Primordial Memory: Reclaiming Sacred Energy Beyond Fear

An Italian American Artist’s Journey into Ancestral Cosmology

By Danielle Marie Fusco

There is something older than religion.

Older than dogma.

Older than the Church.

Older than the word “pagan.”

Older than the word “witch.”

There is something primordial.

Before there were temples, there was sky.Before there were saints, there were stars.Before there were intermediaries, there was breath.

As an Italian American woman, a performing artist, a lineage seeker, and someone who moves through the world as an empath and intuitive, my journey into ancestral reclamation has taken me beyond aesthetics, beyond folk dance, beyond ritual gesture ... into cosmology itself.

Not fantasy. Not spectacle.

But the ancient human relationship to energy.

Before Paganism: The Primordial Human

Long before structured pagan religions developed in the Mediterranean, early humans practiced animism ( the belief that animals, landscapes, celestial bodies, and natural forces held spirit, agency, life.)

This predates:

• Classical Roman religion

• Greek pantheons

• Organized polytheism

• Christianity

Archaeology whispers the story:

• Burial rituals hinting at afterlife or spirit continuity

• Venus figurines embodying fertility and abundance

• Megalithic structures aligned with solstices and celestial events

• Cave paintings that suggest altered states and cosmological awareness

These were not “witches” in the medieval sense. They were humans relating directly to land, sky, and mystery.

This is what I mean by primordial.

It is not rebellion, it is remembrance.

Energy Is Not Mysticism, It Is Physics

When mystics speak of energy, we are not making things up. Modern physics proves it:

• Matter is energy (E=mc²)

• The universe is composed of fields and forces

• Electromagnetic energy permeates space

• The human body generates measurable electrical activity

Nikola Tesla spoke poetically about energy, frequency, and vibration. He may be misquoted in spiritual circles, but the truth remains: reality is not solid as it seems. Ancient cosmologies understood this intuitively. They didn’t need quantum mechanics, they had metaphor:

Spirit, Breath.Chi, Pneuma, Ruach. Different words, same recognition: life is animated by force.

Magic, stripped of Hollywood glamour, is conscious engagement with relationship — between mind, body, environment, and intention.

Words alter neurochemistry.Beliefs alter behavior.Ritual alters psychological state.Collective intention alters social systems.

This is not glitter. This is science meeting mysticism.

How Sacred Practices Became Feared

European witch hunts (15th–17th centuries) were not simply about pagan survival. Fear was fueled by:

• Religious fragmentation

• Political instability

• Economic hardship

• Gendered anxieties

• Church centralization

• Witch-hunting manuals like the Malleus Maleficarum

Italy experienced trials too, though fewer executions than Germany or Scotland. Accusations often targeted:

• Women healers

• Midwives

• Folk practitioners

• Socially vulnerable individuals

As medicine professionalized under male-dominated systems, female healing authority became suspect. Folk magic was reframed as superstition. Mystical autonomy became heresy. The problem was never magic itself .... it was control. Who mediates between human and divine? Who defines orthodoxy? Who controls knowledge?

These questions echo through time.

The Derogation of the Sacred

Sacred practices became polarized:

On one side: institutional religion. On the other: the caricature of the witch — evil, chaotic, satanic.

Historically, most folk practitioners were neither satanists nor dangerous. In Southern Italy, folk Catholicism blended prayer, saint veneration, charms, and herbal knowledge.The women removing malocchio were performing protective ritual. They were not worshiping evil. The problem was never ritual. It was unsanctioned ritual.

Modern Sensationalism and Moral Panic

Societies repeatedly amplify fear:

• The Satanic Panic of the 1980s in the U.S. revealed how hysteria, media, and flawed investigation criminalized sacred practice.

It becomes easy to say: Magic = evil Mysticism = danger Autonomy = threat

When fear dominates, nuance disappears.

Magic Is Neutral. Intention Is Not.

Magic, as engagement with energy, is neutral. Intention is everything.

Language can bless or harm. Belief can liberate or control. Ritual magnifies intention.

The responsibility lies not in abolishing ritual, but in cultivating ethical consciousness:

• Am I acting from domination or healing?

• Ego or service?

• Illusion or truth?

An Italian American Lens

As an Italian American woman reclaiming Southern lineage, I live inside a culture shaped by:

• Roman Catholic dominance

• Inquisitorial history

• Agricultural ritual memory

• Folk healing traditions

• Migration trauma

• Patriarchal family structures

I do not reject my ancestry. I do not reject faith. I reject fear.

To access Source without an intermediary is not anti-religious — it is mystical. Christian mystics, Sufi poets, Kabbalists, Indigenous peoples — all affirm the same.

Direct experience of the divine has always existed alongside institutions.

Sacred Rage as Awakening

The world feels restless. People feel disconnected from land, body, meaning.

Sacred rage is refusal. Refusal to outsource divinity. Refusal to accept erasure of ancestral knowledge. Rage without discernment becomes chaos. The question is not how we burn it down — the question is how we build with clarity.

Reclaiming Primordial Awareness

Reclamation is not reenacting Iron Age ritual. It is s not abandoning science. It is not conspiracy.

It is remembering:

• We are biological beings in a cosmic ecosystem

• Consciousness interacts with physiology

• Ritual organizes intention

• Land shapes psyche

• Words create worlds

Pre-pagan awareness was simple: Sky. Earth. Breath. Cycle.

No intermediary. No idol. No hierarchy.

Later, theology, patriarchy, law, and empire layered complexity onto this simplicity. Not all structure is evil. But unexamined structure breeds control.

Our Responsibility Now

If magic is relationship with energy, our responsibility is:

• Intellectual rigor

• Historical literacy

• Ethical clarity

• Psychological maturity

• Cultural humility

As artists, healers, lineage holders, we must:

• Separate documented history from mythic symbolism

• Avoid repeating unfounded claims

• Refuse fear-based narratives

• Refuse spiritual consumerism

• Refuse weaponization of mysticism

True awakening is sober, not sensational.

We Are Not Powerless

We are participants in evolving consciousness. Knowledge of connection to Source was never extinguished — only obscured, distorted, institutionalized, commercialized.

It lives in breath. In attention. In integrity.

Beyond Illusion

To transcend illusion does not mean abandoning reality.

It means engaging it fully:

• Reading history critically

• Studying anthropology

• Understanding physics

• Honoring ancestors

• Reclaiming ritual responsibly

• Creating art that embodies truth

This is not just an American story. This is a human story.

And for me, as an Italian American woman walking between land memory and cosmic awareness, the work is this:

Not to fight darkness with fantasy, But to illuminate complexity with clarity.

The primordial was never about spectacle. It was about alignment.

Perhaps awakening does not look like revolution. Perhaps it looks like remembering we are already connected.