to food, can also bring deeper ecological awareness, through place-­based identity creation and profound place connection. In these spaces of awareness, new materiality and relationality spring forth.

Modernity, networks and festival hybridity – engaging Latour’s theories As in the previous chapters, some scholars hypothesize whether Italy is a modern country or not. Sapelli has speculated provocatively that Italy and other parts of

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southern Europe are ‘postmodern without ever having been modern’ due to their late industrialization (Sapelli 2008). Latour’s theories would assert that, in fact, none of us have ever been modern or postmodern. We are all hybrids, and Nature is still enchanted. The modernists and antimodernists have made a mistake, Latour tells us (1993: 114– 116; 128–129). Italian festivals can help to demonstrate the creative hybridity and vivid enchantment still possible in contemporary society. In Italy the social is fundamental, campanilismo or fierce local patriotism arises from the local landmark as symbol, and likewise sense of place is often socially rooted. One farmer in Nuto Revelli’s vast collection of interviews with Italian peasants in Piedmont said: ‘The land held the family together. Land and social are bound together’ (Revelli 1977, 1997: 290). Latour has hypothesized that this could be said of all humanity (1993). The dualism of post-Enlightenment thinking is an illusion, creating a false schism between Nature and culture, according to Latour (Latour 1993: 98–99, 100–103, 104–105), a gulf that really does not exist, except in certain Western cultures. He goes so far as to state that: ‘Cultures – different or universal – do not exist, any more than Nature does. [. . .] the very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off ’ (104). For Latour, Western thinking that prides itself on concepts steeped in what may be seen as modernity and postmodernity are illusory. He sees our ontology as similar to that of a South American Indian nation from the Amazon region of Ecuador, the Achuar (interestingly, this is a native nation I studied earlier in my career when focusing on South America), or for that matter like any culture that we might conceive of as premodern. I would argue that Italy, and perhaps other parts of southern Europe, are a Latourian hybrid of premodern, modern and postmodern, maintaining relational epistemologies and powerful materiality, despite homogenizing twenty-­firstcentury forces. Other strands of theories woven together here return the discussion to materiality and the power of place to act on and through. Another premise of Latour’s principal philosophies is the concept of hybrids. This is a description of what he entitles the ‘nonhumans’ or the ‘mixtures between entirely new types of beings, hybrids of nature and culture’ (10–11). Discussing hybrids, Latour does not capitalize Nature; however he does when referring to ‘limitless Nature’ (9) in the sense of the natural world. For Latour, hybrids of culture and Nature have agency, and can do things we have rejected, or overlooked, in modern ways of thinking. They exist in conjunction with a third key premise of Latour’s, that of the network (117–122). If one were to apply Latour’s theories to Italy, one can find a number of examples of his ideas at work: in regards to relationship, to hybrids of culture and to networks. My research in the rural areas of Lombardy and Piedmont demonstrates that Italian folk beliefs and lived religion exhibited in festival have a materiality that sometimes attributes agency to inanimate objects. These are also hybrids in Latourian language, those exhibiting ‘thing power’, as Bennett calls such agency and materiality (Bennett 2004). The style of ritualized communal practice and belief in the case studies from my fieldwork are tied profoundly to place. This is further demonstration of the case stating how we Westerners, for all our ‘violent hubris’ (Bennett 2004: 349), are not actually modern. Such a statement can apply even to a Western European nation like Italy with one of the highest rates of recent industrialization.

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Latour invokes environmental philosophers and other theorists on Nature when he writes of how we have convinced ourselves that the world is disenchanted (1993: 114–115). However, on the contrary, many an Italian city or small village’s legends and local festivals offer embodiment of place and community showing that the world can still be perceived as enchanted. My fieldwork chapters have given specific examples of these beliefs in today’s Italy. This leads me again to point to Italy as an example of Latour’s discussions on network theory, and how even the longest network is ultimately local: ‘Is a railroad local or global? [. . .] It is local at all points, since you always find sleepers and railroad workers, and you have stations and automatic ticket machines scattered along the way’ (117). Like the festival, the railroad is a good example of a hybrid. One could say the railroad is always a local network, and would literally be relational in Italian culture and mindset: someone will always have family and friends who can help as one moves along it. Sapelli has discussed such theories of relationality in economic terms (Sapelli 1995). Finally, my theory describing the festival as a bridge over the dualistic schism that modernist ideologies have created between Nature and culture could be called a Latourian device. It draws essentially upon networks in order to exist, and it is not modern. Therefore, in the theories, questions and fieldwork engaged here, festival itself is shown to be a hybrid as are the components that make it up: foodways, costumes, materiality of place, ritualized community gatherings, lived religion.

Temporal percolation: the heterotopia and alternative forms of temporality that allow for place-­power awareness In the theories discussed in previous chapters of festival as a bridge between Nature and culture, the festival becomes an example of the Latour hybrid. One of the means by which the ritual and festival cross the gap between pre and postmodern, between human and Other, or perhaps other-­than-human is through the meeting and intersection, the interanimation, of diverse temporal spaces and perceptions. I have introduced the concept in previous chapters that the space of festive time creates an opening, a moment of potential for humanity’s awareness to be heightened and made more sensitive. Archaeologists Christopher Witmore (2006) and Kenneth Lymer (2009, 2010) demonstrate the temporality of festival as polychronic: a setting where past eras can seep into and mingle with the present. Witmore discusses the percolation of differing temporal settings, where, like coffee and water, time periods meet and permeate each other in such a way as to change each other’s consistency and potency: ‘building upon a non-­modernist notion of time where entities and events quite distant in a linear temporality are proximate through their simultaneous entanglement and percolation’ (Witmore 2006: 267). Their explorations of multiple sensory materiality are illustrated in the festivals here. Witmore cites both Ingold and Latour in engaging questions of how past and present percolate together when humanity allows itself non-­linear awareness. Like my interest in and engagement with foodways as means of percolating with place, Witmore is interested in how sound rediscovers ‘bodily engagement’ with place (Witmore 2006: 269). He discusses that, through sensitivity to other sensory properties,

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the archaeologist may escape ‘the tyranny of ocularcentrism’ (2006: 282). Like Bennett, he urges us to not deny ‘the action of things’, lest we fall back into ‘exploitative and dominating tendencies of the West’ (Witmore 2006: 282). Pertinent to my theories on the petroglyphs in northern Lombardy, Lymer draws from Witmore in examining the temporal percolations and polychronic power of landscape found in rock art parks in Central Asia (Lymer 2009, 2010). These theories have informed my thinking on and engagement with the materiality and temporality of rock art landscapes, such as in the petroglyph parks in the long glacial valley of Valcamonica, examined in Chapter 3. Here my goal is to examine more in depth the idea that we can challenge linear temporality and experience other forms of awareness in distinct ambiances and circumstances, thereby allowing other senses of time and space to emerge. I have deconstructed the festival temporality in previous chapters with the help of Foucault’s theory of the heterotopia. Now I will unpack his theory further for greater clarity. As its etymology indicates, the term expresses the idea of ‘other places’, sites that are real ‘emplacements’, found universally in world cultures, but that challenge and invert our perceptions of ‘normalcy’ (Sohn 2008: 46–47). To play with the term a bit, in my work here, which refers to Nature and the other-­than-human Other, these could be seen as ideal places to experience the Other; not illusions of utopia (although there are heterotopias of utopic illusion, discussed further below) but sites in which ‘all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted’ (Foucault 1986: 24, cited in Rodman 2003: 211; also Foucault 1998: 178; Foucault 1966 [2010]). Heterotopias are ‘a constant of every human group’ (Foucault 1998: 179). It was in 1966 that Foucault first discussed the term and laid out six principles of his spatial theory. In an interview on French radio that same year he spoke of how children know these ‘counter spaces’ or ‘other spaces’: the games at the bottom of the garden, the Indian-­style tents where one plays, the forest of hide and seek, the parents’ bed when the parents are away, and so forth (Foucault 2010 [1966]; Davis 2010: 662). (A typical Foucauldian note, demonstrating his well-­known interest in themes of power structures and punishment, is that he comments that this is a transgressive play-­place, where the child is aware he or she could be punished if discovered.) As for the adult world, Foucault chose to delineate libraries, museums, brothels, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, homes for the elderly, cemeteries, colonies, ships, gardens, and also the carnival or festival (Foucault 1998: 178–183; 2010 [1966]). In the 1967 lecture and interview (Foucault 2008 [1967]), followed posthumously by an article (1998, 2000), Foucault set out these emplacements in detail. I am intrigued by how these ‘times outside of time’ exist and thrive, surprisingly, in the midst of our Western society’s racing, linear temporality. One need only think of week-­long, outdoor music festivals, or the all-­ consuming Granddaddy of annual alternative gatherings, Burning Man; perhaps the newer phenomenon of Comi-­cons – which at the time of writing are spreading across the world in all cultures. Most pertinently, my research demonstrates that any festival or ritualized lived religious communal space, such as a feast or other event, can enter into this theory of alternative temporalities, percolating together and perhaps allowing new awareness of place-­power to emerge. Consequently, to better elucidate the applications of the heterotopia, here are details from Foucault’s six categories:

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1. The first principle determines that the heterotopia is found in all cultures, but is

still very diverse. He broke these into two types: that of the crisis heterotopia and that of the ‘deviant’. Early societies or indigenous societies’ rites and houses set apart for adolescents, women and so forth; today’s boarding schools, some of which are same-­sex schools; homes for the elderly – ‘rest homes’ and assisted living. His concept of the deviant heterotopia exists today as in the past, in the form of prisons, psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation centres and so forth. Subsequent writers have added other late modern places to this category, such as the refugee camp, underground tunnels where the homeless dwell, rehabilitation centres for the rich, and so on (Dehaene & De Cauter 2008: 7–8; De Boeck 2008: 297–308). It is important to state that ‘deviant’ is a relative term; some of the alternative festival scenarios mentioned here would be categorized as deviant in more conventional or conservative circles. 2. The second principle illustrates how, despite being universals, heterotopias can be altered by certain societies or certain groups to operate differently depending on the society and culture. Foucault offers examples of cemeteries (2000: 180–181). He uses the term ‘other city’ for these ‘dark dwellings’ (181). A contemporary illustration of how this second principle can apply is found through additional societal uses of the cemetery located on the city’s periphery. In Milan, I observed over years of living there and visiting that the city’s primary monumental cemetery had become a place of illegal encampments for Romany communities. The Romany almost surely celebrated various community events there and perhaps ritualized, while living out crucial life passages such as birth and death. Thus the cemetery becomes an illustration of a heterotopia that offers potential for life on the edge, with potentially extreme societal reversals. 3. Foucault’s third principle of heterotopia is the juxtaposition of ‘several emplacements that are incompatible, contradictory in themselves, or unrelated to each other’ (181). He cites the theatre, the cinema and, in particular, the garden as easily identifiable examples of this principle. From Foucault’s description, one gets the sense of how the macrocosm may be represented in the microcosm, perhaps incongruously at times, on the stage, the screen or in the perfectly designed and sculpted garden. Perhaps one might include a garish visitor centre selling cheap souvenirs in a pilgrimage site or a National Park? 4. Principle four is that time behaves unconventionally in a heterotopia, becoming ‘heterochronic’. Here among other examples we find the festival, fair and carnival. Foucault himself also added the holiday resort village, such as a Club Mediterranée: an enclosed space of festive time but one that is largely closed, gated or walled off and unto itself. We probe more into this principle below. 5. Heterotopic emplacements in this fifth principle require some kind of opening and closing that isolates them. However, they are still penetrable and thus this gives them a kind of attainable exclusiveness. Foucault cites military barracks, saunas and public baths; rituals of various kinds, and the American motel where people can be closed in, sheltered or find space for sexual liaisons without being observed. There are diverse others one could add: the American fraternity or sorority on many university campuses springs to mind, with their versions of

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secret adolescent societies and initiations; clubs of different kinds, such as a country club with its exclusive membership but that is prominently visible to the public; or the various orders of Masonic Lodges. One could perhaps include the nudist camp or colony, often hidden and yet advertised publicly. 6. Finally, his six principles conclude with those spaces ‘not of illusion but of compensation’ (1998: 184), where life is highly regulated, organized and regimented. He finds the ultimate example in the New World colonies such as those created by the Jesuits in South America and the English North American Puritan colonies. Foucault adds brothels and in particular the ocean-­going ship as examples. Now that our lives are so often engaged in long airplane journeys, where life events unfold – sometimes transgressively and even tragically – one must add the airplane. There are pertinent connections in a number of the heterotopic principles discussed here, but the fourth in particular is relevant in regard to festive time. Related to that, the fifth could be argued to be relevant as well given the carefully gated nature of many festival encampments in the Pagan world; also for music festivals, Burning Man and so forth. In the festival time of ‘temporal discontinuity’, the inverted, perhaps even contested, realities of the heterotopia allow for a place and time where people ‘are in a kind of absolute break with their traditional time’ (Foucault 1998: 182). To return to Latour, the ultimate hybrid is the heterotopic place, for as Foucault described heterotopias they are ‘emplacements that have the curious property of being linked to all other emplacements . . . spaces which are linked with all others’ (1998: 178). Thus they are, in the Latourian as well as the Foucauldian sense, linked in a network of relations. Regarding the fourth principle’s use of ‘heterochronic’, to engage the terms more thoroughly, my interpretation is that the terms heterochronic and polychronic are not interchangeable; however, they can be synchronous and synergetic. Heterochronic denotes a multiple and diverse perception of temporality, which includes a break from ‘normal time’ and from the relations within that temporality. Polychronic refers to how the past and present can be interanimated and intermingled. My argument is that the altered relations and temporality of the festival can offer both a polychronic and heterochronic space – past and present percolating together, in non-­ordinary moments, but that are real and related to other sites in other places or in society. The festival accounts in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 illustrate the lived expressions of such lifeworlds. Foucault set out these principles and theories first in a talk, which in some translations appropriately is entitled ‘Other Spaces’. The 1966 radio interview clearly describes them as ‘other’: ‘these other places’; ‘spaces that are totally other’. This is intriguingly apt here, in that during the festival heterotopia, power of place, the Other and the numen, the spirit of place, can be sensed and perceived; they have the opportunity to be acknowledged and to manifest through the festival’s lived religious traditions, feasting or other form of ritualization. It is very likely that Foucault did not intend his ‘other places’ to be used in such a context, despite the idea that heterotopias are places of inverted and contested perspectives and dynamics. Some writers have argued that, although the concept of heterotopia has become widely used and influential in a variety of disciplines in the ensuing two decades since Foucault’s death, he

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did not develop his heterotopia theories clearly (Dehaene & De Cauter 2008: 4; Cenzatti 2008: 75). As Dehaene and De Cauter remind readers,‘the lecture remained unpublished until 1984’ (2008: 4). However, as can happen in many cases, Foucault’s theories developed lives of their own and grew beyond his usage and his life, becoming widely used in many contexts. My use of this theory is to underscore my argument that in the ‘other space’ of the festival, with its inverted perceptions and special temporality, new awareness may emerge. Various scholars in the area of contemporary Pagan studies have examined how theories of heterotopia and of power inversion or gender challenging relate to the newly created phenomenon of the Pagan festival. Indeed the Pagan festival, particularly those in remote or more isolated natural places, provides an apt example of powerfully heterotopic and polychronic temporality, as Pike has discussed in detail in her ethnographic 2001 work. ‘Neopagan festivals are marginal sites, or “heterotopias”, to borrow Michel Foucault’s term’ (Pike 2001: 234). As well as Foucault, Pike also attributes other scholars writing in the field today with having helped her ‘understanding of festivals as “places apart” ’ (234). In her Pagan festival fieldwork, Pike’s participants made the distinction between the festival world and what they termed ‘mundania’ (Pike 2001: 18–40). Their vision of the festival world was that of a mythical realm seen as ‘Faerie’ and of ‘magical otherworlds’ that ‘makes them “liminal destinations” ’ (2001: 20). There are contrasts with the studies I have carried out in the festivals here that are traditional cultural, calendrical or gastronomic fairs, and some are actually urban. However, in the case of Milan’s Celtic New Year, and most pertinently in Chapter 5’s exploration of the new religious movement of Paganism growing in Italy, some of Pike’s theories do apply. Additionally, in the cases of Andrista’s Badalisc, Paroldo’s Saint Martin’s Summer and Milan’s Celtic New Year, people did express finding a sense of pilgrimage. ‘The separation of the festival world from mundania is also accomplished by making festival attendance a pilgrimage. Neopagans often journey to far-­away places when they go to festivals or ritual sites, and they see this journey as a pilgrimage or rite of passage that will transform them’ (Pike 2001: 27). My argument is that there is often a transformational quality to the festival experience, even when it is less removed from ‘mundania’, to use Pike’s term. This is due not only to the experiences of the festival itself, but to experiences of materiality and the place’s potential for place-­ power. Returning to a specific place and community, experiencing a powerful place once more – perhaps seasonally and annually – is an important element of the festivals Pike has studied in America, as well as those studied here. The heterotopic, heterochronic temporality of the festival is interanimated with place, and thus the materiality of food and embodied, ‘emplaced’ lived religion come through potently. In the opening that the heterotopic space provides, a portal for awareness, for a sense of the Other, can arise – whether that Other is a marginalized human community, a new religious movement, the ignored stories in the landscape, or Nature. To return to the discussions elaborated on in Chapter  5 of the new religious movement of Paganism in Italy, through the heterochronic portal the festival bridge connects Pagans to each other, to a sense of the numinous and the Divine; it may also allow awareness of the possibility of an ancient tribal community, or perhaps a nemeton – a meeting place or a sacred grove for worship for the Celts and Gauls (Jones &

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Pennick 1995) – beneath the park and castle grounds. When Ossian and Maria lead their Druidic community into the thickly forested lands of northern Piedmont, they feel a sense of connection to and honouring of ancestral lands, in their own heterotopic, polychronic experience. Their festival encampments at Samhain and Beltane commune with the genius loci of their (now becoming established) ritual sites, evoking a potent ‘time out of time’ space there. The space of the festival creates a portal for Andrista villagers to have new awareness of their mountain landscape, and for Paroldo it evokes the ancient witch-­healers’ presence. The hybrid nature of the festival and its unique temporality offers these varied expressions of place to emerge.

The unique agency of landscape art Chapter 3 revealed the remarkable power of landscape in relation to one of the festivals discussed – Andrista in northern Lombardy is located in a region with extensive areas of petroglyphs. The Foucauldian heterotopic and heterochronic understandings discussed above are expressed in a volume by Thomas Heyd (in Darier 1999), which struck a particular chord due to my experiences in Italy. They also were relevant in other areas of my work, such as my studies on Amerindian archaeological sites in North, South and Central America. Heyd discusses the ‘Medicine Wheels’, the name often given to boulder structures found on the northern plains of North America, which often also have petroglyphs and pictographs associated with them (Heyd 1999: 153–155). These are often generally referred to as rock art. Heyd analyses the Medicine Wheel boulder structures according to Foucault’s six principles of ‘heterotopology’, described above, concluding that such rock art spaces can be called heterotopias: ‘These boulder structures juxtapose incompatible sites by bringing together a perspective on land of its original inhabitants and a perspective on land of its present exploitation-­ oriented users. In so far as the origin of these sites points to times receding indefinitely far into the past, reflection on them constitutes a slice or break in the ordinary perception of time’ (Heyd 1999: 161). Rock art and ancient structures in the landscape, particularly circular or semi-­ circular structures like a Medicine Wheel or stone circle, can create a feeling of unusual temporality. Similar to other kinds of art, experiencing such places can jar or transport us out of normal, mundane awareness – as Heyd puts it, ‘unsettle us’ in some manner (1999: 161). I have spent days and many hours over decades exploring and experiencing stone circles in Britain, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland; Gallic, Etruscan and classical Roman sites; Medicine Wheels, pyramids and other Native American Indian ancient sites in North and Central America. Consequently my studies and observations support this theory. Even the beauty of a Renaissance square can have heterotopic power, Heyd argues – a point to consider in the Milan festival fieldwork in and near Piazza Duomo. It is very interesting to consider how Heyd’s theories apply to the massive petroglyph parks covering Valcamonica in northern Italy. As discussed in Chapter 3, one of the most extensive areas of petroglyphs and pictographs in Italy – perhaps in Europe – lies near the festival researched in Andrista. My argument is that people’s awareness of the petroglyph parks and use of the ancient symbols from them in the immediate area of

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the Andrista festival have contributed to the powerful place agency and heterotopic impact of both the area and the festival. The theme of place agency plays a fundamental role in the examination here. The polychronic power of an honoured landscape manifests its enduring wisdom through art, artifacts, and the power of its materiality. Lymer wrote, referring to Witmore’s theory of percolation (2006): The present is an aggregate mix derived from multiple times which do not follow strict linear relationships. Thus, we are able to move away from viewing the landscape as a monochronic object and acknowledge its many polychronic facets as various pasts still actively resonate within the realities of our various presents. [. . .] [R]ock art sites are nodes in the landscape embodying temporal percolations of significant spaces. Lymer 2010: 3–4

Ritual and liminality, sacred space and festive time Ritual time is ‘anti-­temporality’ (Turner 1982a: 243–265). This is exemplified frequently in my observations in particular of the Pagan festivals and feasts. When one is engaged fully in such a time – be it for a day or a week – one does experience the anti-­temporality that Turner found in ritual or theatrical community events. His description of the ‘social anti-­structure’ that can arise in ‘ritual time’ accords with some of the heterotopic spatial theory of Foucault. ‘Liminality is a temporal interface whose properties partially invert those of the already consolidated order which constitutes any specific cultural “cosmos” ’ (Turner 1982b: 41). It can also be ‘sacred space time’ in these ‘subversive and ludic (or playful) events’ (1982b: 27). Turner interpreted much of the Western world’s postmodern and post-­industrial festivals or ritual as liminoid, in that they involved leisure time activities that were purely optional and voluntary, ‘leisure genres’. However, unlike carnival culture (or many forms of Western entertainment), he did not see the liminal in tribal society as reversing the social order; on the contrary a tribal ritual was intended to support and reinforce not only social order, but cosmic order. Instead: ‘supposedly “entertainment” genres of industrial society are often subversive, satirizing, lampooning, burlesquing, or subtly putting down the central values of the basic, work-­sphere society, or at least selected sectors of that society. The word “entertain”, incidentally, is derived from O.F. entretenir, to “hold apart”, that is to create a liminal or liminoid space in which performances may take place’ (1982b: 41). From the economic standpoint mentioned earlier, Turner also saw the liminoid as potentially including that which is bought and sold. ‘The liminoid is more like a commodity – indeed often is a commodity, which one selects and pays for – than the liminal’ (55, italics in original). Despite pages of careful elucidation of the nuances and subtleties distinguishing the two categories, ultimately Turner concedes that: ‘In complex, modern societies both types coexist in a sort of cultural pluralism’ (55). As mentioned in the Introduction, this book has conflated Turner’s categories and uses both liminal and liminality in festival and ritual observations. In the Italy of Bella Figura where life and norms are still somewhat circumscribed in the areas of social behaviours and conventions, dress, foodways and so forth, times

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that invert and stretch the boundaries of convention are sought after and precious to many. As earlier chapters have shown, the Italian Pagan movement and communities have found this temporality and these moments of convention-­flouting to be liberating, as some of the research participants noted in fieldwork interviews. As Chapters 4 and 5 have indicated, the worlds-­in-between-­the-worlds and sacred space time of the Pagan communities’ rituals and festivals have particularly offered practitioners and participants just such liminal anti-­temporality with their heterotopic lived religious spaces.

How do we sacralize in our late modern era? We make meaning and we sacralize – this is the essence of lived religion. From time immemorial, human beings have done this with art, performance, ritual. Grimes’ work has scrutinized ritual, asserting that it may be found in surprising places; he examines late modern ways of sacralizing, in unexpected ways such as the televising of a festival or ritual (2006). In an intriguing ‘take’ on the concept of location and the sacred, Grimes’ work agrees: ritual is found in all places, even the seemingly everyday or mundane (2006: 12–13; 89). My own theories and experiences resonate with Grimes in general – on ritual, on theatre, on performance, on activism. In discussing how ritual can impact the world in profound and healing ways, Grimes demonstrates his awareness of what some have called ‘depth’ ecology (Kohák 1984). He quotes deep ecologist poet and activist Gary Snyder in regard to why ritual and performance can be truly transformative: ‘Performance is currency in the deep world’s gift economy’ (Snyder 1990: 75, cited in Grimes 2006: 147). In other words, the performance, the ritual – in whatever form it may take – may actually ‘earn the attention, the grace, and the forgiveness of the animals and plants and spirits, the council of all beings’ (2006: 150–151). This is a poetic and ecological expression with animic nuances of how the festival and/or ritual can honour and sacralize, even in seemingly mundane forms, connecting the other-­than-human Other as well as the human community.

Power dynamics, critical voices and problematic nuances Reflection on controversial or problematic terms is well warranted, as well as reflection on various terms, theories and concepts that may require further critical unpacking. The introduction to this chapter began unpacking certain terms, and here this section will provide some further explanation. These may include the Heideggerian umwelt, ‘dwelling’, the need for poetics of place to keep sight of politics of place, and the use of Foucault’s theories. Activist and ecologist Val Plumwood was dismayed by the potentially exclusionary politics, as well as the lack of social justice concern, that she infers as being wound up with the use of another Heideggerian term, ‘ “heimat” or dwelling in “one’s place” or “homeplace”, the place of belonging’ (Plumwood 2008: 1). Some examples of this arose in my research in Milan, discussed in Chapter 3, which looked at the festival involvement by the conservative and exclusionary political party,

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the League. There is an irony, which I am well aware of, in using Heideggerian terms when writing of communities that his political allies tried to annihilate; I am referring to some of the communities in which I carried out fieldwork, such as Omegna, Andrista, Cevo, that were sites of Nazi atrocities in World War II, being homes of fervent partisan resistance activity. In addition, some of the esoteric communities represented here, such as the growing Wiccan population, includes many LGBTQ members who would not have been welcomed by the National Socialists, despite their own esoteric interests. Deep ecology, along with other branches of twentieth-­century environmentalism, is closely related to areas of nineteenth-­century Romantic thought that evolved in Europe and North America. As was related in Chapter  5 regarding Paganism’s rebirth and growth, these branches of philosophy, literature and early environmentalism could be seen as logical reactions to the ravages inflicted by eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century northern European and North American industrial development. However, as notions about the sanctity of Nature spread among elites and intellectuals, indigenous populations in areas under colonial rule were being subjected to military hegemony, oppression and genocide. Chidester and Linenthal review such histories in their discussions of sacred space in America (1995). During the nineteenth century, for example, a romantic naturalism transferred a sacred web of sentiment from God to nature. [. . .] Some analysts have argued, however, that this nineteenth-­century religious valorization of nature disguised the political, social and economic forces at work in the production of American space. On the one hand, romantic nature religion obscured the military conquest of American Indian societies that made natural environments available for appropriation by ‘Nature’s Nation’. Chidester & Linenthal 1995: 13

Hence, in a work such as this, it would be lax to overlook an acknowledgement of such historical legacies tied integrally into politics of place when discussing theories of poetics and power of place. Twentieth- and twenty-­first-century feminist thought maintains the urgency of this need as well. Power dynamics are an integral facet of place studies and place-­based relationships, as many scholars in diverse fields have illustrated – from religious studies to anthropology to feminist studies. The book has regarded how Nature, animals, women, people of colour, have been historically denigrated, relegated to a lower echelon of ‘humanness’ or personhood, and devalued in a dualistic and traditionally patriarchal view of the world. In the case of Knott’s 2005 book, her examination of the topic of the left hand and its taboos, its marginalization, tie in to my discussions of Nature and the Other. ‘This certainly involves the process of reclaiming that which has been dominated, undervalued and marginalised by a Western order informed by Greek and early Christian dualistic thought’ (Knott 2005a: 168). As pointed out to me by Kim Knott some years ago, critiques from Gillian Rose’s feminist geography (1993) offer insightful perspectives on the early exclusiveness of place studies, which were traditionally a male domain. The language used by earlier theorists reveals this bias, according to Rose and others. In their studies on sacred

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spaces, Chidester and Linenthal (1995) demonstrate the history of power struggles and contestations over sacred space, using examples from America as well as other nations. ‘Sacred space is often, if not inevitably, entangled in politics’ (1995: 15). Chidester and Linenthal have focused on the romanticizing of Nature in the nineteenth century, which obscured the genocidal practices and horrific injustices wreaked upon indigenous nations worldwide. There is a constant need for thorough analysis and avoidance of mystification in regarding what is sacred space: ‘Attention to the contested character of sacred space might provide a necessary corrective to this analytical naïveté, whether it takes the form of theological dogmatism or mystical intuitionism, that holds out for a view of sacred space as simply “given” or “revealed” ’ (Chidester & Linenthal 1995: 17). In the case of the Druids of northern Italy, the community – in my experience and as recounted in the ethnographic work – is conscientious about acknowledging and honouring the original ancestors of the lands on which their festivals and rituals are placed. North American and all Pagan communities in colonized lands would do well to follow suit.

Foodways as lived religion, ritual and community healing This book and my research have included food and foodways in the focal points, critically engaging questions and ethnographic research on how food is a key component of religious and cultural festivals. In Italy (and for Italian-Americans as well) there is a cultural fascination with food, with recipes and family traditions, with eating together at the table. It is an ordinary moment, which is continually ritualized. Orsi articulates how the values of the home or domus inculcated at the family table are in essence a form of religion for Italians that extends beyond the home (Orsi 2002: 77). Orsi points out that food is often connected to the sacred, particularly as it is intrinsic to the extended sense of home in its most revered cultural form, the domus (2002: xlvi). His sensitive ethnographies offer perspectives on lived religion in complex communities, and give an understanding of the evolution of the Italian-American experience in America. There is also an in-­depth perspective on the evolution and adaptations of Catholicism in the United States. While Orsi does not write much on the foods themselves, he does discourse in depth on eating together, on cooking, on the value of food and all that the domus signifies in Italian and Italian-American culture (2002). ‘That unit, the ostal or domus, was at once building and family, the unifying principle that linked man and his possessions’ (Ladurie 1979: 352–353, cited in Orsi 2002: xlvi). Relationship and reciprocity appear again as significant themes, as in discussions of animistic views of relating to the other-­than-human: ‘Religion is always religion-­inaction, religion-­in-relationships between people, between the way the world is and the way people imagine or want it to be’ (Orsi 2002: xx). Orsi’s examination of the various rituals connected with the Madonna, through the time period mentioned, illustrates the element of ‘street theatre’ attached to the religiosity of the Italian-American community there (2002). This community comes largely from the south of Italy, known as the Meridione or Mezzogiorno, and therefore there is some overlap with the work done by Tak on southern festivals. There are

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intriguing parallels to the Madonna’s perceived protection of Siena and the Sienese allegiance to her over centuries, as related in Chapter 2. Like many places in Italy, the religious identification of divinity or divine patronage became intertwined with the people’s sense of place and local sense of identity. Although this book does not generally study the patron saint or Madonna festivals specifically in each town in the fieldwork, only that of Saint Martin in Paroldo, it is significant to note that each town has an important identification with its Madonna or patron saint. Orsi articulates how the sacred theatre of the community ritual is played out under the watchful eye of the divine figure ruling the domus, and the annual ritual cleanses, purges and re-­integrates the people for the year ahead (Orsi 2002: xlviii–xlix; 172–173; 177). This allusion and metaphor is pertinent to the Badalisc, where the horned serpent and his attendants in the ritualized Epiphany appearance does in essence cleanse and re-­integrate the tiny village for the year ahead. Like LaChapelle’s writings on Siena, and Parsons’ as well, Orsi’s histories of Harlem give evidence of the empowerment and healing that public ceremony and ritual can convey through identity creation and meaning-­making. The blending of place-­power, ritual, relationality and community healing, bonded through the sacredness of home and family, have been critical themes for this book.

Conclusion This chapter revealed more of the underlying theoretical framework that the fieldwork elucidates and gives context to. It has highlighted some theorists and theories that have had significant influence on the book and research. It should be evident, however, that other important theorists’ work, specific to certain elements or aspects of the fieldwork case studies, were woven into the thick descriptions in the fieldwork. Among critical intersections, I have examined how heterotopic, polychronic time can emerge in festival and in ritualized community gatherings, which allows them to become spaces for new relationality – an animic awareness touching the human as well as the other-­ than-human. In this space, a new sense of the agential power of place and its materiality arises. The next chapter discusses the unique Scale of Engagement put forth here for analysing the festivals’ engagement with place and community. The Scale and its component parts provide a useful tool, universally applicable, which can be offered to many organizers of community events, public rituals and place-­based festivals.

7

Analyses and Conclusions

The textual accounts in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 have laid the groundwork for the analyses presented in this chapter. The festivals were selected due to their distinctive qualities of performing place and place-­based traditions, as well as, in some cases, unique demonstrations of lived religion. This chapter now analyses all through the prism of engagement, with materiality, with place, with community – in all senses. The temporality and ambiance created by the festival is a mystery in many senses. Therefore, departing from ‘TAP’, the Theory of Active Place introduced earlier, this chapter offers a method of indexing and analysing called a ‘Scale of Engagement’. The index enumerates specific qualities and aspects observed and experienced in each festival, using the qualitative data of the interviews and direct participation in the festivals. The chapter is broken into two parts: Part one lays out the categories and reasoning for each division of numerical analysis, and gives the Scale of Engagement with the findings. Part two then delves into theoretical foundations for the analyses derived from the use of the Scale. Its concluding section once more revisits the metaphor used in the book of the bridge spanning the gulf between humanity and Nature.

Analysis by scale – an archaeological precedent showing interanimation with place The sometimes ineffable and certainly profound experiences of lived religion and their expressions of power of place seem to ‘move along with the world’, rather than imposing themselves on it. Ingold’s words touch into this mysterious unfolding: ‘In dwelling in the world, we do not act upon it, or do things to it; rather we move along with it. Our actions do not transform the world, they are part and parcel of the world’s transforming itself ’ (Ingold 2000: 200). My Theory of Active Place, TAP, was discussed in previous chapters. However, in order to unpack the analyses more clearly, without reductionist or overly quantitative methods, I decided to introduce a Scale of Engagement. There are multiple cross-­disciplinary precedents for this method. Here is one example. Among diverse theorists utilizing scaled measurements are Tilley, Hamilton, Harrison and Anderson in the Journal of Material Culture (2000: 197–224). This study is significant for its analytical structure, as well as for its theories of place as agent and engagement with place. Tilly et al. present an archaeological study of boulder and stone masses, known as ‘clitter’, in the southwest of England, on Bodmin Moor. The

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archaeologists over time began to recognize human-­made patterns and modifications in the arrangements of the stones that at first had been overlooked. The study discusses the interpretations of the stones’ positioning and the possible significance for ancient people, and thus is pertinent to this book through the philosophical thrust of the researchers’ conclusions. The archaeologists began to create a picture of the Bronze Age residents and architects’ relationships with material and place. The circle must have been a cosmological template for the ordering of the world and situating humanity within it. The prehistoric architecture and its relationship to the landscape is circles within circles within circles. And those circles encompassed relationships between the living and the ancestral dead, the people on Leskernick Hill and those living elsewhere on Bodmin Moor. [. . .] These people lived in a world of stone and massively modified the stones on their hill and gave these stones meaning and significance. There is clearly a continuum of relationships between people and the stones. Tilley et al. 2000: 217

Tilley et al. are sensitive to (and try to resist) culture/Nature dichotomies (219). They are interested in depicting a flow of relationship, of reciprocity between people and place, as my studies reveal in the festivals studied. Tilley et al. describe how the team believes ancient populations ‘engaged with the stones’. The findings demonstrate ancient and modern societies’ meaning-­making with ritual and a profound materiality of place: ‘A sense of locality was being imagined, produced and maintained through moving stones and moving past stones on the hill and through ritual acts in and around them. Through engaging with the stones people “made” themselves, physically and emotionally creating an attachment to place’ (Tilley et al. 2000: 218). The archaeologists’ use of a Scale of Engagement is metaphorical and textual – it is from the perspective of visual scope, positioning, patterning and so forth. Instead of laying out findings in tables and indexes, their study delineates the work with four case studies that discuss the differing scale of circles, cairns, walling and arenas. These are not the only archaeologists whose work has had resonance with my work; for example, Heyd’s theories on place agency, heterotopia and landscape art (1999) have been influential, as have Witmore’s (2006) and Leymer’s (2010) research, discussed in Chapter 6. These theories give evidence for an ongoing heritage of nuanced awareness of place agency and materiality described by archaeologists in both built and natural environments. Now we look directly at the scales themselves.

Part one – Scales and analysis Methods that index the unquantifiable In reviewing the data gathered earlier in the research process, I began to feel strongly that some scaled form of assessing variables was necessary. Various scholars working

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with similar data agreed: ‘Investigators who focused on hermeneutic or qualitative research were inclined to emphasize philosophical differences in their approach, but rejected the use of numbers. Contrary to these beliefs, “qualitative” data often involve the translation of ideas into numbers’ (Thorkildsen 2005: 4). Whether or not one chooses to use a numerical indexing style, heuristic data like those in this study can be unpacked and illustrated more clearly with some form of measurement tool (Thorkildsen 2005: 5). Once the idea sprang into my mind and I began to sketch ideas out using a form of scale, I found a diverse collection of theorists had used scaled assessments in order to index engagement, itself a nuanced term interpreted in various ways in different fields. The idea for a scale of some kind arose on its own during my fieldwork, when reflecting upon how to ‘measure’ engagement with place, not something easily evaluated or quantified. However, research across disciplines revealed that scales of engagement can help to unpack and clarify where and how different definitions of engagement emerge, whether with a community of human beings, a physical location, concrete materials, with work duties or emotional coping strategies. The precedents I reviewed spanned the fields of archaeology, psychiatry, psychology, sociology and urban housing studies. Some used numerically organized or categorized scales, designed for spread sheet analysis in a quantitative study (Blount et  al. 2008); others simply involved textual case studies enumerated one through four, comparing and contrasting the depth of engagement (Tilley et al. 2000). Williams et al. (2008) developed a psychometric scale through the use of ‘facet design’, calling for an extensive literature review. Upon further reflection, subsequent reading, and then trial analysis formatting, my chosen method was an index.

Assessing sense of place as derived from materiality Relationships with place draw upon many layers of memory, of sense and of emotion, composed of diverse elements and sub-­elements, as Williams et al. found (DeMiglio & Williams 2008; Williams et al. 2008). Given the wide range of possible interpretations, specific qualities and categories are desirable here with which to gauge human beings’ engagement with their home-­place through festival. The purpose of this chapter is to assess more precisely how the festival environment or culture engages with and expresses the materiality of place in this specific bioregion, with the community (in all its nuanced senses), and in what form it does this, whether through ritual, liminal space creation, performance or feasting in communal meals. Thus, with this aim, numerical values were assigned to four scaled categories. In the four-­point scale used, overall the highest possible combined score is sixteen. The highest scores indicate the most profound involvement and engagement with the local community, bioregion or environment, as well as the greatest participatory experience with materiality and place-­power. This multi-­tiered awareness is examined in those organizing, performing, selling wares, produce and crafts, or visiting the festival. The four categories of analysis and the values assessed here are:

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1. Organizational structure: grassroots versus top-­down: The first category

examines the involvement of locals in organizing the event, seen as ‘grassroots’, i.e. townspeople from the place, versus primarily government or tourist office (run by local government) organizers. It examines the origins and attitudes of the tourist office festival organizers, for example, comparing and contrasting them with local non-­profits or individuals involved in the festival creation. The theory is that government or tourist office staff may be outsiders, and may not know the place so intimately. This contrast is entitled ‘top-­down versus grassroots’. In the fieldwork it became evident that most of the local tourism offices, or even government organizations creating the festivals, were frequently staffed by people from the area who had an intimate and powerful relationship with the place – whether natural or built environments. The presumption prior to the fieldwork, that locals in grassroots organizations rather than government or tourist office employees would have a more profound relationship with place and community, was not borne out by the fieldwork experiences.   In terms of using a Theory of Active Place perspective and examining the place’s capacity for agency, those in the organizing teams who were not from the town or area seemed at times to have developed a strong awareness of place-­power after the experience of being involved with the festival. In order to gauge this, the ethnographic data played an important role. The four-­point scale used here is: l 4 – high grassroots involvement; l 3 – mainly grassroots, but some top-­down/government; l 2 – some grassroots, but mostly top-­down; l 1 – top-­down only with no grassroots involvement. 2. Local offerings: place-­power shown in local/regional awareness: This category examines how much the bioregion and local history, foods, traditions, folklore and so forth are involved in and represented at the festival or fair. It indexes how profound the sense of materiality and connection seems to be, and whether this is made evident through all that the festival offers, performs, or in the markets displays. Some factors examined are: l In the farmers’ markets (mercati contadini) or other venues serving food, are the produce and products locally derived and produced? Are the recipes local? l Are the re-­enactments specifically about the place, about localized traditions, or are they drawn from general folklore? l What kind of talks or performances take place? The scale here is: l 4 – profound; l 3 – good; l 2 – moderate; and l 1 – shallow. 3. Place-­power manifested and ritualized in alternative temporalities: This category questions how materiality’s impact and potential for perception of place-­power may be manifested in the festival. It examines – whether emerging through a public ritual, or public feast – whether one form or another of liminal

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space is created. Taken into consideration, as discussed in the fieldwork, is that a sense of the sacred may arise through the sharing of food formally in communal feasting. The conception underpinning this category is that it is through the creation of ‘time out of time’, heterotopic time, where conventional perspectives change (Foucault 1998) and the place’s agency and capacity for relationality may be best perceived. Here the scale is: l 4 – yes or strong; l 3 – existent but not strong; l 2 – weak; or l 1 – non-­existent. 4. Perceptions of place reported specifically by participants: This category measures the connections and interanimation with place reported and experienced by the participants in the festival – emotional, psychological, sensory and so forth. The interviews were both formal and informal. The informal ones were generally carried out spontaneously in the festival, whereas the formal interviews were arranged and conducted beforehand or afterwards. As in question number 2, the scale here is: l 4 – profound; l 3 – good; l 2 – moderate; and l 1 – shallow. In all categories, half points can be assigned as well, to show gradations of the element or aspect reviewed, such as 2.5, 3.5, etc.

Case studies and index results unpacked The following are sketches of the areas and festivals with the purpose of explaining which elements were compared and contrasted, how they were assessed and indexed, and ultimately how the final values were derived.

Milan’s Celtic New Year This was the most urban and industrialized area of the study, with a central population of approximately one million – making it far and above the most populated place in this study. The population is highly transient and has a large percentage of immigrants, from other regions of Italy as well as from other nations. The festival was a three-­day, commercial event, with market stalls, displays of various kinds, day and night performances and so forth. Attendance in its culminating years was reported by the organizers as being as many as 100,000, which would include some of the fieldwork years. (This figure is surprising given that my own estimates were much lower.) Some years, such as the years of the fieldwork, the organizers put on a conference on a related theme as well. As discussed in Chapter 3, there was for some

A – Milan, Celtic New Year festival

More top-­down, but good local sense of place = 2

Good displays of local lore/crafts/sense of place = 4

Surprising liminality and materiality in performances = 3

Good and profound for some = 3

Sense of place strong, despite urban setting = 12

Index uses scale of 1–4 below:

1) Organizational teams – local or ‘top-­down’

2) Depth of connection – local foodways, crafts, lore, etc.

3) Materiality and power of place manifested through ritualization, liminal time, feasting, etc.

4) Perceptions of sense of place reported/ experienced and evidenced

Conclusions: Quality of relationships with place and materiality

Table 7.1  Scale of Engagement

Evident sense of place and place-­power profound = 14

Profound = 3.5

Strong liminality, ritualized hunt, costumes, feast = 3.5

Very traditional/familial/ local lore/customs = 4

All locals, though some in government; family run = 3

B – Andrista, Badalisc festival

Strong sense of place in place and community: Pumpkin = 10.5 and Carnival = 11

Good for both = 3

Both minimal liminality – Pumpkin = 1.5; Carnival = 2

Both P & C offer local foods/lore/traditions = 3.5

Local government but with local involvement = 2.5

C – Omegna, Pumpkin and Carnival festivals

Very strong place-­power and sense of place = 14.5

Profound sense of place = 4

Place-­power and liminality strong = 3.5

Local crafts/ lore/ traditions/food = 4

Locals and not for profits; some government = 3

D – Paroldo, Summer of St. Martin festival

Place-­power and sense of place strong = 15.5

Good overall and profound in many = 3.5

Ritual liminality and powerful bonds with place = 4

Local foods/lore/ traditions largely (esp. Druids) = 4

Locals; little or no government involvement; very ‘bottom up’, despite initial involvement = 4

E – Druids and Wiccans, ‘Festa Celtica di Beltane’, (Celtic Beltane Festival) in Piedmont

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years also an archaeological exhibition in tandem with the conference and festival. There was extensive press coverage that spanned the national press, given the wide reach of the organizers at that time. l

l

l

l

Point 1. The organization was largely ‘top-­down’, due to the organizers being part of the government and representatives of a major political party. Nonetheless, their own love of Milan and its history, as well as their personal sense of place was evident in the interview process, despite the obvious political motivations. This point was indexed at 2 for mixed grass roots and top-­down. Point 2. Regional crafts, history, foods and so forth were greatly in evidence and there was a focused involvement with the identity and sense of place of Milan as well as of northern Italy as shown by interviews with participants, visitors and organizers. This point was given a 4. Point 3. The Celtic New Year festival gave evidence of an evocative place-­power from the castle and park grounds. Whether the tangible place-­power was created by the setting and actual landscape, or by the event, surprising liminality emerged through the use of costuming, re-­enactments and music. At certain moments the city park took on a potent ‘time out of time’ atmosphere, which demonstrated festival heterotopia and heterochronia. This point was indexed at 3. Point 4. Also impressively sensitive was the sense of place reported by various vendors and performers who participated in the study. The visitors who were spontaneously interviewed in the festival also reported in general an awareness and a sensitivity to place that was unusually acute. Celtic New Year ranked high on the overall quality of its sense of place bridge between humanity and place, surprising for so transient an urban centre. Point 4 received a 3 for profound/good sense of place reported.

Milan’s Celtic New Year received an overall score of 12 on the index (out of the 16 total possible).

Andrista’s Badalisc Festival This is by contrast the smallest of the towns studied in this fieldwork, with a population of approximately fifty. It is a rural hamlet in a mountainous area of northern Lombardy, where there is minimal tourism – what little there is comes primarily in summer – and no real industry of any sort. Consequently, the population has been diminishing over recent years. The annual Badalisc festival on 5 and 6 January, Epiphany, is not commercialized in the least and largely attracts locals or the extended families of locals who return from other areas for it. The attendance, extrapolating from the crowd at the hunt, then from the evening dinner and dance, is approximately 100–200. l

Point 1. The organizers for the Badalisc work in all manner of occupations. One key organizer and study participant works in the local government, but also in the local parish church. Organizers and those involved in running the festival showed a love for and bond with place (and with the traditions of the festival) that were

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tangible. This point scored a 3 for high grassroots engagement, with minimal top-­down government involvement. Point 2. The foods, feasting and other traditions at the Badalisc are intrinsically bound to the place, demonstrating interanimation with land and identity in an eloquent way. It has perhaps the most unbroken heritage of place-­based tradition among the festivals reviewed here, with an important familial element also involved. As much as possible, the drinks and foods served are made locally. It merits a 4 on this index for the place-­power shown through foods, tradition, street theatre and so forth. Point 3. The mountainside hunt of the Badalisc and his subsequent ‘speech’ in the village centre are ritualized, exhibiting distinctive tradition and liminality as well as communitas. Point 3 receives a 3.5 on the index for the manifested and ritualized power of place in a public village festival. Point 4. The relationality with place and the material religious feeling manifested in the interviews and in the community’s involvement was impressive. Interviewed participants demonstrated how their self-­identity was interwoven with the tiny village and its traditions, to the point of seeing the Badalisc as portraying and embodying their genius loci. This festival scored 3.5 on the index.

Overall the Badalisc festival demonstrates striking place-­power. Andrista residents’ profound relationality with place and their unique lived religious traditions comes through eloquently. It received 14 on the festival index.

Omegna, the autumn Pumpkin festival and winter Carnival Omegna has two events that figure in this book’s study, their annual October Pumpkin festival and their winter, pre-Lenten Carnival. The methodological choice in this research was to study popular culture festivals, feste and sagre, that were not Church-­ related and that articulate and perform place. The decision to study two of Omegna’s festivals arose organically through the fieldwork there, through discussions with the organizers. Both festivals in this fieldwork are in the mid-­autumn and mid-­winter, on either side of Christmas, and both are distinctively place-­based. Omegna has a population of approximately 15,000, making it the second largest in the study. It is moderately urban, both industrialized and mountainous, with a mix of population that is transient and today often foreign-­born. The two festivals differ in their origins: the Pumpkin festival was created only a few years ago, while Carnival is more traditional. While its current form probably derives from the early twentieth century, its origins are as old as Italian Carnival itself (Gallo Pecca 1987; Fantoni 1979). Neither of Omegna’s festivals require tickets to enter, although special meals or dances do require ticket sales. The Pumpkin festival is a three-­day event, while Carnival goes on for a week or more. The Pumpkin festival probably draws anywhere from 500 to 1,000 participants over the three-­day span, judging by the food served, and crowds at the fair. Carnival does not draw people from outside the town, or very few, and has fewer participants – probably some 200–300 at a maximum.

Analyses and Conclusions l

l

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Point 1. Both are organized by local people who either are employees of the city tourist bureau, the ProLoco (a part of the government), or volunteers assisting the tourist office. All have a deep love for the area, an understanding of the bio-­region and a strong sense of place. This point scored 2.5 for mixed top-­down and grassroots for both festivals. Point 2. The structure of the two festivals differs given the type of community and cultural festivals that they are. The Pumpkin festival is a harvest fair, a sagra, offering culinary events, while Carnival is a calendrical community observance, drawing on earlier traditions. Nonetheless their similarity is strong in that they both show the presence of local or bioregional crafts, foods, folklore or vibrant place awareness. The Pumpkin festival offers local produce and products in their harvest market and local foods in the community meals, while Omegna is personified and embodied by Carnival’s ‘River Royals’; thus their scores are indexed similarly, with high points for both festivals in local awareness. The festivals both received a 3.5 on this index. Point 3. On this index point gauging liminality and ritualization, the only even slightly ritualized aspect of the Pumpkin festival is that of the communal meals. For an Italian community this has a strong resonance, and indeed the chief organizer who participated in the study underlined the element of spiritual communion that the communal meal in the city piazza offers. As discussed in earlier chapters, it is an evocative example of ‘ingesting topography’ (Leynse 2006). However, having participated in this meal three times, it was clear that there was little sense of liminality during the meals beyond the magic of the natural setting, as compared with the hunt of the Badalisc, the costumed performances and re-­enactments at Celtic New Year or the spiritual components engaged in the rituals or post-­ceremony feasts in the Pagan community.   Omegna’s Carnival offers traditional forms of street theatre, which create symbolic meanings and reinforce local identity by personifying and embodying place while returning ancient customs to the little city. For example, on the opening morning liminality arises as the ‘River Royals’ arrive from the lake in the morning mist and embody their roles. Thus Omegna’s Pumpkin festival scored 1.5 on this index; while its Carnival, with differing qualities and aspects of ritualization, scored 2. Point 4. Perceptions of sense of place received and reported by attendees as well as by organizers are high in Omegna. Participants ranged from strictly local people at Carnival to visitors from Milan or from abroad at the Pumpkin festival; thus the reports of how they perceived place, felt in community, and so on likewise varied widely. Both groups reported profound experiences of place in general, and gave evidence of tangible place-­power emerging from Omegna’s mountains and lake environment. These experiences resonate across cultural boundaries or other human-­created barriers. Both Pumpkin and Carnival rated 3 on this scale for awareness of place-­power and sense of place as reported by those present.

Ultimately the power of the bridge created by foodways, potent materiality and place-­power is strong overall for both festivals, and thus the Pumpkin festival scored 10.5 and Carnival received 11.

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The Summer of Saint Martin, a harvest festival in Paroldo This is the second smallest of the rural villages examined here, with approximately 400 residents year round. The harvest festival is a typical farm country ‘showcase’, as in many places. What differs in Paroldo is that the festival combines specific agricultural and historical aspects of local knowledge, with lived religious traditions and folklore, along with performances, a market, communal meals and often a conference. The Saint Martin’s festival goes on for three days, and draws anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people, many of whom are extended family members, former residents or perhaps visitors from Milan and Turin, as well as from abroad. Like Omegna’s communal meals, the best gauge of numbers is from the bookings for the dinners. l

l

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Point 1. As in other towns studied here, the ProLoco government tourist bureau has a hand in organizing the event; however, there are sometimes two local grassroots organizations that play key roles in the Saint Martin festival, the principal one being the Masche di Paroldo, a folklore society named after the witches/folk healers of Paroldo. Thus its structure is a mix of top-­down and grassroots; however the grassroots involvement is of foremost importance and influence. Point 1 is given a 3 on this index. Point 2. Regarding depth of connection with the land, foodways, history, bioregion, built as well as natural environments and sensitivity to the place-­power, there is no doubt that Paroldo’s festival and organizers have profound awareness, which they communicate well. The conferences, culinary events and farmers’ market, as well as all the performances put place and its materiality at centre stage in every related sense. One need only read of the Bagna Cauda or the Cena delle Masche communal dinners. It receives a 4 in this category of the index. Point 3. The category analysing the liminal quality offered by the festival or any ritualization receives a still strong but slightly lesser score. Ritualization appears in Paroldo through the annual community gatherings in the festival, and the traditional dress, the black cloak. Particular activities such as formal, communal eating of local, traditional foods, the annual bell tower concert and other local musical performances create a ritualized ambiance as well. The night-­time guided walks that have become a traditional part of Saint Martin’s festival (as well as other calendrical village events) evoke liminal time and mystery with remarkable place-­power. This aspect scores 3.5. Point 4. Participants interviewed spontaneously as well as those interviewed formally reported a powerful sensitivity, knowledge and in-­depth awareness about the place. For the natives and even descendants of natives, Paroldo’s village and lands are themselves integral members of the family rather than an exterior physical place where the family happens to live. This criterion receives a 4.

Overall the engagement with place and the material of built environment as well as natural shown through Saint Martin’s Summer is remarkable. Paroldo’s bridge between humanity and place is not only evident, it appears to have been established for decades, or perhaps centuries. Here the scale of engagement score is 14.5.

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Pagan communities’ Festa Celtica di Beltane, the Beltane festival The community and the festival reviewed here varies from those evaluated above as it is a grouping of different people from differing traditions and different regions, but who practise the new religious movement, Paganism, and therefore often frequent the same festival. The festival used for the analysis and review here is the Beltane Festival, held each spring in the outskirts of Biella, in northern Piedmont, La Festa Celtica di Beltane. It is an example of collaboration between Druids and Wiccans, in both the organization and leadership. The Festa takes place in a natural setting in a somewhat remote mountain area in Piedmont near Biella, Parco Arcobaleno. At the time of writing, the festival had celebrated its twenty-­first year, and local news reported a thousand or more people in attendance for the weekend events. l

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Point 1. The festival is completely organized by locals, with little or no government involvement. Its organization and leadership are not a top-­down structure, but very much ‘bottom up’. There has been some international involvement, such as speakers from abroad. However, it is in every other sense an Italian-­native grassroots event. The Beltane festival merits a 4 on the scale. Point 2. For profundity of connection with all that is local, such as locally sourced and made foods, arts and crafts, history, costuming, ritual and folklore, the Beltane festival merits a full score. Local speakers, artisans, musicians and foodways are all sourced by organizers and are in great evidence. This aspect receives a 4. Point 3. Related to the points expressed above, the relationality with place and with Nature revealed by the Festa Celtica is remarkable. Whether it is due to the materiality of the great trees and mountain meadows where the outdoor sacred sites and sites for worship are created, or the materiality of crafts and foodways drawing inspiration from the mountains and forests nearby, place and its many traditions is commemorated and honoured. There is a notably profound materiality of place resonating in the lived religion of Italian Paganism, and a remarkable numinous or time-­out-of-­time quality of the three days. If one takes the perspective of the classical sense of spirit of place, we could say the numen is alive and responding. Whatever the reason, this aspect of the scale likewise receives a 4. Point 4. The perceptions of place-­power evoking a strong sense of place in festival participants is notably strong in this community. There is a sense of pilgrimage for those who come back year in and year out, seeking to renew their bonds with land and place, by camping in the parkland area or staying nearby for the three-­day ‘Pagan Camp’ festival. As the sentiment from Tak cited in previous chapters expresses, the majority of festival-­goers to the Festa Celtica come to ‘refresh themselves at the well of local culture’ (Tak 2000: 27). It receives a 3.5.

Overall the Festa Celtica merits the highest score of any analysed here on the Scale of Engagement. One could argue that being a local Pagan festival with heterotopic qualities and characteristics – ritualized time when participants remain inside (many, if not all) the festival space for days, taking part in ritual and ceremony in Nature – it is likely to receive the highest points. However, it is not a hidden or secret event, unlike

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other alternative gatherings. Additionally, one must recall that the Scale here analyses more than the ritualized or lived religion aspects of the festival; it also regards the local and place-­aware nature of the organizational structures, the organizers themselves as well as the participants. This Festa offers a clear example of many of the ideas represented in the book: awareness of TAP; lived religion intertwined with expressions of materiality from both natural and built environments; traditional foodways and festival structures. It receives a score of 15.5.

Part two – Theoretical structures supporting the analyses Factors contributing to a profound sense of place-­power and deep engagement In reviewing the analyses as laid out here, it first becomes apparent that among the most rural or most remote areas studied here, Andrista, Lombardy, Paroldo, Piedmont and Parco Arcobaleno, Piedmont received the highest scores. However, in sharp contrast, Milan’s place-­power appeared to be potent as well, despite being an urban centre and large city festival – the largest of all reviewed here. To explain and unpack these analyses more completely, I reflect again in the following sections on diverse theories that influenced my thinking regarding place-­power, materiality, liminality and other factors.

Festival and community health The first point on the index scale examines the organizational structures, whether local or not. Small villages’ festivals by the nature of their demographic make-­up have intimate community involvement, and are more likely to have grassroots festival organization – i.e. one finds events made for locals by locals, working with teams of locals. In the fieldwork I noted whether the grassroots organizers were part of the local government, thus whether there was a cross-­over, so to speak. Having local involvement is important for a more profound understanding of place in the festival as the connection with local area traditions, folklore, community desires and needs and so on is likely to be greater. Another feature is that local issues or problems will be seen as more urgent. The fieldwork interviews often bore this out in both places, and this was a key aspect in the results for point one. Despite this, the mere fact of festival organizers being locals who may have known one another for a long time, or whose families may be closely connected or the like, will not necessarily ensure that people will work together in smooth collaboration. Sadly, human dynamics are often difficult no matter the intimacy of association, socio-­ economic level or geographic area. Consequently, while engagement with place and the local may be greater, it does not follow necessarily that harmonious collaboration will result. Tak made the important observation about his fieldwork on festival in Calvello in southern Italy that, ‘campanilismo is certainly not the same as community spirit or

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communitas’ (Tak 2000: 162). The experience of collaboration, of engaging with one’s community to create, organize or staff a festival may be difficult, can involve disputes or personality conflicts, or may simply be very hard work. However, such participation in one’s community helps to fight the increasing alienation and disengagement rife in late modernity, as does the maintenance of lived religious customs. Siena’s Palio festival creation, taking place annually over centuries, raises the interesting possibility that cities with well-­defined sense of place and the ensuing deep sense of local identity and engagement may have lower crime rates and other measurable social or environmental factors. LaChapelle’s studies on Siena’s Palio festival (LaChapelle 1995: 60–61) reported, as did Parsons’ Palio studies (Parsons 2004: 118), that in Siena there is a lower crime rate than in other cities of comparable size. Some theorists believe, as discussed by LaChapelle and Parsons, that there is a direct correlation between the health of the community, the close cooperation and communication carried out over the course of the year due to the annual festival organizing and a lower crime rate. Parsons makes the point that the contrade who design and carry out the Palio offer a number of key social functions for the city. They help in ‘fostering a sense of community within a contrada not only across social classes, but also and perhaps most importantly, between generations’ (Parsons 2004: 118). He sees this as a ‘benign form of social control’ where Bakhtinian forms of ribaldry, rivalry and exuberant behaviours are held in check by the ‘traditions and culture of the contrada’ (118). Some theorize that the close collaboration of the Palio and its internal contrada structures may even instill greater courteousness in the city (Parsons 2004: 118; various people, pers. comm. Siena 2007). My argument is that festivals can aid communities, organizers and participants in engaging with place more deeply; also that a festival or community ritual of some form can demonstrate the awareness of TAP, of place as agent. Festivals can offer ways for community health to be sustained and improved: through engaging with the human community more deeply as well. In the Pagan community’s festivals, rituals and feasts, as well as the very ‘secular’ Pumpkin festival, there were participants who spoke of a sacredness in sharing of communal feasts and culinary traditions that the festivals offer. Those interviewed in Andrista spoke of the village dynamics; in such a tiny community the benefits or drawbacks can be felt directly. Stefano Ronchi spoke in the interviews about the organizing of the Badalisc festa and indicated that internal disputes did arise. He also spoke of how they strove to mend any rifts and live amicably within the community (3 March 2009). The interviews with Paola backed this up and she expressed similar views. Consequently the experience can provide a double opportunity for healthful living and bonding. Depending on the kind of carnival or festival being undertaken by a community, some theorists have argued that deep communion can result. Gardiner argues that some types of carnivalesque festival can ‘supercede the perennial dualisms of bourgeois society [. . .] to constitute an exemplar of Bookchin’s “ecocommunity” ’ (Gardiner 1993: 792). Scholars studying Pagan communities have observed the community bonds and identity formation that arises in more radical, ‘fringe’ forms of group formation, including ‘neo-­tribes’ (Howell 2008: 16–19; Letcher 2001: 153–156; Pike 2004: 98–100). Within the Pagan community in Lombardy and Piedmont, the collaboration on the

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various Druid and Wiccan conferences and festivals has provided healthy (and in some cases of already existing disputes, healing) opportunities for collaboration among the differing groups, which I witnessed in my over a decade of friendship and involvement. Societal health and a sense of wellbeing may spring forth from the collaborative labours that festival creation offers, through deeper engagement with one’s human community in a place – school to school, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, city to city – potentially adding another dimension to the healing quality of strong bonds with place.

Making time and space for experiencing place-­power Rodman has theorized that awareness of the Other helps us to experience fully the heterotopic altered sense of time that is not typical or everyday in places that are not ‘ordinary’ places. Foucault’s heterochronia then can emerge, a place of ‘temporal discontinuity’. He wrote: ‘The heterotopia begins to function fully when men [sic] are in a kind of absolute break with their traditional time’ (1998, 2000: 182). Taking it from the opposite departure point, I would assert that the heterochronic temporality of the festival, feast or fair can – not always, but may – offer an opportunity for experiencing the Other in its many forms. From a Nature perspective, such as a biocentric view (Kohák 2000), the delicate voices of Nature as represented by place as the Other have a greater chance of being heard without having to compete with urban chaos and the fragmented social structures of ‘new capitalism’ (Bruun 2008: 8–9). This is true, and yet the analyses offered by the Scale of Engagement show from the final tally that an urban place can also offer times and emplacements where materiality and power of place are palpable. Milan’s central park, Sempione Park, offered a green setting for Celtic New Year that allowed the festival to create a heterotopic liminal space. Theorists discussed here have argued that the Earth has a voice, an energy and potential agency. Sometimes the sounds contributing to a ‘voice of the Earth’ come from the evocative energies of place (Basso 1996; Casey 1996; Harvey 1997; Hillman 1995; Ingold 2000; Naess 1995a; Roszak 1992). My fieldwork and analyses show the multidimensionality of places where a potent sense of the sacred, of the numinous, can arise – sometimes unexpectedly. Thus the settings for the events studied here themselves influence the festivals with the place’s inherent natural power: Omegna’s colourful sacred mountains and clear mountain lake, Orta; Paroldo’s burbling springs and rolling hillsides of ancient trees; Biella’s pre-Alpine forests and hidden groves; Andrista’s high mountains with sweeping vistas and craggy snow fields; urban Milan’s underground water courses and hidden canals underlying a long-­standing green space. We have examples of this throughout the research. Regarding Milan, some participants in the fieldwork expressed their belief that Milan has special power and unique magic due to the water sources underlying the city. Milan is built on top of springs and ancient waterways, and was at one time a Venice-­like city of 152 kilometres of canals. (Most of its canals have been covered over in past centuries and are no longer used (Simpson 2007).) Nonetheless, the power of place succeeds in seeping through and reaching humanity, even in the bedlam of a city like Milan’s noisy downtown. The presence of ancient power places or sacred sites, considered holy and chosen by ancient people for their rituals or magic spells, may add to the natural potency of the place – or,

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at least, to its perceived potency. Perhaps ancient cultures sensed some existing power in the land, which caused them to choose that site for their rituals and worship. Or perhaps the worship and ritual over time instilled a certain vitality or sacredness in the land, and a knowledge of that belief in the community. Tuan wrote: ‘In the traditions of Taoist China and pre-Dorian Greece, nature imparts virtue or power. In the Christian tradition, sanctifying power is invested in man, God’s vice-­regent rather than in nature. [. . .] Such places owe their numen not to any indwelling spirit of nature, but to the miraculous appearances of martyred saints or of the Virgin Mary’ (Tuan 1974: 148). Whichever the origin of this impactful place-­power, in Piedmont and Lombardy (as in much of Italy), the list of pre-Christian and pre-Roman sacred sites is lengthy, and grows longer still as sites continue to be unearthed and excavated. For example, Andrista is surrounded by Iron Age and Bronze Age rock carvings, such as those protected by UNESCO in Valcamonica, some of which are believed by locals to have been ritual sites for early civilizations. As Chapter 3 discusses, some locals speculate that the Badalisc may embody the horned figures carved in the area. Piedmont is home to numerous ancient sites with megalithic stones and rock carvings considered sacred sites, and many are thought to be sites bestowing healing or fertility. Sites such as the Nature Reserve at Bessa (Ossian and Maria, pers. comm. 26 January 2008; September 2006); or the ‘Sacred Mountain’ sanctuary and enormous fertility boulder in the Basilica of the Black Madonna at Oropa are believed to have been revered by ancients and are still honoured today by the local Pagan communities (V. Minoglio, pers. comm. 18 October 2008; M. Merati, pers. comm. September 2006; Romanazzi 2005). Paroldo is near to many of Piedmont and Liguria’s ancient Gallo-Celtic sites with dolmen, menhir and rock carvings, believed to be sacred to ancient tribal populations, such as the Liguri, and honoured by local Pagans today (Salvetti, pers. comm. 1 February and 21 June 2008; Romanazzi 2005: 90–93). There are also the remains of Roman temples dedicated to various deities in the region. In Paroldo, a standing stone of unknown origin stands propped up in the hillside churchyard of the chapel of Saint Sebastian that overlooks the village, transported there perhaps, or maybe originally there (Salvetti, pers. comm. 21 June and 8 November 2008). This same hill forms part of the basin ringing the town with its natural barrier and protective landscape, and for Marino – researcher in geo-­physiology, discussed in Chapter 4 – the Earth’s deep fault lines under the village paths have added to the land’s power. In the village’s shared beliefs, the tiny town is thought to be protected by a ring of magical energy, created by the ancient local witch/healers’ rituals and reinforced by the carved stone masks on the two church towers. The materiality of these stone carvings and churches is dramatic, by themselves, and doubly so when one is aware of the locals’ vernacular religious traditions. The enduring question of the origin of such place-­power may never be answered in such a way as to satisfy quests for certainty. However, with reflexivity, heuristic as well as hermeneutic consideration of diverse features and aspects, the heterotopic, lived religious space and time of the festival may reveal perceptions and experiences – in human and other-­than-human communities, through foodways and feasting, through moonlit walks, rituals and processions. Paroldo’s festivities have created time-­out-of-­ time moments, offering examples of place-­based materiality and animic relationality.

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The results in the scale, in points 3 and 4, demonstrate this in both rural and urban settings in the fieldwork.

The stories in the land Diverse studies on place-power and community demonstrate how rural places and rural communities can maintain awareness of the stories the places have ‘gathered’ into themselves (Casey 1996). In Basso’s term, derived from the Apache community of Arizona, they recognize ‘the wisdom that sits in places’ (Basso 1996: 70). Conversely, the lack of community in transient urban settings allows the place’s stories to be forgotten: the people are not there, in situ, to maintain the narratives of place and to pass on what the place has gathered of its history or of their history. This research has shown how maintaining the bonds with place and its stories, keeping the networks local (in a Latourian sense), honours the wisdom through collecting stories, performing them and celebrating place in festival, all help to preserve the vitality of the place and the community. Then the human and the other-­than-human can ‘dwell deeply’ – recognizing an intrinsic interconnection with place and with Nature (Ingold 2000). Festivals such as the Badalisc in Andrista or the Summer of Saint Martin in Paroldo allow communities to dwell deeply and keep local stories alive; they reiterate the place’s stories to the community, enacting them for the community, letting the young people live them together with the elders. Fieldwork participants recounted how this can aid in keeping continuity for an area’s traditions, even in the face of depopulation and hardship – traditions of food, communal sharing, of music and story-­telling. This book has discussed related concepts such as liminality in ritual (Turner 1982b) and polychronic states of relationship with place, time and culture (Lymer 2009; Witmore 2006). It has also theorized that, as in Foucault’s thinking, spaces like the fair, carnival or festival can be likely locations for the ‘out of the ordinary’ experience of time, of relationships and of the world (Foucault 1998; Rodman 2003). Similar to the experience of going on holiday and encountering ideas from cultures we did not recognize previously, the fair or festa offers a space to hear what we may otherwise overlook in our daily routines. As we step into the festival culture space, (akin to sitting in a darkened theatre, or beside a fire with a story-­teller), we move outside of time into liminality and allow ourselves to open to new ideas, new experiences, new sensations, new voices. There is a reciprocal give and take of energy, reviving the stories in both culture and nature, and flowing across the reciprocal bridge that the festival offers. It is in this give and take that the animic bonds of relationality appear, allowing for the power of materiality, of foodways and of place to inform us. These kinds of considerations all factored into the scores on the index.

Milan: the city as nemeton, as temenos The origin of the city in history was both a sanctuary, built on cosmic dimensions, as well as a fortified strategic settlement. It set aside special places for rituals, as well as for commerce. This is true throughout the world, and certainly in Europe and the British

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Isles (Kruta 2007; Smith 1987; Tilley et al. 2000; Tuan 1974). The sacred gathering site reported to be underlying the centre of Milan was called a nemeton by my fieldwork participants in Milan (Emanuela Magni, pers. comm. 23 September 2008), a term they believe applies to Gallo-Celtic culture. This term is used widely in the contemporary Pagan world and in the body of literature, both academic and popular, on the panCeltic peoples of Europe, denoting the sacred groves or sacred gathering places of the Druids and their tribes (Carr-Gomm 1991). For the Greeks and Romans the city’s heart held shrines to various deities, the temenos in Greek, templum for the Romans: it was an enclosure set apart (Smith 1987). As a place where humanity overcame the concerns of the wilderness, ‘The city liberates its citizens from the need for incessant toil to maintain their bodies’ wrote Tuan (1974: 150). Among other things, this ‘liberation’ meant that citizens could focus more time on the sacred and exercise their yearning for lived religion through community ritual and festival. It is sadly ironic therefore that in cities today it seems to be more difficult to stop and step outside of a work-­driven, capitalist view of life and the world around us. Perhaps this is the role of the festival and carnival. It is interesting to note that Milan’s urban Celtic New Year festival scored an 11.5 overall. The score is not as high on the Scale of Engagement as other more rural areas, or for festivals with a less commercial component; however it still was surprisingly strong for a city park. Many in the fieldwork sensed a potent power of place in Milan’s centre, and in the Castle grounds in particular; this factor was discussed by the Celtic New Year organizers in the fieldwork, as shown in Chapter 3. It is possible that the sense of place felt by participants and organizers, as well as that of the visitors to Celtic New Year at the Castle, could stem from ancient remains underlying the Sempione Park. It is as possible as any explanation. The festival certainly derived power from its historically evocative setting and symbolism. Additionally the park is connected to the heart of Milan, the Duomo square, by a pedestrianized avenue that the re-­enactors processed along during the festival. Thus the temenos of Milan from medieval times, its principal piazza, was also highlighted in the festival. Whatever its sources, Celtic New Year and its participants at the Castle responded to the materiality of the place, which gave the ancient place-­ power of Milan visibility and acknowledgement.

Death, the numinous and the Other Point number 3 on the scaled index reviewed a category that posed the question of whether liminal space was created with obvious ritualization at the festival. Some theorists (such as Foucault, Gardiner and Rodman) believe that time out of time already inherently exists in the festival or carnival. The festival ‘heterochronia’ and non-­ ordinary ambiance can be manifested in various ways and through various ritual forms, which my argument asserts can allow for materiality of place and the other-­ than-human Other to be sensed. Point 3 reviews how in some cases communal feasting with a heavy emphasis on time and place, with music and folklore, or through night-­ time walks, performances in costume and so forth, created opportunities for festival participants to experience an expanded, deeper sense of place. The results were based as much upon my impressions and observations as researcher and ethnographer, as

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much as having been drawn from the interviews. Consequently the inclusion of this aspect of festival culture may require some unpacking and explanation. What is said to be a numinous quality can arise quickly for many people in places connected with crisis, death or with traumatic historic symbols. Foucault included cemeteries and hospitals in his groupings of heterotopias (Foucault 1998). Bell wrote of the symbolic power of battlefields and other sites where horrors took place such as Auschwitz or Hiroshima. She described such sites as evoking ‘images and emotions so unlike those of daily life as to endow these places with tangible spirituality’ (Bell 1997: 158). Awareness of death does help one to step outside of mundane consciousness and focus; a jolt of danger, of stark, startling reality can shock one out of customary complacency or a mundane mindset and into heightened listening and focus. Turner saw such places and awareness as inducing liminality in ‘complex societies, the “extreme situations” beloved of existentialist writers: torture, murder, war, the verge of suicide, hospital tragedies, the point of execution, etc.’ (Turner 1982b: 46–47). Here is an illustration from my personal experience, which has relevance to this study’s emphasis on the ‘stories that sit in a place’ and the question of whether that enhances place-­power. Years ago I worked in lower Manhattan for two different companies that were both located in the Twin Towers once standing at the site of New York’s World Trade Center. At that time I felt a deep bond with place there for many reasons, among them the physical land’s history and geography as well as my family’s history. Despite being one of the most chaotic urban settings imaginable, with the deafening bedlam of Wall Street’s financial districts, it offered an important sense of place to me. Today the Twin Towers are gone; there is instead a new building and a memorial commemorating the approximately 3,000 people killed in September 2001. Does that make the site more sacred or more liminal to observers today than it did to me twenty-­five years ago? For many people, yes, it may create a powerful sense of liminality and of the numinous there due to the site being associated with death, destruction and upheaval. Additionally there are rituals of memorial enacted annually, which re-­establish the symbols of ‘tangible spirituality’, as Bell termed these images in historical sites of tragic memory. For many Americans, as well as for many foreign visitors, this is now a place of pilgrimage, with its natural power enhanced by the numinosity derived from tragic symbolism and history. However, through my personal lens, the triangular area of land that forms lower Manhattan, where the Hudson River and East River meet dramatically on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean – a powerful ‘ecotone’, the meeting of very different eco-­systems – was already charged and evocative. Place is powerful there, already active, inherent in the dramatic geographic location as well as now in the collective store of memories and images from ‘9/11’. This anecdote is intended to help illustrate how sites related to death or horror may augment existing place-­power with universal or society-­invoked symbols. In a less traumatic fashion, some of the festivals observed in this study offer methods to jolt visitors out of everyday roles, consciousness and relationships, including their usual sense of place. Costumes aid in developing an ambiance of the otherworldly and in creating heterotopic temporality, providing a kind of ‘trigger’ to the unconscious mind – masks particularly. In a festival or ritual gathering, liminality can arise suddenly with a sense of numinosity, without imagery of death per se, but occasionally with a

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certain frisson of danger or fear. In the case of the wintry hunt of the Badalisc there is a sense of danger as he is pursued by torchlight and then tied up when caught, as a fearsome beast. Darkness and the thought of the hovering spirits of ancient witches or other ancestors sharpen visitors’ senses as Romano leads the nocturnal perambulations in Paroldo. The events on the misty Castle grounds in Milan easily evoked emotions and images from past ages as Iron Age warriors rode or paraded through fire-­lit encampments on horseback holding steel weaponry. The Druids and other Pagans in their night-­time, often moonlit, rituals purposely evoke – and invoke – the numinous by candlelight and firelight, creating an otherworldly ambiance with robes, music and poetry. In short, the Other and the other-­worldly can appear close by and are easily evoked in our world. In that way these expanded senses go side by side with awareness of place and the Other in Nature, qualities we humans can often forget to acknowledge. The polychronic space of the festival, a heterotopia with its heterochronia, even in broad daylight or in a city centre can magically create numinous liminality that wakes us to this atavistic and animic awareness. The purpose of this section has been to further elucidate aspects of the index’s point 3 regarding liminal space.

Political considerations nuancing the power of place In tiny Andrista it is possible to view the fervent devotion to the Badalisc among the villagers as civil religion – not because it is a traditionally Catholic festival, not because they worship the monster – but because the festa is a source of identity in Andrista. It is an identity that they protect and honour. In Andrista, anyone who wished to abolish the Badalisc, who did not believe in his importance, would be seen as tantamount to a traitor and could ostensibly be ostracized. This is akin to behaviours in times past regarding loyalty to Catholic ideas or Catholic traditions in Italy. Hence I conclude that the Badalisc is not only a form of lived religion, but it offers an example of civil religion in Andrista. The festival, however small and unknown outside of Valcamonica, is a unique form of popular religion, supporting and protecting the villagers’ sense of place-­power, religious tradition and identity. Paroldo does not have such an intensely passionate identification with its festivals, although the bonds with place are fervently held and felt. There is a certain political ‘flavour’ to their sense of identity, however, in that Paroldese seem to view themselves as having Gallo-Celtic origins and see the legacy of that Celtic heritage in their traditions. As discussed in Chapter  4, there is also involvement by the Slow Food organization in Paroldo’s festivals and communal feasts. Slow Food is much more than a culinary or gastronomic organization, as shown already. The organization was conceived and born out of the radical leftwing political foment in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, and has traditionally kept a leftwing bent. Its politics, philosophies and wide-­ ranging cultural reach are too complex to characterize simplistically. However, in brief, it is likely that the presence of Slow Food at the festivals in Paroldo, and its relationships in Paroldo with key people in the festival organization, will have significant influence. Leitch (2003) assessed the risks and possible negative implications in revering rural customs or history: ‘Demands to protect local culinary traditions and cultural diversity

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could just as easily risk appropriation by radical regionalist movements with exclusionary political agendas. Anti-­corporate rhetoric combined with narratives of cultural loss may fuel a deepening sense of nationalist nostalgia’ (2003: 457). Nationalist nostalgia in Italy can become campanilismo taken to an exclusionary extreme of parochialism, which sadly has appeared in many places in Italy and particularly in the north. This offers an important warning to many places, in Europe and elsewhere. The negative slant to bonds with place can easily become, as Relph wrote: ‘an excess of local or national zeal (with) a tendency to become a platform for ethnic nationalist supremacy and xenophobia’ (Relph 1997, quoted in Eyles & Williams 2008: 22–24). Celticity similar to that espoused and promoted in Celtic New Year in Milan could propagate Relph’s aptly named ‘poisoned sense of place’ (ibid.). The symbolism purposely organized of Gallo-Celtic warriors marching through Milan to Piazza Duomo and supported by the xenophobic (and oftentimes, Rome-­bashing) League is powerful. Happily, for all the charming bioregional fervour and local pride on view, this brand of exclusionary sentiment was not visible in rural Paroldo during my fieldwork. After the Pagan communities, Paroldo and Andrista, the most rural and remote of the communities here were found to have the highest scores on engagement with place and community. One could say ‘not surprisingly’. However, examining rural areas as well as urban Milan has shown that the right combination of factors can manifest liminal, polychronic space, communitas and engagement with place.

Conclusion As with so many questions in Nature and in life, we have seen examples here of ‘the chicken or the egg’ conundrums (to borrow a vernacular expression) regarding festival, foodways, religion and place. Some of the fieldwork begged the question of whether places had an existing vitality and power from the geologic or geographic settings and features, which then the original cultures acknowledged and eventually built their own sites; or whether human activity ‘sacrated’ the space first (Smith 1987). I argue that, yes – the Earth is powerful to begin with. This is where my Theory of Active Place, TAP, springs from. Such place-­power can be enhanced due to whatever unique geologic, geographic powers or influences exist. Then the ancients’ own sense and honouring of sites significant to them instilled further meaning in the land through their lived religious traditions, their engagement with the land, their meaning-­making. In cases such as these, human stories and wisdom can be seen as contributing further to the land’s own stories and wisdom, gathering and congealing in place, as Basso and Casey (1996), Heyd (1999) and Ingold (2000) have argued. Returning to physics, as discussed in the Introduction, energy is not lost – it can be transformed and will change, but it remains. Perhaps the ancients’ passions and loyalties to their lands and ritual sites are still tangible and sensible, enhancing the materiality of natural and built environments. Finally, postmodern festivals have added their stories and messages to the place and its vitality, having been influenced originally by the local history, culture and place. It is all cyclical, like the seasons that give birth to the festival cycle, to religious calendrical feasts and rituals, much in life and in Nature reveals how all is connected, interanimated

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and intertwined. This profound engagement of place and people offers a challenge to those endeavouring to find the source of place-­power and the land’s vitality. Perhaps it is enough to say ‘the place is sacred, the place is powerful’, stilling reductionist Cartesian urges (recent arrivals in human consciousness), which can compel one to dig and split and strip. The foregoing points speak to over-­arching themes brought out in earlier chapters: the need for relational epistemologies (Harvey 2006; Ingold 2000; Milton 2002), where our relationality and our sense of reciprocity (Sapelli 1995) extend to all our relationships, including those with place and with Nature (Kohák 2000, Naess 1995b; Plumwood 1995, 2008). When we acknowledge and keep the Other’s stories alive in our beloved places, we create and/or nurture a relational worldview that is health-­giving and vitality-­enhancing. Stories and cultural mythologies play a critical part, as do festivals, in both creating and maintaining ‘place accountability’ (Plumwood 2008: 9). This chapter has gone into a deeper, more detailed analysis of how the Theory of Active Place may be applied to festivals and community gatherings. It analysed the festival fieldwork with a numerical index, demonstrating the place-­power of each of the festivals studied here, the potential liminality and the profundity of bonds between place and community that are communicated by the festivals. The relational epistemology of humanity and place was examined, and the poetics of dwelling in each festival analysed to shed new light on the mystery of how awareness of the other-­thanhuman may arise. Now we arrive at final reflections.

Conclusion This section concludes by examining how the principal research questions on festival, materiality of place, lived religious traditions and foodways in Italy have been interrogated and answered. The book’s research and Italian fieldwork have illustrated that festival culture can be a bridge not only between and among human communities, but between human-Nature communities. The concept of the Other has been explored using these differing perspectives of both Nature and human as Other. The analysis in the previous chapter shows the multiple features of the festivals’ lived religious traditions, their bonds with place, and demonstrates the many interlocking strands that fortify the festival bridge linking humanity and place. This bridge is given shape and re-­fortified through the embodied poetics of dwelling offered by rituals, foodways, performances and stories.

Dialoguing with the Earth The lands studied here offer eloquent examples of how place speaks to those who can listen. Novelist Beppe Fenoglio was a native of one of the regions studied in this work, the Langhe. His fictionalized version of his involvement in the fierce anti-Fascist partisan activity in Italy in the Second World War, Johnny the Partisan, gives poignant evidence of the profound sense of place which the Italians maintained even in war time. Fenoglio’s Johnny constantly mentions the land and its forms, the rivers, flowers, trees and so forth as he goes about his terrifying and tragic duties in wartime (1995 [1968]). Despite the trauma of war he depicts the men as they seek to have connection, to find dialogue not only with each other but also with their home and the Earth (Fenoglio 1995: 77) – as do other natives of northern Italy today. Place is part of the family in Italy, as my fieldwork reveals; despite industrialization, diaspora and migration, this is still true. The theoretical framework here has included theorists such as Basso, Bennett, Harvey, Ingold, Kohák, Milton, Rodman, and Watson, among others, who write of the power and materiality of place, of epistemologies and ontologies that may approach – or be – animic. Their work reveals humanity’s ability and need for relationships diverse enough to include the Other, where a relational epistemology can also include place as Other. The theoretical framework has been supported by theorists on festival in Italy or on Italian-American communities, such as Orsi, Magliocco, Parsons, and Tak. Among the relational epistemologies explored here has been the experience of place and its materiality through foodways and gastronomic community festivals and rituals. My purpose has been to demonstrate that in heterotopic spaces with liminality, such as some kinds of festival time, humanity can experience a ‘dialogue’ with place, with all

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forms of community, including the human and the other-­than-human. These spaces of unique temporality can become apparent in various representations of festival, whether a large urban event like Milan’s Celtic New Year, or a tiny community ritual like Andrista’s Badalisc, where multiple time periods intersect, a liminal atmosphere is created and potent place-­power pervades all aspects of the festival. My research has demonstrated that materiality, place and relationality can be performed and embodied in many diverse festival forms.

Initial questions: what was asked To sum up the overall research questions in a concise manner: Is materiality manifested through engagement with local foodways and community festival in northern Italy? And, if so, what positive outcomes for individuals and the larger society might engagement with place and community offer? The first premise of this study is that places have power – whether natural or built environments – and relay a sense of that to human beings. To clarify it, the name TAP, Theory of Active Place, was created, a theory that sprang out of my environmental work over decades and my Italian fieldwork. To further support it and to elucidate others’ contributions, diverse theorists also established that place-­power and sense of place are real, and are not academic constructs. Given that the first is true, various theories were tested to further the understanding of why relationships with place are important, for the individual and for the society. The importance is highlighted in diverse critical sources, from healthcare to philosophy, ecology, geography, archaeology, ritual studies, and so forth. The literature influencing the book has demonstrated that this is an interdisciplinary work, with wide application. The theory that the festival can be considered at times a public ritual was examined. This theoretical review validated the arguments that the festivals studied here answer both Bell’s (1997) and Grimes’ (1975, 2006) components and categories defining a ritual. Knott (2005a) and Smith (1987) as well as others entered into the examination of ritual and place. Intertwined with these principal arguments came Foucault’s (1998, 2000), Rodman’s (2003) and Witmore’s (2006) ideas and theories, demonstrating that festivals open a space that is out of the ordinary in its temporality and capability, that is heterotopic and also often polychronic. This allows for new awareness to reach festival participants, organizers, visitors – an awareness that springs from the place’s influence and materiality. Consequently, a metaphor used here is that of the festival or ritual as a bridge between humanity and place. This led to an exploration of the relationality and innate materiality of place as fundamental components, where energy and communication can flow back and forth as through a dynamic conduit, or a two-­way bridge. The work argues that the heterotopic and polychronic space of the festival helps to facilitate this communication, where the festival or ritual becomes a multi-­sensory language articulating the Theory of Active Place more clearly in human terms. Finally, the concept was reviewed that such awareness and experiences can offer other benefits to a community, such as helping to maintain or to draw population into

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rural, depopulating regions (as in Paroldo, Andrista). It may also allow for the multivocality of diverse populations to be expressed and acknowledged (as in Milan, Omegna, Biella), and to foster wider community wellbeing (Eyles & Williams 2008).

Analyses revisited: what was answered Six festivals in five towns were studied, three rural areas and two urban settings. The festivals chosen were selected to give examples of how communities perform place in distinctive but varied manners. It was a methodological, theory-­driven choice not to study the patron saint or Madonna traditions, which are annual, calendrical festivals occurring in all of Italy. Although Paroldo’s autumn harvest festival is named after its patron saint, Saint Martin, it is primarily a harvest fair where unusual elements of the village’s folklore and history are also represented. For example, the village priest was involved in a ceremony on the Sunday of my November 2008 fieldwork in Paroldo; however, generally there are no Masses or religious processions involved in Saint Martin’s Summer in November. The festival fieldwork analyses in Chapter 7 used a scaled index to assess engagement with place and community in the six festivals, drawing categories from elements of the original theories and questions. The index delineated the outcomes in a quantitative format and then reviewed the analyses in detail. To sum up in brief it appears that while the more rural areas, Andrista, Paroldo and the Pagan festival site near Masserano, had the highest score on the index of engagement with place, the largest city in the study, Milan, also scored well on engagement with place. In this regard, the initial assumptions and theories when embarking upon the study, that a rural place is where the agency of place can be best felt and expressed by the festival/ritual, and where community can come together most relationally and meaningfully, were both proven and at the same time disproven. Through the Scale of Engagement surprising findings emerged regarding Milan’s Celtic New Year. It was a somewhat unexpected outcome to discover that the festival offered a place for multivocality to both the human community and the place’s ‘voice’. This aspect of the urban festival gave support to two different threads of the woven theories here. First, Sapelli has theorized that in Italy the waves of migration out of the countryside and into the major urban centres like Milan brought a ‘ruralization of the cities’ (Sapelli 1995: 13, 118). Through his critical analyses of the social and economic effects of migration, his theory demonstrates that rural customs, mindsets and mores are transferred to the city, such as his ‘chains of reciprocity’. In essence, Milan’s Celtic New Year gave evidence of this phenomenon through the remarkable cohesiveness and significant relationality that the Pagan community demonstrated while there. Examples of communitas were exhibited in this festival, as Chapter 7 also discussed; in addition, the conflicts and social dramas internal to the Pagan communities seem to be alleviated and ameliorated through the collaboration and annual reunions represented by the Druids’ Beltane festival, their Festa Celtica di Beltane (a typical Turner element of communitas). The Celtic New Year fair represented something more important to people than commercial activities, or the pursuit of internecine and internal disputes:

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it offered an opportunity to reunite in a festive public occasion, dressed in cloaks and other forms of alternative clothing that express Otherness as Pagans. The community was able to assemble, in the centre of Milan, yet in a heterotopic outdoor atmosphere evoked with Celtic re-­enactments, crafts, music, and so forth. (Many of the community also were able to sell services, crafts or art.) At various Pagan events throughout Italy and highlighted at the Beltane Festival each May in Piedmont, it was clear that through the liminality created by the festivals, the community can be drawn together and communitas can re-­emerge out of social conflicts. This same Turnerian theory could be applied to Andrista’s process through the Badalisc festa: through liminality and the desire for community survival, internal social drama is overcome and the group rediscovers its communitas. Although Omegna’s two festivals scored the lowest of the five places observed, Carnival in Omegna scored well for an urban festival. This was due to its distinctive performing of place in the dramatis personae of the ‘River Royals’ who lead the Carnival and due to its ritualized parades and feasting; it also manifested through the place-­ based relationality of local people. Interesting examples of multivocality, as well as perhaps of Bakhtinian reversal traditions, were displayed through their choice in some years of an immigrant and a person of colour for the Carnival Queen (Bakhtin 1984; Rodman 2003). Thus the initial research question is repeated: ‘Are materiality, relationality and active place-­power manifested through certain place-­based community festivals in northern Italy?’ Yes – this can be answered with a definite affirmative.

Not permitting the magic to escape A secondary research question arose: what positive outcomes can engagement with place and community offer? One outcome from festivals, be they newly created, or iterations of more historic traditions, is the effect of drawing population into or maintaining existing population in a rural place. Historians of Italy, Sapelli (1995) and Ginsborg (2003), have studied the enormous impact of ongoing rural migration to the cities in post-Second World War Italy. More than one of the fieldwork participants called the Langhe, the region of Paroldo, a ‘desert’ in regards to its depopulation, as well as its water scarcity. Tak discussed how the rituals he has observed had changed after decades of emigration; for example the San Donato commemorations that he studied in the south altered considerably as the numbers of children diminished in the villages (2000). Happily, despite these changes and contrary to what social scientists observing had predicted, the local rituals did not disappear (Tak 2000: 218). This book’s study of identity and community as intertwined with lived religion, foodways and place-­based traditions demonstrates why the festival/rituals do not and will not disappear. Christian saw depopulation sapping the life out of the villages in northern Spain in the 1970s, describing the ‘magic leaking out year by year’ from their village rituals and from what he called their ‘peculiar theatre’ (Christian 1972, 1989: 40–41). The Italian communities in this fieldwork are striving to fix the magic in place with festivals and other initiatives, and thereby gather the people in, together with their stories. The

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folklorists, anthropologists, historians and other scholars encountered in Italy during this research are working avidly to discover, document and preserve local history, local awareness and traditions. So many of those interviewed or encountered during this fieldwork articulated their passion for their region or home-­places’ stories, folklore, foods, tragedies, mysteries, music and so forth. Generally speaking there was no ‘disneyfication’ (Relph 1976, 2008) and very little objectification or nostalgia-­selling in evidence. Enthusiasm came out of a love of home and tradition, and an authentic passion for preserving them, or for honouring place and ancestry. From all that has been observed, heard and analysed, my prognosis is that it is unlikely, at least in the rural areas studied in my work, that Andrista’s Badalisc or Paroldo’s Saint Martin’s Summer festivals will disappear in the near future. On the contrary, my prognosis is that they are very likely to grow in size and outside publicity. My prognosis on Paganism in Italy is likewise a positive growth prediction, as shown by the continuing expansion of these communities, their festivals and the fervent dedication of the leaders – not only in northern Italy, but throughout the country. This research makes evident that festival offers healthful contributions to community, to awareness of the Other in its multivocal forms and to fighting late modern alienation. The magic, the stories, the wisdom all sit in place; they and the land gather us in, and together these elements aid in keeping vibrant place-­power alive.

Final reflections Italy’s late industrialization has allowed for quasi-­animic cultural values of deep relationality and materiality to linger; bonds with land, place and the other-­thanhuman have proven to be notable. The lived religious traditions, foodways and festivals studied here provide spaces of engagement that demonstrate notable forms of communion with place and performance of materiality. The pervasive cultural meme of eating well, of ‘Si mangia bene’, along with other deeply ingrained Italian attitudes about food, have proven to be complex and nuanced, revealing embodied bonds with place, home and community. Humanity in the late postmodern era generally moves quickly through a landscape – or over it at 30,000 feet – without engaging with it or honouring it. The resulting loss of awareness of place contributes to increased alienation in society and a general loss of wellbeing. Nature has been commoditized, regarded as a resource to be consumed, serving ego-­driven ends or capitalist economic purposes. Place’s potential for agency generally is overlooked, nor do people appreciate that – like diverse human communities – place too can be an Other, capable of relationship, of touching us and of acting upon us with its materiality and place-­power. This book has proposed a Scale of Engagement as a tool for investigating a festival or community ritual’s engagement and bonds with community and place; it has also proposed a Theory of Active Place, TAP, which provides a counterpoint and antidote to conceptions of dead matter or of a static world. Referring to the obvious allusion, awareness of TAP is manifested when humans ‘tap into’ the subtle currents flowing through Nature and built or natural environments – sensations, feelings, intuitions. My review of and revelations on place-­power and

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materiality through locally based foodways and festival rituals are multivocal and interdisciplinary. This theory together with the Scale of Engagement offers timely tools for use across fields of study, work and culture. The combination of critical theory, research and ethnography that has been described here demonstrates the varied and nuanced means by which individuals and communities may recover their ‘original openness to the world’ (Ingold 2007: 201). Italy has enriched the world with a myriad of gifts. Perhaps the model of festival culture that Italy demonstrates to the world is likewise a gift for finding greater relationality, engaging the poetry of dwelling and of beauty, through a rediscovery of healthful, embodied relationality in spaces of heightened awareness and communication. Beyond superficial concepts of ludic time, or persistent stereotypes of Italy as a Disneyfied theme park with ‘pizza, pasta & mandolino’, the examples here of local foodways, lived religious traditions and varied forms of festival culture offer universal antidotes to isolation while demonstrating multi-­dimensional understandings of place. May such theories and awareness offer resilience, healing and renewal to communities – human and other-­than-human.

Notes Chapter 1 1 The term ‘other-­than-human’, which some scholars, such as LaMothe (2015) and Abram (1996) write as ‘more-­than-human’, refers to all those beings other than Homo sapiens with whom we humans share our Planet – whether Nature in a general sense, or other mammals, reptiles and so forth. As in the animism discussions that follow, sometimes rocks, mountains, and other natural forms or occurrences on Earth are referred to as ‘other-­than-human persons’. The term can also refer to the dimensions beyond our usual waking awareness and recognition, such as the spirit world, or the world of the ancestors. I am influenced by the work of Hallowell, who is often associated with the first adoption of the term in the late modern academy, in his studies of the Ojibwa; and I also quote from Harvey and Ingold who have adopted the term too (Hallowell 1960; Harvey 2006, 2013; Ingold 2000). 2 Amy Whitehead offers an articulate unpacking of some of Ingold’s and Latour’s theories, as well as their ongoing discussions in the areas of ‘A NT’, and Ingold’s ‘playful yet insightful’ (2013: 115) answer to Latour with ‘SPIDER’: ‘Social Theory for Anthropods’ (2013: 114–116).

Chapter 3 1 This chapter is derived in part from original fieldwork and research published in Folklore, April 2013, vol. 124, number 1, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/001 5587X.2013.731155. I gratefully acknowledge the journal’s permission to use my data and research here. 2 Those who know Italy are familiar with the usual tradition of Epiphany, La Befana. She is a charming elderly witch figure in Italian folklore who flies around the country, delivering gifts to good children on Epiphany. It is very interesting that despite that being a widespread Italian custom, the Befana is not seen in Andrista or Cevo.

Chapter 5 1 Aspects of this focus in my Italian research have been covered previously in other publications. Parts of this chapter appear here with the permission of Berghahn books, and were published in Kathryn Rountree’s edited volume Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe — Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses (NY and London, Berghahn 2015). Other material was included in my article ‘The Goddess Returns to Italy’, in The Pomegranate — International Journal of Pagan Studies, Volume 10.1, 2008, pp. 5–20.

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2 Some scholars prefer to call this new religious movement (NRM) ‘Neo-Paganism’, in both English and Italian; however this book uses simply the term ‘Pagan’. 3 Another note on usage: where ‘Witchcraft’ is capitalized, it refers to the contemporary religion, not to vernacular tradition or cultural imagery. 4 ‘Synthesis’ is a term preferable to ‘syncretism’ for many scholars (Mumm 2002: 116–117). Whatever the term, the union of beliefs and practices occurred consistently over time, recurring in the conquest of the Americas, as well as Asia and many other regions of Christianity’s expansion (Chidester 2000; MacCulloch 2009; Mumm 2002). 5 In the twentieth century Italy had the largest Communist Party outside Russia (Caldwell 1991; Ginsborg 2003). 6 The Powers of Wicca: The World’s Oldest Religion in our Contemporary Society (my translation of the title).

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Index Page numbers in bold refer to figures, page numbers in italic refer to tables. agency, 11–2, 145 landscape art, 151–2 place, 13, 13–5, 19, 28–9, 33–4, 74, 85, 158, 183 space, 19 Agnelli, Aldo, 118 Alba, 125 Alessandri, Angelo, 93 Alessandro (Paroldo resident), 124 ambiance, otherworldly, 5 Ambrose, Saint, 88 Americanization, 16, 52 Amici del Sentiero Etrusco Celtico (Friends of the Etruscan Celtic Trail), 74 Anderson, E., 157–8 Andrista, 10, 19, 43, 60, 60–1, 99, 151–2, 169, 176, 181 see also Badalisc festival Androla, 74 animism, 6, 12–3, 14, 21, 71, 121, 185 n.1 animistic science, 16 Antica Quercia, 140–1 anti-clerical movements, 36 apotropaic structures, 56, 126 archaeologists, 74, 75, 157–8 aromas, 110 Arturo (re-enactor), 79 associations, networks of, 108 Auschwitz, 174 Australia, 24 authority, reversals of, 44 Autumn Equinox, 14, 103, 129 Badalisc festival, 59, 60–1, 76, 95–6, 150, 172 Badalisc’s speech, 62, 63–4, 64, 65, 71, 164 campanilismo, 69, 70 and Catholicism, 70–1, 72, 175 characters, 62–3 costume, 71–2, 72–3

food, 65, 67, 70, 164 gastronomic traditions, 67 the hunt, 61–2, 64, 164, 175 masques, 45, 45–6 materiality of place, 66–9, 89 motivation for, 72 organization, 84–5, 163–4 origins, 75 Patroness, 68 place-power, 164 relational epistemology, 72–3 reversals, 44 Scale of Engagement, 162, 163–4, 181, 182 sense of dread, 62 serpent costume, 17, 43, 44, 46, 66, 67, 70, 156 street theatre, 64 survival, 183 symbolism, 31, 65, 67–8 temporality, 180 traditions, 65–6 Bagna Cauda, 104–6, 119, 121, 166 Bagolino, 42 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 42, 44, 69, 70, 113 Baldoli, Claudia, 16, 52, 56 Barroero, Luigi, 20, 121–2, 124 Barron, Patrick, 13, 74–5 Barstow, Anne Llewellyn, 133–4 Basilicata, 35, 37, 38 Basso, Keith, 2, 9, 21, 71, 108, 172, 176 Batali, Mario, 52 Befana, the, 185 n.2 Bell, Catherine, 22, 31, 32, 33, 174, 180 Bella Figura, 32, 81–2, 133, 136–7, 152–3 Bellah, Robert, 59 Bellisama (goddess), 131 belonging, sense of, 50, 79–80, 81 Beltane, 103, 129, 130, 151, 167–8, 181–2

200 Belvedere Le Langhe, 122 Bennett, Jane, 13, 14, 145, 147 Berlusconi, Silvio, 92 Berry, Thomas, 4, 12, 14, 15 Bettinelli, Stefania, 53–4 Biella, 97, 98, 129, 167–8, 170 bio-regionalism, 11 Bocelli, Andrea, 25 Bone, Gavin, 139–40 Bossi, Umberto, 92, 93 Boulder, Colorado, 18 Bowie, Fiona, 31 Bowman, Marion, 29 bread, healing, 121–2 Bread and Circus, 35–6 bridge metaphor, 20, 180 British Association for the Study of Religion, 76 British Isles Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, 140 British Traditional Witchcraft, 129, 133, 134, 138 Bugatis, Pierina, 132–3, 133–4 Burning Man festival, 22, 147, 149 Calderoli, Roberto, 93 Calvello, Basilicata, 34, 35, 38, 168–9 campanilismo, 36, 61, 96, 98, 145, 168–9, 176 Badalisc festival, 69, 70 food and foodways, 55–7 Milan, 25, 40–1, 77, and nationalism, 89–90 capitalism, 37, 170, 183 Carnival, 41, 42, 43, 44 carnival culture, 152 Carr-Gomm, Philip, 140 Casalini, Marco, 60–1, 65, 69, 108 Casey, E.S., 23, 109, 176 Castellano, Laura, 10, 38, 88 Catholic Mass, 18, 54 Catholicism, 36–7, 44, 52, 53–4, 127 and Badalisc festival, 70–1, 72, 175 materiality, 132 and Paganism, 132, 133, 136 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 36, 40, 50, 59, 77–80, 94, 96, 150 campanilismo, 77 choice of location, 82–5

Index costume, 82 Druidry and, 86–7 and food, 87, 95 funding, 87 materiality, 80–2, 87–8 organization, 84–5, 163 Pagan Otherness, 80–2 place-power, 88–9, 90 political agenda, 86 relationship with La Lega, 90–1, 91 religious affiliation, 93 Scale of Engagement, 161, 162, 163, 173, 181–2 sense of communitas, 79–80 Sforzesco Castle, 77, 78, 83–4, 85, 88, 93 temporality, 88–9, 180 Celtic-spirituality, 87 Cevo, 10, 69, 108 chauvinism, local, 25 Chiara (re-enactor), 79 Chidester, D., 154, 155 Christian, Jr., W. A., 123, 182–3 Christianity, and Paganism, 131 Cibi rituali, 53 cities, ruralization of, 37, 40, 59, 115, 181 civil religion, 59, 91 Clearwater Festival, 29–30, 32 Clementi, Filippo, 42 cognitive imperialism, 11 collective identity, 115 collective memory, 116, 124 colonialist heritage, 11 Commedia dell’Arte, 27, 45–6, 69, 72 commensality, 18 commercialism, 86 commercialization, 52, 55, 124 commodification, 55, 87–8, 124 communal meals, 105, 118, 121, 165 communal time, 22 Communism, 52 communitas, 4, 33, 79–80, 87, 89, 96 community, 50 bonds, 1, 24, 60, 144 lack of, 172 power of, 85 community development, 24 community festival, the, 22, 24, 26, 28, 57 community healing, 155–6

Index

201

community health, 168–70 community rituals, 30 community well-being, 28, 38 concretion, 72 connectedness, 3 consumerism, 52 contrade teams, 19 cosmology, new, 15 costume, 40, 50, 70, 98 Badalisc festival, 17, 43, 44, 45–6, 71–2, 72–3 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 82 embodiment and exteriorization through, 71–2 materiality, 2 Paganism, 130 symbolic, 21, 44 Crociani-Windland, Lita, 37, 38, 70 Crowley, Vivianne, 138 culinary traditions, 16 cultural beliefs, 9 cultural bonds, 2 cultural identification, 61 cultural memory, 71 cultural representations, 21 culture/Nature dichotomies, 158 Curott, Phyllis, 137–8, 140

see also Paganism Dundes, Alan, 47, 48 dwelling perspective, 19–21, 22, 23, 30

D’Ambrosio, Ossian, 57, 86–7, 88, 88–9, 99, 101, 102–6, 109, 129, 130, 140–1, 151 Darfo Boario Terme, 69 Day of the Dead, 104 De Cauter, L., 150 death, awareness of, 174 Deep Ecology, 51, 154 Dehaene, M., 150 depopulation, 24, 99, 117, 122–4, 181, 182–3 depth ecology, 153 Derrett, R., 24, 33 dialects, 61, 65 Disneyfication, 124, 183 domus, 21–2, 26, 40, 51, 54–5, 101, 155, 156 dragons, 73–4 Druidry, 1, 59, 86–7, 97, 99, 102–6, 129, 130, 134, 135, 140–1, 151, 155, 170 Scale of Engagement, 162, 167–8, 181–2

Falassi, Alessandro, 47, 48 family, and place, 24 family loyalty, 26, 144 Farinetti, Oscar, 52 Farrar, Janet, 139–40 fast foods, 115 Fava, Antonio, 45 Feast of Fools, the, 43 feasting, 17 feminist issues, 10 Fenoglio, Beppe, 118, 179 Feo, Maria, 86–7, 88, 102–6, 109, 141, 151 Ferraguti, Paolo, 124 festa, ix, 17, 26, 28, 34–5, 40, 172 festival culture, 36 festival time, 22, 28, 42, 64, 149, 152–3, 179–80 festivals categories of ritual action, 31 importance, 32 numbers, ix, 35–6

Earth Systems Science, 15 Eataly initiative, 52–3 ecclesiastic reversal, 43 economic benefits, 24 eco-psychological healing, 48 embodied experience, 24 embodiment, 50–1, 61, 71–2 emigration, 24, 40, 99, 182 engagement, ix, 146–7 entertainment, 152 Epiphany, 68–9, 70, 71, 72, 76, 185 n.2 epistemology, 3, 4, 179 relational, 8–9, 19, 144, 177 ethical values, 114–5 ethnocentrism, 90 Eucharist, 18, 53 European Parliament, 92 Europeanization, 109 Evil Eye, 56, 135 exclusionary politics, 153–4 exteriorization, 32, 50–1, 71–2, 96 externalities, 32 Eyes of the Night exhibition, The, 94–5

202 origins, ix, 34–5 place-based experiences, 98–9 positive aspects of, 24 as ritual, 21–2, 24, 54–5 role of, 2 universality of, 30–1 Field, Carol, 105 fieldwork, ix, 1, 8–9, 10, 16, 19, 22, 34, 100, 170–1, 176, 181 fiere, 115 Florence, 55–6 folklorists, 74 food and foodways, 8, 16–7 Americanization, 16 Badalisc festival, 65, 67, 70, 164 campanilismo, 55–7 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 87, 95 commodification, 52 communal meals, 105, 118, 121, 165 Eataly initiative, 52–3 ethical values, 114–5 healing power, 101 as lived religion, 155 local food movement, 51 local products, 95, 103, 108–9, 115–6 materiality, 103–6 and place, 51–2, 98–9 political agenda, 116 power of, 103 ritualized, 54 sacralizing, 17–9 and the sacred, 53–4 Saint Martin’s Summer, 166 situated eating, 114–6 spiritual understanding, 103 standardization, 16 symbolism, 100–2 food choices, 114–5 food production, 52 Formentini, Silvia, 79–80 Foucault, Michel, 22, 23, 33, 147–50, 152, 170, 172, 174, 180 France, 17, 51, 52, 101–2, 104, 108–9, 114 fun, 27 funding, 87 Gaia Theory, 14, 15–6 Gallo Pecca, Luciano, 42, 43 Gardiner, Michael, 33, 50, 169

Index Gardner, Gerald, 132, 135 gastronomic culture, 16 Gavaldo, S., (archaeologist), 74 gender challenging, 150 genius loci, 4–5, 8, 54, 56, 73, 151, 164 geophysiological perspective, 126–7 Geophysiology, 15 Gerardo (Wiccan), 82 Germany, 135 Gheorghiu, D., 5, 7 Ginsborg, P., 38–9 Glastonbury, 28–9, 30 globalization, resistance to, 108–9, 114 Goddess spirituality, 129, 130–1, 132, 136–7, 137–8 Gray, John, 30, 85 Grimassi, Raven, 137 Grimes, Ronald, 22, 32, 50, 55, 71, 72, 74, 74–5, 85, 96, 153, 180 grotesque, 44 Guano, Emanuela, 136 Guccini, Francesco, 53–4 Halloween, 84, 85, 93 Hallowell, Irving, 13, 185 n.1 Hamilton, S., 157–8 Harding, Stephan, 16 Harlequin, 45 Harner, Michael, 137, 138 Harrison, S., 157–8 Harvey, Graham, 12–3, 99 Heidegger, Martin, 23, 30, 153–4 hermeneutic methodology, 3 Herodias (goddess), 133 heterochronic time, 148, 150 heterotopia, 22, 23–4, 60, 64, 147–50, 158, 170, 175, 180 heterotopic power, 151 heuristic methodology, 3 Heyd, Thomas, 151–2, 158 Hiroshima, 174 historical legacies, 154 Hogan, Linda, 11 Holy Thorn Ceremony, Glastonbury, 29 Howell, Francesca Ciancimino, background, 2–3 human nature, universals of, 30 Hutton, Ronald, 141 hybridity, 144–6

Index identity, 25–6, 48, 50, 81, 115–6, 117 collective, 115 reference points, 144 sense of, 56, 81 Imbolc, 103 immigrant groups, 107 indigenous cultures, 19–20 Industrial Revolution, the, 37 industrialization, 36–7, 106, 130, 134, 135, 145, 183 ingesting topography, 17 Ingold, Tim, 13, 19–20, 22, 23, 30, 85, 98, 121, 143, 146, 172, 176, 184 Innocence III, Pope, 43 interanimation, 21 interconnectedness, 37 internal migrations, 39–40, 41, 57, 182 Ireland, 37 Italian-Americans, 22, 40, 101, 115, 155–6, 179 Italian Communist Party, 186 n.5 Italian language, 26, 65 Italianness, 52, 107 Italy background, 38–9 politics in, 92 population, 39 unification of, 26 Jackson, P., 46 Jouët, Philippe, 36 Kapor, Melinda, 88 Kazakhstan, 76 kinship, 76 Knott, Kim, 18–9, 22, 28, 30, 154, 180 knowing, embodied ways of, 20 Kruta, Venceslas, 94 La Lega, 35, 59, 83, 86–7, 90–1, 91, 92, 93 LaChapelle, D., 33, 48, 156, 169 Lake Orta, Lago d’Orta, 97, 106–14, 111, 113 Lammas, 104 LaMothe, Kimerer L., 6 land and landscape bonds with, 1, 107–8 commodification, 124–5 as history congealed, 108

203

love of, 8 power of, 85 stories of, 172 temporality of, 85 landscape art, 151–2, 158 Langhe, the, 97, 99, 100, 110, 117–27 language, 3–5, 25–6 dialects, 61, 65 Latour, Bruno, 13, 39, 144–6, 146 Laven, Mary, 6–7, 7 Lega Nord, 35 Legnano, Palio, 42 Leitch, A., 114, 114–5, 116, 117, 175–6 Leland, Charles, 132–3 Lent, 42, 44 Leopold, A., 4 Lepore, Luca, 83–4, 85, 86, 92 Levi, Carlo, 118 Leynse, W.L.H., 17, 37, 51–2, 101–2, 108–9, 114, 124–5 liberating quality, 44 life crisis rituals, 33 Limerick, Patricia, 18 liminal, usage, 4 liminal destinations, 150 liminality, 4, 24, 64, 152–3, 165, 172, 174–5, 179–80 liminoid, the, 4, 152 Lions of Brescia, 79 listening, 3 literature, 32 lived religion, 85, 98, 130, 132, 144, 145, 155, 175, 183 local, the, 144 local food movement, 51 local involvement, 168 local products, 95, 103, 108–9, 115–6 Lombard heritage, 35 Lombardy, 32, 36, 38, 60, 68, 116, 131 Carnival, 42 Paganism, 84, 133 place-power, 171 London, 109 Lord of Misrule, the, 71 Lovelock, James, 14, 15–6 Lymer, Kenneth, 75–6, 76, 89, 146–7, 152 MacGillis, Miriam Therese, 15 Machiavelli, The Prince, 35

204 macrocosm, the, 148 Macy, Joanna, 9 Maddalena, 132, 133 Madonna devotion, 49, 68, 131, 155–6 Maffeis, Eliana and Elisa, 66–7 Maffessoli, Mario, 62, 66, 71 Maffessoli, Paola, 62, 66, 67, 68–9, 70, 72, 73 Magliocco, Sabina, 131, 135 Magni, Emanuela, 82–4, 85, 86, 93, 94 Malta, 131 Manzoni, A., 1 marginalization, 4 Maroni, Roberto, 92 Marrè, Davide, 138 Martin of Tours, Saint, 119 masked festivals, 40 masks and masking, 2, 43, 45, 50–1, 72 masques, 45–6, 72–3 materiality, 1–2, 56, 145, 180, 183–4 awareness of, 5 Catholicism, 132 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 80–2, 87–8 definition, 5 food and foodways, 103–6 Nature, 51 new, 6 Paganism, 130 Palio, Siena, 47, 48–50 and place, of place, 6–7, 7, 8, 9, 17, 66–9, 85–9, 98–9, 126–7 religious, ix and reversals, 44 of things, 6–7 materiality studies, 6 meaningfulness, 28 meaning-making, 30, 34–5 Medicine Wheels, 151 memory collective, 116, 124–5 cultural, 71 maintaining, 19 sense, 10, 102, 105 Menegoni, L., 137 methodology, 3, 37, 181 Scale of Engagement, 158–9 Middle Ages, 42, 42–4

Index migrants, internal, 39–40, 41, 57, 182 Milan, 35, 60, 96, 101, 110, 153–4, 176 background, 38–9 bonds with place, 39 campanilismo, 25, 40–1, 77 Celticity, 91–2 cemetery, 148 city elections, 92 Duomo, 40–1, 131 The Eyes of the Night exhibition, 94–5 foundational myth, 92 nemeton, 172–3 origins, 81 Piazza Duomo, 41, 94 place-power, 90, 168, 170–1 population, 39 Saint Ambrose festival, 88 Sempione Park, 170 Sforzesco Castle, 77, 78, 83–4, 85, 88, 93 status, 92 temenos, 173 witch trials, 132–3, 133–4 World War II, 10, 94 see also Celtic New Year festival, Milan Milan, Riccardo, 18, 106, 107, 114 Milanese-ism, 91–2 Milton, K., 143, 143–4 mindfulness, 51 Minoglio, Valentina, 80–2, 88, 131 modernization, 135 Monteaperti, Battle of, 49 Morgan, David, 17, 126 Muir, John, 20 mundania, 150 music, redeeming power of, 28 Nash, G., 5, 7 nationalism, 89–90 Nature, 170 agency, 11–2 being in, 3 bonds with, 1 definition, 4 Latour and, 145–6 magical perceptions of, 20 materiality, 51 Other in, 175 personhood, 9

Index and place, 20, 144 power of, 5 re-enchantment of, 135 romanticizing of, 155 Nature-humanity, 23, 26, 55, 101 nemeton, 172–3 network theory, 146 networks, 87, 108, 145–6 Nevola, F., 46 new materiality, 6 New York City, 40, 57, 68, 71, 101 World Trade Center, 174 Nigogliotta, the, 98, 111–2, 111, 114 nonhumans, 145 nostalgia, 52, 176 numen, 4, 4–5, 171 numinosity, 174–5 Obama, Barack, 7 ocularcentrism, 110 Olivier, L., 75 Omegna, 18, 54, 56–7, 84, 98, 99, 103, 116, 170 Carnival King and Queen, 98, 112–4, 113, 117 festival origins, 106 immigrant groups, 107 La Nigogliotta, 111–2, 111, 114 placeful awareness, 109–11 population, 164 Pumpkin festa and winter Carnival, 107, 108–12, 111, 117, 162, 164–5, 181, 182 World War II, 107–8 Open University, the, 117 organization, 84–5 organizational structure, 160, 163, 165, 166, 167 Orsi, Robert, 21–2, 26, 40, 54–5, 57, 67, 68, 76, 101, 155–6 Other, the, 146, 147, 177, 179 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 81 definition, 4 in Nature, 175 place as, 73 sense of, 5 space for, 81 Otherness, 72, 73 Pagan, 80–2, 182

205

other-than-human, the, xi, 1–2, 3, 4–5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 23, 48, 51, 59, 130, 146, 147, 153, 155, 156, 171, 172, 173, 180, 184, 185 n.1 otherworldly ambiance, 5 paese, 25–6 Pagan Otherness, 80–2, 182 Pagan studies, 150 Paganism, ix, 8, 14, 22, 53, 59, 102, 127, 139, 153, 169–70, 175, 176 British Traditional Witchcraft, 129, 133, 134, 138 and Catholicism, 132, 133, 136 and Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 80–2 Celtic-spirituality, 87 and Christianity, 131 contemporary lineages, 138–40 costume, 130 demographic, 129 foundational beliefs, 132 Goddess spirituality, 129, 130–1, 132, 136–7, 137–8 growth, 183 indigenous practices, 131–3, 137, 141 inspiration, 129 lived religion, 130 Lombardy, 84 materiality, 130 mores of resistance, 133–4 rebirth of, 11, 129–41, 134–7, 137–8, 150, 150–1, 154 rebirth of Druidry, 140–1 Scale of Engagement, 162, 167–8, 181–2 see also Druidry; witchcraft pageantry, 21, 22 Palio, 41–2, 46, 71 Palio, Legnano, 42 Palio, Siena, 41, 44, 46, 117, 169 contrade, 47–8, 47, 49 drapelloni, 49–50 materiality, 47, 48–50 physicality, 49 Piazza del Campo, 48 symbolism, 48 Pantalone, 45

206

Index

Paroldo, 19, 56, 98, 102, 118–9, 120, 127, 170, 175, 176, 181 Bagna Cauda, 105 communal meals, 118, 122 depopulation, 99, 118, 123–4 the Gargarota talking spring, 121 geophysiological perspective, 126 healing bread, 121–2 magic circle of protection, 118 place-power, 171–2 St. Martin’s Summer, 34, 50, 98, 118–22, 150, 162, 166, 172, 181, 183 witchcraft, 119–25, 119, 126–7, 126 Parsons, G., 48, 49, 71, 106, 117, 169 Pecca, Gallo, 45 performance, 153 personhood, 6, 144 Petrini, Carlo, 17, 52, 57, 91, 115, 137 petroglyph parks, Valcamonica, 73–5, 147, 151, 171 phenomenology, 23–4, 30 physical properties, 7 Piedmont, 24, 32, 36, 38, 45, 55, 56, 68, 97–8, 100, 110, 117, 131, 145 depopulation, 123 Druidry, 97, 102–6, 129 emigration, 99 food festivals, 98 place-power, 171 Scale of Engagement, 168 witchcraft, 97, 98, 118–26, 133 Pierrot, 45 Pike, Sarah, 87, 150 Pirandello, Luigi, 85 place agency, 13, 13–5, 19, 28–9, 33–4, 74, 74–5, 85, 158, 183 authentic expression of, 110–1 cherished, 7 definition, 5 embodiment of, 17, 51 and family, 24 gastronomic awareness of, 51–2 loss of awareness of, 183 materiality of, 6–7, 7, 8, 9, 17, 66–9, 85, 89, 98–9, 103–4, 126–7 and Nature, 20, 144 negative sense of, 9–11 as Other, 73

perceptions of, 161 performing, 9, 26, 54, 75–6 phenomenology, 23–4 politicised, 90–1 power of, 1, 9, 17, 23–4, 29–30, 51, 82–5, 88–9, 90, 99, 116, 145, 175–6 ritualizing, 102–6, 180 sacralizing of, 28–9 sense memory, 10 sense of, 2, 3, 7, 8, 8–9, 9–11, 11, 23–4, 25, 124, 159–61, 163, 165, 166, 167 spirit of, 4 place accountability, 177 placeful awareness, 109–11 placefulness, 47 place-power, 126–7, 156, 160–1, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170–2, 176, 183–4 place-power ecology, 13–5 Plumwood, Val, 153 political considerations, 10, 116, 175–6 Portinari, F., 100 positive outcomes, 182–3 postmodernism, 176–7 power heterotopic, 151 of place, 1, 9, 17, 23–4, 29–30, 51, 88–9, 90, 99, 117, 145, 175–6 power dynamics, 154–5 power inversion, 150 power structures, 35 Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), 8 Protestant Reformation, the, 37 psycho-spiritual significance, 24 Pumpkin festa and winter Carnival, Omegna, 107, 108–11 Carnival King and Queen, 98, 112–4, 113, 117, 165, 182 La Nigogliotta, 111–2, 111, 114 Scale of Engagement, 162, 164–5, 181, 182 qualitative methodology framework, 3 Rastelloti, Michela, 108, 108–9, 113 Ravenwolf, Silver, 140 reciprocity, 26, 27, 39, 87, 144, 155, 177 reclaiming, 11, 14

Index re-enactors, 79, 89, 94 regionalism, 25 relational epistemology, 8–9, 19, 144, 177 relational model, 33–4 relationality, 7, 144 religion civil, 91 lived, 85, 98, 130, 132, 144, 145, 155, 175, 183 spatial analysis of, 18–9 Relph, E., 10, 90, 176 resilience, 2 resistance, mores of, 133–4 Revelli, Nuto, 118, 145 reversals, 42–4 Rinallo, Diego, 37 rintracciabilità, 109 ritual, 5, 23, 24, 144 Bowie’s study, 31 and community healing, 155–6 festivals as, 21–2, 24, 54–5 importance, 32 life crisis, 33 liminality, 172 and meaningfulness, 28 origins, 34–5 and temporality, 21 transformational power, 32 universality of, 31 ritual action, categories of, 31 ritual dress, materiality, 2 ritual time, 152 ritualization, 165, 166, 173, 180 ritualized community, 5 categories, 22 ritualized time, 28, 167 rock art, 73–5, 147, 151, 171 Rodman, Margaret, 4, 90–1, 170, 180 role-playing, 45 Roman festivities, 42 Romantic movement, 135 Ronchi, Stefano, 62 Rose, Gillian, 154 ruralization, of cities, 37, 40, 59, 115, 181 Sabbath feast days, 37 sacra, 18 sacralizing, 153 sacrament, 18

207

sacrare, 18 sacred, the definition, 18 and food, 53–4 location of, ix spatial analysis of, 18–9 sagra, ix, 17, 26, 28, 34–5, 98, 115 St. Martin’s Summer, Paroldo, 34, 50, 98, 118–22, 150, 162, 166, 172, 181, 183 saints, 21 saints’ days, 34 Salvetti, Romano, 119, 121, 125 Samhain, 77, 84, 93, 103, 104, 129, 151 Sansoni, Umberto, 19, 74 Sapelli, Giulio, 26, 39, 41, 57, 87, 96, 135, 144–5, 181, 182–3 Sardinia, ix Scale of Engagement, x, 4, 14–5, 38, 157–77, 181–2 archaeological precedent, 157–8 Badalisc festival, 162, 163–4, 181, 182 categories of analysis, 159–61 Celtic New Year festival, Milan, 161, 162, 163, 173, 181–2 Druidry, 162, 167–8 methodology, 158–9 Paganism, 162, 167–8, 181–2 Piedmont, 168 Pumpkin festa and winter Carnival, Omegna, 162, 164–5, 181, 182 scores, 159 theoretical structures, 168–76 Wicca, 162 Senesità, 106 sense memory, 10, 102, 105 sensory experiences, 21 sensual engagements, 76 settings, 170 Sforzesco Castle, Milan, 77, 78, 83–4, 85, 88, 93 shadow places, 9–11 shamanism, 20 sharecropping, 37, 39 shared values, 25–6 Sicily, ix, 35, 36 Siena, 106, 156 contrade teams, 19 Fonte Gaia, 48

208 Madonna devotion, 49 Palio, 41, 44, 46–50, 47, 116, 169 Piazza del Campo, 48 Silvia (re-enactor), 88 situated eating, 21, 114–6 Slow Food, 16–7, 51, 52, 57, 91, 97–8, 99, 100–1, 103, 108–9, 114, 115, 116, 125, 175 Smith, J.Z., 75, 180 Snyder, Gary, 153 social control, 169 social justice, 153 social networks, 39 societal resilience, 2 Spain, 37 spirituality circles, 11 standardization, 16 Starhawk, 140 stereotypes, 184 Stewart, Kathleen, 38 street theatre, 40, 64, 122, 165 Stregheria, 137 Stregoneria, 137 supermarkets, 18 Swimme, Brian, 12, 13–5, 14, 15 symbolism, 2, 7, 20, 23, 54 Badalisc festival, 31, 65, 67–8 food and foodways, 54, 100–2 Palio, Siena, 48 Tak, Herman, 4, 34–5, 38, 40, 56, 71, 74–5, 91, 182 tangible spirituality, 174 temenos, 173 temporal discontinuity, 149 temporal percolation, 146–7 terminology, 3–5 terroir, 17 theatricality, 21, 22 theoretical framework, 179–80 Theory of Active Place, 13–5, 74–5, 157, 160, 169, 176, 177, 180, 183 Thich Nhat Hanh, 51 thing-power, 72–3 things agency, 11–2 comforting quality of, 7 materiality of, 6–7

Index physical properties, 7 thingness of, 6–7 Thorkildsen, T.A., 159 thresholds, usage, 4 Tilley, C., 157–8 time and temporality, 21, 180 alternative, 22, 24, 160–1 experience of, 32 festival, 22, 28, 42, 64, 149, 152–3, 179–80 festive, 42 in flux, 88–9 folding, 75–6 heterochronic, 148, 150 of landscape, 85 ritualized, 28, 152, 167 topophilia, 8 tourism, 24, 36, 55, 124 tourist attractions, 22 tradition, 19, 66 transformational power, 31–2, 33 transubstantiation, 53 truffles, 125–6 Tuan, Y.F., 90, 91, 171, 173 Tucker, Mary Evelyn, 15 Turin, 39 Turner, Victor, 4, 21, 28, 33, 37, 96, 152–3, 174 Tuscany, 37, 132 Tylor, Edward, 12 umwelt, 23–4, 30, 153–4 underworld, the, 83 United Kingdom, Paganism, 104, 129, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141 United States of America Italian-American immigrant communities, 22, 40, 101, 115, 155–6, 179 Paganism, 104, 135 Vadda, Franca, 102 Valcamonica, 61 petroglyph parks, 73–5, 147, 151, 171 values, shared, 25–6 Venice, 55, 102 Venice Carnival, masks, 43, 45 voice, awareness of, 3

Index Watson, M., 51 weaving metaphor, 20, 20–1 Weber, Max, 37 well-being, community, 28 wellbeing, loss of, 183 Western society, 26 Whitehead, A., 6, 7, 29, 185 n.2 Wicca, 1, 22, 59, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 162, 167–8, 170 see also Paganism Williams, A., 159 witch trials, 132–3, 133–4 witchcraft, ix, 97, 98, 119–25, 119, 126–7, 126, 130 British Traditional, 129, 133, 134, 138 feminist, 129 Italian tradition, 137

209

in Milan, 132–3 persecution, 132–3, 133–4 see also Paganism Witches’ Ceremony, The, 72 Witmore, Christopher, 75, 110, 146–7, 158 women, 45, 62, 64, 70, 136–7 women’s spirituality movement, 136 World Trade Center, New York City, 174 World War II, 10, 39, 57, 94, 97, 99, 107–8, 154, 182 Yeats, William Butler, 27, 28, 31–2 Zanni, Sibillia, 132–3, 133–4 Zeppa, Marino, 125–6 Zucca, Michela, 39