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Any object or fluid that gets in touch with the dead is contaminated and can transmit the negative magic load to anyone and in any circumstances. The water in
which the dead was washed, and the candle as well become strong evil agents necessary for the witchcrafts. When the husband sleeps or whenever possible, you springle some water from the dead over him and say:
"May he not be able to raise his hand over the wife,
Just how the dead cannot raise his."
Obviously, it is a magic practice performed on reasons of violence. If you wash the dead with some liquor and afterwards you
put that liquor in your husband's food or give it to him to drink, then you can do anything you want to him, he is alive only physically. With the water from the dead you can drive away people and even set them apart. In order to
stop the dead's widow from getting married again, you take her belt, knod it nine times, put it in the coffin or in the grave and say:
"Holy Mary, you Holy Mother,
May she not get married,
Just how the dead can't get married."
This works also when you are angry with somebody. The water from the dead brings death and the candle of the dead is used for all kinds of doings. The water from the dead must be thrown
where no one walks. The candle of the dead is good at trouble or exorcisms. When you light it no one can harm you. The thread with which the measure of the dead has been taken is tied at the girder in order to prevent the luck from
leaving the house with the dead.
The well is also an important element in the familial space. It appears like a necessary device for the traditional householding; and the searching of the springs-if not an
occupation, it is still a necessity. In our villages there is still a "specialist in finding springs" the one who discovers them by help of the magic twig, the willow twig. The willow is a magic tree, that is why the ones
who perform magic with willow twigs cannot die, they are cursed. Being a water tree, also the charms made by means of it are very dangerous, as they bring sorrow and misfortune: The Angry Osier Charm:you take nine angry osier
branches and cast a spell over them. You tie them together, take them to the graveyard, and lay them on a grave of a dead whose name you know and let them there for nine days to sleep. After nine days, you take them home. You throw
them in the yard or garden of the person who annoys you or doesn't leave you alone and say this spell:
"Just how the osier is angry
May ...(the name)... be angry all his [her] life
Just how the dead cannot speak
And cannot raise
May...(the name)...be."
That's why it is said that it is bad to pick up sticks at random, as they may hold a negative magic load.
We have testimonies related to the end of those who had made osier or
filbert charms, which could confirm the doing, presented above: " Those who perform charms with filbert or osier can't close their eyes for good until they told everything they did. Here, the old priest was called to a woman.
While the priest was in the house, one could hear chains and noises, stones turning down the floor; all the devils crossed that place, the house was shaking. But when the priest got out of there, everything was clean."
The
cow that doesn't give milk is cured with the combs used to comb the dead for the last time. The comb must be put in the coffin under the head of the dead, but you break a piece of it and keep it in the house because you never know
when you need it. When the cow doesn't give milk, you take the piece of that comb and say:
" Holy Mary, you Holy Mother,
May this cow not have the power
To keep the milk,
Just how the dead doesn't,
The dead that I combed last time."
If you hate somebody you give him/her some water from the washing of the dead and put the water in the glass of liquor at big funeral feasts, and this one will totally lose his strength.
"At my sister-in-law's funeral, two old women wanted to sew a few hairs of the dead on my brother's coat for him to forget his dead sister - they said - but I didn't let them, as I knew that the hair must be buried with
the corpse. When the hags saw that they couldn't do that, they tried to lay my brother on the table, in the place of the dead body, and hearing this from the neighbours I hurried up to help him, because I knew that it was forbidden
for someone to be lain the place of the dead. If you hated someone, you would charm him. You would measure his shadow and put it in the coffin near the dead and that person would either become helpless or die". |
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The first way of satirizing those who don't respect the traditions is the magic doll: the old man for the girls and the old woman for boys. The dolls were made of
straws and dressed in rags. They always convey a message by which the village shows its discontent towards the bachelors.
The custom is ancient and is performed in the entire Europe. The magic doll, has the task, generally, to
take up over itself the disease, the doing or the curse. After the evil has been transferred over the doll, this one will be burnt or buried.
"When you were aware of a doing you would make a doll, thought to be one with the
doing. When it was ready you would pierce it with needles and throw it in fire for the doing to perish just like the doll perished."
"A lot of practices have been done in our places. Someone made an old woman's figure
out of clay and pierce it with a needle, then put it into the oven; when the figure got dry ,the woman represented by it died."
For the charms of setting apart couples, the dolls are named for copying the personalities of
those submitted to the witchcraft. Two dolls are made of rags and taken to the boundaries at night. There a pit is dug and the dolls are put back to back in it, saying:
"This is X(name),
This is Y(name),
When you, lad, turn your face to this girl,
Only then should they get together,
When the hills get together,
Only then should these two get together and talk".
If we study the general behaviour of the
traditional man, something amaze us: just like the proper human deeds, the objects of the outside world lack in a self inner value. An object or an action get a certain value and become at the same time real only because they take
part , in a way or another, to a reality that trancend them. Among so many other stones, one single stone becomes sacred - and therefore it is imbued with Life - either because it is a hierophany, containing the manna, or because
its shape shows a certain symbolic meaning or recalls a mythical act. The object looks like a receiver of an outside power that makes it different from its environment and gives it meaning and value.
The magic doll can also be
hierophany: incomprehensive, invulnerable, it can be what man cannot, becoming precious especially by its magic power, resisting in time by is lasting doubling but other dolls become sacred because they are possessed, by magic
transfer, by souls. Sheltering souls they can be attacked and thus the being represented by it can be affected.
Almost all the acts performed in magic purpose reproduce primordial acts, repeat mythical acts.
In the detail of
his conscious behavior the primitive man doesn't know acts that haven't been performed and accomplished before by another who wasn't a human. His life is the uninterrupted repeating of some gestures indicated by others. This
couscious repeating o paradygmatic gestures discloses a native onthology. The product of nature, the object refined by the skill of humans can't reach its identity unless it takes part in a transcendent reality. The gesture
doesn't get meaning unless it resumes a primordial reality.
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