SLFK 214, February 12, 2004
Last lecture &endash; ended up being mostly about babka-type witches
Who don't consider themselves witches at all
In fact, they see themselves as part of mainstream Orthodox religion
And consider their charms to be prayers, though, charms tend to have an interesting Christian and other mix with references to the power of water
Evocation of morning, noon, and night
References to iron and locks and keys
Show doll pictures
I think they have a real therapeutic value
They really know lots of useful info
Which nowadays is often lost &endash; as I was reminded after class
The herbs are good and medically active
Massage is good &endash; if you know what to do with what part
Guy who treats Peter's back
I'm not sure I would advocate "dead" water, but I do use the herbs
Dad's PhD dissertation
Dad curing me when biomedicine failed
Great lotions
This type of therapy adjusts to the patient
Attempts to standardize acupuncture
Well, some of its effectiveness is that it is an art of sorts
Adjusting to each individual
Psychological component also very important
Being taken seriously &endash; there and in US
In US = megabucks
Psychological component useful in treatment of ALL illness
If you are hurting, being listened to sympathetically
Could have same effect at egg ceremony on Greg
Relaxes you
Lets body muster its resources
Gives you a chance to heal
Tendency here, with prolonged illness, is to throw more medication at it
Which may well weaken the body and make healing even harder
Some of dad's cures would just clean out the system
Psychological component esp. important in a society where you have animistic thinking
Or another term would be pollution beliefs
Things don't just happen
Has to be a cause
If you have an illness or a pain you just can't seem to shake
You are afraid you did something wrong &endash; like made someone jealous
You need relaxation &endash; as provided by egg ceremony
You need reassurance that jealousy or whatever has been counteracted
Remember digging up people's footprints in Ivanits
If you think someone did this to you
You want to know that order has been restored
So, focus on a certain society type where space is enclosed and the boundaries protected
Such a society will
Fear the outside, fear strangers
And also seek internal causes for problems
Internal causes could be offending that place, which is held virtually as sacred
As in you make the place spirit made
Or even encroach on his territory when you ought not
Internal causes can be a person &endash; as in a babka, who can be accused of being a witch
Though other people can be accused also
Or even do things inadvertently
This sort of reasoning is not chronologically bound &endash; more society type
So place spirits are around and will be
Same for witchcraft beliefs
Then did unit on food
Because body is symbol for body politic
Much of witchcraft, whether curse or cure, is expressed in terms of food
Then just started Baba Iaga type witch
This is more a remnant of religion than of a society type = higher mythology
This is time-bound
But of course a religion does not exist in a vacuum and so it is appropriate to the society where the religious beliefs are held
We already saw same sort of focus on land and the food/crops that it produces when we looked at matriarchal beliefs
So, there is another witch that has more to do with religion, but she will be tied to land and to food
If there is protection of boundaries and the points of boundary crossing, you see this in connection with her, which is where I stopped.
Witch that is very clearly connected to pre-Christian religion is now no longer a part of real life; she exists only in fairytales.
Baba Iaga, the witch of fairytales, is most definitely a remnant of religion
Rusalki are basically nice
But there is another witch
Who is more witch-like in the western sense
Though she can devour little boys and girls, she favors older ones
Why she really seems to be is a mythic being of cosmic proportions
She controls morning, noon, and night, horses of
The cycle of the crops
The fiber arts
Doll story and the tasks that she sets
Horses
Her house &endash; please note aspect of motion and guarding door
Her size
Lives in forest or underground
She takes young women and young men and initiates them
Teaches them the ways of the world
Her fairytale task for men often involves choosing the right horse out of a herd of identical horses
In short, she is a serious mythological being
Not just some bugaboo to scare children
She is either a priestess who serves to initiate young women and men
Or a goddess to whom young women and men went to worship when they were on the verge of adult status &endash; I think she is a remnant of Mokosh because Mokosh is the moist earth
And the realm of Baba Iaga is often underground
Experience in her realm educates initiates in crops, and food, and cloth &endash; things that are products of agriculture
And prepares them for adult life
Parallels in contemporary (well, until very recent times) courtship
What about males?
Well, the place spirits are male
And there is also ancestor cult, which often blends with place spirit beliefs
Look at ancestor cult
Article by Veletskaia about Old Believers
Peculiar practice of the stolpniki
Suicide, according to Orthodoxy, is forbidden
Human cannot chose birth and death; it is up to God
Yet stolpniki DO practice a suicide of sorts
Other Old Believer suicide stories
What makes standing at your post technically not a suicide is that you don't know when you will die
Just stand there until you do.
Veletskaia has a whole book on red death
Claims that, at one point in the past, there was a practice of killing elders
There were 2 types of death then, normal and special
Normal = you die of old age
Special = red death, red not in the sense of bloody, but in the sense of beautiful
An elder, in full command of faculties (say 60 years old), CHOOSES death (as in you KNOW the hour of death)
All the stories are about elder men
The son of the elder who chooses death takes him out and kills him in one of three ways
Special tree at which the person is left to die, sort of like the stolpniki
Or killed with a blow to the head
Or smothered with a special pillow
Taken out to a special hut in the forest, usually in winter, and left to die
This is the basis on which the idea of the witch's hut is built?
Person left with minimal food and, of course, it is cold
Body then examined in spring and predicts weather, crops
Person tossed in a ravine = crack in the earth
In all cases, the purpose of all this is crop fertility
This is a sort of sacrifice
The person who dies a normal death stays put in the land of the dead
The person who is given a red death can journey back and forth between the dead and the living
Takes messages from the other world to the land of the living
That is, tells them about weather and crops
Takes messages from the living to the spirit world
That is, offers prayers on behalf of his descendants
This is source of ancestor cult
The elders given a red death are the ones to whom you address your prayers
They can deliver them for you
Certain times of year when dead are supposed to return
Very much celebrated now
Stories told NOW about how the practice of red death came to an end
Two versions
Please note emphasis on the importance of CROPS
There is a belief in two types of death now
Related to red death beliefs by inversion
Go back to closed society
Boundaries and borders erected and carefully guarded
Points of transition, like gates, doorways, windows
Protected
And also seen as magical &endash; that is where you seat Volodia when you want to do wax ceremony on him
Show Katia's apartment pictures
This is pre-Turner
General phenomenon of boundary construction and special treatment of the doorway or gateway
This will parallel boundary construction in time &endash; you break of the year into units, just as you break space into places
The points of transition in time are rituals
For Slavs these are a big deal
And doorways, gateways, and roads are used in ritual as potent symbols
For Russian and Ukrainian culture, boundaries are extremely important
Farmstead is FENCED off and that is how you know what is included in it
Each grave plot is fenced, so that you know your family's plot and can distinguish it from other plots
The cemetery itself has a fence around it
Sometimes there are fences that separate the village from the road
Different attitude between Russia and the West
My house is not fenced off from the neighbors, whereas there the yards would be
Cemetery here may be quite open, not fenced off
Certainly grave plots not fenced
The special role of the OPENING in the boundary: the doorway, gateway, even window
In many senses, all of the power of the boundary is concentrated at the point where you cross it
So that, in this country, sometimes you erect the GATE ALONE
And the non-existent fence in presumed
This true in Albemarle County &endash; some of the estates