Protective Amulets Research Articles

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.

The die for the production of the hammered kaptorgas from Kouřim, Central Bohemia

Kaptorgas were small trapezoidal boxes with lids worn by women and girls in early medieval central Europe as magic or protective amulets. The paper presents a new find of a bronze cast die for hammering the front side of kaptorgas, which was excavated at the Nad Dolnicí settlement site located in the hinterland of the important central Bohemian hillfort of Kouřim. The die was used to produce type 1A kaptorgas with a motif of a four-legged eared gryphon with an indication of a wing and a tail ending in a floral decorative element. Although kaptorgas with this particular motif have not been recorded in Bohemia, it has analogies in Bulgaria and Poland. Based on the stylistic assessment of this originally Mediterranean motif and the chronology of type IA kaptorgas in Bohemia, the die can be dated to the 10th and beginning of the 11th century. X-Ray fluorescence analysis and elemental mapping of the object's surface show that it was made from bronze with a significant lead admixture and a small admixture of zinc. The die is discussed in terms of the spread of Mediterranean motifs and their adaptation by local craftsmen.

Branding the Order of Texts and Bodies in Medieval South India

Abstract Branding is a popular mode of bodily marking among several Vaiṣṇava traditions in southern India. This article examines how a practice with no discernible basis in the Vedas was transformed into a marker of Vaidika piety and Brahman identity. I examine the first known Sanskrit treatise about devotional branding, a short essay titled Protective Amulet of Righteous Conduct (Saccaritrarakṣā) written by the influential Śrīvaiṣṇava scholar Vedānta Deśīka (c. 14th/15th CE). Like most of Vedānta Deśika’s writings, The Protective Amulet is an exemplar of high scholarship. But unlike many works of Sanskrit scholarship, the Protective Amulet seems to have bubbled up from a world of popular practice. This article is about the Vedicization of bodily branding and the process in which forms of reading and interpretation were used to transform new practices into allegedly timeless markers of identity and devotion. The close connection between branding as both a bodily and scholarly practice means that this article is also about the connection between words and flesh. Branding is, of course, material. It entails fire, metal, ash, sweat, skin, and scars. But branding is also semiotic and discursive, both in the many meanings grafted onto a single branded symbol as well as in the enormous volume of writing and debate that bodily branding provoked. A study of branding pushes us to think about texts and bodies as connected in ways that intellectual history and material studies have yet to fully acknowledge.

Визуализация представлений о душе в украшениях национальных костюмов саха (якутов) и тувинцев

Introduction. The cultural heritages of the Sakha (Yakut) and the Tuvan are distinguished by a similarity of basic worldview ideas pertaining to the structure of the Universe, multi-storeyedness of each of the Three Worlds, the pantheon of deities, etc. Goals. The article aims to interpret semantics of ethnic jewelry as a visual narrative articulating the ideas of individual soul in traditional Sakha and Tuvan cultures. To facilitate this, the paper shall summarize the available descriptions of these ideas from ethnographic material, identify some facts confirming jewelry used to serve as markers of soul, consider semantics of traditional jewelry signs. The study hypothesizes as follows: when it comes to soul visualizations, folklore sources manifest repeated indications localizing one of the three souls (aorta, blood, belt, etc.) ― hence, the other two must also have some certain locations and related beliefs, too. Methods. With due regard of the dynamics in religious and aesthetic preferences, the employed interdisciplinary and comparative historical approaches comprise the structural/functional, interpretative, and axiological methods. The method of mosaic reconstruction proves as instrumental in revealing jewelry symbolism. Results. The paper confirms adornments (jewelry pieces) act as means to visualize some valuable worldviews, ideas of human soul and its whereabouts, prestige and behavioral norms. The former are defined as utmost identity signs for an inhabitant of the Middle World that serve as markers and protective amulets for each of the three human souls, also viewed as mediators between the sacred and profane worlds, triggers in ritual communication, and social status indicators. Conclusions. Being a universal form, circle (silver disk, bead, infinity knot, and button) denotes the place and function of each soul. For instance, the air one of the Sakha and the middle one of the Tuvan are placed in the head and identified with head adornments (jewelry pieces). According to Sakha beliefs, the maternal soul is localized in the mediastinum (pulse and blood ― heart and liver), while Tuvans place soul one into the navel. Yakut women of fertile age tend to mark this soul with solar breast jewelry, with no identified symbolic parallels in the Tuvan costume. Yakuts believe the third earthly soul be indicated with a belt buckle and dwell in the navel, while the Tuvan tradition says the good soul dwells in the belt. So, the Yakut have retained somewhat more archaic version of the symbolic corpus. And the differences are largely determined by the late influence of Manchu-Chinese culture and Buddhism on worldviews of southern Tuvans.

African Diaspora Protection: Amulets in New Spain, New Granada, and the Caribbean

Objective: To underline that beyond the territories under Portuguese rule, evidence of the use of protective amulets can also be found in places under Hispanic control and the Caribbean. This study aims to enrich historiography on the subject and dialogue with it regarding source analysis and a rereading based on the descriptions of central-western Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Methodology: It interrogates sources widely used for the study of African matrix cultures in America from a different perspective and reviews non-written sources that allow visualizing written ones in theircontext. Originality: This paper contributes to the understanding of how sources can be reread to research African Diaspora cultures in the light of their connected history, tracing the use of these amulets in specific socio-cultural contexts. Conclusions: By considering and interrogating diverse sources on the conversion of Africans and the African diaspora in the Americas, these stories transcend the immutable benevolence of Catholicism and Eurocentrism and question the myopia of the Jesuits and inquisitors in New Spain and New Granada when observing African customs.

Beyond the (Holy) Shroud: A glimpse into Afro-Catholicism during the Haitian Revolution

ABSTRACT This paper explores how Africans and Afro-Creoles used discourses shaped by Catholicism during the Haitian Revolution both to fight the prospect of re-enslavement by the French and to pursue alternative notions of freedom to those proposed by Toussaint Louverture. Specifically, it examines the appeals for Sunday rest and free days; and the use of protective amulets in pursuit of divinely-granted invulnerability in battle. Afro-Catholicism helped forge a sense of common identity during the colonial period, and enslaved people took a more active role in its dissemination than previously acknowledged. Free cultivateurs and soldiers later appropriated Catholicism as an effective language of resistance because they shared it with the French colonial authorities and the emerging Haitian élites. Arguments about Afro-Catholicism in West Central Africa and Ibero-America also apply to the French Caribbean and underscore the Atlantic entanglements in the development of Catholicism.

Urban Taxi Slogans: The People's Arts

Urban Taxi Slogans: The People's Arts

Shells as a Costume Element of the Turkic-Ugric Population of the Saltiv Culture (Based on Materials from the Krasna Hirka Biritual Burial Ground)

In eight burials (seven inhumations and one cremation) of the Krasna Hirka burial ground in Kharkiv region, there were found the pendants made of sea shells of the mollusk «Cypraea moneta» (burials Nos. 53, 176, 180, 191, 195, 311) (figs. 1: 2, 19, 20; 2: 15, 32; 3: 11; 4: 19; 5: 9) and pendants made of the valves of river mollusks («Unió pictorum» or «Anodonta») (burials Nos. 53, 185, 309) (figs. 2: 16, 33, 34; 6: 23—29). The pendants were present in the child’s burials (burials Nos. 53, 180, 185, 191, 195, 309) and young women of childbearing age (burials Nos. 176, 311). The location of shells jewelry in the burials indicates that they were sewn on clothes and headwear (burial No. 309), they were a part of removable breast ornaments (burial No. 176) (fig. 5: 15), a handbag decoration that was hung to the belt (burial Nos. 185, 191, 311) (figs. 2: 17; 3: 1; 4: 1), also they were woven together with glass beads, bronze bells and bronze spiral beads into the braids of buried people (burials Nos. 53, 180, 195) (fig. 2: 1). The arrangement of the pendants in the burial No. 309 allows asserting that three pendants adorned the child’s cap, being sewn at the area of the temples and on the crown (fig. 7: 2). By the location of the beads, bronze beads, bells and four more pendants of mollusks shells (fig. 7: 1), it can be seen that the collar of the child’s clothes in the neck area was decorated with monochrome beads and small beads sewn on, and four shell pendants that were sewn onto the child’s clothes in the chest area (fig. 7: 3). Polychrome beads (eye-shaped and striped), together with cast bronze bells and bronze beads, were threaded into the child’s braids (fig. 7: 4). In the investigated burials, the shell pendants resembled protective amulets. The connection of these jewelry with the water element, their shape and colour (white/ pearl) indicate that they are related to the cult of the Moon and are a symbol of the Great Goddess — the mother/ progenitor of all living beings and the giver of all life’s blessings.

Семантические модели и мотивы акционального кода удмуртского лечебного ритуала

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the actional code of the Udmurt healing rite, considered as a cultural text. Scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the ritual actions of the healing rite are classified into groups according to the relevant method of achieving the goal and taking into account the semantics of its actional component. The proposed classification is based on the system develo¬ped by E. E. Levkiyevskaya for the study of the Slavic protective amulet. As a result of the analysis, the author has iden-tified the main semantic models, which are manifested in the elementary semantic units - motifs. The con-sidered semantic models are notionally divided into three groups: the first group combines ritual actions the main purpose of which is to establish contact, the second one encompasses actions intended to have impact on the source of the disease; the third one contains actions aimed at giving a patient properties that can make him/her invulnerable to the disease. The analysis of folklore and ethnographic material revealed that motifs of the semantic models belonging to the second group were the most widespread ones, 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.

Subjective forecasting of security practices in extreme situations

The purpose of the research is to study the features of the subject’s predicted choice of security practices in connection with extreme life situations that are significant for him. The main hypothesis was the assumption that the choice of security practices can be associated with the type of extreme situation that initiates it, in such a way that each group of these practices corresponds with a certain type of extreme situations. The research was exploratory in nature. The authors used the methods of incomplete sentence and subjective scaling. A total of 200 university students participated in the study on a voluntary basis. The sample included 118 (59 %) girls and 82 (41 %) boys aged 18–21 years. The respondents identified subjectively significant extreme situations, such as illness, pressure on the psyche, domestic extreme, financial fraud, transport accident, trauma at work, criminal aggression, natural disaster, terrorist attack, destructive social conflict. Factorization has established their semantic grouping into general social, public and private extreme situations. The authors based the study on the selection of the following security practices: normative (compliance with safety instructions, safety memos, following the developed safety rules), socio-­cultural (taking into account the signs of danger, the use of talismans, protective amulets, conducting a ritual of protection against threats) and individual (compliance with the recommendations of significant persons on safety, the use of their own safety rules, their own safety traditions). The authors established on an empirical basis, that the choice of security practices differs depending on the extreme situation that initiates it. The most preferable for students are individual security practices, the least preferable are socio-­cultural ones. The choice of official security practices is more often associated with public extreme situations; the choice of socio-­cultural and individual security practices is more often associated with private extreme situations. The problem has prospects for further research.

The Existence of Tri Datu, From Temple's gift to Souvenir Industry

Consisting of three colors: red, white, and black, Tri Datu reflects three absolute powers surrounding the universe. Balinese Hindu people manifest the trinity deities into interwoven red, black and white threads. Almost in every Balinese Hindu ritual, the existence of the Tri Datu thread can be seen. Therefore, the Tri Datu thread has been using as a ritual instrument or protective amulet. On a philosophical level, the item has a value of self-control. If someone is wearing the sacred item, they would properly behave in society because the interwoven thread represents the divine symbol of righteousness. Many Balinese have been spotted wearing the three-colored thread, thus attracted the non-Balinese people curiosity. The phenomenon was perceived by wider communities that the interwoven thread is local identity. It is gradually led to market demand to obtain the Tri Datu as a souvenir from the island of God. One to another home industry of the Tri Datu accessories emerged as a response to tourism industry demand. Today, one may find the Tri Datu thread-based souvenir in the marketplace at ease. Although the interwoven thread strongly relates to religious symbols, it does not mean that non-Balinese cannot wear it. One should be aware that the Tri Datu holds a religious value that should be taken into account. Therefore, one should avoid wearing it inappropriately, such as a leg bracelet, or put it in any place without consulting it beforehand.

Demons and exorcism in ancient Mesopotamia

AbstractThis essay provides an introduction to the topic of demons and the means of opposing them in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third to late first millennia BCE. Demons and witchcraft were integrated aspects of the Mesopotamian world. They could threaten individuals, often causing illness or ill fortune, as well as target society as a whole, encroaching upon the protected and ordered world of the Mesopotamian city. There were a number of ways to counter such threats, such as protective amulets and incantations, but the foremost, particularly in the first millennium BCE, was the figure of the āšipu, or exorcist. A trained ritual professional, the āšipu had a range of tools at his disposal, as well as the protection and sanction of the gods. This article provides an introduction to the issue of demons and exorcism by presenting four key aspects of this complex topic: first, an overview of characteristics and role of demons in Mesopotamia; second, a summary of the two notable demonic figures known as Lamashtu and Pazuzu; third, the demonic and chaotic figure of the witch; and fourth, an overview of the āšipu and his methods.

Parallel Phrases and Interaction in Greek and Latin Magical Texts.

Magical texts represent an inexhaustible source for the phenomena of an ancient language for special purposes. The scope of this paper is limited to the different kinds of word-borrowings in the Pannonian set of curse tablets. One-language, well written and easily readable magical texts can be difficult to understand while explicit and unambiguous wording is expected in such practical genre like curses which level at definite persons. Harmful curse tablets and protective amulets, however, can be obscure. This study aims to give a comprehensive account of the possible reasons why these texts have a cloudy style, with special outlook of parallel phrases in Greek pieces of evidence.

Fetishizing the Foot: Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

Fetishizing the Foot: Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

Protective power: The nabau or water dragon among the Iban of Sarawak

This article discusses the origin, nature and significance of the nabau, which I gloss in English as ‘water dragon’. I show how there are clear indications that the nabau is regarded by the Iban as protective. The nabau has been woven into pua cloths, skirts and strips of cloth called labong Bungai Nuing. The nabau on labong Bungai Nuing are regarded as manifestations of a culture hero from the parallel semi-spirit world of Panggau Libau, Bungai Nuing, and they are used as protective amulets. This is the clearest demonstration of the protective nature of the nabau. I suggest that the significance of the nabau should be understood in the context of its association with water and with beliefs about the flow of cosmic power and fertility through water. The use of the figure of Bungai Nuing hints, I suggest, at the nature of beliefs about the flow of cosmic power, kuasa, and the ways in which humans engage with this.

Лексема билцг: к вопросу о происхождении и семантике (на материале эпоса «Джангар»)*

The article presents results of a study conducted within the project framework ‘A Definition Dictionary of the Language of the Kalmyk Heroic Epic of Jangar’. 28 Jangar epic songs have been investigated, the object of research being the lexeme biltsg ‘(signet) ring’ included in the word list of the Definition Dictionary. So, the paper attempts to examine the etymology and semantics of the mentioned word. Analysis of the thematic group of adornments can hardly introduce any critical discoveries in linguistics or history and ethnography, but it does facilitate solving questions on separate aspects of spiritual and cultural life of people, helps reconstruct fragments of the archaic view of the world once developed by the Turco-Mongols. The lexeme biltsg is one of the most rarely used words of the epic: only 4 patterns discovered in the whole of the Jangar. The analysis of the etymology — with due regard of related scholarly literature — concludes that the Kalmyk biltsg ‘(signet) ring’ cannot be reduced to the Turkic bizelüq. Still, two etymologically opposing variants of the lexeme were used in Mongolic languages. Thus, the forms bilesüg and bilüčеg have differing morphemic structures. The first one is a compound word and stems from — as aforementioned — the Turkic bilek ‘wrist’ + üsüg ‘ring’ which was actually never adopted by Mongolic languages due to the absence of a corresponding regular affix in the mentioned language systems. The second form is a completely Mongolic word structure, namely: the stem bile- + affix -čЕg. The lexeme is determined (motivated) by a relict stem to have constituted the basis of the proto-Turkic *bilek and that of the proto-Tungus-Manchu *bilen; though the stem is no longer to be traced in modern languages. The historical morphemic structure of the Kalmyk word consists of бил + цг < *bülü + čЕg where the first part is a nominative or verbal (?) stem, and the latter one is an affix applied to form nouns with meanings of either result or object nomination, their main function being that what is denominated by the motivating stem. The epic uses the word biltsg in the meaning of ‘signet ring’ which serves as a symbol of power and strength, also acting as a protective amulet which is typical for traditional culture of the Kalmyks.

Christian Magicians, Jewish Magical Idioms, and the Shared Magical Culture of Late Antiquity

Some time in the late-fifth or early-sixth century CE, a ritual practitioner—operating in the environs of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt—created a protective amulet that reads, “Hôr, Hôr, Phôr, Elôei, Adônai, Iaô, Sabaôth, Michaêl, Jesus Christ. Help us and this house. Amen” (Ὡρ, Ὡρ, Φωρ, Ἐλωεί, Ἀδωναί, Ἰάω, Σαβαώθ, Μιχαήλ, Ἰεσοῦ Χριστέ· Βοήθι ἡμῖν καὶ τούτῳ οἴκῳ. ἀμήν). Each of the names used in the first part of this amulet, known as P.Oxy. VIII 1152 (=PGM P6a), is familiar from other ritual objects from late antiquity (approx. fourth to seventh centuries CE). But the juxtaposition of these divine names on a single amulet presents us with a puzzle: did the ritual expert who created this artifact or his client perceive there to be a difference, tension, or even contradiction between Jesus Christ and the other names listed? Or, alternatively, would they have conceptualized all of these names as belonging equally within what they would have thought of as the “Christian tradition” or some other tradition?

About this title ‐ Geology and Medicine: Historical Connections

The development of the geological and medical sciences shows overlap through numerous historical threads, some of which are investigated here by an international authorship of geologists, historians and medical professionals. Some of the medical men considered here are the relatively well known Steno, Parkinson, William Hunter and Peter Duncan, as well as several more obscure individuals such as Sperling, Hodges, Lemoine, Siqués and a number of Italians. Their work included foundational geological studies, aspects of hydrogeology and the nature of fossils. The therapeutic use of geological materials has been practised since ancient times. A suite of magico-medicinal stones, some purportedly harvested from the bodies of fabulous animals, have ancient folklore roots and were worn as protective amulets and incorporated into medicines. Medicinal earths were credited with wide-ranging medicinal properties. Geology and Medicine: Historical Connections will be of particular interest to Earth scientists, medical personnel, historians of science and the general reader with an interest in science.

Jewels, Gems, and Magic Stones: The Uses of Stones in Natural Magic in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, many people believed that rocks and minerals possessed magical properties. For example, rubies were used to treat disorders of the blood, while topaz was used to ward off demons. This paper describes the supposed properties of these stones and their uses as medicine, as good luck charms and protective amulets, and as a means of working magic.

British and Roman Names from the Sulis-Minerva Temple: Two Solutions to an Old Problem

Any personal name found within a charm fits into one of two categories: background name (a name of a deity/saint, referring to the author’s confessional identity) or subject name (the particular name of a person for/against whom the charm is intended). By the ‘subject name’ we understand any proper name in the text of a charm, which transforms a ‘recipe’ (the term of J. G. Gager) of a potentially magical text into a real magical performance. According to the observation of V. N. Toporov, introducing a personal name into a charm is mandatory: “A text of a charm is a mere text and nothing more, until a name is incorporated into its large immutable body. It is only adding the name, uttering it turns a verbal text into a ritual performance, that is, into an actual charm that works as such.” However, in many cases putting a name (subject name) into the charm is impossible, because it is not known either to the charmer or to his/her customer, the charm not being intended against a particular person. This is exactly the case with charms against thieves, which are quite widespread. Charms of this type are generally referred to as ‘Justice Prayers’. Tablets of that type were found in abundance during the excavations at the Bath site of the Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva. This site, with its natural hot spring that has been believed to have healing properties up to now, had already been worshipped in the pre-Roman era and was associated with the goddess Sulis whom the Romans would later identify with Minerva. Among the multiple archaeological findings made at the site (such as coins or votive images of body parts allegedly healed by the goddess), there are 130 lead tablets of diverse contents. Along with name lists and commendations addressed to the goddess, there is a considerable proportion of tablets that can also be categorized as Justice Prayers. Their authors address Sulis in order to return stolen things. The explainable absence of subject names in these texts seems to indicate that they were replaced in the charms (Graeco-Roman defixiones being indeed charms) by the formula identifying the potential victim as ‘the one who has stolen my property’. Therefore, the invariable rule of introducing a personal name into the body of the charm, predicted by Toporov, seems to be fulfilled: we can suggest that the formula the man who took it might be classified as a substitute for the unknown subject name and is functionally aimed at creating the kind of uniqueness a charm needs to be actualized. But it is to note, that Justice Prayers, unlike conventional defixiones, contain, as a rule, the name of the aggrieved party. Conceivably, it is their name that stands for the subject name of the charm. The analysis of the use of verbal tenses in the tablets discovered a strange tendency: people with Roman names use the perfect of the verb involare ‘to steal’ (involavit), but persons with Brittonic names prefer to use the second future of the same verb – involaverit. We could suggest, the Brittons used to write their tablets not post factum, but ante factum and transformed Roman curse tablets into a kind of protective amulets. Their use of Latin letters wasn’t a real ‘writing’, but rather an ‘iconic’ use of symbols characteristic to the stage of epigraphic. In this context, the tablet N 18 (with supposed Brittonic words) deserves a special attention.