Aradia

Aradia (アラディア) is a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal, introduced in Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index.

Etymology
is a central figure in , a 1899 book written by American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, allegedly based on material provided by an Italian woman called Maddalena, supposedly documenting the beliefs, rituals and religious text of pagan witches. The book was a major influence on and other forms of.

is said to be a goddess, daughter of and, who descended to the human world and became the first of all witches, teaching oppressed peasants witchcraft to use against the rich upper classes and the church.

Appearance
Aradia is described as a silver-haired girl looking around 17 or 18. She wears a wimple large enough to fall to her ankles, giving her a nun-like silhouette, but also wears as a skimpy dancer's outfit resembling a bikini variant and baring her feet and navel, the combination of which was apparently meant to look immoral.

Personality
Aradia expresses disinterest in things relating to the cross, considering it newfangled nonsense, and questioning if one would find anything of worth in people who rejected the witches of a bygone era yet appropriated their legends as part of their religion. However, Anna doubted that she was as fixated as she claimed and interpreted it as lip service, given the role she had to play and expectations as an advocate for witches, her position requiring her to always be skeptical of the cross's power.

Aradia moonbathes and forestbathes in order to calm herself.

Background
Aradia is a figure from a famous witchcraft grimoire (namely ),   presented as a report on legends conveyed to the author by an Italian witch in Tuscany. Said to be the daughter of and, Aradia was described as the "goddess of all witches", who supposedly took a physical body and descended to the human world to save persecuted witches and the poor from the wealthy church. In the story, all witches' sabbaths are used to worship her and involve rituals meant to teach people how to resist oppression from the rich. Although the legend was likely made up by the witch on the spot, Gerald Gardner would take the story as true and work it into the foundation of Wicca.

The background of the individual who took on the identity of Aradia as a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal is not fully known, but given her chosen persona and salvation conditions, as well as glimpses and references concerning her past, she was a witch for whom the witch hunts had never truly ended, even in the present day, and who sought to protect and save all witches around the world from persecution. One recent failure that affected her was the death of an old woman living alone in a forest who had been made the scapegoat for an illness and had her home set on fire, who had urged her to save the next one before dying in her arms.

Los Angeles Arc
Aradia had come into contact with Anna Sprengel at some point prior to the destruction of R&C Occultics on December 26th, and was with her at an unknown location in the aftermath. After a brief talk about the disposable pawn, the poisonous effect and chaos in the new age that it was meant to bring about, and a reference to Alice and the nonsense of Wonderland, Aradia told Anna that "everyone was waiting".

Post-Handcuffs Arc
On December 29th, Aradia brought Anna to their group's base, in a cruise ship in a flooded stadium in the middle of a rainforest, acting as her guide to the base and its members, but was dismayed to find Alice absent when she was going to introduce Anna to her.

After the events surrounding the crash of the Overhunting, as well as the battle in the Vanishing Tunnel, Alice was brought back from Academy City by Anna. Greeting Alice upon her return, Aradia and the others in the group were shocked and dismayed to find that Alice's newfound interest in Kamijou Touma had swayed her from using her magic to benefit their plans. Limited by the group's rule of not angering Alice, Aradia sets her sights on Touma, viewing him as a hindrance to their goal.

New Year's Eve Arc
As the cabal became split as to how to approach the issue of Kamijou Touma, Aradia was on the side of the Killers. On December 31st, she attempted to kill Touma, with the Bologna Succubus and Good Old Mary trying to thwart her.

New Year's Arc
After being defeated on New Year's Eve, an unconscious and bound Aradia was brought by Touma's group when they returned to Academy City. In their custody between January 1st and 2nd, during the group's time at the Kamijou Residence, their New Year's shrine visit and the visit to the Bridge Builders Cabal's newly-established consulate in School District 12 following Alice's invitation, Aradia spent most of her time with her hands and feet bound with duct tape to prevent her from using her magic, with Touma holding her hand with Imagine Breaker when that was not possible.

On the morning of January 3rd, as Touma was considering his opposition to the cabal's decision to immediately execute Anna Sprengel, Aradia managed to escape his watch but was stopped by Othinus, who talked about Touma's circumstances and convinced Aradia that Touma could fit the conditions for her support. She was subsequently cut down by Trismegistus, a fellow Killer, when he decided Touma needed to die, but was saved by Good Old Mary. Escaping the consulate grounds as it was caught up in the resulting battle, Aradia encountered Aleister Crowley's group as they were analyzing the Transcendents and their plans. When the injured Touma freed the sealed Anna Sprengel, he also undid Aradia's bindings in light of their likely pursuers.

Abilities
As a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal, Aradia is said to be powerful enough to rival the regular magic side on her own. She is described as a goddess of witches, the moon and the night.

Like many witches, Aradia makes extensive use of ointments and plant-based mixtures. In her case, the 'palette' of chemical compounds that are her ingredients are stored in the gold decorations she wears, with herbs kneaded into the malleable gold for storage. By rubbing the key-shaped clasps, powder is produced which falls to her feet and she mixes in her sweat, sebum or oil by stepping on it barefoot, creating an ointment and a 'shadow' that powers her magic. This shadow does not change regardless of the light shining around it and remains just one shadow even if light sources are shining from multiple directions.

Aradia also makes extensive use of the Rule of Three, a concept at the core of Wicca where the effects of a witch's magic, regardless of whether it is used for a good deed or a bad one, return to the witch at three times the strength (e.g. if one uses magic to steal money, they would lose thrice as much, and if they use magic to kill, they would receive a wound thrice as lethal). The rule, meant to keep witches on the right path, is one which is supposedly difficult to use in practice and a double-edged sword that can lead to self-destruction, but Aradia is skilled at manipulating events so that her deeds are framed as 'good' and exploiting the rule to reap the benefits. The Wiccan spell which she uses to do so is known as Reload Three Times,  with the 'weapon' being 'reloaded' being her 'shadow'. By performing a chain of continual 'good' deeds, Aradia can amass good fortune, bolster her magic, and cause her power to snowball. She also has a few contingencies in place to avoid a potential backlash. Performing a deed corresponding to a spell and its desired outcome increases that spell's effects and the likehood of that outcome (for example, helping a child find their parents via a simple divination to support a search spell to locate someone for her).

Coupled with the ability to frame her deeds as good and exploit good deeds for malicious ends, Aradia is skilled at manipulating people and proselytizing, allowing her to rapidly build a coven of new witches, which share a portion of her power (including the binding and usage of the Rule of Three) and can draw on her spells, inscribed in the Book of Shadows granted to them.

Aradia has a number of spells relating to divination, and possesses a search spell based on Kuma no Shibō (熊の脂肪), capable of sweeping the entire Shibuya area. Like some other Transcendents, she uses common tone creation to translate and synthesize her speech into unfamiliar languages.

Transcendence
Like many other Transcendents in the Bridge Builders Cabal,   Aradia can release a seal in order to draw on power transcending that of regular humans, with an incantation involving the declaration of "Risk 4" (リスク4) and "departing human territory" (人域離脱). In the case of Aradia, this power is in the form of the Sansō Megami (三相女神) and the nature of her seal is a triple seal (三重封印).

With its activation of the triple goddess within her flesh, she invoked the night, moon and witches, and how ancient goddesses of wisdom (giving Hecate, Isis, the Morrígan and Freyja as examples) would view the world from three perspectives while providing the priestess serving them with a powerful protection.

When she attempted to use this power during the climax of her battle with Kamijou Touma, her shadow stretched in three different directions and spun around her in a circle with an inhuman shape, but the great power was negated by Imagine Breaker before anything further could be seen.

Trivia

 * Similarities have been noted between Aradia and her fellow Transcendent Mut Thebes, given their use of shadows and the snowball effect that can occur with their magic.