What Slavic witches could do. Modern Ukrainian witches

I remember a long time ago my grandmother Maria told me about magical rituals: “You can do magic only at night. After all, when the sun is in the sky, the gates lose their power ... ”Grandmother Maria was the same age as the past century. She herself used to tell fortunes, she knew spells for all occasions.

Indeed, during her childhood and youth, in the 1910-1920s, ancient customs and rituals were still preserved, and not only somewhere in the highlands of the Carpathians, but also in Central Ukraine.

Wrong time

But, as it turned out, many people in Ukraine still practice divination, so to speak, everyday white magic directed against dark forces. However, if rumors are to be believed, real black witches have not died out here either, sending diseases and even death on people.

One case occurred in the town of B., which is not far from Kyiv. For obvious reasons, we omit the name of the town. Once upon a time, as they say, a husband and wife. Lived for twenty years. They put two daughters on their feet ... But something didn’t work out for the spouses, maybe they got tired of each other for so many years. And then the husband (gray hair in his beard, a demon in his ribs) met a young woman. He was economic and non-drinker, so a lonely rival took the peasant away. The wife fell ill with grief, but then, on the advice of friends, she turned to one grandmother. She was known as a real witch, they said that the disease could send and ruin life, but she also knew how to bewitch.

The witch took the money and set to work. It is clear that it was difficult to get the fugitive husband drunk with a love potion. Therefore, the fortune-teller began to follow the peasant and on one of the sunny days, whispering a spell, stepped on his shadow - they say this is a sure way to keep a loved one. To fix the effect of the spell, the witch brought the abandoned wife of cancer into the courtyard and buried it in the ground, again with a special spell.

Cancer, as you know, moves back, so the unfaithful husband will take a walk, take a walk, and even return to his native shelter. In addition, the old woman ordered the unfortunate wife to pierce the heart of the mole, which she brought with her. The husband, according to the sorceress, now had to again blindly, like a mole, fall in love with his abandoned wife.

But a month or two passed, and all these magical things did not work on her husband. You see, he really fell in love with the young. Or maybe she was a stronger witch than the old grandmother ... It became clear that a love potion was indispensable. And the witch found a man who agreed to help and managed to pour a potion on an unfaithful husband at one feast.

And shortly after the feast, the husband died. Later, the witch confessed to the poor widow that she conjured over the potion on the night from Monday to Tuesday, and this is a divination not for a love spell, but for hatred and death. They say that a love potion should be brewed at midnight from the juice of primrose, verbena and blueberries, moss and wheat, honey and clover leaves. The person they want to bewitch is given literally a few drops of such a decoction.

So that the teeth are not instructed ...

Is it possible to find out if there is a witch or sorcerer near you? The people said it was possible. One way is with cottage cheese. On the last day of Maslenitsa, you need to take a piece of cottage cheese, wrap it in a cloth and hold the bundle behind your lower lip for three nights. Then dry it, tie it in a knot and carry it with you as a charm. The witch herself must come and ask for cottage cheese.

Another way is to use the ashes from the Kupala fire. The ashes from the extinguished fire must be collected in a rag and quickly leave without looking back. The next day, the witch will come and ask you for fire. In general, it is good to bury the ashes from the Kupala fire in front of the threshold of the house, hide it at the entrance to the apartment: this is a sure way to scare away witches and sorcerers.

But witches are spared the need to look for a villain in their environment. They see right through everyone. And so that the witchcraft power does not run out, they sprinkle their clothes with ashes from ash branches. Such clothing makes them almost invulnerable.

But what to do if you suddenly realized that your neighbors are solid witches and evil sorcerers? How to protect yourself from them? The easiest way is to stand at night on the threshold of your home, look in the direction of the "enemy object" and say:

The night is dark, the night is quiet
You are sitting on a horse with a bulan,
On a falcon's saddle,
You close the bolts and doors,
Churches and monasteries!
Shut my enemies
Lips-destroyer,
sling-cheeks,
Eyes, eyes,
To have them on me
Born and baptized (state your name here),
Teeth were not instructed
Eyes did not stare
They had no anger in their hearts
To be respected by all
And they had good thoughts.

I'll finish it, I'll finish it!

But let's talk about white magic. After all, there are soothsayers who heal people and do good. After praying (usually to Nicholas the Wonderworker), the fortuneteller begins treatment. With pain in the joints and tendons, abscesses, warts, tumors, a rite of “gnawing out” the disease is usually performed. The sore spot is lightly bitten with teeth, while a spell is whispered.

For healing, especially children, in Ukraine there is a rite of "turning". A sick child is placed on the threshold of the house, his height and arm span are measured with a thread. Then a hole is made in the door jamb at the level of its top, this thread is put into the hole and hammered with an aspen peg. Sometimes the thread is wrapped three times around the head of a small patient and burned.

And to make sure the treatment is correct, in some areas they “twist”, that is, they drive not only a thread into a hole in the door, but also the cut ends of the child’s hair. The disease must go away with the hair and thread.

In order to expel evil spirits from the patient’s house or body, the worms, as they are called in Ukraine, use fumigation. Cleansing healing smoke is obtained by burning heather and juniper twigs, oak leaves and wormwood stems. The smoke from burning a dried bat, the skin of a frog, crawling out of a viper, or from burning a shirt left after the deceased is considered especially effective.

For healing, the method of pouring wax is well known. At the head of the sick soothsayer, he puts a new bowl of water and pours melted wax into it. When it freezes, it determines who or what the child was afraid of and why he fell ill by the shape of the spot formed by him on the water. Hence the treatment.

You need to know the auspicious time for sorcery. A good love plot is done at night, on a full moon. At the same time of day they speak, whisper bad teeth. Colds are cured with a word and a potion before sunrise.

Herself a fortune teller

But is it worth waiting for help from amateur sorcerers? Maybe enchant yourself? According to the magical rules, when you see the passage of wild geese in early spring, you need to throw up a bunch of straw and say:

Geese, geese, you - to the nest,
And we are warm.

It is believed that after this, the picked up straw is saturated with strong positive energy. It is used in the household. Chickens do not lose eggs on such straw, and a couple of these blades of grass in the house, on the windowsill, are a strong amulet.

The people know that the primrose found on the feast of the Annunciation means a quick wedding. And if a girl often lubricates her body with honey, then the guys will simply stick to her and not give a pass ... Well, for the one who stayed up in the girls, folk magic advises to eat a spoonful of flour with salt slightly moistened with water at night. Soon after that, the betrothed will certainly appear in the house.

If you suddenly meet a mermaid (in Ukrainian, a mavka) near a pond, then you need to say, crossing yourself: “Ivan da Marya! I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!” The spirit of the river or lake will immediately fall behind you. By the way, it would be nice to carry wormwood or mint with you - as a talisman. Well, if you need a magic wand, then you can get it. It is only necessary to track down when it swallows the caught frog.

It is necessary to grab him with his left hand so that he does not have time to swallow that frog, and with his right hand, taking a stick into it, pick out the unfortunate frog from the mouth of the already unfortunate frog. The wand with which you saved the amphibian will become magical. For example, it will be possible to put out fires by going around a burning building.

Oles ILCHENKO

The Slavic magical tradition arose as a result of a bizarre interweaving of primordial sorcery based on paganism and Orthodox Christianity, which has always been more loyal than Catholicism.
Among the Slavs, it was predominantly women who conjured, since it was believed that they were closer to nature than men. The most powerful witches lived in Polissya, in Ukraine. Kyiv has long been considered the capital of Slavic witches.
At a time when Europe was blazing with the fires of the Inquisition, our witches, on the contrary, did not experience any particular harassment, but on the contrary, they were protected by law, which prohibited reprisals and lynching of them.
The result of the centuries-old PR of the sacred inquisition was the impartial appearance of a European witch - an ugly old woman covered with warts. In fact, everything, as you understand, is not at all like that.
Witches are "born" and "high". They say that if seven girls are born in a family in a row, then the last one is a born witch, if illegitimate girls are born in a family from generation to generation, then the third one will be born a witch. Another interesting version says that the daughter of the mother who breast-fed her child for more than two years will become a witch.
A distinctive feature of Ukrainian witches are the eyes. In European "colleagues" they are red, as they are inflamed after sleepless nights. Ours are breathtakingly beautiful.
Researchers divide Ukrainian witches into Polissya and Carpathian, the latter are also called Bosorki.
If the Polissian witch could act in the form of a seductive beauty, then the bosorka is always terrible, an ugly old woman, a witch is a two-hearted woman. As is the policeman. Bosorka could turn into various objects and animals, send damage and steal milk. Only she had one more completely unpleasant ability - to steal a child from the womb of mothers, and they could also replace babies with their own - ugly and hunchbacked Bosorki harmed people mainly at night.
The image of the Ukrainian witch is very "erotized". those. eroticized. These are very attractive women, with special charms cause a strong sexual desire in the opposite sex. They have a lot of men. In addition, the Ukrainian witch is very sexy even at a not very young age.
The Ukrainian witch leads a double life, because she has both inhuman and human qualities. During the day she is an ordinary woman, and at night she is a witch. Through the dual nature of its essence and the relationship to it is dual. The nature of the witch's relationship with other people can be described as "armed neutrality". It can turn into open hostility or have the character of a secret agreement, depending on the circumstances.
After death, the witch was buried like an ordinary person. Only certain magical actions were added to the funeral ritual: poppy seeds were poured into the grave and a peg was hammered.

I welcome everyone. Perhaps I won’t tell anything so stunning, but the very fact that all this is happening in our days impresses me personally ...
Not yesterday, but just 18 years ago, when I was a completely stupid and good girl of 19 years old, we, having lived in Siberia and missing our native places, decided to return to Ukraine, to the Donetsk region.
Never before had I encountered anything like it.
The village in which we lived was large, the feeling of the Soviet Union had not completely disappeared yet, it was only 1995. At that time, Ukraine did not feel like another country at all, and it was all the more strange for me to observe all this ... For me, it was complete surrealism.
A short preamble: in our village that year two or three (I don't remember) young men hanged themselves. Really young, guys after the army, without any prerequisites ..
I didn’t communicate with them, I can’t say anything, but I remember the summer because there was a severe drought. I remember how we planted sunflowers at the end of April, but there were no shoots even in June, and when we dug up the beds, we saw absolutely dry seeds in dry hot ground. There were cracks in the ground - you could stick your palm in ...
So there were rumors that it was because of suicides, because in all the villages around it rained regularly. And it should be noted that the villages in Ukraine are very close to each other, not like in Siberia. Every 15-20 km. And we repeatedly saw how the clouds walked around us, and even felt the smell of rain, but the earth did not see a drop ..
Another such moment, our house stood at a T-shaped intersection, and there was a road along our garden, like a “leg in the letter T”, i.e. our house was marked by two roads on the left and in front. And this road went no less than to the rural cemetery, which was opposite our garden across the road. It scared me at first, but then I got used to it.
And at sunset on a June day, I was in the garden in the area - 5-6 hours and ate that frail grass around our watermelons and tomatoes. Three grandmothers walked past me with a cart on which stood a can of water. One of the grandmothers lived just opposite this intersection, and there were rumors that she was a witch. I always scoffed about this, because I did not believe in this matter ...
These grandmas passed, approached the graves of the hanged boys - they were out of the way and it was impossible to confuse them, and began to perform some kind of ritual. They didn’t react to me at all, maybe because I didn’t stand like an idol, but just looked at them stealthily, maybe they didn’t take me into account at all - they thought, well, it’s working and working, or maybe something else. Only the three of them sang something and watered this grave, and then another. And they left.
It didn’t reach me at that moment what I saw, in the evening I accidentally told my friend, she said that the grandmothers caused rain, I don’t know how it’s called correctly, well, in general, “they watered the suicidal dead” ... I remember that I still teasing about it all.
The next day we were in the afternoon, and the heat was terrible, we went to swim at the stakes - the heat, the sun ... When we got there, and this is km 2, nothing changed, while we were swimming - suddenly black clouds came. This has happened more than once, we didn’t bother too much ... And then it came ...
It whistled and rumbled so that we didn’t know where to go, the downpour was terrible, cold, the drops weren’t just drops, but like good needles they pricked ... It whistled and rumbled for 2 hours, and then it went away, as it never was ...
And the next day I was terribly ill, with glitches and fever. I was lying in the summer kitchen, and it always seemed to me that someone was being buried and they were walking past our yard. I heard the funeral orchestra very clearly. So here it is...

The attitude towards witches among all peoples was respectful and fearful, but each of them endowed this specific caste of women with their own characteristics. The names were also different. The word "witch" comes from the Proto-Slavic root -ved-, which was part of the lexeme "to know" and words of the same root. “Vedat” in Slavic meant “to know”.

The Slavs called witches women who had some kind of secret knowledge, wise in magic and able to do various fantastic things (fly, milk for a month, communicate with devils, etc.). The southern Slavs had another definition of these spiritually unscrupulous ladies - "veshtitsy". In the western regions, they were called "enchantresses", that is, those who know how to intoxicate, send spells, magic.

What Slavic Witches Could Do

Since pagans often attributed phenomena inexplicable to them to the actions of evil forces, witches were often blamed for all possible troubles. Over time, a specific image of the Slavic witch developed as a malevolent lady, with whom jokes are bad. If a cow in the village lost milk, the witch was to blame. Only Slavic witches possessed the ability to “take away” milk from a dairy cow.

How milk was taken from foreign cows

Women could be witches from birth (take over witchcraft by inheritance from their mother or grandmother) or "scientists". The first cows were milked by hand, as simple village women do. In order not to be noticed, they turned into objects (a wheel from a cart, a pitchfork) or animals (black cats, dogs, toads or pigs) and secretly made their way into the barn. The milking process continued until the cattle bled from the udder. Interestingly, women already born witches had a real tail.

"Scientific" witches became such by making a pact with the devil. They could get milk in another way. Once milking a cow by hand, the woman made a hole in the corner of her house and plugged it with a chopstick. After that, the witch could at any time pull out this chopik and get freshly milked milk, which flowed from the unsuspecting cow directly to the witch in the dwelling.

Milk, diluted with freshly picked dew, was a favorite delicacy of these women. Witches on holidays arranged receptions for evil spirits, where they treated them to milk with dew. Often milked for this purpose and a month in the sky. The milking of the month was usually done by the South Slavic Veshtians. These cases are described in Ukrainian folklore.

In addition to such dirty tricks, Slavic witches could send diseases, drought or hail, which destroyed the entire crop and threatened people with hunger. If the witch made "spins" from spikelets of wheat or rye on the field, she thus sent a curse on death. Also, if there was a lunar or solar eclipse, this was necessarily blamed on the restless witch, who could not wait to kill the human race.

Witch flights

In order to milk the young moon or steal it out of mischief - which also often happened - the witch had to rise into the air. For the Slavs, the ability to fly was the most unusual of what these ladies could do. Slavic witches usually flew on a poker or broom (a large, roughly crafted broom). Among the Scandinavian peoples, similar characters soared into the sky on a spinning wheel or on a horse skull, to which a red rooster was harnessed.

Another means for flying is rubbing a specially prepared drug into the skin. It was prepared in advance from various herbs and other “magic” items, such as belladonna, fly agaric, snake fat, crushed wolf bast bark, etc. These recipes are described in the 17th-century monument “The Evening Sorcerer”.

Before midnight, the witch undressed and rubbed her whole body with this remedy. Both pomelo and secret ointment were also used for flights to the Sabbat. A Slavic witch flew out of her house through a pipe, using it as a kind of portal for a quick ascent into the sky.

Witches could fly on the back of the devil. To ride this creature, you had to first lure him into your house. The devil can fly in through a chimney or a hole in the ceiling. To make this happen, the witch kept a damper in the oven open or broke some boards in the ceiling. There are many ways to ride the devil among the Slavs. One of them is to spit on his tail, after which the evil spirits become pliable.

Contact with the devil

The main difference between a real witch and an ordinary rural healer who collected herbs and knew how to heal people was the signing of an agreement with evil spirits. Thus, the woman sold her soul and after that did only evil. The sold soul always ended up in hell after the death of a person. It is interesting that the witches communicated with the devils in the most intimate way in ordinary life.

Some witches painfully experienced their forced communication with the devils. Other ladies felt equal to these beings. They could, for example, flirt with them or even communicate even more closely. Usually, intimate contacts with devils or incubus demons took place at regular gatherings of witches on Bald Mountain.

Stories about dancing with the devils at the Sabbath on Lysa Gora are characteristic of the beliefs of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their folklore was influenced by the traditions of Western European peoples. Among the Russians, witches often gather in small groups on old poplar, elm, or willow. This usually happens on Kupala. During such gatherings, evil spirits decide who will get what kind of sacrifice for various unclean amusements.

It has long been said that the Ukrainian land is full of mysticism. From the school literature course, I remember Nikolai Gogol, who loved this land so much, which inspired him to write mystical works, for which he remains known to this day not only for books, but also for feature films and theatrical productions. The Ukrainian land is rich in tales, legends, fairy tales and epics. Some of them are true, some are fiction, we will not guess about it now. The most amazing thing is what you encounter personally, in the present moment. And I want to dedicate this story to what I know personally, from the people I saw, who were and are my neighbors. Yes, yes, Ukrainian witches really exist, and they can be closer than you think, for example, neighbors, acquaintances, whom you see daily, with whom you talk and share news, gossip, whom you call to visit or help. And this surprises even more than the works of art of writers, because the plots are created before your eyes.

So, let's begin. I live in a small town, whose name, for obvious reasons, I will not name, on its last street, fenced off, like a farm, from the rest of the city by a lake and a forest. Many called the street a farm, and it looked like a separate village, numbering sixty houses in its best times. All the cases that will be discussed were in my memory from childhood, their details have long been forgotten, however, the most interesting essence remains.

On this street, in this house where I live now, my paternal grandparents used to live. They were built in the 50s of the last century, choosing this area as close to the railway station, where the grandfather worked as the head of the station. He walked to work through the forest, so the place was not chosen by chance. Before mass construction, military barracks were located in this place and the street was then called differently - the Column. The strange name was renamed to a more suitable and beautiful one.

When the settlers built up, life flowed along its own course. Only after a while it became clear that among the ordinary inhabitants of the street there are not quite ordinary ones. People call them "witches". It also became known that their density is very high. Judge for yourself, if anyone knows a witch in some city, well, one, that's good. And here at least four for sixty houses.

A story told by a neighbor across the house from me. It was a long time ago, I was still learning. One of the neighbors got sick. And the doctors could not find the cause. Having survived, the neighbor went to the grandmother, who treats. She looked and said: “I’ll fly you, as soon as you come home, if someone asks for something, don’t give it, otherwise the disease will return. They envy you, that’s what they did. And whoever comes, he did it.” After the treatment, a neighbor came home, looked, and the neighbor-aunt ran to her, all nervous, and asked for something to lend (I don’t remember anymore). She refused her, saying "I don't have it." The next day, he again comes for some trifle, either salt or an egg. Again refusal. On the third day, the aunt came, and her husband was there and gave her what she asked for. She was very glad. And the disease returned to the neighbor again. And again she ran to her grandmother. I don’t remember how the matter ended, only this neighbor is no longer alive, and the aunt, discovered in this way in unclean deeds, is still alive, although older in age.

I remember this aunt well as a child. I’ll go out for a walk outside near the house, and she will come out, freeze and look at me with an unkind look, that, as they say, the blood runs cold. I walked around her then on the tenth road, I understood that I was an unkind person.

Another witch lived a little further on the other side. When my grandma was alive, they all didn’t share something among themselves, they often quarreled. Well, the witch played pranks too. Either he will make a trace for his daughter, that is, my aunt, then some other dirty trick. My ancestors lived richly, by their labor, cultivated a lot of land, grew a garden and kept cattle, so there was something to envy.

And now it's time for that grandmother to die. And she called my grandmother to say goodbye. Given their enmity, this is more than a strange event. As it seems now, the witch apparently wanted to transfer strength to my grandmother, without this it is hard for them to die. But my grandmother did not go to her. The neighbors had to dismantle the roof on the witch's house, only then she rested. I heard about this ritual with dismantling the roof, but I didn’t think it was true, moreover, that they do it now.

My grandmother was also accused of witchcraft. Painfully quarreled with neighbors. Sharp on the tongue, and people saw through. But I grew up in normal conditions, and I never saw a grandmother for fortune-telling or magic. She worked a lot, but she was hardly engaged in witchcraft. Maybe insight was perceived as divination.

I learned much later that it was also unclean on the edge of the street. One grandmother there was guessing on the cards. The girls and I ran to her for interest. And nearby, too, two neighbors opposite each other did not know the world. One conjures something on the other. You walk past, there is a mirror hanging on the fence. What do you think it is? It appears to be a protective amulet against the evil eye. The aunts had fun. I don't remember the details of this story either.

If you do not attach importance to these stories, it seems that ordinary people live their ordinary lives. There are millions of them. But if you look closely, an extraordinary truth will emerge. Ukrainian witches can be very close, much closer than one might think. And maybe I am one of them.

Reviews

I agree with Larisa, I also thought about Atlantis when I read it.
In fact, there are many such people everywhere, one meets all the time. When the "village" dispersed to the cities, such people seemed to dilute, became less visible, and here you can get up to your business almost without looking back.
Of course, this is lower magic, a complete lack of spirituality.
Well, and you, Nadezhda, the witch, this is a completely different matter. :)

I don't know much about Atlantis. Maybe tell me more about it or maybe there is where to read? The note is just about the lower magic and is talking about. I was brought up in an atheistic-material environment and therefore perceived everything that happened more as squabbles of women, rumors, stupidity from "nothing to do" unkind people. In the end, I joke about myself (I often heard the epithet "witch" in my direction, especially when it was impossible to bend me), but you definitely determined who I was created by. And this is a completely different matter. I can say the same about you;) Penetrate into the depths. These are the people I'm looking for.
And about "these" I can say that this force, or the spirit in them, makes them do dirty tricks. They become physically ill if they do not harm others.