La Befana: the Italian Christmas Witch

Website: https://chthonia.net
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The last podcast of 2024 focuses on the grandmotherly figure of La Befana, a witch who appears on Epiphany Eve to bring gifts (or coal) and to sweep the house. Children may not look at her without suffering consequences. The origins of La Befana may lie in an Etruscan/Sabine goddess, and the paradoxical nature and perception of this witch figure may tell us something about the uneasy relationship of a patriarchal world with Nature.