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Eclecticism in the Russian Charm Tradition

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Book cover Charms and Charming in Europe

Abstract

Charms1 are a conspicuous element even today in Russian magical belief and in Russian popular medicine, and the corpus of recorded charms in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (i.e. among the predominantly Orthodox East Slavs) is extensive.2 The number of serious studies devoted to charms, however, though by no means negligible by comparison with studies in other parts of Europe, is rather more limited,3 and the field has been affected to some extent in the past by attitudes of the Church and, in particular in the Soviet period, the State, attitudes which persist in some quarters (see n. 3). There has been a tendency in Russia, still evident in some works, to treat charms simply as a minor genre of folk literature, to be anthologised while down-playing or ignoring their place in the structure and history of popular belief and practice. Any comparative approach to the subject in which Russian charms might be studied in relation to charms from other language and culture areas has been rare, although perhaps no rarer than it is in other countries. Moreover, the emphasis on texts in much of the literature has often ignored performative aspects and details of source and milieux of recorded charms; even the manuscript Russian charm books which survive, dating from the first half of the seventeenth century onwards, rarely offer much more information on how the charms were used than the versions of charms collected and published by scholars.

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Notes

  1. The bibliographies attached to recent to recent books in the field cover most of the literature Ryan (n. 2 above), Kliaus, Iudin (n. 4 below), and see two important books on Russian magic which have appeared too recently to be fully taken into account here but which contain valuable new material on charms: A. A. Turilov and A. L. Toporkov (eds), Otrechennoe chtenie v Rossii XVII–XVIII vekov, Moscow: Indrik, 2002,

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  2. and E. B. Smilianskaia, Volshebniki, Bogokhul’niki. Eretiki. Narodnaia religioznost’ i ‘dukhovnye prestupleniia’ v Rossii XVII v., Moscow: Indrik, 2003. The latter has a very extensive bibliography. The former is the subject of a long hostile review (V. Kostyrko in Otechestvennye zapiski, 2003, no. 4, 2003, http://magazines.russ.ru/oz/2003/4/2003_4_58.html, accessed 27 May 2004) which complains that the book encourages superstition by providing charms and divinations for contemporary magicians, and apparently regrets the end of censorship! Other modern English-language works which contain some useful general discussion and information on Russian charms are:

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  3. Linda J. Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief, New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1989;

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  4. and Elizabeth Warner, Russian Myths, London: British Museum, 2002.

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  5. The now dated W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, as Illustrative of Slavonic Mythology and Russian Social Life, 2nd edn, London, 1872 (reprinted New York: Haskell House, 1970), contains some comparative comments and may also be of interest for further reading.

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  6. For example the charm motif index by V. L. Kliaus, Ukazatel’ siuzhetov i siuzhetnykh situatsii zagovornykh tekstov vostochnykh i iuzhnykh slavian, Moscow: Nasledie, 1997 (the inclusion of the South Slav material is both useful and significant); the index of persons and things invoked in charms by

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  7. A. V. Iudin, Onomastikon russkikh zagovorov, Moscow: Moskovskii obshchestvennyi nauch. fond, 1997 (this also contains a succinct up-to-date description of Russian charm structure).

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  8. For this kind of popular dream and fortune-telling literature see Faith Wigzell, Reading Russian Fortunes: Print Culture, Gender and Divination in Russia from 1765, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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  9. Philip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias, London: Secker & Warburg, 1984, p. 198. The ‘midsummer herbs’ or St John’s Eve/Day herbs, usually only nine herbs, are a commonplace of European magic:

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  10. see J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd edn, 12 vols, London, 1907–15, 2, p. 129,

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  11. and E. Hoffmann-Krayer and Hanns Bachtöld-Stäubli (eds), Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols, Berlin and Leipzig: W. de Gruyter, 1927–42, s.v. Johannes der Täufer. The association of the herbs with charms is perhaps most famously exemplified by the ‘Nine Herbs Charm’ of Woden in Lacnunga (see nn. 20, 36 below). In Russia their collection and use may be accompanied by charms — e.g. in the Tver’ region after gathering the herbs a girl had to return home without speaking, place the herbs under her pillow, and say, ‘John and Mary herb, head herb, and all twelve herbs, tell me who my husband will be’ — she will then see her future husband in a dream. For this belief in Swedish-speaking Finland see

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  12. K. Rob. V. Wikman, ‘Popular Divination: Some Remarks concerning Its Structure and Function’, Transactions of the Westermark Society, II, 1953, pp. 171–83 (176).

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  13. E. N. Eleonskaia, K izucheniiu zagovora i koldovstva v Rossii, Shamordino, 1917 (reprinted in idem, Skazka, zagovor i koldovstvo v Rossii, Moscow: Izd-vo ‘Indrik’, 1994), p. 18;

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  14. M. M. Gromyko, Trudovye traditsii russkikh krest’ian Sibiri (XVIII-pervaia polovina XIX v.), Novosibirsk, 1975, p. 148.

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  15. This was probably the case in most of Europe — the fifteenth-century Wolfsthurn handbook described by Kieckhefer contains a mixture of domestic and magic recipes: Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 2–6.

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  16. The collector and editor of one of the best large collections of Russian charms groups them in eight categories of theme and function — Love, Marriage, Health, Everyday Life, Trades and Occupations, Social Relationships, Nature, Supernatural: L. N. Maikov, ‘Velikorusskie zaklinaniia’, Zapiski Imp. Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva po otdeleniiu ètnografii, II, 1869, pp. 417–580 (reprinted as a book with the same title, St Petersburg-Paris: Izd-vo Evropeiskogo Doma, 1992, with new pagination, postscript and notes by A. K. Baiburin).

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  17. In 1691 part of the evidence against Prince Vasilii Vasil’evich Golitsyn in a treason trial was that he kept a male witch in his bathhouse to make love spells to seduce the Regent Sofia. A valuable modern study of nineteenth-century Russian love charms, with an English summary, is A. L. Toporkov, ‘Russkie liubovnye zagovory XIX veka’, in M. Levitt and A. Toporkov (eds), Oros i pornografiia v russkoi kul’ture, Moscow, 1999, pp. 54–71.

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  18. See M. Vlasova, Novaia abevega russkikh sueverii, St Petersburg: Severo-Zapad, 1995, s.v. veter, for a general account of Russian wind beliefs, including some simple charms.

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  19. J. L. I. Fennell, Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965, pp. 52–3.

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  20. M. Zabylin, Russkii narod: Ego obychai, obriady, predaniia, sueveriia i poèziia, Moscow, 1880 (reprint 1989), p. 394. We may note that there are Anglo-Saxon charms against ‘flying poisons’ which are perhaps comparable: e.g. Lacnunga (n. 20 below), p. 89.

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  21. For this charm element in an English medieval spell see O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864–66, I, p. 399.

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  22. See J. Spier, ‘Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their Tradition’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56, 1993, pp. 25–62.

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  23. The Greek stories divide into Sisinnius and Michael types: see the very detailed article by Richard Greenfield, ‘St Sisinnios, the Archangel Michael and the Female Demon Gylou: the Typology of the Greek Literary Stories’, Byzantina, 15, 1989, pp. 82–141.

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  24. The notion of disease siblings is quite common; cf. the ‘nine sisters of Noththe’ in the Lacnunga collection of recipes and charms (Anglo-Saxon and Latin). See Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585: the Lacnunga, ed. and transi. Edward Pettit, Lewiston, NY; Lampetere: E. Meilen Press, 2001, p. 297. Fever charms with personified fevers can be found in Anglo-Saxon: see Godfrid Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1948, p. 295.

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  25. W. F. Ryan, ‘Ancient Demons and Russian Fevers’, in Magic and the Classical Tradition, Warburg Colloquia, London, 2004, forthcoming.

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  26. See A. V. Iudin, Onomastikon russkikh zagovorov: imena sobstvennye v russkom magicheskom fol’klore, Moscow: Moskovskii obshchestvennyi nauch. fond, 1997, pp. 242–61,

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  27. and O. A. Cherepanova, Mifologicheskaia leksika russkogo severa, Leningrad: Izd-vo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1983, pp. 92–4.

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  28. A. Barb, ‘Antaura, the Mermaid and the Devil’s Grandmother’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXIX, 1966, pp. 1–24;

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  29. this builds on work begun in M. Gaster, ‘Two Thousand Years of a Charm against the Child-Stealing Witch’, Folk-lore, 11, 1900, pp. 129–62.

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  30. D. K. Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy: Ocherki russkoi mifologii: umershie neestvennoiu smert’iu i rusalki, Moscow: Indrik, 1995 (edited and annotated version of work first published in Petrograd in 1916), ch. 5, §51, notes the identification of the ‘daughters of Herod’ with rusalki (water sprites) in some places, and observes that rusalki sometimes have the characteristics of the poludnitsa, the midday witch/demon who shares some features with the Gylou.

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  31. See B. A. Uspenskii, Filologicheskie razyskaniia v oblasti slavianskikh drevnostei. (Relikty iazychestva v vostochnoslavianskom kul’te Nikolaia Mirlikiiskogo), Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1982, pp. 89, 103, 164–5; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp. 370–1. On the link between some star and serpent names in Russian charms see

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  32. A. V. Iudin, ‘Ob imenakh zvezd-«pomoshchnits» v russkikh zagovorakh’, in Z. Tarlanov (ed.), Iazyk russ’kogo fol’klora, Petrozavodsk: Izd-vo Petrozavodskogo gos. universiteta, 1992, pp. 66–71.

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  33. A. Blok, ‘Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii’, in E. V. Anichkov (ed.), Istoriia russkoi literatury, I, Moscow: Izd. T-va N. D. Sytina i T-va ‘Mir’, 1908, pp. 81–106 (reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii, V, Moscow-Leningrad, 1962, see p. 66).

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  34. See W. F. Ryan, ‘Solomon, SATOR, Acrostics and Leo the Wise in Russia’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, n. s. XIX, 1986, pp. 46–61.

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  35. T. R. Forbes, ‘Verbal Charms in British Folk Medicine’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 115, 4, 1971, pp. 292–316 (298). SATOR is written on paper and hung round the neck against ague and other diseases. Other formulas are written on bread and eaten.

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  36. Also G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1948, p. 281.

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  37. Priests and monks are several times accused of magical practices or fortune-telling in legal cases of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Russia. For the role of the parish clergy in copying charm books see E. B. Smilian-skaia, ‘“Suevernaia” knizhitsa pervoi poloviny XVIII veka’, Zhivaia starina, 1994, 2, pp. 33–6. Clerical involvement in magic in the West is widely documented.

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  38. E. V. Emchenko, Stoglav: issledovanie i tekst, Moscow: Indrik, 2000, ch. 5, pp. 257, 270–1, Question 11, and response in ch. 8.

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  39. A. I. Iatsimirskii, ‘K istorii lozhnykh molitv v iuzhno-slavianskoi pis’mennosti’, Izvestiia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti, XVIII, 1913, 4, pp. 16–126 (30–9). For some discussion, with Greek and German analogues,

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  40. see S. Rozanov, ‘Narodnye zagovory v tserkovnykh Trebnikakh’, in Sbornik statei v chest’ akademika Alekseia Ivanovicha Sobolevskogo, Leningrad, 1928, pp. 30–5.

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  41. See B. A. Uspenskii, ‘Religiozno-mifologicheskii aspekt russkoi ekspressivnoi frazeologii. (Semantika russkogo mata v istoricheskom osveshchenii)’, in Morris Halle et al. (eds), Semiotics and the History of Culture. In Honor of Jurij Lotman, Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1988, pp. 197–302 (210).

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  42. ‘Sadko, rich merchant, subdue the weather’ (in the poem Sadko, merchant and minstrel, is able to calm the elements by playing music): A. G. Chikachev, Russkie na Indigirke, Novosibirsk: ‘Nauka’, Sibirskoe otd-nie, 1990, p. 133.

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  43. See in particular Eve Levin, ‘Dvoeverie and Popular Religion’, in Stephen K. Batalden (ed.), Seeking God: the Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993, pp. 31–52.

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  1. National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, UK

    Jonathan Roper (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow) (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow)

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© 2004 W. F. Ryan

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Ryan, W.F. (2004). Eclecticism in the Russian Charm Tradition. In: Roper, J. (eds) Charms and Charming in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524316_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524316_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51972-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52431-6

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