Raven Grimassi

I'm writing today about the theft of an author's work by another person who passes it off as his or her own book. This is known as intellectual theft, and is illegal under copyright law. I want to write about this because I recently became the victim of plagiarism.

In December of 2007 I was alerted to the publication of a book titled The Complete Book of the Holy Strega. Word came to me that this book is a compilation of my writings compiled by a woman presenting them as her own. She calls herself Aradia della Toscana, and also uses the alias Lady Strega, and Aradia de Toscana. The book was offered for sale through Lulu.com but has since been removed from their website, as has the Lulu storefront for "Lady Strega".

Through a series of events I was sent a copy of this book, The Complete Book of the Holy Strega. I quickly discovered that the material is my own, word-for word, verbatim (but never mentions my name). The fact is that the material in the above mentioned book (The Complete Book of the Holy Strega) all came from a book I wrote in 1980 and had published by Nemi Enterprises in 1981, which was titled The Book of the Holy Strega. It should be noted that the person who stole my work did add Italian translations to my previously published book (which contained only English). However, the added Italian translation appears to have been done through a translation program, and is very poor and inaccurate. This is clear because tense, gender assignment, and sentence structure are frequently incorrect in this book, The Complete Book of the Holy Strega, which often happens when relying on a translation program.

But for Aradia della Toscana (Lady Strega) the errors in translation present a much larger problem. This is because she claims that the Italian text is her grandmother's writings as passed down in her famly tradition from Italy. If so then this would mean that her grandmother did not possess the necessary command of Italian (and yet is described as a native who was raised in Italy). Another problem in The Complete Book of the Holy Strega is the English text itself. In my book I wrote in the Introduction that my text is a paraphrase of oral and written Italian material. In other words, the English is my personal creation. And yet, Aradia della Toscana presents the exact wordage from my book as the translation of her grandmother's material (which she states is hundreds of years old). How she thought she would get away with this deception is puzzling.

One might assume that this person lacks intelligence, but she actually appears to be clever and put some thought into how to craft a deception. For example, she put a copyright notice dated 1977 in her book, The Complete Book of the Holy Strega. My copyright is 1981, and I assume that when caught as a plagiarist her plan was to claim that I stole her book. There are a couple of problems here for her. One is that she would not be able to produce an official copyright in court but I can.

Another problem is that she included several drawings in her so-called 1977 copy that were actually drawn four years later by one of my initiates. The copy of her book, The Complete Book of the Holy Strega, that I now own states that it is a copy of the second printing, 1977. But of course that is impossible. One of the images used in this copy is an old Italian illustration from a fairytale book that I reworked in Adobe Photoshop in 2007 and placed on the Stregheria.com website early last year. Clearly this image was captured by Aradia della Toscana from the website sometime in 2007, and yet appears in the so-called 1977 printing of her book The Complete Book of the Holy Strega. Well, on second thought maybe we should question this person's intelligence afterall.

In the end the question of the day becomes why did this person steal my work and present it as her own? I can't answer that for her, but I do wonder how she reconciles the spiritual nature of the teachings in the book with her behavior of intellectual theft and plagiarism (not to mention perpetrating a lie).

I believe that a person should obtain the results of his or her labor. In this light, Aradia della Toscana (aka Lady Strega, and Aradia de Toscana) should receive what she has worked very hard for, and that is to be exposed for what she did. It is my hope that what I have written here will help accomplish such justice.

Anyone with information on this person's legal name, email address, or physical address, please contact me at: grimassi@earthlink.net

Due to what I regard as an intentional misrepresentation, being fostered by author A.J Drew, regarding my reasons for withdrawing from his event, I am posting the actual reasons here.

The following is a joint statement from several of the authors (myself included) who, with two additional authors, collectively withdrew from Mr. Drew's event.

We, the undersigned, were invited to the Real Witches Ball (RWB), and gratefully accepted. We hoped our participation would add to the event and encourage greater community attendance and involvement. Due to misinformation being spread regarding our withdrawal from the event, we feel compelled to make the following statement:

Recently, several months after our acceptance, we learned a ritual had been added to the event. We were not informed of the ritual prior to our acceptance of the invitation, nor did representatives of the RWB inform us of this change. We learned of it from outside sources.

Had we known that the RWB would focus (as indicated by the importance placed on it on the RWB website) on a political protest in the form of a negative ritual wherein living people are sacrificed in effigy, we would not have accepted the invitation. In our judgment the ritual is a type of black magic and vigilantism. The design of the ritual as described to us could have a negative impact on the community and may be psychologically deleterious to some participants. As a result, we have decided to not participate in this year's event.

We take this ethical action at great cost to ourselves. The unilateral changes made without notification by the Real Witches Ball violated and voided our agreements, and as other venues will have already scheduled appearances by speakers for that time period, we are locked out.

We wish to state, without hesitation or equivocation, that we denounce and decry any form of interpersonal abuse, including child abuse, spousal abuse, parental abuse, or destructive manipulation. We firmly support and encourage any who have suffered such abuse to seek aid from trained professionals in overcoming its insidious effects. We believe the support of the community can be highly positive when added to this professional healing work. This does not include participation in negative rituals.

P.S. Following my posting on the Pagan Nation website in order to bring to light why the authors actually withdrew in mass, we are told that changes are now being made to this ritual by Mr. Drew and some of his associates at Pagan Nation. These changes are currently being kept secret from the general membership of Pagan Nation and are unknown to the above signed authors. We hope that the changes are positive ethical ones not designed to harm anyone.

Other Websites of Interest

Correcting Misrepresentations