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[Regions of Italy] 
[Back to Sardinia]
Some years ago, in Rome, my friend Fiamma was having a run of really bad luck--absolutely nothing was going right. To her it was obvious that someone had put a curse on her by planting a doll or some object in her apartment. The only solution was to call in a witch and have the place exorcised.
At first, I laughed, sure that she was kidding me. But she wasn't. She was dead serious and took immediate steps to hire the best person she could find.
All my exorcism experience being Hollywood-based, I was quite surprised that the witch was an ordinary-looking person who went walking around Fiamma's apartment, searching every nook and cranny--places I never would have dreamed of--for the object that had been used to throw the malocchio (evil eye) on my friend. I had expected at least a bit of chanting or maybe a bubbling witch's brew on the stove containing a toad or a bat's wing. But there was nothing like that. To be honest, I was keenly disappointed that it was so lacking in mystery.
Not too long after that, I was telling my friend Luisa, born and bred on Sardinia, how funny it was that Fiamma believed in such things. Luisa was unamused, and told me about the witches of Sardinia.
Ordinarily, she wouldn't give out that sort of information, especially to a non-Italian. In fact, when this occurred I had already known her for years and never once had she mentioned anything about sorcery, magic, or anything of the kind.
She told me that the witches of Sardinia are very secretive. They speak only in the sardo dialect, which is really almost a different language. Practically every village has a witch but outsiders can never find out who they are. The majority of them are female; a mother passes her secrets down to only one of her daughters, starting from when the girl is very little. If she has no daughter, the witch takes her secrets with her to the grave. There are very few male witches and Luisa said she had never known of one in all her years growing up in Sardinia. But she had heard of them. A male witch is called a minechicudet (omine chi iscudet--literally, the man who sends away.) There is nothing written about these Sardinian magic-makers, male or female: it's all word of mouth.
Generally, the witch is a beautiful woman; almost always, she is married with children. But her husband and family come second to her calling. When townspeople seek her services, she usually gives them free of charge. She works her magic by creating special chants and dispelling potions, and is paid in household and farm goods.
The filtro di amore (love potion) is what is most sought after, especially by young women. The second most asked-for service is the removal of a malocchio, as was the case with Fiamma. But, Luisa informed me, the Sardinian witch doesn't go searching in the house for the object that caused the curse. Instead, she drops a stone into a glass of salted water. Somehow, as the stone sinks the curse is removed--or maybe it's the way in which the stone sinks that removes the curse. Luisa didn't know.
Another way the witch removes a curse is to have you give her some of your intimate apparel; she makes a chant over it in secret, gives you back the clothing and the curse is removed.
This is white magic, good magic. But then, unfortunately, there is black magic. How much black magic the witches perform is unknown; it simply isn't spoken of. But if the witch is willing to do black magic, she will--very hush hush--make a doll out of cork or rags, then stick a pin in the shoulder or the leg. The person who commissioned the curse then hides the doll in a secret place in the cursed one's home, probably on top of a ceiling beam or under an eave or beneath a floorboard. In short time, the person starts having a series of misfortunes or gets a terrible ache in the shoulder or a dreadful pain in the leg. And until the object is discovered and removed from the house, his woes continue.
As for Fiamma, her Roman witch never found a doll or any other cursing object, even after returning two or three times to search. Fiamma went to several psychics, but her bad luck and poor health continue to this day and she has finally decided to move to Spain. Good luck, Fiamma, I hope it works!
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