Academic literature on the topic 'Romanian Incantations'

The article discusses the lexical borrowings from the Serbian language in the incantations of Vlachs (Romanians) from Eastern Serbia and is based on the authors’ field materials. Incantation vocabulary analysis is carried out on the example of two texts recorded from native speakers of Oltenian dialect of the Romanian language from the villages of Zaječar and Negotin. There is an incantation called Întorsura mare (literally „Great return“, this incantation aims at removing damage and returning it to the person who caused it); the spell De noroc (Good luck) is meant to attract good luck. During the field research were recorded other incantations, mainly aimed at curing various diseases: the incantation of toothache or ear inflammation (De năjit), boils (De buboaie), inflammation of the glands (De gâlci), mercury poisoning (De argint viu, lit. “Of live silver”) etc. The informants from whom the incantations were recorded are elderly women, all of whom completed at least primary school, but do not know the written form of their native language, because they studied in Serbian. The texts of incantations have a stable character (exclude the variability of the components). However, some borrowings from the Serbian language, which are part of modern lexical duplicates and are not recorded in Romanian dictionaries, are still preserved in the texts of the incantations

В статье понятие «вода» рассматривается как в узком функциональном плане в качестве одного из элементов предметной сферы акционального компонента заговора (действии), так и в качестве словесного образа в его вербальном компоненте (тексте). В качестве основного источникового материала автором статьи были выбраны румынские заговоры конца XIX — начала XX в., представленные в собраниях румынских исследователей С. Фл. Мариана, Е. Никулицэ-Воронка, Э. Ходоша, А. Горовея, а также заговоры романоязычного населения долины реки Тимок из собраний исследователя К. Санду-Тимока, современных исследователей С. Гацовича и В. Попович, а также зафиксированные автором статьи и Н. Г. Голант в ходе экспедиций 2018 и 2019 гг. в восточную Сербию тексты и описания ритуалов заговоров. В статье приводятся названия типов воды, используемых в заговорах румын и романоязычного населения восточной Сербии. На примере одного из заговоров из собрания С. Фл. Мариана демонстрируется тесная связь между акциональным и вербальным компонентами заговора, в которых вода играет организующую роль и представлена в динамичном процессе перехода из одного условного типа в другой (проточная, специальная, заговоренная и т. д.). Вода является основным элементом многих лечебных и любовных заговоров, а также гадательных практик. В изложенных примерах показано, что в заговорах вода наделяется особой магической силой и является элементом, объединяющим акциональный и вербальный компоненты. The article considers the concept of water both in the narrow functional plane as an element of the subject sphere of the actional component of an incantation and as an image in its verbal component (in text). The main sources of the study are the Romanian spells of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, represented in the collections of Romanian researchers such as S. Fl. Marian, E. Niculice-Voronca, E. Hodos and A. Gorovei, the incantations of the Romanian-speaking population of the Timok River valley collected by C. Sandu-Timok, contemporary researchers S. Gacovici and V. Popovic, as well as texts and descriptions of incantation rituals collected by the author together with N. Golant in expeditions to the Eastern Serbia in 2018 and 2019. The paper presents different names of the types of water used in Romanian incantations. Using the example of an incantation from the collection of S. Fl. Marian the author demonstrates the close connection between the actional and verbal components of the incantation, where water plays an organizing role and is represented in a dynamic process of transition from one type to another (flowing, special, incantated, etc.). Water is a basic element of many therapeutic and love incantations and divination practices. Examples covered in this article show that water is endowed with a special magical power and is an element uniting the actional and verbal components.

Within the context of charmings, as it has been recorded among Romanians, the article aims to disclose the meaning of the theme of fairies’ taboo violation as a precondition necesary to gain sacred knowledge. In this regard, various certain incantations addressed to the fairies are examined, along with legends and third person accounts that underline the role played by these supernatural entities as numinous agents for initiation to the `secret` register of knowledge through a special form of communication, which in modern neuroscience terminology might be referred to as an ‚altered state of consciouness’, but which, in the emic terms of magic medicine is described as a disease, namely beeing taken by the fairies. In concordance with the idea of mutual exchanges between humans and the numinous, the one who accept the fairies’ authority and pay the price of being tormented by them, gain the gift of therapeutic and divinatory abilities.

In traditional Romanian society, where the vast majority of the population was illiterate, writing remained mysterious and inaccessible. For the peasants from the Romanian village, writing and the book have acquired separate meanings, being used in a particular way through magico-religious rituals. In order to defend against the action of evil forces and for the healing of the sick body, the traditional community instituted ceremonial, apotropaic and thaumaturgical practices, involving a set of alternative uses of writing. The clerics played an important role in consolidating these practices. The village priests made the written amulets (apocryphal texts, prayers and incantations) intended to be worn closest to the body to ward off unclean spirits which could cause harm to women who had just given birth and to the new-born. Books and writing were seen as repositories of healing forces that could ward off disease and trouble. In the Romanian rural society, between the two World Wars, it was still believed that evil spirits, agents of disease, could be drawn from the sick person's body with the help of “healing letters” (rom. “răvașe de leac”), containing prayers, various religious symbols, names of saints but also magic formulas, often presented in an enigmatic and incomprehensible way. The formulas are written upside down, from right to left, then from left to right (like the famous palindrome “Sator arepo tenet opera rotas” or “Abracadabra”) or distributed in geometric figures (spirals, triangles, crosses). These “healing papers”, with a strong iconic charge, were applied to the body or the text and the image were drawn directly on the skin of the sufferer. Drinking water in which one had washed a plate on the surface of which healing formulas had been written or swallowing the paper on which magic formulas were written were other common practices. Romanian ethnologists have documented the survival of these practices until the mid1970s. Similar practices are found in other parts of Europe.

Our research follows the demonic perspective on Avestiția′s activity and life. Considered today as a demonic character, she is highlighted by an activity defined almost exclusively against the killing of a pregnant woman or a baby, through appearances that cause fright (the disease called samcă) and the disfigurement of the "touched" by the demon. Because her history is unknown, the recent popular tradition has made one, Avestiția being the sister of Saint Sisoe, a murderer of children, and hence the generation of his witchcraft activity, which is why she is punished by her brother and by Archangel Michael. Newer theories claim a Semite origin (Lamashtu and Lilith), but we come with another, a totemic one, generated by the demon's descriptions. Thus, by systematizing the researched elements, we affirm that, starting from a totem (of the bear), dethroned by the masculine cults of Dacia, deity turns into a demon and encounters the demonological Semite elements, prior to Christianity in our country. Subsequent intervention of Christianity "corrects" the history of the character, turning her into a legend, when Sisoe and Archangel Michael appear. This final formula is known by Romanian ethnologists. Christian syncretism almost immediately generates the incantations of samcă and the "Book of Avestiția," a charm that reveals the name and the real history of the demon, which aroused the attention of Christian syncretism when attempting to kill baby Jesus, defrauded by Michael. Sacred folk literature describes her as an extremely dangerous being, Satan's right wing.

The Thread Metaphor in the Linguistic Imaginary of Folklore. In our study, we analyse the conceptualization of the idea of creation in the linguistic imaginary of traditional Romanian communities, with the help of certain metaphors from the sphere of household industry, namely the thread, the linen, the towel, the handkerchief, the kerchief, the girdle and others. By exploring a number of theories from the field of cognitive linguistics and ethnolinguistics, we research not only the manners of representing genesis, but also those of other forms of “creation”, such as creating human connections, both between the living and between the living and the dead. To this end, we follow certain linguistic data that encode the concept of creation, identified in folkloric texts, such as dirges, incantations, carols, fairytales, or cosmogonic legends. For their correct interpretation, we invoke their relation with popular beliefs, with ritual practices or elements of material patrimony, without which we would not be able to understand the deepest meanings. Finally, the results of the analysis highlight the significance of the seed-thread, as a core-metaphor responsible for the production of several types of creation, at different levels of existence. The thread metaphor supports the imaginary scheme of warping and weaving, which has modelled the representations about the birth of the vast canvas of the world. By analysing the multiple items, the connections and correlations created with the thread’s help, we can better understand that the folkloric world is itself a vast canvas whose threads often remain visible only to the initiated. Keywords: creation, cosmogony, thread, linen, towel, handkerchief, kerchief, girdle, footbridge, bridge, connection.

The text aims to compile a small index of literary forms that are born or only reappear in holiday contexts of Romanian writers, being closely related to the place of vacation and the way it is organized. The series of these forms opens with the poetry of the ruins, an imported form, which justifies the mobilization of our romantic poets on a journey to the ruins; and includes several other examples, such as the Montagnard legend (related to the holidays in Bucegi of V.A. Urechiă’s family), the miniature (suggested by the year spent in the C.T.C. sanatorium at Tekirghiol by M. Blecher, together with the painter Lucia Dem. Bălăcescu), the aphorism and the incantation (from the landscapes with clouds by Petru Creția), or the imported form of the Abschiedsduett/ “duet ballad” (called by Andrei Pleșu, to record the “paideic” experience of Păltiniş that he lives with C. Noica and Gabriel Liiceanu).