A magic carpet is a mythical flying rug or carpet that appears in various tales and folklore from around the world. These magical carpets are said to possess the power of flight and are often depicted as a mode of transportation for characters in ancient legends and modern fantasy stories. In many tales, the magic carpet is portrayed as a valuable and precious item, often associated with great wealth and power. It is said that these carpets can only be created through the use of powerful magic, requiring skilled sorcery or enchanted materials to bring them to life. One aspect often discussed when it comes to magic carpets is their gold cost. The acquisition and creation of a magic carpet is often depicted as a difficult and expensive endeavor.

Witchcraft and Magic in Russian and Ukrainian Lands before 1900

When you think of a witch, what do you imagine? Probably what comes to mind is not a Russian trapper in far eastern Siberia with a set of written spells tucked into his belt, meant to win him success in hunting and trapping and seducing women. And not an Orthodox priest who equipped himself with a spell meant to win the love of his superiors. Equally far from stock images of witchcraft is a military recruit who, in the mid-eighteenth century, at the acme of the Enlightenment, offered to assist the Russian imperial authorities with a bit of herbal magic that would “cover the Prussian king and his entire army with fog and release water and capture the king alive.” Yet all of these cases emerge from the historical record of Russian witchcraft trials.

Magical practice was widespread in the Russian and Ukrainian lands, and we can document the actual spells and rituals practitioners used. In the Russian lands (where men predominated among persecuted sorcerers) and Ukrainian areas (where women predominated among the accused), magical specialists and ordinary people used herbs, potions, spells, and charms to heal individuals, to tell the future, and to make members of the opposite sex lust after them. Women sometimes resorted to magic to abort unwanted pregnancies or to fend off abusive husbands or masters. And still, others sought magical advice for malevolent ends or believed themselves to be the victims of a bewitchment.

When you think of a witch, what do you imagine?

Authorities condemned such witchcraft as evil, criminal, and demonic. However, their ideas about witchcraft were very different from those that circulated in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Orthodox regions didn’t develop mythologies about the Black Sabbaths and satanic orgies that spiced up European witch lore.

Witchcraft and magical belief are alive and well in popular culture today, both as a growing religious denomination and as an endlessly fascinating topic of scholarly works, novels, movies, and television shows. Nods to actual historical witchcraft belief and its persecution lend period color if not profound elements to works as disparate as Harry Potter and American Horror Story. But those historical referents are most commonly drawn from the Anglo-American past. Occasional works take up material from the rest of Europe. But who knows anything about witchcraft belief or persecution further to the east, in the Orthodox realm of Russia and Ukraine?

In this first of its kind collection, the editors have assembled a set of primary source documents on witchcraft belief and practice in the regions that today make up Russia and Ukraine. Many of the materials have never been published in any language before. The texts range from the earliest mentions of witchcraft in the medieval Kyivan chronicles to reports from the early modern Muscovite court about magical attacks on members of the royal family to physicians’ assessments of outbreaks of demonic possession in the nineteenth-century countryside.

Orthodox regions didn’t develop mythologies about the Black Sabbaths and satanic orgies that spiced up European witch lore.

With a particularly rich selection of sources documenting legal conceptions and formal prosecution of accused witches, the collection engages with issues that have contemporary as well as historical relevance. The documents force the reader to consider the deadly power of imaginary ideas when given real world authority. They push us to examine the kinds of “truth” elicited by harsh interrogation and torture. And they encourage us to expand our expectations about how societies are ordered through exposing the imaginary “other,” the witch, that they most feared. The comparison of Ukrainian and Russian traditions reminds us that mental constructs assume radically different shapes in different cultures. It also underscores the extent to which ideas are malleable, not set in stone, and can alter, for good or for ill, over time and place.

Because these materials emerge from religious, social, political, and cultural worlds generally unfamiliar to western readers, the editors have curated the collection, providing introductions to orient readers to the worlds of magic, witchcraft, and the eastern Slavs.

*Featured image: M. V. Nesterov, For a Love Spell, 1888.

This book was published under Cornell University Press’s NIU Press imprint. Find out more.

Valerie A. Kivelson is Thomas N. Tentler Collegiate Professor of History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Cartographies of Tsardom, Desperate Magic, and Autocracy in the Provinces. See all books by this author.

Christine D. Worobec is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Possessed and Peasant Russia. See all books by this author.

How Slavic Witches Are Reclaiming Their Culture and Native Religion

On a crisp afternoon last spring, visiting student Yair Berzofsky found himself in the largest park in Prague captivated by the sight of a human effigy burning on a tall pyre. He took notice of the children in play armor who ran past him wearing giant purple hats and jousted with foam swords as adults drank, danced, and beat drums. The figure in the bonfire was part of this year’s Čarodějnice, a celebratory burning of winter witches. Berzofsky watched the woman’s frame crumple as celebrants took turns roasting sausages and marshmallows over the fiery branches. “The witch burning was not the reason everyone came,” he later tells us, adding that the event was a testament to Prague’s “ability to not just rehash an old tradition, but to turn it into a reason to celebrate its heritage.” At the end of each winter, Czechs and diasporic Slavs celebrate Čarodějnice, a variation of the ancestral Walpurgis Night—the Christian Saint Walpurga’s feast day, during which observers light bonfires to ward off witches in Europe and the United States. While some see a witch-burning parties as distasteful, as it recalls a dark history of persecution and murder, Čarodějnice harks back to similar pre-Christian traditions. Berzofsky fondly recalls the event’s warm and charming energy: “In a weird way, I felt at home.” The witch burning evokes customs associated with Slavic gods and goddesses. As author Michael Mojhe describes in his writings, some deities in the Slavic pantheons lived on through equivalent Christian saints, but others were abandoned. Two critical examples are Jarilo, god of war, vegetation, and spring, and his oppositely aligned sister Morana, goddess of witchcraft, death, and winter. While Slovakians reimagined Jarilo as St. George during Christianity’s spread across Europe in the late 900s, Morana was not. This was partially due to the Catholic Church’s patriarchy but also because she lacked a counterpart in a Christian tradition vehemently opposed to witchcraft and a female god. The burning or even drowning of her effigy, much like the one Berzofsky witnessed, is a Pagan tradition both celebrating winter’s end and ritually recognizing her cultural death.

Like the continued celebration of Čarodějnice, this story follows those of Slavic descent reclaiming an ancient faith tradition—namely, witchcraft—that endured centuries of erasure from Christian institutions. Both of us, authors Emma Cieslik and Alexandra Sikorski, are from Polish American families and grew up in the Catholic Church. It wasn’t until Sikorski began researching contemporary Paganism that we learned of Slavic religious practices prior to the sweep of Christianity in Europe. Researching the contemporary reclamation of Slavic witchcraft as an aspect of cultural identity—especially when invasion and destruction threaten that culture, as in Ukraine now—has become for us a way to reclaim parts of our heritage we never knew existed. The term Slavic, or the culture of Slavs, encompasses an ethnolinguistic group of multiple ethnicities and cultures that share similarities in food, language, and cultural practices across Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. The Slavic world extends from Russia in the east to Czechia in the west to North Macedonia in the south. Beyond these countries are Slavic immigrants and their descendants, including both of us, who exist in diasporic communities around the world. “In Slavic Paganism, there are broad practices, but there are also some specific to the regions within each country,” Stephania Short, a Slavic Pagan, explains. These specific practices are often what come under threat. Invaders have fought over and died for rich farmlands of what is now Ukraine for hundreds if not thousands of years, making Russia’s recent attack on its sovereignty feel like a continuation of centuries-old conflict. It may come as no surprise that a long history of Slavic immigration, religion, and war shaped various Slavic practices and traditions. For Short, part of her witchcraft involves connecting with her Ukrainian ancestral roots—an act made all the more essential by recent events. “People are looking for ancient meaning,” says Slovakian tour guide Helene Cincebaux. “I think there’s a fascination with Slavic culture, the rituals—maybe the plants, the herbs, things they did. They were natural healers.” Witchcraft and Paganism existed in Slavic regions long before Christianity found a home. Even when witchcraft faced persecution, its traditions persisted, reimagined within the constraints of the new dominant religion. In the UK, the 1950s emergence of Wicca, a nature-based, Pagan duotheistic religion, led to the repopularizing of witchcraft and other alternative belief systems. In the same way that native religions varied across Slavic areas, the term “witchcraft” does not refer to a singular identity. “Witches,” including those who do not use this term but exist under the umbrella of witchcraft, participate in a variety of practices and hold diverse spiritual beliefs. These include contemporary Paganism, folk Catholicism, and Wicca. Where one person uses tarot, another may not. Where one person views hexes as inherently unethical, another may not. Where one person venerates deities, another may not or may only venerate one. Despite this diversity of practice, some people avoid using the term “witch” because it was and may still be used as a derogatory label for people holding spiritual power outside Christianity, as well as those who exist outside social norms. In Eurocentric and Americentric beliefs, the prototype for a witch is a woman or femme presenting person who is targeted because of their practices. during the second wave of feminism, some women turned to witchcraft as liberation from the patriarchy, finding empowerment in venerating goddesses. Together, they could create a community through common practices in witchcraft, such as yearly festivals that mark the passage of time. According to a survey conducted by researcher Helen A. Berger between 2008 and 2010, 71.6 percent of contemporary Pagans, including various religions and witchcraft, are women. The faith has also become a safe haven for some LGBTQ+ individuals. Ever since Christianity spread to Slavic Europe in the 900s, people who existed on the margins of society were accused or and persecuted for witchcraft, including literate women and individuals with limb differences and disabilities. It became a scapegoat identifier for people the Church deemed dangerous or different. Similarly, queer researcher Mara Gold explains, “those accused of witchcraft were generally those that didn’t fit the norms of the gender binary, including [LGTBQ+] people and poor older women discarded by society.” Polish photographer Agata Kalinowska’s monograph Yaga supports and holds space for LGBTQ+ individuals within witchcraft. The diary, which includes photographs documenting thirteen years of queer women’s spaces, takes its name from Baba Yaga, a ferocious witch from Slavic folklore. For Kalinowska, this title is important because it speaks to how Baba Yaga creates space for queer witches: Now there are women in Poland who empower such figures of older independent women… women who know a lot about nature, power of plants, the importance of female and nonbinary friendships. They are Yagas, they don’t belong to the world created around beauty myths, they queer the system. Individuals who practice witchcraft today often seek it out because it welcomes those who are forgotten or harmed by mainstream religious institutions. They are part of a larger movement of people reclaiming witchcraft as spiritual liberation.

Witches of the Church

“A lot of witchcraft is heavily intertwined with Christianity,” explains Sara Raztresen, a Slovenian American witch. Although Christianity sought to erase native religions, many Pagan traditions became embedded in Christian practice. Converts tethered Pagan deities to saints with similar iconography. After the Catholic Church arrived in Slovenia, locals began to identify Kresnik, the god of the sun, fire, and storms, with St. John and St. George. So Kresnik, the head deity of the Slovenian pantheon, is no longer as prevalent as the saints who inherited his role. Kresnik, St. John, and St. George are among the entities with whom Raztresen actively communicates. On those days, she sets her altar with offerings associated with the deity with whom she intends to speak. For Kresnik, this includes herbs and flowers related to his role as patron of summer, such as chamomile and daisies. When the deity makes their presence known, Raztresen asks questions that are answered through the tarot cards she pulls, acting as a conduit between the two. As she explains it, Raztresen’s craft is “about finding God in unorthodox places and learning to talk to him directly, rather than relying on other people to tell me who he is and what he’s about.” This belief often manifests through animism, the belief that “the plants and stones all have their own little spirits.” This is where witchcraft finds its place. “If you’ve got brains for problem solving, you’ve got muscles for dealing with physical problems, you’ve got magic for dealing with spiritual problems,” Raztresen figures. Practitioners use magic in a variety of ways, including magic deemed acceptable within Christianity, because it doesn’t present itself as explicitly spiritual or Pagan.

The walnuts Raztresen uses in her potica, a traditional Slovenian nut roll, represent abundance, fertility, and power. Each time she makes it, she understands the process of making the sweet bread as “a magical ancestral experience.” In some Ukrainian traditions, this type of roll may be made with poppy seeds in place of the walnuts.

One of these practices is “kitchen witchcraft,” a broad practice that encourages intention and focus, using many on-hand food ingredients with magic and symbolic meaning. For kitchen witch Raztresen and others, their practices often involve using ingredients key to their ethnic backgrounds, such as meats, grains, spices, and more that are native to their ancestral homelands. Kitchen witchcraft and other ethnic household rituals allow people like Raztresen to connect with their heritage even if they live far away. However, the intermingling of Christianity and witchcraft among Slavs doesn’t erase the stigma the Catholic Church perpetuates against witchcraft. Today many Slavic witches practice their craft as a form of opposition against religious institutions. Raztresen says, “[Church goers] all want you to do the white button-up collar thing in Church,” but there’s a great diversity of Christian practices that include elements of witchcraft and folk traditions. Similar to experiences across the world, the Church inquisitors in Slavic regions interrogated, tortured, and executed a number of witches. Scholar Michael Ostling states in early modern Poland, the Catholic Church executed approximately 2,000 people for witchcraft, most from the lower socioeconomic classes. The best documented example of this persecution is perhaps the 1775 Doruchów witch trial in Poland, where the Church executed fourteen women, although historians have debated the year and number of victims. Immediately, marginalized people and their loved ones, as well as other concerned citizens across Eastern and Central Europe started questioning these claims of witchcraft. It wasn’t until 1776 that Poland outlawed torture and the death penalty—partly in response to the Doruchów witch trial. Today, more than two centuries later, people like Raztresen are exploring how their own ethnic traditions are rooted in pre-Christian pagan and witchcraft practices. They are reclaiming how practices persecuted on threat of torture and death lived on through cooking, praying, and sewing traditions.

The Strength of Color

Stephania Short was introduced to spiritualism at the age of thirteen after watching her mom pull tarot. By ninth grade, she “didn’t necessarily believe in God,” and as the years went by, she grew more connected to her Ukrainian roots. She reached out to family members and went to her mom to learn more about Ukrainian cultural traditions and spiritual beliefs. Like Raztresen, Short practices her witchcraft to celebrate her Slavic heritage.

“Paganism kind of allows you to practice with everything that our ancestors would, so everything is based off of the land,” she says. Plants and herbs that are abundant in Ukraine, such as rosemary, are important in her craft. Like herbs, colors hold meanings in Ukrainian witchcraft traditions. Short explains, “Red is a symbol of strength and protection. Gold symbolizes abundance and prosperity and good luck. Blue symbolizes peace and healing and just kind vibes all around.” With this knowledge, she now intentionally decorates her pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs, with these colors to welcome the spring.

According to some Ukrainian folklore, decorating eggs ensures the world will continue. With each egg decorated, a chain is added to or tightened to hold back a monster from destroying the world.

Deepening the importance of the color red in Ukrainian witchcraft, poppies represent strength and prosperity. Short aims to incorporate the flower into her spell work and practice “as a form of appreciation for [her] ancestors.” To Short, spells may be made with and for a diverse array of occasions and situations. She defines them as “basically manifestations: energy or intentions that you’re pursuing out for the universe to grasp onto.” Herbs, like rosemary or poppy, and flame may speed up this process. Even the color of the candles may impact the spell. “All elements you use connect to your intentions with the spell, as they carry their own energies.” For Short and many other Slavic witches, the study and practice of Slavic witchcraft involves learning the meanings behind these cultural beliefs. When winter bleeds into spring, effigies of Morana are drowned or burned just as Berzofsky witnessed, ushering in new life. The Catholic Church banned this practice in the fifteenth century, so the residents of some Slavic countries replaced her with an effigy of Judas. But the custom of burning Morana lived on. Short’s cousin introduced her to Morana. Before, she hadn’t been aware that Slavic Paganism contained so many deities. However, she doesn’t “believe in gods and goddesses necessarily.” Instead, she views it as alluring and something she needs to acknowledge. Short discusses Slavic and Ukrainian witch practices on social media, from beliefs surrounding native gods and goddesses to the use and meaning of native Ukrainian herbs in spell work. The importance of this has risen in light of the current war. “I’m maybe a little biased, but the Russians’ goal is to eliminate our culture,” she says. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian witch has become a symbol of solidarity for some—recalling the woman of the past who fights for her cultural heritage (her native religion) in the face of erasure and destruction at the hands of the Christian Church. Images of Ukrainian witches appear on the Ukraine War NFT Collection and among Ukrainian cosplayers around the world, alongside messages showing the strength of Ukrainian people. Madame Pamita, a Ukrainian American witch and author of Baba Yaga’s Book of Witchcraft, explains that during the invasion, traditions and practices have grown more dear, more important to preserve. Ukrainians and other people in Slavic diasporas see the rediscovery of their traditions and practices as a healing tool.

Ukrainian artist Marta Pitchuk contributed a series of paintings of Motanka dolls entitled “Motanka—A Spiritual Guardian” to the exhibition Ukraine Is The Cradle of Heroes at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center. Her art, as writers Suwitcha Chaiyong and Varuth Hirunyatheb explain, recognizes parallels between Ukrainian ancestry and modern realities, recalling sacred iconography.

Healing

Emblems of Slavic witchcraft have been interwoven with messages of Ukrainian solidarity, including motanka dolls, 5,000-year-old symbols of feminine wisdom and guards for families within Ukrainian folk traditions. Motanka dolls are talismans unique to each family and symbolize connection between familial generations. Madame Pamita’s grandmother was a baba sheptukha (баба шептуха), a healer who made motanky (мотанки) spirit dolls, but her grandmother died before she was born. Although she heard about these practices, she never knew how to perform them. Others share a similar experience of unfamiliarity, but a mother-and-daughter team in British Columbia are changing that by creating and selling motanka dolls as a fundraiser for Ukrainian relief. With attention on agency and the self, Slavic witchcraft encourages healing and identity formation. It focuses on reflection and connection. Even if they aren’t recognized as religious practices, the cornerstones of many Slavic witchcraft traditions can be uncovered in small Ukrainian dolls, Slovenian kitchens, and large celebrations. Ukrainians and their allies are preserving these traditions for solidarity, fundraising, and strength. The presence of magic may not be obvious, but it is simply a matter of perspective. That perspective may bring people closer to culture they may feel disconnected from in diasporic communities or from being part of a marginalized people. It may bring them their own version of spiritual happiness and cultural enrichment. Emma Cieslik is a museum professional in the Washington, D.C., area and a former curatorial intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Alexandra Sikorski is a writing intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a master’s student in public anthropology at American University. When she isn’t researching contemporary witchcraft, she enjoys dissecting material culture and design.

Afrolatinidad: Art & Identity in D.C. is an interview series highlighting the vitality of the local Afro-Latinx community. Before the term Afro-Latinx entered popular discourse, Latin Americans of the Diaspora have been sharing their stories through artistic manifestations online and in community spaces throughout the district. Their perspectives are intersectional in nature of existing in between spaces of Blackness and Latinidad.

Folklife Magazine explores how culture shapes our lives. We publish stories about music, food, craft, language, celebrations, activism, and the individuals and communities who sustain these traditions.

Most Popular

1. Appalachian Folk Magic: Generations of “Granny Witchcraft” and Spiritual Work
2. “A Language I Come Home To”: Yiddish in the Jewish Diaspora
3. Rewilding Culture: Sam Lee and Cosmo Sheldrake’s Love Songs to the Natural World
4. When Escaping Reality Helps Define Identity: Expression and Empowerment in the Cosplay Community
5. A Man of Peace: Grand Master Kim’s Vision for Chicago and the World

MAGIC: MAGIC IN EASTERN EUROPE

Demonology, introduced by Christian religious thought in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, profoundly affected western European thought with respect to its conception of magic. The transformation of the witch into an expression of the demon who seeks to ensure his power on earth and prepare for his own advent obscured popular thinking, which possessed its own type of representations and its own system of values inherited from a rather deep-rooted paganism. In eastern Europe, where this intervention did not occur in the same way, the phenomenon of magic continued to evolve in its primary form, as a unified practice anchored in a popular culture of which it represented only one facet. For so long isolated from the historical and sociological upheavals that affected western Europe, the peoples of eastern Europe still hold to a different worldview and use different means to account for the human condition. As Mircea Eliade states in his De Zalmoxis à Gengis-Khan (1970): "As in all other provinces of the Roman Empire, autochthonous religious realities outlived, more or less transformed, both the romanizing and the christianizing processes. There is enough proof of a pagan heritage" (p. 73). The common inherited substratum preserved by the Romanian and Balkan populations is considered by Eliade as "the principal unifying element in the entire Balkan peninsula" (ibid., p. 183). As early as the 1930s, Pierre Bogatyrev, in the introduction to his Actes magiques, rites et croyances en Russie subcarpathique (1929), noted a renaissance of paganism among ethnic groups practicing orthodox religions, even though he insists that this renaissance evidently took place "under the aegis of the Revolution and Soviet government." He adds: "Orthodox religion and witchcraft, the rival sisters, … form an unexpected ensemble. All of village Russia is divided into witchcraft parishes that do not yield to ecclesiastical parishes." Given the importance of the pagan heritage (not to mention the circulation of motifs, sociocultural exchanges, and so on), it is not surprising that a rather large body of magical practices is shared by the majority of the traditional societies of southeastern Europe. In fact, there is no domain in which magic is not practiced; magic crosscuts all spheres in which human beings move. But recourse to magic becomes especially obligatory for the different phases of the life cycle; in this way it ensures its principal function, that of integrating individuals into their own collectivity and their own development. Throughout this region, for example, the Fates, those fabulous beings whom the Bulgars call "women or fairies of fate" and whom the Greeks name simply Morai ("fates"), participate in the "programming" of an entire life, from birth to death, including marriage. They are the ones to whom a woman addresses herself (even today, in a hospital setting) on the third day after childbirth:

You, the Saints, You the Good Ones, You the Fates Predestine this child, This newborn. Come as sweet as honey, Come as smooth as water, And as good as bread, As gay as wine, As limpid as water, And give him intelligence and wisdom. To this child newborn, Give him health and good fortune in life. May he be protected by God.

In Romania, especially in the region known as Little Walachia, the Fates intervene in the principal magical rites dealing with marriage and love through the intermediary of their plant, the mandrake. When, for example, a mandrake is unearthed during rites designed to determine a young woman's mate, the Fates are addressed in the same terms as those used to ask about a child's destiny: "You, the Saints, / You the Good Ones, / You the Pure, / I give you honey, wine, bread, and salt. / Let me know the destiny of [so-and-so]." The Fates are also invoked through their plant in incantations that accompany magical rites aiming to reunite separated couples:

You mandrake, You the Benefactress, Herb of the Saints, Know her lot. And if her husband had been destined to marry, If this union be his fate, Bring him back And reunite them, Keep them bound forever. … Give them a second chance. … If God had wanted them to separate, May they separate. But if not, Bring them together, you, Benefactress, Herb of the saints. Unite them a second time. Enliven her home. …

At times of death, the Fates through their plant are once again asked to intervene in a sort of ritual magic that is experienced and felt as a form of euthanasia. After the mandrake is unearthed "in order to summon death," an act performed in complete silence and sadness; it is boiled and the ill person is bathed with the decoction; at this time the Fates are invoked and asked to declare the lot they have selected for the sufferer: death or life. If it is death (as is usually the case), they are asked to palliate the victim's suffering: "May his fate be decided. / If it be death may it come quickly. / May he not suffer any longer." This type of magic ritual also appears in the Balkans, at least among the Bulgars, as Christo Vakarelski (1969) demonstrates. Many other magical practices are shared by these traditional societies. Among them, the most important are the rites aiming to vitiate the contamination associated with childbirth and those aiming to avoid the contamination of death — all intended to ensure the separation of worlds that should not intersect. An extended comparative study, for example, could be undertaken on the magical precautions taken so that the dead remain dead and do not transform themselves into vampires, who are today still dreaded, feared, and fought. Represented as wild or monstrous carnivorous animals, these eternally unsatisfied beings are doomed to seek out earthly pleasures. They refuse to be relegated to the beyond and, instead, assume human form in order to finish on earth what they could not realize in life. In order to make sure the dead do not become vampires, certain preventive measures can be undertaken. One can, for example, deposit nine stones, nine marble chips, and nine millet grains under the person's head and utter the following incantation:

Your mouth, I petrify. Your lips, I marbleize. Your teeth, to millet I transform. So that harm shall you never wreak.

Numerous magical practices (echoing religious rites) are also associated with the cyclical succession of the seasons and with the household. Incantations surrounding the home usually seek to expel malevolent forces and bring good luck:

Just as the waters melt in March, Just as they are transported by the torrent And just as they clean and carry All the rust, All the trash, May my home and all those who live in it also be Cleansed Of all malfeasance, all bad luck, All illness, all ill will That may be in its walls.

These incantations and the rites they accompany are essential, for they situate man in a context of rituals that integrate him with nature and the order of the cosmos. In fact, it is in this domain that, from Romania to Bulgaria to Russia to Greece and Albania, the magical rites most resemble each other in both form and content. Magical practices are also directed at administrative and legal authorities. For villagers the power of persuasion is the best weapon against these authorities with whom they are usually involved in a "battle of words." Silencing the authorities is seen as the ultimate form of persuasion, and many incantations thus request that they be silenced just like the dead:

Just as the dead have now grown cold, May all members of the tribunal grow as cold. May no one be able to proclaim my guilt. May they stop speaking, May they lose their voice Just as the dead have lost theirs. The arms of the dead are crossed over their chest. May the case made against me grow as cold as they. May it go away.

In many regions of eastern Europe one could say that folk culture was not profoundly modified by the more or less important changes that occurred in modes of production. It is, however, not easy to speak of magic and witchcraft as it is currently practiced and experienced in these countries, because both official discourse and research data relegate these practices to an obscure past or consider them forms of charlatanism. A series of field trips conducted in Romania in recent years, however, confirms that folk beliefs remain very much alive and that recourse to magical practices in frequent, especially when it concerns the health of children, the prosperity of the home, the productivity of animals, and so on. In fact, one does not have recourse to magic merely on an occasional basis; it is the imaginary fabric into which all individuals are enveloped. There are few mothers, for example, who do not know one or another incantation to neutralize the effects of the evil eye (belief in the evil eye is found throughout the Mediterranean Basin and elsewhere). The following Romanian example is expressed in extremely violent terms:

May he burst, the envious one. Evil eye he cast. May he explode. If a virgin spellbinds him, May her braids fall off. If his wife spellbinds him, May her milk dry up, May her breasts wither, May her child die of hunger. If a youth spellbinds him, May he burst completely.

Many practices and incantations form part of any individual's basic knowledge, but one seeks recourse to magic only if one has the gift, the power, the desire, and the daring to do so. The specialists commonly known as witches possess the gift and the daring to practice a distinct form of magic. A witch is frequently described as someone who uses supernatural forces to do evil (although most witches will say they do what they do for the good of humankind). Witches were and still are enormously feared because they are said to "give life or death." Consulting them always means incurring some form of danger, especially since they are thought to collaborate with the Devil (who appears in his diverse forms during the s é ance). Access to witches is also difficult and troublesome: they live often in faraway places (necessitating a tiresome journey, waiting one's turn among the others who have come for consultations, sleeping in a strange place); one can only see them on specific days and at specific times (at night, for example); one must be recommended to them by someone in whom the witch has confidence. Thus access to specialized magic could be said to presuppose a kind of punitive expiatory path. People have recourse to witchcraft especially in cases of serious disequilibrium or when a significant disturbance has disrupted the natural order of things. Witches are especially sought out, for example, in cases in which a marriage is endangered by the intervention of a third party (usually the husband's mistress, a rival who wishes to substitute herself for his legitimate wife). Indeed, marital relations and extramarital ties are a source of great conflict and violence, and the greater part of specialized forms of magic is played out in this arena. To control her husband, who should not waste his energies elsewhere, a woman has recourse to two forms of specialized magic, both of which aim to reunite the legitimate couple. In the first form the wife attempts to kill the intruder (the "rival," the "stranger") or to eliminate her from the protected sphere. In the process, the two women enter into a kind of magical battle using a number of possible weapons: a charmed knife that must symbolically reach the other; dolls made from scraps of the man's or the mistress's clothing: a yellow plant (dosnica ), described as "terrifying," which causes the rival to wander to the ends of the earth; the mandrake, which can make people go mad; and an insect or a frog (seen as the mistress's substitute) captured under special conditions and made to suffer the worst treatments. Specific procedures accompany the use of any of these means. For example, while piercing a symbol representing her rival with the charmed knife, the woman will utter the following incantation:

You, charmed knife, Go into her body. Beat her, Crush her, So that her blood spouts forth. If she is alive, pierce her heart. If she is dead, seek her out in the Beyond.

May the one who is breaking my home, The one who does not let me live with my man, The one who gives me no peace, May that one die and disappear.

In the second form — identified as the "magic of filth" — the wife will simply attempt to dissolve the soiled relationship in which her husband is involved in order to reestablish her original tie with him. She will use decoctions made from urine, semen, menstrual blood, fecal matter, sweat, or other secretions of intimate life (which serve as substitutes for the people concerned). These decoctions may be clandestinely fed to the husband. If he eats his own secretions (an act of autocannibalism), he is said to devour himself, thus reintegrating the forces and energies he seeks to dispense elsewhere. If he eats the substitutes of his wife, he is said to become impregnated by her, filled with her person. Incantations accompany the administration of these decoctions; if, for example, the wife uses menstrual blood, she utters the following words (similar to those used in practices on certain Greek islands today):

Just as the menses are cyclical, Have their hour and time, So, to each of my words May he likewise return. May he return to my body, May he return to my desire. … May my husband cling to me, May he explode, may he burst, May he not do without me.

The wife may also manipulate these secretions in other ways. She may, for example, take the earth on which her rival has trod and place it on her husband's feces, uttering an incantation all the while. One could speak at length about these and other forms of magic still practiced in Romania and other east European countries. Indeed, despite all the sociocultural modifications and modernizing trends that have taken place in this part of the world, magic has adapted itself to its new environment. It is not a survival of a bygone era but an integral aspect of popular culture; it provides people with the power and know-how to understand their world and their position within it. Magic is still the arena through which different communities find a common language, a discourse through which they recognize themselves.

The acquisition and creation of a magic carpet is often depicted as a difficult and expensive endeavor. It is believed that these carpets require special ingredients and intricate spells to be woven into their fabric, resulting in a high price tag. The gold cost of a magic carpet is said to be influenced by various factors such as the size and quality of the carpet, the complexity of its enchantments, and the materials used in its creation.

See Also

Additionally, the skill and reputation of the sorcerer or craftsman responsible for creating the carpet can also impact its gold cost. In tales where the acquisition of a magic carpet is a central plot point, characters often go to great lengths and face numerous challenges to obtain one. This further emphasizes the rarity and value placed on these magical items. However, it is important to note that the gold cost of a magic carpet can vary greatly depending on the myth or story being referenced. Some tales depict magic carpets as highly sought after and reserved only for the wealthiest of individuals, while others portray them as more accessible to a wider range of characters. In conclusion, the gold cost of a magic carpet is often depicted as high and valuable due to the mystical and rare nature of these flying rugs. The acquisition of a magic carpet is often a central plot point in many legends and fantasy stories, further illustrating their perceived worth and significance..

Reviews for "From Wearing to Displaying: Creative Uses for Magic Carpet Gold Costs"

1. Jane - 1 star - I was really disappointed with Magic Carpet Golf Course. The course was poorly maintained and the putt-putt holes were boring. The staff seemed disinterested and didn't provide any guidance or rules for playing. There was also no shade or seating available, making it uncomfortable to spend time on the course. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this place for a fun mini golf experience.

2. Mike - 2 stars - Magic Carpet Golf Course was not what I expected. The course was overcrowded with players, and it felt like we were constantly waiting in line to play. The holes were unimaginative and lacked creativity. Plus, the staff seemed overwhelmed and didn't do a good job of managing the flow of players. It was a frustrating experience, and I wouldn't choose this golf course again.

3. Sarah - 1.5 stars - I didn't enjoy my visit to Magic Carpet Golf Course. The mini golf course was run down and in need of maintenance. Many of the holes were broken or not functioning properly. The whole place had a rundown and neglected feel, and it definitely affected the overall experience. I expected better from a popular mini golf course, and I wouldn't recommend it to others.

4. Tom - 1 star - Magic Carpet Golf Course was a complete waste of time and money. The course was poorly designed, with no interesting obstacles or challenges. It was like playing mini golf on a plain field. There were no decorations or themes to make it exciting. Additionally, the staff was unfriendly and unhelpful. Save your money and go elsewhere for a better mini golf experience.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Transforming Magic Carpet Gold Costs