SLFK 215, October 28, 2003
Review
The people who get CALLED witch are healers for the most part
Call self baba, babka - this is a term meaning "grandmother"
Importance of kin relations in general - extends way beyond our concepts
Who gets called "brother," "sister"
How I got to be grandma
Non-blood "kin"
Milk mother
Midwife as grandmother to all the children she delivered
Kin relations are very desirable
Obligations that come with
Kind of person - religious, sensitive
The healing functions - conditions treated:
Lots of childhood stuff - like the seizures
Crying, colicky baby
Child who can't sleep (fear sickness)
And they help adults - esp. those with various aches and pains
Which can be attributed to fear sickness
Or evil eye, malefice
The cures themselves:
Wax ceremony
Egg ceremony
Whispering over water - prayers
Sometimes spit in water
Patient then has to drink
Writing prayers on a piece of bread
Which you then have to eat
This type of cure is not a full ecstatic state
But group can be present
Not full ecstatic state - but then the problem that is cured is not as severe as the problem cured by a shamanic séance
How it works
Physically - not the chanting singing and dancing around of shamanism
But still rhythmic motion and whispering
What happened to Greg in terms of relaxation
What patient feels as ceremony done to him or her
What the person doing the egg ceremony feels:
Weight of egg
Heat of patient's body
Parallel to the healing hands
What it does for the patient - besides the calming effect of rhythmic motion, chant
Identify point of pain and/or disease, injury
Allow concentration on that body part
Give hope and help muster resources
Bread and water allow same sort of concentration
Physical component
Halyna's massage of patient
Dietary advice
Social manipulation aspect
Halyna's cure of sick woman in village
Husband problems
His support
Support of village
Shamanic parallel here also
Look at the people performing the ceremony again and examine attitudes toward them:
The Ukyr, Kuytun, and Arkhangelsk videos are among the Old Believers in the Lake Baikal area
Same people who do the Stolpniki suicide of sorts
No more Stolpniki, at least that we know of
But certainly the various ceremonies with water, bread, wax
They see these as prayers and as religious activity and so not ashamed
The ladies that do it are nice pious ladies, pillars of the community
By the same token, could be ACCUSED of witchcraft
Similarly - Halia in village
Everyone knows, there is a HUGE audience outside, some 30-40 people
To me - make sure not to tell anyone
Fear of accusations of witchcraft
Some of it is Soviet legacy
Great pressure not to have any of this stuff
Soviet Union, the country of the future, would be very forward-thinking and would not rely on superstition at all
Great persecution of all of the village baby
Of the shamans of Central Asia
But also part of general tendency of human thinking
They have seen lots of dual attitudes
Or a good attitude that suddenly switches to bad
Movie Resurrection
Recall minstrels - wandering holy men, servants of the church
And also seen as guys who participate in drunken orgies
Rasputin - title alone = Holy Devil
How process of accusation works, shift from seeing as good to seeing as bad
Halyna example again
Me doing the ceremony in Ohio
The reality of the practitioners now
Sweet people
Who perhaps have near-death experiences
Woman Alexis met
Woman who was with lesovikha all night
Halia's dad nearly dies