.:: Historically Attested Trance Techniques and Fairy Offerings in Traditional Witchcraft ::.
(From: Éva Pócs.Small Gods, Small Demons: Remnants of an Archaic Fairy Cult in Central and South-Eastern Europe. In: Michael Ostling.Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits: Small Gods at the Margins of Christendom. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 255-276.)
“The rich wealth of narratives that surrounds the figure and activity of magicians consists of folklore motifs of learning and initiation. From time to time the fairies seize them and transport them to the otherworld, often starting in early childhood, and there teach them fairy knowledge—mostly the use of medicinal herbs. One common motif is a serious illness that the selected individual needs to undergo, as well as punishment by the fairies of any reluctant candidates. All of this is well known from the narrative repertoire of other magical-religious specialists, too. A unique characteristic of the initiation of fairy magicians is, however, that the fairies snatch them in a state of trance or dream induced by music and so transport them to their own golden, glorious other-world.
How does all of this manifest in the actual living practice of magicians? Some Serbian reports speak of the trance-inducing role of music and dance actually used in “real-life” initiations. For instance, at a certain age a candidate for a fairy magician falls into a trance; that is, goes to the so-called fairy tree of the village in a semi-conscious state and begins to dance there. Or, quite simply, the person will commence an ecstatic dance which, according to one data item, lasted for nine days and nine nights. The initiates eventually become the professional healers of their community who pursue their activity with the patronage and assistance of the fairies. Some of them re-enter contact with the fairies from time to time.
On the basis of field observations, Maria Vivod describes the practice of a Serbian “fairy seeing” healer from Voivodina. She explains that this woman was in constant communication with her fairy helpers who “sent her” the patient’s diagnosis and also explained to her how she could help the patient. She used the term fairy disease to refer to mental diseases and states of possession, and would offer healing and fortune telling.
An indispensable part of the healing activity of the fairy magicians of the Balkans was to present sacrifices—a practice prevalent in the Orthodox areas of the Balkans until quite recently. Healing and the offering of sacrifices would both take place in the distinctive space-time structure of the fairy world; in other words at the fairy spots which were, as we have mentioned, taboo at all other times. This could be a meadow, a spring, or an artificially created sacred space (e.g., a circle drawn around the sufferer). Most commonly, however, it was what they called a “fairy tree” (e.g., the hawthorn for the Serbs and a rose tree in Transylvania). Another common fairy spot was any location where the patient had become possessed by the fairies due to some breach of taboo—the point where they had been “struck” by the fairies. The time for healing was usually one of the fairy periods of the calendar year, such as Rusalia (Bulgarian rusalska sednitsa, Romanian rusalia, Serbian rusalje), the week before Pentecost. Alternately, it could take place during one of those “fairy times” that followed in cyclic repetition (1 week, 1 month or 1 year after the appearance of the disease). The sequence of sacrificial foods and drinks varied from place to place, but milk, honey, wine, bread or cake are part of the sequence in practically all data. The offering of sacrifices is often preceded or followed by a ritual invocation of the fairies in the presence of the sufferer (e.g., Albanian fairy healers dress the patient in white and make them sit in a quiet spot inside a circle that they draw themselves); Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Albanian and Croatian data testify to female magicians praying to the fairies in a whisper or reciting charming spells over them in a chanting voice and in a state of semi-trance, requesting that the fairies withdraw their harm-doing and restore the patient’s health in return for the offerings. The patient usually spends the night at the spot or, at other times, the healer will sleep at the location with the patient and an incubation dream takes place during which the patient recovers.
The relation of fairy sacrifices to the cult of the dead was noticed quite early—Lawson claims that the offerings given to the nereids in Greece are actually the same as the Christian offering to the dead, the pomana, which is taken to the cemetery as an offering for the salvation of the souls of the dead.
Fairy offerings presented by Romanians during Rusalia week are strongly influenced by the fact that this is also the week of sacrificial offerings to the dead. This again strongly underlines the close relationship between the realm of the dead and the fairy world of the Balkans. The relationship which Bulgarian, Serbian and Greek fairy magicians maintain with the fairies can in many cases be seen as verging on communication with the dead. For example, Romanian and Serbian female magicians who have “good fairy” patrons, called the saints, fall into a trance and communicate with the dead regularly at the time of the major Christian feasts of the dead; that is, at Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. We also know of magicians who, although fairy magicians by name (vilarka, vilevniak), mostly transmit messages of the dead to the living during their spontaneously induced states of trance. A certain process of “Christianization” may be observed along another line, too—besides fairies and the dead, Christian deities also functioned as communication partners to magicians. Fairies who punish taboo breakers and at the same time accept sacrifices and offer healing were replaced, on many occasions, by God or the Virgin Mary. People would pray to them while presenting their offerings. The role of helping or healing fairies is now sometimes filled in by angels.
As far as our data allow us to judge, the communication technique used in these cases was trance induced by way of concentration and meditation in quiet places at night, by saying prayers to oneself or, occasionally, by the rhythmical recitation of charms.Through trance (either with genuine or dramatically performed), these healers and their patients had visions or at least powerful fantasies about the fairies they had invoked and induced to “appear.” As mentioned earlier, oral folklore accounts are full of motifs of healers who were transported by music and dance and underwent initiation in a musical fairy heaven. Images of fairies making music and dancing also appear in the visions of patients or at least in their narratives. There are quite a few reports in which the ill- experienced incubation dreams in “fairy spots” and having visions of fairies making music and dancing: the belief in the remedial power of fairy music and fairy dance was prevalent all over the area under examination. This is no surprise, since they need to sleep alone, by the trees or on the clearings of fairies, and “they make sure they don’t fall asleep” so that they can hear what the samodiva decide regarding their recovery. They also believe that this is the spot where the samodiva gather in the night to dance the hora.”
Litany of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus * Taken from Kyrie Eleison: Two Hundred Litanies with Historico-Liturgical Introduction and Notes by Rev. Fr. Benjamin Francis Musser, O.F.M. (Westminster, MD: The Newman Bookshop, 1944).
