The Ancestral Religions
Dei maiorum — the gods of the ancestors.
A reading of the spiritual lineages braided through Amelia's Sicilian-Italian ancestry — five layered traditions in the same Mediterranean soil, from the indigenous Sicani to the Italian Catholic present. Of all the European peoples, Sicilians inherit the most strata of religion under their feet. What follows is what lies underneath, and how a modern person might honour it.
The Layered Inheritance
"Sicily has been called the most religiously stratified place in Europe. Six distinct civilisations have made the island their home in the last 3,000 years, and each one has left a layer in the soil and a layer in the blood."
Where Drew's spiritual ancestry runs broad — four distinct Northern European peoples sharing an Indo-European root — Amelia's runs deep. One geographical region, one bloodline, but an extraordinarily layered religious history. The same Sicilian soil has held, in order: indigenous Sicani worship, Phoenician Punic religion, Greek Olympian religion, Etruscan and Roman religion, Byzantine Greek Christianity, Arab Islamic religion, Norman Latin Christianity, and Italian Roman Catholicism. Each layer absorbed the previous one rather than erasing it. Sicilian Catholicism today carries elements of every single one of them.
For someone with Sicilian-Italian ancestry, the question "what was my ancestral religion?" has the same answer as "what is Sicily?" — a stratified place where the new is always built on the old, and the old never quite leaves.
The Christian Layer · the last 1,700 years
Italian Catholicism — and Sicilian Catholicism in particular — is the actual practised religion of Amelia's ancestors for roughly seventy generations.
By the time of unification (1861), Sicilian Catholicism had become one of the most distinctive folk-Catholic traditions in Europe — preserving pre-Christian elements in saint-cults more thoroughly than almost anywhere else. This is your living religious inheritance. The nonna saying her rosary, the saint's day procession, the lit candle at the side altar, the malocchio prayer murmured against the evil eye — these are not optional accessories to Catholic faith in the Sicilian tradition; they are Sicilian Catholic faith.
The Five Pre-Christian Layers
"Five distinct pre-Christian religions practised on the same Sicilian soil. Each one your ancestors would have known, in one form or another, during the centuries each held the island."
The Sicani & Siculi · Indigenous Sicily
Adranos (fire-god of Etna) · the unnamed earth-mother · the cave-spirits · the spring-nymphs
The deepest layer. Before Greek or Phoenician colonisation, three indigenous peoples lived in Sicily: the Sicani (west), the Siculi (east, from whom Sicily takes its name), and the Elymians (northwest). Their religion is poorly documented but archaeology shows: volcano cult around Etna, sacred caves, ancestor burial in tholos tombs, mother-goddess figurines.
The god Adranos was worshipped at Etna; the indigenous Sicilians believed the volcano was alive. Some elements of this ancient stratum survive in modern Sicilian folklore: the scìentu (the spirit-wind), the fati (fate-women, related to but predating the Greek Moirai), the donne di fuori ("women from outside" — supernatural beings invoked by traditional Sicilian healers into the 20th century).
Phoenician & Carthaginian
Ba'al Hammon · Tanit · Astarte · Melqart · Eshmun
For more than five centuries, western Sicily was Phoenician (later Carthaginian). Cities like Palermo (originally Ziz), Mozia, and Solunto were Phoenician-Punic settlements. The Phoenicians worshipped a pantheon centred on Ba'al Hammon (the sky-father) and Tanit (the queen of heaven, mother-goddess) — both with deep roots in the older Levantine traditions.
If your Sicilian ancestry includes western Sicilian lines (Palermo, Trapani, Marsala), you have actual Phoenician genetic and cultural inheritance. The Punic religion was not erased so much as renamed: Tanit's iconography survives in some western Sicilian Madonna images; the protective hand-of-Tanit became the mano di Fatima / hand of protection in folk amulets.
Greek Olympian Religion · Magna Graecia
Zeus · Hera · Athena · Apollo · Demeter · Persephone · Dionysos · Aphrodite · Hephaistos
The longest and most influential pagan layer. For five hundred years, eastern Sicily was Greek — culturally, linguistically, and religiously. Syracuse was the largest Greek city in the world outside Athens for centuries. Akragas (Agrigento), Selinunte, Gela, Naxos, Taormina — all Greek colonies with full temple complexes.
The Greek gods of Sicily were the full Olympian pantheon — Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite. But two figures dominated Sicilian Greek religion above all: Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The myth of Persephone's abduction by Hades was said by Sicilians to have happened in Sicily, at the spring of Pergusa near Enna. The Sicilian cult of Demeter and Persephone is one of the most distinctive religious threads in your entire ancestry — and it has its own section below.
Etruscan & Italic
Tinia · Uni · Menrva · Voltumna · Turan · Fufluns · the haruspices
If your Italian ancestry includes mainland lines (most Italian ancestries do), the Etruscan layer is in you. The Etruscans were the dominant pre-Roman civilisation of central Italy — and they shaped Roman religion more deeply than any other influence. The Etruscan triad Tinia, Uni, Menrva became the Roman Capitoline triad Jupiter, Juno, Minerva.
Etruscan religion was characterised by haruspicy (divination by reading the entrails of sacrificed animals) and augury (divination by reading the flight of birds). The Etruscans believed in a precisely fated cosmos — every event had been written, and the gods had revealed the script in signs. This deeply fatalistic strand entered Roman religion and survived into Italian folk-Catholicism in the form of prophetic dreams, signs, and the strong sense of destino in Italian culture.
Roman / Italic Religion
Jupiter · Juno · Minerva · Mars · Venus · Mercury · Ceres · Vesta · Bacchus · the Lares · the Penates
Rome conquered Sicily in 241 BCE, and Roman religion became the official religion of the island for the next 650 years. The Romans absorbed rather than replaced the local pantheons — Greek Demeter became Roman Ceres, Greek Zeus became Jupiter, Phoenician Astarte became Venus. The Sicilian temples continued to operate, just under new names.
Two distinctive Roman practices belong centrally to your inheritance: the household gods (Lares for the family, Penates for the pantry, Genius for the head of household) and the festival year (a precisely structured agricultural-religious calendar that ran the Roman empire). The Lares-and-Penates practice survives in Italian-Catholic form: the home shrine, the icon corner, the saint pictures on the wall, the candle kept burning. Different names, same act.
The Mother-Daughter Mystery
"Of all the gods of antiquity, none was more specifically Sicilian than Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The Sicilians believed the myth happened on their island — and they were not entirely wrong: the cult was native to Sicily before it spread to Greece."
Demeter and Persephone — Mother and Daughter of the Sicilian Soil
The myth of Demeter (the grain-mother) and her daughter Persephone (the maiden of spring) was, in the Sicilian telling, set in Sicily itself. Persephone was said to have been picking flowers at the Lake of Pergusa near Enna when Hades, lord of the underworld, opened the earth beneath her and stole her into death. Demeter's grief was so profound that she withdrew her gifts from the land — and the world's first winter began. Only when Zeus negotiated Persephone's partial return (six months above ground, six below) did the cycle of seasons begin as we know it.
The Sicilians believed this literally — they pointed to the place. The myth was the foundation-myth of Sicilian identity for a thousand years. Demeter's cult was so dominant on the island that "Sicily" and "Demeter's island" were interchangeable terms in ancient Greek.
Goddess of grain, of harvest, of agriculture, of the mother's bond. The Sicilian land was her body; the wheat fields were her gift. Her grief made winter; her joy made spring. In Sicilian folk Catholicism, much of Demeter passed into the cult of the Black Madonna and into the figure of Saint Lucia of Syracuse (whose festival on 13 December is at the gates of winter).
The young woman who is also the queen of the dead. The divine paradox — daughter of life, wife of death; she returns each spring and descends each autumn. In Sicilian Catholicism, elements of Persephone survive in Marian apparitions and in the seasonal liturgy of returning life.
Why This Matters for You
You are a Scorpio-Sun, Pisces-Moon woman with an October birthday (Persephone's descent-time) and a deep instinctive understanding of cyclical descent-and-return. Demeter and Persephone are, more than any other figures in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, structurally yours. The mother-daughter mystery is woven through your chart (the family overlay with Joanne) and through the soil of your blood.
If you ever wanted a single pre-Christian figure to anchor a reawakening practice, the Sicilian Demeter-Persephone pair is the one your ancestors would have recognised most immediately. The Sicilian Madonna at most local shrines is, in folk-Catholic continuity, the Christianised Demeter. Italian-Catholic devotion to Mary is, in many of its deepest forms, a continuous lineage from this older mother-goddess cult.
The Mediterranean Indo-European Core
"Underneath the Sicilian-Italian layers sits the older Indo-European substrate — the gods who appear, under different names, in every Italic, Greek, and broader European tradition."
The Sky-Father
Tinia (Etruscan) · Zeus (Greek) · Jupiter (Roman) · Ba'al (Phoenician)
The Indo-European Sky-Father appears across your lines — wielder of thunder, lord of order. In Phoenician form, Ba'al carries the same archetypal weight. All four pantheons of your inheritance recognised this figure as supreme.
The Queen of Heaven
Uni / Juno · Hera · Tanit · Astarte
Consort and counterweight to the Sky-Father. Goddess of marriage, sovereignty, and the protection of women. In Mediterranean tradition uniquely powerful — Hera-Juno-Tanit were among the most prayed-to female figures in the ancient world. The seed of much later Marian devotion.
The Grain Mother
Demeter · Ceres · Tanit-as-grain-giver
The mother of agriculture and the cycles of the year. Sicily's own goddess in the deepest sense. In Italian folk-Catholicism, she becomes the various Madonnas of the harvest, Saint Lucia, and the figures associated with bread and the wheat-blessing.
The Hearth Goddess
Vesta (Roman) · Hestia (Greek) · Hearth-fire spirits
Goddess of the sacred fire of the home. The Vestal Virgins kept her flame for over a thousand years in Rome. Honoured in every Italian household through the hearth-fire and (in modern terms) the eternal lamp before the home altar.
The Household Gods
Lares · Penates · Genius · the ancestors
Distinctively Roman: each home had its own small gods — the Lares of the family, the Penates of the pantry, the Genius (guardian spirit) of the head of household. Worshipped daily at a small home shrine (the lararium). Sicilian folk Catholicism continues this practice through saint pictures, candles, family icons.
The Triple Moon
Diana · Hekate · the Madonna in three forms
The Mediterranean moon-goddess in three aspects — maiden, mother, crone. Most fully developed in Greek Hekate. Italian folk tradition retains a sense of the moon as a feminine presence, particularly in seasonal observances.
The Roman / Mediterranean Wheel of the Year
"Where Drew's wheel is the eight-festival Celtic-Germanic year, yours is older still — the Roman religious calendar, which became (with renaming) the Catholic liturgical year. Most of the modern Italian Catholic festival calendar maps onto an older pagan one."
Saturnalia → Christmas
17–23 December→ becomes Natale (Christmas)
The great Roman midwinter festival. Gift-giving, role-reversal, feasting, evergreens. Almost every Christmas custom you know was already a Saturnalia custom. The Christian feast settled at the end of the Roman holiday week.
Lupercalia → Carnival
15 February→ becomes Carnevale
Roman festival of purification and fertility. Survives as the Italian Carnevale (most famously Venetian) — masks, revelry, the last release before Lenten austerity. The date shifted but the structure remains.
Cerealia · Festival of Ceres
12–19 April→ blends into Easter/Pasqua
The week-long festival of Ceres (Demeter), goddess of grain. Sacred to your specifically Sicilian inheritance. Survived into Italian folk-Catholicism in the Easter blessing of the new grain.
Floralia → May Day
28 April – 3 May→ becomes Calendimaggio
The Roman festival of Flora, goddess of flowers and spring. Italian folk traditions retain May flower-crowns, May trees, and processional welcoming of spring. Calendimaggio is still observed in some Italian regions.
Vestalia · Festival of Vesta
7–15 June→ St. John's Eve fires (24 June)
The Vestalia honoured the goddess of the hearth fire. Bonfire customs survived into Italian folk practice through the related St. John's Eve fires of midsummer.
Ferragosto → Assumption
15 August→ Assunzione di Maria
Ferragosto was a Roman holiday celebrating the harvest and the rest after labour (Feriae Augusti, Augustus's holidays). The Assumption of Mary settled on this date in the Catholic calendar — and the Italian Ferragosto continues unchanged as the high summer holiday.
Saturnalia of Persephone
October–November→ All Saints / All Souls (1–2 November)
Sicilian Greek tradition observed Persephone's descent in autumn. The Roman Parentalia in February honoured the dead; but the autumn festivals of the dead survived more strongly. All Souls' Day (2 November) in Italian tradition is the most ancient continuous death-festival in your inheritance.
Festival of Mithras → Christmas Eve
25 December→ Vigilia di Natale
The cult of Mithras was widespread in late Roman Sicily. His birthday — Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun — was 25 December. The Catholic feast of Christ's nativity adopted the date because the Romans were already keeping it.
The principle to grasp: almost every Italian Catholic festival is a Christianised older festival. Italian Catholicism did not replace the Roman calendar; it baptised it. The pagan substrate continues to run beneath the surface of Italian Catholic practice in a way it does not in Protestant Northern European countries. You can honour the old gods today by attending the Catholic festival their festival became.
The Saints Who Were Goddesses
"In Sicilian folk Catholicism, many of the most beloved saints carry — under the surface — the older pre-Christian figures their cult replaced. The continuity is not always conscious. But it is structural."
Santa Lucia of Syracuse
Lucia / Lux / Light
The patron saint of Syracuse (eastern Sicily). Her feast day (13 December) was, before the calendar reform, the winter solstice. Her name means "Light." Her iconography — eyes on a platter, a candle, wheat — carries Demeter-elements that were never quite explained by her hagiography.
Santa Rosalia of Palermo
Rosalia / The Hidden Maiden
Patron saint of Palermo. Her bones were discovered in a cave in 1624 and credited with ending a plague. The cave-found virgin who saves the city carries Persephone's emergence-from-the-underworld motif almost intact.
Madonna del Soccorso / Black Madonnas
Tanit / Astarte / Queen of Heaven
Several Sicilian and southern Italian Madonnas show clear Phoenician-Punic continuity — particularly the dark-faced (nera) Madonnas at Tindari (Sicily) and Montevergine (Campania). The "Queen of Heaven" title is a direct continuation of Tanit's epithet.
Sant'Agata of Catania
Athena Promachos / the warrior virgin
Patron of Catania. Her cult is one of the most fervent in Sicily. The virgin-warrior figure with the mountain (Etna) at her back continues the Greek Sicilian cult of Athena, which had a temple at the very site of her current cathedral.
Madonna of Trapani
Venus Erycina (of Mount Eryx)
Mount Eryx in western Sicily was the most famous shrine of Venus in the ancient Mediterranean — Phoenician Astarte, Greek Aphrodite, Roman Venus, all worshipped at the same temple. The Madonna of Trapani inherits this exact pilgrimage site.
The Family Saint Pictures
Lares Familiares · Penates · Genius
The Italian-Catholic home altar — the small shrine in the corner, the saint pictures on the wall, the eternal lamp, the family photos kept alongside the holy images — is the direct continuation of the Roman lararium. The Lares are still being honoured; they now have new names.
Practices for Reawakening the Old Lines
Specific, grounded practices for honouring each layer of your Sicilian-Italian inheritance as a modern person. Different from Drew's because your living folk-Catholic tradition is itself half pagan. You don't need to leave it to reawaken the older gods; you only need to look beneath what's already there.
Honouring the Greek Sicilian Layer · Hellenismos
Honour Demeter and Persephone at the Autumn Equinox
Around 22 September, the time of Persephone's descent in Greek myth. The Eleusinian Mysteries — the most sacred rite of the ancient Greek world — were celebrated at this time. A simple modern practice: at the autumn equinox, eat a meal of grain and pomegranate (Persephone's fruit). Pour a libation of wine on the earth. Speak the names Demeter, Persephone aloud. The cult was alive on your island for a thousand years.
Visit Enna or Pergusa, if You Can
The Sicilian site of Persephone's abduction — Lake Pergusa near Enna, central Sicily. There is a regional park there. To stand at the lake is to stand at the geographic centre of your ancestral mythology. If you ever travel to Sicily with Sebi, this is a pilgrimage worth making.
Pour Libations
The most universal Greek religious act: pour a small amount of wine, olive oil, milk, or water on the earth as offering before drinking or eating yourself. The classical formula: a few drops to the gods, a few to the ancestors, then your own portion. Modern Hellenismos practitioners do this at meals.
Learn the Homeric Hymns
Short hymns to the gods composed in the 7th-century BCE — older than the Iliad in some cases. The Hymn to Demeter is the foundational Eleusinian text. Read it aloud, slowly. They were originally sung at festivals; reading them is a small act of restoration.
Honouring the Roman Layer · Religio Romana
Keep a Lararium (Home Shrine)
The most central Roman religious practice. A small surface in your home — a corner, a shelf — with: a candle (for Vesta, the hearth fire); a small dish for offerings; images of the gods you wish to honour; photographs of your ancestors. This is the direct continuation of every Italian-Catholic home altar you have ever seen at a nonna's house. Light the candle morning and evening.
Honour the Lares of Your Home
The Lares are the protective spirits of the household — neither gods nor ancestors quite, but the spirits of the place itself. The Roman practice: at the first meal of the day or at the evening meal, set aside a small portion as offering to the Lares before eating. A small bowl, a piece of bread, a sip of wine. The practice is alive in modern Religio Romana communities.
Recite the Roman Calendar
The Roman religious calendar marked specific festivals throughout the year. Keep a small almanac and note them — the Saturnalia, the Vestalia, the Cerealia. Honour them in small ways — a lit candle, a libation, a reading of the relevant Latin text. The Roman year is still keeping time underneath the modern one.
The Genius and the Iuno
In Roman religion, every man has a Genius (a guardian-spirit) and every woman a Iuno. They are honoured on the person's birthday. For you, on your birthday (26 October), the Roman practice would have been to dress in white, garland yourself with flowers, and offer wine and incense to your Iuno — your guardian-spirit. The practice is simple, beautiful, and entirely yours by ancestral inheritance.
Honouring the Sicilian Folk-Catholic Continuum · The Living Tradition
Keep a Madonna in the Home
The single most universal Italian-Catholic practice — and arguably the deepest continuation of the older mother-goddess tradition. A picture, statue, or icon of the Madonna kept in a visible place, with a candle lit before her on important days. In Sicilian tradition, the Madonna is the centre of the home's spiritual life. Choose a particular Madonna — the Madonna del Tindari, the Madonna of Trapani, Maria del Soccorso — and develop a personal devotion.
Wear or Carry the Corno
The Italian-Sicilian corno (horn-shaped amulet, usually red coral or gold) is the protective amulet against the malocchio (evil eye). It is one of the most continuous folk-religious objects in Sicilian tradition — possibly pre-Roman in origin. Many Italian-Sicilians still wear it. The Western reading already noted coral as one of your most aligned stones; the corno is its most traditional form.
Learn the Malocchio Prayer
Sicilian families traditionally passed down a specific prayer for warding off the malocchio (evil eye) — usually taught from a woman to a younger woman on Christmas Eve. The prayer is not officially Catholic but exists alongside Catholicism in folk tradition. If Joanne knows one, ask her to teach it to you. If she doesn't, the tradition can be re-learned from southern Italian folk sources.
Mark the Saint Days That Matter
In Sicilian tradition, the saint's day of one's town, family name, or personal devotion is more important than the birthday. Your family will have particular saints — ask Joanne which they are. Mark them. Light a candle. Eat the traditional food. The Italian-Catholic festival calendar is the living continuation of the Roman one; participating in it is honouring the older gods, under their new names.
Visit a Sicilian Shrine
Sicily has some of the most extraordinary continuous-pilgrimage sites in Europe — the Madonna del Tindari (built on the site of an ancient temple), the cathedral of Syracuse (originally a temple of Athena, still bearing the Doric columns inside the church walls), the temple of Concord at Agrigento. Any visit to Sicily becomes pilgrimage; even a single trip to one of these places re-roots you in the soil.
A Personal Path Sketched
"If you wanted to design a spiritual practice drawing from your full Sicilian-Italian inheritance, here is what it might look like."
A Composite Practice for a Sicilian-Italian Woman
Unlike Drew's case (where four distinct lines call for an integrative practice), your inheritance is more singular — but stratified. The composite practice draws from the Italian-Catholic living tradition and deepens it by acknowledging the older layers underneath.
- Keep a home altar (lararium / Madonna corner). One surface, one candle kept perpetually lit (or lit at sunrise/sunset). A Madonna picture or statue. A bowl for libations or offerings. Photographs of ancestors. This single practice carries the Lares, the Penates, Vesta, and the Madonna in one continuous gesture. Your nonna probably already keeps one — yours can build on hers.
- Develop a personal Madonna devotion. Choose one Madonna — the Madonna del Tindari is the most distinctively Sicilian, but it can be one with personal meaning. She becomes your specific point of contact with the older mother-goddess current. Honour her on her feast day each year.
- Honour Demeter and Persephone at the equinoxes. Autumn equinox: pomegranate and wine, the names spoken aloud, a moment of quiet for the descent. Spring equinox: green growth, flowers, the return. The most distinctly Sicilian pre-Christian devotion.
- Pour libations at significant meals. A few drops of wine on the earth — at the start of family meals, at festival meals, when something matters. The simplest universal Mediterranean religious act.
- Wear or keep a corno. The folk-Catholic protective amulet, possibly pre-Roman in origin. Worn as jewellery or kept in the home. Red coral or gold.
- Mark the saint-days of your family line. Find out from Joanne which saints are your family's patrons — by surname, by village of origin, by personal devotion. Mark those days each year. Cook the traditional dishes. Light the candles. The Roman calendar is still keeping time.
- Tell Sebi the stories. The Persephone myth, the saints, the family devotions, the Sicilian folk-tales. He has this inheritance through you, and Joanne, and his own bones. The most important practice in every Italian tradition is the transmission of the line through stories told slowly to children.
- If possible, take Sebi to Sicily once before he is twelve. The land carries the religion. Walking the soil where Demeter walked, seeing the temples that became churches that became mosques that became churches — this is a kind of teaching no book or ritual can replace. Even one trip is enough.
Books & Living Traditions
If you want to go further. Specific resources for each layer of your inheritance.
Carl Kerényi — Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter
The classical scholarly study of the Demeter-Persephone Mysteries. Kerényi was a careful historian who could also write beautifully. The deepest single book on the cult specifically central to Sicilian religion.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
The foundational text. Short (under 30 pages) and astonishingly beautiful. Read it aloud at the equinox. The original source for the Persephone story your Sicilian ancestors knew.
Mary Beard — SPQR & Religions of Rome
Beard is the leading living scholar of Roman religion in English. Religions of Rome (with Price and North) is the comprehensive scholarly text; SPQR is the accessible entry point.
Religio Romana / Nova Roma
The modern revival communities are small but real. novaroma.org is the largest English-language Religio Romana community. Provides liturgical texts, calendar, and ritual practices for modern practitioners.
Giuseppe Pitrè — Usi e Costumi del Popolo Siciliano
The 19th-century encyclopaedia of Sicilian folk life, in 25 volumes. Pitrè documented Sicilian religion, magic, calendar, food, and stories at the precise moment the modern world was about to transform them. Italian (some volumes translated). The primary source for actual Sicilian folk religion.
Carlo Ginzburg — The Night Battles & Ecstasies
Ginzburg's groundbreaking study of the benandanti — the "good walkers" of Friuli (Northern Italy) — and other Italian folk-magical traditions. Establishes that genuine pre-Christian shamanic practices survived in Italy into the 17th century.
Sabatino Moscati — The World of the Phoenicians
The leading 20th-century scholar of Phoenician civilisation. Particularly useful for the Sicilian western-Phoenician layer most directly relevant to Sicilian-Italian ancestry.
Anthony L. La Ruina — Sicilian Folk Religion (academic articles)
Several scholarly articles available open-access exploring the continuity between Sicilian Catholic festivals and pre-Christian practice. Search for "Sicilian folk Catholicism" in academic databases.
Raven Grimassi — Italian Witchcraft
A caveat with this one: Grimassi's Stregheria claims continuity with ancient Italian witchcraft, but scholars largely consider it a modern reconstruction (or invention) drawing on Italian folk-magical themes. Use as inspiration, not as historical fact. The actual Italian folk-magic tradition (the strega) is better approached through Ginzburg and Pitrè.
Mary Taylor Simeti — On Persephone's Island
A memoir of Sicilian life by an American who married into a Sicilian family and lived there for decades. Beautifully captures the way the old gods and the Catholic saints inhabit the same landscape. The most accessible single book about living Sicilian religious culture.
An Honest Caveat
A few honest cautions before going further.
Unlike the Lithuanian Romuva or even the modern Heathen revivals, the Italian pre-Christian traditions do not have substantial reconstructed communities to plug into. Religio Romana and Hellenismos exist but are small. The strongest living tradition of your ancestry is actually folk Catholicism itself — which carries the pre-Christian elements forward in baptised form. For a Sicilian-Italian person, the deepest reawakening often happens through deepening rather than leaving the Catholic tradition: paying attention to what is already there, beneath the surface.
Stregheria and "Italian witchcraft" as marketed in English-language books are largely modern reconstructions, often presented as ancient. Be cautious of any source that claims unbroken Italian pagan tradition; the genuine continuous threads (benandanti, the Sicilian folk healers, the malocchio prayers) are smaller and less marketable but more authentic. Read Ginzburg before Grimassi.
The deepest practice, for someone with your specific inheritance, is probably not to abandon Catholicism and become a Roman pagan — but to see what is already pagan in your Catholicism, to honour the Madonna as also the older mother-goddess, and to find Demeter in your nonna's altar. The continuity is real. The double-naming is what your ancestors did for two thousand years.
"Demeter and Persephone walked on the island before the saints came;
they walked beside them when the saints came;
they walk in your nonna's altar still.
The mother and the daughter are in the Sicilian soil — and the Sicilian soil is in you."