An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming
“The Magical Turn? Room for Nordic Doctoral Students.” Symposium, Uppsala, April 11–12, 2024
ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers, and Charming 16th annual Conference “Conflicts and Catastrophes.” Helsinki, June 12th-15th, 2024
Conference Report on “The Materiality and Performance of Charms.” Singapore, 29th August – 1st September, 2023
Review of The Language of Magic, edited by Eleonora Cianci and Nicholas Wolf. E. Cianci – N. Wolf (cur.), The Language of Magic – Milano, LED, 2022 ISBN 978-88-7916-996-7 – https://www.ledonline.it/Il-Segno-le-Lettere/996-language-of-magic.html By: Lea T. Olsan A deep insight into Latvian charms. A review of Aigars Lielbārdis Latviešu buramvārdi. Teksti, tradīcijas, konteksti [Latvian charms. Texts, traditions, contexts]. Rīga: LU Literatūras, folkloras un mākslas institūts, 2024. 264 pages By: Toms Ķencis
A Degree Of Intertextuality: An Interview With Emanuela Timotin
In the third in our series of interviews with charms scholars about their scholarly lives, we present an interview with Emanuela Timotin, the new Chair of the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming. The interview was conducted remotely in February 2024, then subsequently by email.
Stability and Change in the Udmurt Kuris’kon Prayers
In Udmurt prayers, the texts have been slow to change in the last century. Although data are not complete, and we have only fractions of data about their evolution after the Revolution and during Soviet times, we know enough to understand that changes were introduced scarcely. In the last decades, especially in the two last decades, many changes have been introduced and the rhythm is increasing. This is the question this paper endeavours to explore, on the basis of a corpus gathered in Bashkortostan, region where the Udmurt ethnic religious practice is still very much alive and even thriving in the second decade of the 21st century.
Chugg’s Charms: Authenticity, Typicality, and Sources
This contribution describes the collection and contents of a set of charms from early twentieth century Devon, and takes that as a stepping stone toward questions about the reliability of the orally-collected data many charms scholars rely on.
Verbal Magic In Contemporary Women’s Narratives About Nightmare Experiences In Estonia
The focus of this article is on the contemporary use of verbal magic in situations interpreted in personal experience narratives as nightmare (old hag) attacks whereby the emphasis is on women’s perspective. First, the author gives a general overview of the outputs of protective verbal magic in contemporary Estonian material to situate more specific verbal magic used for warding off the supernatural attacker during the nightmare experiences. The author concludes that the topic of nightmare attacks as well as verbal magic against them is still relevant in modern folklore. Although elaborated long charms are rare, contemporary verbal magic against nightmare in general is even more heterogenous as in older tradition. Expectably, new international trends of verbal magic have influenced contemporary tradition but some key elements from older tradition are still present, combined with protective objects and rituals from older folklore as well as diverse new sources.
Verbal Charm Vs. Prayer: An Emic Approach To The Lithuanian Terminology
In 20th-century folkloristics, it was commonly held that prayer was a religious phenomenon, while verbal charms were associated with magic. However, this dichotomy formed by scholars is often not accurate or useful in practical terms when attempting to differentiate between these genres. In Lithuania, verbal charms and prayers form a common text corpus, and the emic terms užkalbėjimas “verbal charm” and malda “prayer” do not align with the etic system of folklore classification, which categorizes them as separate genres. In an emic perspective the Lithuanian word malda encompasses a broad category of texts, which includes prayers, verbal charms, and any other texts intended to establish communication with non-human entities such as gods, plants, animals, etc. This category also includes Christian prayers. The article reveals that in Lithuania the relationship between a prayer and a verbal charm is not binary (religion vs. magic), but complementary: malda is the text of the charm, while užkalbėjimas is a charming ritual that involves both the text and the process of its recitation, complemented by ritual actions and performed by a qualified person (a charmer).
The Tale Of God As A Prayer, A Charm, A Fairy Tale
The goal of this article is to epistemologically discuss the couple “folk prayer” and “charm” in the specific case of the narrative incantations whose main protagonist is a holy figure. In this regard, I have chosen a certain structure known among Romanians as “The Tale of God”, “The Mother of God prayer” or “The Mother of God charm”, which agglutinates episodes from Virgin Mary cycle of apocrypha legends together with images that depict scenes of divination and bibliomancy performed in a consecrated but uncommon space (e.g., a church with nine altars). The text also presents structural and functional similarities with the “Dream of the Mother of God”, especially as respects the Passions disclosure and the formalized ending demands for ritual delivering the ‘story’ under certain conditions of time, space and performance. In the beginning, the analysis focuses on those aspects that predispose this prayer to embed references to charming incantations and practices, as well. Then, based on ethnographic references, the discussion goes towards the process of putting the ‘prayer’ in practice within a story telling event which, at its turn, is assigned with devotional purposes and magic finalities. In the end, emic terms of ‘faith’ and ‘emotion’ are taken into consideration as pertinent parameters to (self)evaluating of faith, sacred communication and expectations that go beyond both theological and ethnological etic distinctions.
This journal issue comprises several parts and presents various studies on the theme of activities in charming and related fields. It includes five research articles, an interview and reports on books and conferences. It is largely based on and thematically framed by the conference "The Canonical and Non-Canonical in Charming Texts and Practices”, held at the National Library of Latvia in Riga on 6–9 September 2022. However, it also contains articles not presented at the conference as well as an interview with a researcher studying charming; such interviews are becoming a tradition for Incantatio.
The article discusses changes in healers’ healing tradition, explanatory models, use of written and published traditions. During the past century, healers used and integrated knowledge from different schools. Another significant trend rising to the fore highlights the importance of local folk medicine, which emphasises traditional values and creates novel cultural interpretations. To characterise the changes, the article introduces four healers, ranging from a half-mythic witch-herder to the healers-innovators of medical methods and local culture.
Bringing Protection Home: Spatially Mapping the Performance of Medieval Charms Against Thieves
This article examines charms against thieves in medieval English manuscripts that make explicit mention of the domestic residence and its environs. In doing so, it considers a particular medieval anxiety around transgression of the property’s boundary lines. By identifying instructions for the practitioner contained within the texts and their associated rubrics, the article imagines how the performance of these charms may have looked in practice, and how, in some cases, there is a parallel with the parish ritual of ‘beating the bounds’. It argues that the performance of these charms creates a relationship between the practitioner, the words of the invocation, and the space in which the charms are recited, and that this performance is a means of asserting ownership and exerting control over the domestic residence, as well as averting the danger posed by potential thieves.
Intentionality and Addressness of Performative Verbs in Russian Charm Texts
The performativity of charm texts as sacred ritual texts is well studied in folk studies, ethnography and linguistics. The core of performative texts is performative verbs. However, there is no clear boundary between performative verbs and other verbs in performative use. There are performative verbs (‘I beg,’ ‘I conjure,’ ‘I swear,’ ‘I curse’) and non-performative verbs (‘I tie,’ ‘I cut,’ ‘I drive out,’ I clear’) in сharms. In this article, I distinguish between them using two concepts of Speech Act theory: Intentionality and Addressness. A result of my work is the classification of Russian ‘charm verbs’. The material is Russian charms in compilations from 1860s till 2000s.
Features of the Transmission and Reading of Incantations Among the Eastern Slavs
This article examines the characteristicss of charms transmission among East Slavic healers. The tradition of passing on charms from the older generation to the younger, both inside and outside the family, and the trend of transferring magical knowledge for free, as well as the practice of limiting the transfer of especially important fragments of incantations (the so-called ‘locks’ or ‘fixings’) is highlighted in this piece. In the second part of the article, the author explores the rules of the healer’s treatment with a charm as a magic tool: the attitude to a verbal charm as a material object, the practice of restoring the power of charms, the types of healer, as well as the regulations governing the choice of incantation object.
Protection Of Domestic Animals Among Bashkirs
The aim of the research is to study and analyse the magical means of protection of domestic animals among the Bashkirs on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan in the middle of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. In this article the author considers various types of magical means of protection of domestic animals amongst the Bashkirs living in the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Bashkirs used amulets, metal objects, natural stones, etc. to protect pets from evil spirits and diseases. It has been revealed that magical items and amulets, which appeared in the deep past, are firmly rooted in the ritual practices of the Bashkirs and have not lost their significance even till the present day. As the author’s field materials were collected from different territorial groups of Bashkirs have shown, at present they continue to preserve traditional ways of magical protection of livestock. In recent decades, the Bashkirs have started to use various means and amulets found on the Internet.
Innovations in the Eastern Udmurts Priesthood
This report, based on the author’s field materials, is devoted to the consideration of the current state of the priesthood of the Trans-Kama (Eastern) Udmurts. It is shown that since the 1990s, with the revival of religious traditions, significant changes have taken place in the organization of the priests’ activities, dictated by the modern realities of life. The main criterion for their choice was the presence of positive moral qualities, in some cases their belonging to the “priestly family”.
Cosmogonic Conceptions of the Udmurt People in Naming Stars and Their Images in Folklore
The cosmogonic concepts of the Udmurt people can be detected through the names of stars, the names of which are usually based on mythological cognition. Additional and very significant information about space objects is contained in folklore texts. The images of stars are included in a stable triad of heavenly bodies along with the sun and moon. Their constant feature is ‘bright’ light, opposed to images of negative energy, forces of darkness – diseases or sorcerers. Therefore, images of stars are frequently used in charms, where they are presented as an insurmountable barrier to those who do evil. The stars, along with the sun and moon, became metaphors and comparisons in the song culture, prayers and charms of the Udmurt people. They are used as analogies in the characterization of family and kinship ties, testifying the relationships within the clan. The stars and constellations, when seen as symbols of unattainability and indivisibility, are a kind of guarantor of stability of the world.
Time And Space in Dream Telling: The Udmurt Example
Dreams and the telling and retelling of dreams are popular customs in people’s daily lives. This study focuses on the process of dream telling, which implies time and space, and how the situation of telling a dream becomes ritualistic. The content of a dream is very important (it can be good or evil) and therefore it is believed and perceived that dreams are signs that both dreamers and listeners will follow. The article will consider these ideas according to the traditional worldview of the Udmurts.
Udmurt Healing Rituals. Semantic Models Of The Actional Code
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the actional code of the Udmurt healing rite, considered as a cultural text. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the ritual actions of the healing rite are classified into groups according to the particular method of achieving the goal involved, something which takes into account the semantics of its actional component. The proposed classification is based on the system developed by E. E. Levkiyevskaya in her study of Slavic protective amulets. As a result of the analysis, the author has identified the main semantic models manifested in the elementary semantic units and motifs. The semantic models under consideration are divided into three groups: the first group combines ritual actions aiming at establishing contact, the second one contains actions intended to have impact on the source of the disease; and the third encompasses actions aimed at giving a patient an invulnerability to the disease. The analysis of folklore and ethnographic material reveals that motifs of the semantic models belonging to the second group were the most widespread ones, something which is accounted for by the fact that the concept of the fight between two opposing forces underlies most Udmurt healing rituals that involve performing an incantation against the disease.
Members of ISFNR Charms, Charming and Charmers working group has studied data from different eras and regions including texts, material objects such as amulets, religious norms and practices, and incantations. Different periods and regions have their own specific variations, intertextual transmissions, poetic and linguistic realisations, text types and motifs. The diversity of charm research is highlighted through published monographs, dissertations and articles. At the same time, databases have been developed in several countries, the creation of which stems from personal initiatives and the research needs of scholars with digital collections and databases being opened in Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Russia (Vepsian material), Belarus, and Estonia. Several novel techniques to assist in content analysis were used alongside quantitative research.
The Nature of The Sources: An Interview With Andrey Toporkov
In the second of our continuing series of interviews with charms researchers about their scholarly life and work, we present an interview with Andrey Toporkov conducted remotely (by e-mail) early in 2022 (subsequently updated in late 2023) by Jonathan Roper, who also made the translation from Russian. Andrey Toporkov is one of the earliest members of the Committee for Charms, Charmers and Charming, having first attended our meetings in London in 2005. Since then, he has been a familiar figure at our conferences. He is a Doctor in Philology, a lead researcher at the Department of Folklore at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a professor and a corresponding-member of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Verbal Charms In A Nineteenth Century Swedish Book Of Magic
This article deals with the analysis of a Swedish magic book dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century which I came across during a fieldwork in northern Sweden. The book consists of magical remedies and verbal charms for healing physical distress in humans and livestock, averting evil influences, and protecting against bewitchment. It represents a practical manual containing non-canonical words of power, whose purpose was the provision of verbal magical instruments for coping with everyday human problems, especially health-related issues. The article gives an overview of its content, introducing a healer and his healing methods, and publishes six charms from the book, together with translations into English. In terms of content, my attention is focused on the verbal charms, their formal features and narrative motives. Following earlier studies on the charm genre, I will characterise the charms from a structural and semantic standpoint. Concerning their textual and oral tradition, I aim to examine whether they can be located in the Swedish charm tradition and whether they present variation with other similar texts. As we shall see, they are texts which cross many borders: canonical / non-canonical, folk beliefs / Christian worldview, supernatural / natural.
On November 2nd, 2023, after a serious illness, William Francis Ryan, an outstanding researcher of Russian magical culture and written tradition, member of the British Academy, Doctor Honoris causa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the author of a number of monographs and of dozens of scientific articles, died at the age of 87. W. F. Ryan was involved with the ISNFR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming since before it was formally founded, and he participated in international conferences organized by the Commitee, served on the editorial board of the journal Incantatio since the journal’s first issue, and published his wonderful articles in Incantatio, as well as reviews of books written by his colleagues.
Taboo Violation and Charming Initiation, as Expressed by Some Romanian Legends and Incantations Addressed to the Fairies
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.
Identification of Unnamed Non-human Agents In Kalevala-metric Incantations
Kalevala-metric poetry is an oral-poetic system of various genres, shared by multiple Finnic groups. In addition to epic and lyric, one of the prominent main genres of the oral tradition is formed by incantations. The Kalevala-metric incantations regularly invoke non-human agents, which are aligned with the performer in various ways. While these agents are often explicitly named and addressed, in some cases their identity remains unclear. By conducting a case study, the paper proposes that in many occurrences the unnamed agents are identifiable by examining textual cues and the emergent text-structure of the incantations. The results show that the identification of unnamed agents can be achieved by biographic-metrical and contextual analysis of the incantation texts.
Abstract. This article relies on a long-term fieldwork experience: Eva Toulouze has attended Udmurt animistic ceremonies in Bashkortostan over a period of ten years and has collected there the uttered prayers. These prayers are the corpus upon which our linguistic reflections are articulated. The language of the prayers represents a particular register of the Udmurt language. They are deeply dialectal, and while today they are mostly transmitted through writing and the magic aspect is less emphasised, they belong to the oral tradition of incantations. In this article, we comment upon some of the peculiarities of these prayers. We explore the multiplicity of ways that the Udmurts formulate their requests to the deities: the different use of verbs and especially the sophisticated syntactical constructions. We are also interested by analysing the peculiar use of possessive markers, revealing that in the Udmurt worldview, the deity to which these prayers are addressed is all-encompassing: the happiness that the Udmurt ask for is the deity’s happiness, as is the rain and the insects against which they ask protection. It is the first time that these phenomena have drawn scientific attention and have been commented on. Key words: Udmurt religion, prayers, ad