Neopaganism in Italy

Gemistus Plethon, who was from Mistras (near the Mani Peninsula—where paganism had endured until the 12th century) encouraged the Medici, descendants of the Maniot Latriani dynasty, to found the Neoplatonic Academy in Florence, helping to spark the Renaissance.

[6][7] Since the early 20th century there has been a resurgence of neopaganism in Italy within esoteric circles, spearheaded by the "Schola Italica" founded by Amedeo Rocco Armentano, who believed that Italian tradition had its main influences from the Pythagorean mysteries as well as Hermeticism.

In the 1920s, with perennialist philosopher Julius Evola and disciple Giulio Parise, he founded a "magical" chain called Gruppo di Ur, an esoteric fellowship that attracted other Pythagoreans from various backgrounds.

The document explicitly claimed that Italy's victory in World War I and the subsequent rise of fascism were supposedly facilitated, if not determined, by certain Etrusco-Roman rites performed following a mysterious discovery of ancient magical artifacts.

[12] Adherents to the modern reconstructionism of this ancient witchcraft consider Charles Godfrey Leland's book Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) as a reference text, the first to explore such pre-Christian pagan cults that purportedly survived in Italy.

[14] Today, Italian neopaganism, akin to Wicca in the Anglo-Saxon world, seeks to recover this Old Religion|primordial religiosity, based on an animistic view of nature, believed to be inhabited by invisible creatures and spirits,[15] along with the practice of herbs, formulas, and spells often used in conjunction with sacraments and prayers of the Catholic Church.