There have been a lot of witches in Rus' since ancient times. In their practical activities they used different forms of witchcraft. One of the most dangerous forms is choosing a footprint from under your feet and throwing dust into the wind. What was this witchcraft? The witch took dust from the trail of the person she wanted to destroy. She put this dust on her palm and pronounced a curse. Then she walked past the house of the intended victim and blew away the charmed dust at the threshold or at the gate. After this, the death of a person was inevitable.
The main role in magic was given to conspiracy or betrothal. That is, magical power was attributed not to things or objects, but to words. It was they who imbued various objects with power. This meant that magic came from the human soul and not from nature.
Even treatment or poisoning with the help of herbs was attributed to non-harmful or healing properties plants, but a sorcerer who endowed them with various properties through his will. That's why Orthodox Church had a negative attitude towards herbal treatment and called it greenery. It was assumed that an absolutely harmless plant could kill if endowed with magical powers.
In 1632, when the Muscovite kingdom was at war with Lithuania, a state decree prohibited the import of hops into the territory of Rus'. And such a decree was born on the basis of a denunciation from spies. They reported that some witch was slandering drunkenness. And when such hops get into Muscovy, a pestilence will begin.
In the 15th-19th centuries, people were especially afraid of a decoction from the “underground root”. Allegedly, the witches of Rus' found him in caves and abandoned wells and pronounced a curse over him. After this, poison was prepared and sold in finished form. But the mysterious root itself is none of ordinary people did not see. The witches living in Zamoskvorechye of the Mother Throne were especially famous for their ability to make poisons from a mysterious plant.
In the first half of the 17th century, such famous witches of Rus' as Feklitsa, Ulka, Mashka Kozlikha, Naska Chernigovka, Dunka lived there. In 1638, a case arose about the damage sent to Queen Evdokia. And all the Zamoskvoretsky enchantresses were interrogated, since they practiced services by slandering certain things.
This is how women suffering from beatings from their husbands turned to the sorceress Naska Chernigovka. The sorceress “laundered the hearts and jealousy of husbands.” She talked about salt, whitewash, soap and ordered women to wash themselves with soap and whiten themselves with whitewash, and to add salt to their husbands’ food.
The witch Feklitsa from Zamoskvorechye was considered one of the most popular in Moscow. It was rumored that she was friends with ghosts and easily communicated with Satan himself. This woman lived not far from the Serpukhov Gate of Skorodom. It must be said that there were many settlements in Zamoskvorechye at that time. There lived taxing people who carried all kinds of cargo, interpreters, foreign, Pskov, and Novgorod merchants. Healers, fortune tellers, sorceresses and witches have long flourished in this area.
And Feklitsa, communicating with spirits, constantly intimidated the people. She frightened those who tried to dig a well or build a basement without her knowledge. People tried not to quarrel with her. After all, she could poison the water in a well, sink a house into the ground, and unleash all sorts of evil spirits. Satan himself helped her punish people. For this purpose, Feklitsa scratched a special sign on the frame of an abandoned well. And lord evil forces immediately came to her call.
It should be noted that the attitude towards witches in Rus' was twofold. They were afraid, but at the same time they called for help in difficult times, asked to tell fortunes, cast a spell, and remove damage. And it happened that they beat me, put me in a dungeon, tortured me, drowned me, and burned me at the stake. Bloody reprisals against sorceresses were practiced extremely widely on Russian soil. But they differed from the Court of the Holy Inquisition in that witches were killed by ordinary citizens, and the state authorities practiced this from case to case.
And the famous Feklitsa was touched by popular anger. In the end, the inhabitants of the capital city dealt with her. The cause was a fire in Zamoskvorechye. He destroyed many houses, and not all the owners were able to rebuild their homes. Several sites remained abandoned. And the children began to play on these ashes. Somehow they discovered a cellar and climbed into it. We saw a hole going into the ground there, decided to check where it went, and disappeared.
The relatives of the missing children became alarmed, and rumors spread that it was Feklitsa who killed them. She brought innocent children's souls as a gift to those ghosts with whom she constantly knew. Then she was reminded of all the sins accumulated over many years.
Enraged men and women burst into Feklitsa’s hut. They beat her and dragged her by the hair to an abandoned well, where she carved signs on the log house. The witch was thrown into this well. To be sure, they also threw stones. But Feklitsa managed to shout curses at her executioners.
It just so happened from ancient times that the witches of Rus' never forgave their offenders. In this case, too, the missing children did not return, and troubles befell the participants in the execution. Some were stabbed to death by robbers, some died from illness, and some were left without home and property after another fire. And before trouble came to someone’s family, signs appeared at the home where she lived. Exactly the same as on the log house of an abandoned well.
For many years, rumors about Feklitsa haunted ordinary people. Meanwhile, the old witches of Rus' were replaced by new ones. And gradually other legends and rumors were born.
In a spiritual verse recorded (by A.V. Valov) in Poshekhonye Yarosl. g., the soul of a witch, who has already completed her earthly existence, repents of her sins in the following way:
“I gave milk from the cows,
She chewed a strip between the boundaries,
I cleaned the bread with ergot.”
This verse gives full characteristics the evil activity of a witch, since these three acts constitute the special activities of women who decide to sell their souls to the devils. However, if you look closely at the appearance of the witch, in the form in which it is depicted in the imagination of the inhabitants of the northern forest half of Russia, then the significant difference between the Great Russian witch and her ancestor, the Little Russian witch, will involuntarily catch your eye. If in the Little Russian steppes young widows are very common among witches and, moreover, in the words of our great poet, such that “it would not be a pity to give their souls for the look of a black-browed beauty,” then in the harsh coniferous forests, which themselves sing only in a minor tone, playful and beautiful Little Russian witches turned into ugly old women.
They were equated here with the fairy-tale Baba Yagas, living in huts on chicken legs, where, according to the Olonets legend, they forever spin the tow and at the same time “graze geese in the field with their eyes, and cook in the oven with their noses (instead of pokers and grips).” . Great Russian witches are usually confused with sorceresses and are imagined as nothing other than old women, sometimes fat as a tub, with disheveled, gray hair, bony hands and huge blue noses. (According to these fundamental features, in many places the very name of a witch has become abusive.) Witches, according to general opinion, differ from all other women in that they have a tail (small) and have the ability to fly through the air on brooms, pokers, mortars, etc. P.
They go on dark deeds from their homes through chimneys and, like all sorcerers, they can turn into different animals, most often magpies, pigs, dogs and yellow cats. One such pig (in the Bryansk region) was beaten with anything, but the pokers and grips bounced off it like a ball until the roosters crowed. In cases of other transformations, beatings are also considered a useful measure, only it is advised to hit with a cart axle and nothing other than repeating the word “one” with each blow (to say “two” means to destroy oneself, since the witch will break that person). This ritual of beating, which determines how and with what to beat, shows that bloody reprisals against witches are widely practiced. And indeed, they are beaten to this day, and the modern village does not cease to supply material for criminal chronicles.
Most often, witches are tortured for milking other people's cows. Knowing the widespread village custom of giving cows names according to the days of the week on which they were born, as well as their habit of turning around when called, witches easily take advantage of all this. Luring the “authors” and “subbotok”, they milk them to the last drop, so that the cows then come from the field as if they had completely lost their milk.
The offended peasants console themselves with the possibility of catching the villainess at the scene of the crime and mutilating her by cutting off her ear, nose, or breaking her leg. (After this, a woman with a bandaged cheek, or limping on one leg or the other, will usually soon appear in the village.)
Numerous experiments of this kind are being carried out everywhere, since peasants still retain the confidence that their cows are not milked by hungry neighbors who do not know what to feed the children, but by witches. Moreover, the peasants, apparently, do not even admit the idea that cows can lose milk from painful causes, or that this milk can be sucked out by alien animals.
Witches have a lot in common with sorcerers, and if you select outstanding features in the mode of action of both, you will have to repeat yourself. They are also in constant communication and strike with each other (it is for these meetings that “bald” mountains and noisy games of playful widows with cheerful and passionate devils were invented), and they die just as hard, suffering from terrible convulsions caused by the desire to convey to someone - their own science, and in the same way, after death, a tongue protrudes from their mouth, unusually long and quite similar to a horse’s.
Due to the remoteness, or simply due to the lack of “bald” mountains, closets and especially bathhouses are considered quite convenient for dates, and there is a “witcher” to supervise them. Throughout the south of Great Russia, this is either a sorcerer or a bloodsucker ghoul, who, according to the common belief of all Slavic peoples, walks after death and kills people. Most often, a witcher is a good creature, who not only does nothing evil, but even tries to be useful: he prevents witches from doing evil, forbids the dead to walk, disperses clouds, etc. He does not lose his power even after death. They say that they have seen him more than once, how he fights with the dead on the graves and always wins. Due to this confusion of concepts that do not give a clear idea of witchers, and due to the fact that ghouls, undead night walkers, belong to Ukrainian beliefs, we do not find the need to give separate descriptions of both.
But the similarity does not end there, since then restless night walks from fresh graves to the old ashes begin (in the best case - to taste the pancakes put out outside the window before the legal fortieth day, in the worst case - to take out belated and unrestrained anger and settle settlements unfinished during life with unkind neighbors). Finally, an aspen stake driven into the grave calms them down in the same way. In a word, it is useless to look for sharp boundaries separating wise men from sorcerers, just as precisely as witches from sorceresses. Even the history of both has much in common: its bloody pages go back centuries, and it seems that they have lost their beginning - the custom of cruel reprisals against sorcerers and witches has become so ingrained among the people. True, the most enlightened church fathers spoke out against this custom back in the Middle Ages, but in that harsh era the preaching of meekness and gentleness had little success.
Thus, in the first half of the 15th century, at the same time that twelve witches were burned alive in Pskov during a pestilence, in Suzdal Bishop Serapion was already armed against the habit of attributing social disasters to witches and destroying them for this:
“You still adhere to the filthy custom of magic,” said St. Father, you believe and burn innocent people. In what books, in what writings have you heard that famines occur on earth due to sorcery? If you believe this, then why are you burning the Magi? Do you beg, honor them, bring them gifts so that they don’t cause pestilence, bring down rain, bring warmth, order the earth to be fruitful? Sorcerers and sorceresses act with demonic power over those who fear them, but who hold firm faith in God, they have no power over those. I grieve for your madness, I beg you, step back from your filthy deeds. The divine rules command that a person be condemned to death after hearing many witnesses, and you put water as a witness, saying: “If she begins to sink, she is innocent, but if she floats, then she is a witch.” But can’t the devil, seeing your lack of faith, support her so that she doesn’t drown, and thereby lead you into murder?”
However, these words of conviction, filled with the highest feelings of Christian charity, sounded like a voice in the desert: 200 years later, under Tsar Alexei, Elder Olena was burned in a log house, like a heretic, with sorcerer’s papers and roots, after she herself admitted that she had spoiled people and She taught some of them witchcraft. In Perm, the peasant Talev was burned with fire and during torture they gave him three shakes because of a slander that he was causing hiccups on people. In Totma in 1674, the woman Fedosya was burned in a log house, in front of numerous witnesses, on the basis of a conspiracy of damage, etc.
When (in 1632) news came from Lithuania that some woman was talking about hops in order to bring about a pestilence, they immediately, under pain of death, were forbidden to buy that hops. Another whole century later (in 1730), the Senate considered it necessary to remind by decree that the law defines burning as witchcraft, and forty years after that (1779), the Bishop of Ustyug reported on the appearance of sorcerers and wizards from the peasants, male and female, who They not only turn others away from orthodoxy, but also infect many with various diseases through worms. The sorcerers were sent to the Senate as guilty of having renounced their faith and having had a meeting with the devil, who brought them worms. The same senate, having learned from questioning the sorcerers that they had been mercilessly beaten more than once and with these beatings were forced to blame for something for which they were not at all guilty, ordered the governor and his comrade to be removed from office, the imaginary sorcerers to be freed and released, and the bishops and other clergy prohibit entering into investigative cases of witchcraft and sorcery, because these cases are considered subject to civil court.
And since the life-giving ray of light flashed for the first time in the impenetrable darkness, on the eve of the 20th century, we have received the following news on the same magical question about witches: “Recently (our correspondent writes from Orel), at the beginning of 1899, a little They did not kill one woman (named Tatyana), whom everyone considered to be a witch. Tatyana had a fight with another woman and threatened her that she would ruin her. And this is what happened later because of a street women's squabble: when the men came to the screams and turned to Tatyana with a strict request, she promised them to turn everyone into dogs. One of the men came up to her with his fist and said: “You’re a witch, but speak to my fist so that it doesn’t hit you.” And hit her on the back of the head. Tatyana fell, and, as if on cue, the other men attacked her and began beating her. It was decided to examine the woman, find her tail and tear it off.
The woman screamed obscenities and defended herself so desperately that many had their faces scratched, others had their hands bitten. The tail, however, was not found. Her husband came running to Tatyana’s scream and began to defend her, but the men began to beat him too. Finally, severely beaten, but never ceasing to threaten, the woman was tied up, taken to the volost (Ryabinskaya) and put in a cold cell. In the volost they were told that for such deeds all the peasants would be punished by the zemstvo chief, since now they are not told to believe in sorcerers and witches. Having returned home, the men announced to Tatiana’s husband, Antip, that they would probably decide to send his wife to Siberia, and that they would agree to give their sentence if he did not expose buckets of vodka to the whole society.
While drinking, Antip swore and swore that not only had he not seen, but never in his life had he even noticed any tail on Tatyana. At the same time, however, he did not hide the fact that his wife threatens to turn him into a stallion every time he wants to beat her. The next day Tatyana came from the volost, and all the men came to her to agree that she would not cast magic in her village, would not spoil anyone, and would not take milk from the cows. For yesterday's beatings they generously asked for forgiveness. She swore that she would fulfill the request, and a week later an order was received from the volost, which said that such nonsense would not happen in the future, and if something like this happened again, then those responsible for it would be punished according to the law, and, in addition, it would be reported brought to the attention of the zemstvo chief. The peasants listened to the order and decided with the whole world that the witch had probably bewitched the authorities, and that therefore in the future they should not go to him, but should deal with it in their own way.”
In the village of Terebenevo (Zhizdrinsk district, Kaluga city), a seven-year-old girl Sasha told her mother that she and her aunt Marya, with whom she lived as nannies, flew to Bald Mountain every night.
- When everyone falls asleep, the lights go out, Aunt Marya flies in like a magpie and chirps. I’ll jump out, and she’ll throw me a magpie skin, I’ll put it on, and we’ll fly.
On the mountain we will skin the skin, make fires, and brew a potion to give people a drink. A lot of women flock together: both old and young. Marya is having fun - whistling and dancing with everyone, but I’m bored on the sidelines, because everyone is big, and I’m the only one small.
Sasha told her father the same thing, and this one rushed straight to Marya:
- Atheist, why did you ruin my daughter?
Marya’s husband interceded: he pushed the fool over the threshold and closed the door behind him. But he did not calm down even to the headman. The headman thought and thought and said:
- No, I can’t act here, go to the priest and to the volost.
The father thought and thought and decided to take his daughter to church, confess her, give her communion and try to see if the priest would undertake to reprimand her. However, the girl herself refused to confess.
“Witches don’t pray or confess!”
And in the church she turned her back to the iconostasis. The priest refused to scold the girl and advised her to give the girl a good spanking,
– What kind of magpie did she throw in, where did she fly? And you, fool, believe the chatter of a child?
Meanwhile, at the hut of the alarmed father, the crowd of men and women does not disperse, and the girl continues to chatter her nonsense.
In the volost they believed the complainant and recognized Marya as a witch. The clerk rummaged through the laws and announced:
“No, brother, nothing can be done against the devil: I haven’t found any article against him.”
Suspicion fell on Marya, and the witch’s fame began to grow. The neighbors began to watch her every step, remember and notice all sorts of little things. One said that she saw Marya washing herself, leaning over the threshold into the street; another - that Marya scooped water during the day, the third - that Marya collected herbs on the night of Ivan Kupala, etc. Every step of the unfortunate woman began to be interpreted in a bad way. The boys from around the corner started throwing stones at her. Neither to her. Neither my husband was allowed to show himself on the street - they almost spat in his eyes.
- If only you, father, would stand up for us! - Marya’s husband begged the priest. The priest tried to convince the crowd and calm Marya down, but nothing helped, and in the end, innocent and meek Marya died of consumption.
15 years have passed since that time. Sasha has grown up a long time ago, she has long insisted that her story is pure fiction, but now no one believes her: the girl came into full sense and realized that this should not be told. She is a good girl, but no groom will marry her: no one wants to marry a witch.
She, too, will probably have to, sitting as an old wench, turn to the trade of fortune telling, especially since such occupations are almost not dangerous and are very profitable. Neither brave fellows, nor beautiful maidens, nor deceived husbands, nor jealous wives will pass by the fortune tellers, because now, as in the old days, the belief in “dryness” lives in people. There is no need for bald mountains or roadside growths, just enough villagers for felt boots so that, having learned the innermost secrets, you can diligently engage in love spells and lapels of loving and cold hearts: both to your advantage and to help strangers. In such matters there is still a lot of scope for clever people, no matter what these tricksters are called: witches or sorcerers, fortune-tellers or healers, grandmothers or whisperers. Here are some examples from the practice of modern witches and fortune tellers.
One peasant of the Oryol province seriously offended his newlywed wife and, in order to somehow improve the matter, turned for advice to the vaunted old healer, who was rumored to be a known witch. The healer advised her patient to go to the meadows and find between the stozhars (stakes on which haystacks are attached) three pieces that had stood driven into the ground for at least three years; then scrape shavings from each stack, brew them in a pot and drink.
And here is another case from the practice of sorcerers.
“I don’t have washed water from my neighbors,” one girl who served a rich merchant also complained to a famous Kaluga witch, “he promised to marry me and he deceived me.” Everyone laughs, even the little guys.
“Just bring me a scrap from his shirt,” the witch encouraged her, “I’ll give it to the church watchman, so that when he starts ringing, he will tie this scrap on a rope, then the merchant, out of boredom, will not know where to go, and he will come to you.” , and you laugh at him: I didn’t call you, why did I come?..
Another poor girl also complained, wanting to marry a rich peasant who didn’t like her.
“If you can, take his stockings off his feet,” the witch advised. “I will wash them and pour water at night, and I will give you three grains: one you will throw in front of his house, and the other at his feet when he goes, the third when he comes...
There are infinitely many such cases in the practice of village witches, but it is remarkable that healers and witches are truly inexhaustible in the variety of their recipes. Here are a few more samples.
A man loves someone else's woman. The wife asks for advice.
“Look at the yard where the roosters are fighting,” the witch recommends, “take a handful from that place in the land and sprinkle it on the bed of your homewrecker.” If she starts to quarrel with your husband, he will again fall in love with his “law” (i.e., his wife).
To keep girls dry, it is advised to carry bagels or gingerbread cookies and apples under their left arm for several days, of course, first of all, equipped with incantations, which contain the most important, secretly acting force.
Only knowledgeable and chosen witches do not chatter conspiracy words into the wind, but put into the spoken things exactly what will then heal, calm and console, at will. It’s as if the most healing potion fills an aching heart when the ears hear the wish that the melancholy that has been pressing until now would go away “neither into singing, nor into roots, nor into trampling mud, nor into seething springs,” namely into that person, who has insulted, fallen out of love or deceived with promises, etc. For lovers, witches know such words that, it seems, no one can come up with better and sweeter than them. They send dryness “to zealous hearts, to a white body, to a black liver, to a hot chest, to a violent head, to the middle vein and to all 70 veins, and to all 70 joints, to the most loving bone. Let this very dryness ignite a zealous heart and boil the hot blood, so much so that you can’t wash it down with a drink, or eat it in food, you can’t fall asleep, you can’t wash it off with water, you can’t go on a spree, you can’t cry with tears,” etc. .
Only coming from the mouths of witches, these words have the power to “seal” someone else’s heart and lock it, but only if they have in their hands: hex roots, the hair of a loved one, a piece of his clothing, etc. They believe every promise and fulfill every order: they put a little head under the sleigh for young guys if they want one of them not to get married this year, they burn his hair so that he walks like a lost person for a whole year. If you stain his undershirt or fur coat with lamb’s blood, then no one will love him at all.
But the most effective remedy in love affairs is a mysterious talisman, which is obtained from a black cat or from frogs. From the first, boiled to the last degree, an “invisible bone” is obtained, making the person who owns it invisible. The bone is equivalent to self-propelled boots, a flying carpet, a bread bag and an invisible hat. Two “lucky bones” are taken out of the frog, serving with equal success both for love spells and lapels that excite love or cause disgust. These cat and frog bones are also spoken of in fairy tales with complete faith in their magic.
These bones are obtained very easily: just boil a completely black cat in a pot and you will get a “hook and fork”, or you should put two frogs in an anthill to get a “hook and spatula”. They use a hook to touch the one they want to attract (or discreetly attach it to her dress). They use a fork or spatula to push her away from her when she has time to get bored or completely disgusted. Few rituals are required and the preparation is not particularly difficult. You need to walk away from the ant heap backwards so that the goblin cannot catch up when he goes looking for traces; then both tracks will lead into the forest, but there will be no trail from the forest. In other cases, it is advised to go to that anthill for 12 nights in a row and walk around it in silence three times, only on the thirteenth night is such a treasure given into your hands. However, you can do without these approaches. Failure occurs only when the marked girl does not wear the hook fastened to her dress for three weeks in a row, etc.
Based on all the data presented, we can conclude that the once influential and terrible power of witches, aimed mainly at love affairs, is now confined to the woman’s kingdom. In this, of course, one must see great happiness and the undoubted success of enlightenment. Already from many places, and, moreover, famous for their superstition, such good news is heard, for example:
“In the old days there were a lot of witches, but nowadays you don’t hear anything about them.”
- The current witch is most often a pimp. So the witches not only die, according to the old custom, on Sila and Siluyan (July 30), having drunk on stolen milk from other people’s cows, but, according to many undoubted signs, under the new order, they have completely prepared for real death.
S.V. Maksimov. Unclean, unknown and godlike power. 1903 Publisher: St. Petersburg. Partnership of R. Golicke and A. Wilborg
Unlike Christian statements, which claim that the Witch is an evil woman who flies on a broom and serves the devil, in fact, the Witch from Old Slavonic is the Knowing Mother. Slavic terms or names, such as: Witch, Witcher, Vedun, Vedunya, have a common root “ved”, which means nothing more than “to know or to know.”
Among the Slavs, this is not at all a designation of the dark essence of a person, and certainly not an abusive expression. It is customary to call wise women and women who know how to use magic a witch.
The magic of the Slavs more often turned to the forces of light and the forces of Nature. So, if you learned about this for the first time, know that the Witch does not mean anything bad about herself. A witch can be called a midwife, a fortune teller, or just a woman who occupies a certain position in society.
It is believed that in the ancient Slavic world, most or even all women possessed magic (to one degree or another). Some, naturally, at the level of fortune telling and rituals, others at a deeper and more powerful level. However, most women, having become adults and wise, having experienced all the hardships of life, having learned all the instructions and knowledge of their ancestors, became Witches. They know how to use magical power Nature, contact the mysterious forces of the underworld and use it for good or bad purposes. Slavic Witches knew all the rituals, various spells, whispers, conspiracies. If a person had the idea that he had been jinxed, then who else but a witch should he turn to!? Before sowing or before harvest, the witch had to whisper over the field so that the spirits of the Earth would make the hard work a little easier. Starting from the construction of a house and ending with weddings, most events in the life of the Slavs were accompanied by the presence of the Knowing Mothers or Veduns, who gave their strength and helped to call forth the necessary forces of nature, so that the pagan Slavs would always live with nature and other worlds in one closely connected life and would not forget who they actually exist.
Of course, as a result of the wild persecution of Witches in Europe (where they were subjected to inhuman torture and painful death), the active propaganda of the terrifying essence of all wise women and knowledgeable men, the word Witch itself suffered a strong conceptual change. Now the Witch is understood as a hunched old woman, whose companion is a black cat, and whose means of transportation to the Sabbath is a broom. And yet, the more Russian people know the true meaning of this word, the faster it will be forgotten as horrible dream and everything will finally fall into place.
Who is a witch, or 64 qualities of a woman
Who is the Witch? Usually they represent an evil and terrible old fury who practices evil witchcraft, eats small children, etc. This image has been embedded in our consciousness for many centuries in order to hide the truth and ancient secret knowledge. Why this was done and is being done is the topic of another article. So who is a witch?
By medieval Christian standards, a female witch was a servant of the devil, supposedly possessing a supernatural ability to harm people and animals. And even now the attitude of Christianity has not changed. How many women were burned at the stake by “harmless” Christians. I wonder why such an attitude towards women developed in the Middle Ages?
A witch (from another Slavic “to know” - to know) is a woman who practices magic, witchcraft. The Slavic word “witch, witch, witch” has the Old Russian root “ved”, which has the meaning: “ved” (“to know”). But the true meaning of the word Witch has been perverted. And now in modern Russian the word witch already has a pejorative and envious meaning.
A witch is a knowing, knowing mother. Knowledgeable women know how to find family happiness. In order to become a good mother, you first need to be a good wife, and even before that, a good woman!
A real woman (witch) must have 64 qualities necessary for a fulfilling family life.
Qualities of a woman that make her perfect
1. Have the determination to follow your husband.
2. The ability to give the greatest pleasure to your spouse.
3. The ability to guess and anticipate the husband’s wishes.
4. The ability to be collected in any environment.
5. Possession and control of sexual power to embody highly spiritual ancestors in their children.
6. Cleanliness.
7. Knowledge of love games and the art of lovemaking.
8. Agility in love positions.
9. The ability to undress beautifully.
10. The ability to arouse the interest of your spouse with your behavior and attire.
11. Ability to present yourself.
12. The ability to excite your husband.
13. The ability to leave a sleeping husband without disturbing.
14. Know ways to fall asleep after your husband.
15. Be able to sleep in any position.
16. The ability to do various massages, maintain longevity and health.
17. Healing treatment: herbal medicine, spells, treatment with vital force.
18. Household and ritual witchcraft, knowledge of folk customs.
19. Knowledge of the basics of star reading: favorable and unfavorable days.
20. The ability to communicate with the elements of nature.
21. The ability to use your space; Knowledge of hair styles and ability to style hair.
22. Knowledge of different characters.
23. The ability to demonstrate the necessary character.
24. The ability to express and subdue your feelings.
25. Knowledge of the necessary protection of one’s honor and dignity.
26. The ability to reason, identify patterns and draw conclusions.
27. The ability to express thoughts eloquently.
28. Knowledge of games that develop human thinking abilities.
29. Conducting business calculations, knowledge of measures, weight, volume, density.
30. Knowledge of the tax system.
31. Ability to negotiate and conduct business.
32. The ability to prove that you are right.
33. The ability to recognize the qualities and abilities of people.
34. The ability to solve dreams and interpret omens.
35. The ability to settle in and create comfort in any environment.
36. The ability to make utensils, household items and toys from clay.
37. Making fabrics and yarn from various materials, making and decorating clothes; knowledge of the hidden meaning of patterns and characteristics of products.
38. Preparation of paints; dyeing of fabrics, yarn, clothing, utensils, knowledge of the basics of color science.
39. Knowledge of the properties of stones and the ability to use them.
40. Cooking and preparing drinks.
41. Knowledge of wild plants, their use in everyday life, nutrition and treatment.
42. The ability to get a good harvest from the garden, preserve it and make food preparations.
43. Knowledge of animal husbandry.
44. Communication and play with animals; training them, instilling the necessary actions.
45. The ability to recognize a person’s condition by his handwriting, to express himself beautifully and competently in writing.
46. The ability to convey one’s state and perception of the surrounding world using painting and drawing.
47. Making garlands, wreaths, bouquets and knowing their hidden meaning.
48. Knowledge of fairy tales, epics, legends, proverbs, sayings and folk songs.
49. Making dolls for games, rituals and witchcraft.
50. Writing poems, songs and performing them.
51. Knowledge of favorable and unfavorable musical rhythms, meters, melodies and their reproduction on various instruments.
52. The ability to move fluidly and dance to different tunes.
53. Art in entertaining games; dexterity and dexterity.
54. Ability to locate oneself on the ground.
55. Ability to juggle various objects.
56. The ability to deceive (“deception” is what is next to the mind, to the truth: tricks, tricks, pranks, sleight of hand, guile).
57. Ability to guess numbers, names, objects, phrases
58. Knowledge of guessing games (riddles, puzzles, charades, hide and seek).
59. Ability to mislead opponents.
60. Knowledge of various betting games.
61. Ability to cry.
62. The ability to appease an angry spouse.
63. The ability to manage your husband’s jealousy.
64. Carry out your duties conscientiously even if you lose your husband
The scriptures give three reasons why these arts should be studied:
1 - By applying these arts, it is easier to win the affection of your lover.
2 - A woman who masters these arts naturally occupies an honorable place in society.
3 - Knowledge of these arts contributes to greater charm, affection and attraction of a man to such a beloved.
Such a Witch woman will be protected by the Almighty Family of the Progenitor; it is impossible for her to impose an alien worldview; such a woman is dangerous for any religion. It's easier to burn it and destroy it. This is what the valiant Christians did in the name of the prophet they crucified.
But before becoming a Witch, the girl was taught and prepared to become Vesta - the one who carries the message. Vesta became a witch after the birth of her child. If the girl did not comprehend the necessary skills and qualities, she became the Bride. But the love union with the bride was and is defective, i.e. marriage.
Thanks to technological progress, we consider ourselves more advanced than our ancestors, but in reality we have no idea about some of the things they owned. Much knowledge was lost and destroyed.
We all love to make claims to each other. Husband to wife, wife to husband, we look for flaws in each other, forgetting about our own. Instead, you should think: “Do I myself live up to my claims to another person, to the world?” And it turns out that we still need to work and work on ourselves. And by changing and developing ourselves, we change the reality around us. By making ourselves better, we make better than those next to us.
The next time you are offended by your husband or start making complaints against other men, read this list and think about whether you should change yourself. The same applies to men.
By what criteria in Rus' were they determined whether a witch was in front of them or an ordinary woman.
IN different years and in different parts of Rus' witches were absolutely considered different women. In the South, beautiful young widows were often accused of witchcraft, whose mere appearance encouraged men (including married ones) to commit reckless acts. In the northern provinces, when asked what it looks like real witch, they would answer you that she is a dry, hunched and definitely shaggy old woman. If you asked this question in the middle zone of the country, then the portrait would be like this - fat, dirty and definitely with a thorn in the eye.
Everyone agreed that they had a small tail, invisible to ordinary people. To make sure their suspicions were correct, the village women invited the “victim” to the bathhouse with them. The refusal was regarded as confirmation of their suspicions. Would a real witch dare to show her tail... And another evidence that there is a witch in front of you is when a woman turns her back to the iconostasis in church, does not pray and does not cross herself.
Why witches always tried to be alone
While some went to a withered, shaggy woman or a fat old woman with a thorn in her eye for help, others accused her of all conceivable and unimaginable sins, from crop failure to the loss of livestock, drought and torrential rains. So, it turned out that for some troubles and troubles that happen in life, a person always seeks to blame someone else, and not himself and his environment. To protect themselves, hermits settled on the edge of the village or in the forest so that in case of any unrest or discontent on the part of the villagers, they could hide in the deep and impassable thicket of the forest. Unfortunately, they were not always able to avoid lynching.
How they fought witches in Rus'
Suspected of the troubles of the entire village or its individual residents, they were often interrogated with partiality. She was tortured, and the rack was often used... Naturally, many confessed to sins they had not committed. A fire and an aspen stake are the main means of fighting witches in Rus'. They were impaled alive and burned in their own huts or at the stake.
History has preserved the most cruel execution- in 1489, thirteen witches were burned in Pskov, accusing them of sending a pestilence to the townspeople. In addition, it preserved history and information about other executions. For example, the old woman Olena, who admitted to casting spells on villagers, was burned in her own hut near Moscow in 1670. Men were also injured. One of those accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake was the peasant Ogloedov. He was executed near Smolensk, this happened in 1678. He was accused of inducing hiccups on people...
Read also: editor's choice of "Russian Seven"
Until now, in the Suzdal region, disputes have not subsided over the reality of the story that happened in the middle of the 18th century with the Bishop of Suzdal and Yuryev, Porfiry.
In 1754, at his next sermon, Porfiry pointed to a certain Anisya Soldatova as the first witch in the village who practiced paganism and collected demons in her house. The bishop called on all his parishioners to stop communicating with the above-mentioned Anisya, who was very offended by Porfiry.
The next night, Anisya, dressed all in white, appeared to Father Porfiry in a dream and promised to get rid of him at all costs. After such words, the holy father only spat after the witch and crossed himself. When the next morning he went out onto the porch of the house, he suddenly felt the earth gradually begin to disappear from under his feet. A few minutes later he fell to the ground dead.
For four long months the priest lay in a fever, on the verge between life and death. But his kind and caring parishioners came out. When he woke up, Father Porfiry said that all the time he was in oblivion, he was haunted by Anisya’s green eyes, saying: “I’ll live and that’s it!” I disgraced myself in front of people...”
But, apparently, having replaced anger with mercy, the witch then took pity on Bishop Porfiry. The priest gradually began to recover, and after a few months he began to get out of bed, and then he completely recovered.
Having recovered from a severe illness, Father Porfiry sent a petition to the Holy Government Synod for his transfer to another diocese. He motivated his reluctance to remain in the Suzdal and Yuryev parishes by the evil caused by the witch Anisya, who wanted to kill the holy father. The bishop's request did not go unnoticed. The same year he was transferred to the Moscow diocese.
All documents that reveal the secrets of mysterious stories about witches are stored in court archives, and the most secret ones are in the Seventh Fund of the State Archive. Here is the very first document concerning witchcraft. It is dated 1654. In the same year, the Tsar of All Rus' issued the first decree, based on which people endowed with state power could punish villagers involved in demonic behavior.
Peter I was more loyal to sorcerers and witches than his predecessor. Only once was he forced to take harsh measures against them. The soldiers who did not want to serve in the army persuaded their wives to turn to sorcerers. They had to tell the guns not to shoot, and the pikes not to stab. The women complied with their husbands' request. The king, having learned about such tricks, cruelly punished those responsible, as they said then, of a crime committed against the state.
Another story dates back to the same time. Once, one of the wealthy inhabitants of the city of Tomsk turned to the local governor with a complaint that someone had put the evil eye on him: things were going badly, his son began to drink “bitter”, his wife was driving him away with her grumbling and reproaches. The governor just grinned at this.
Having not received a proper answer from the governor, the townsman hired a spy (a private detective, as we would say now). It was he who had to find the person who sent damage to the average person. But he himself did not stay away from the case: he caught several suspects and began to torture them with his own hands. The townsman beat and burned living people with fire just to find out who sent evil to his house.
The governor, who did not tolerate any lawlessness in his city, stopped the lynching. But as soon as he intervened, he was suddenly struck by a serious illness, such that for several months the governor could not even get out of bed. After recovery, he immediately sent a letter to the capital asking for help in sorting out such a difficult and confusing matter.
The response to the governor’s letter was the arrival of judges. However, they could not resist dark force. Immediately upon arrival in the city, all the judges fell into a severe fever. After the successful outcome of the disease, they randomly selected several people from the residents of the city and declared them sorcerers. Then, having previously completed procession, ordered to flog the unfortunate, innocent people in front of all the honest people. That was the end of the matter.
In the same Seventh Fund of the State Archive you can find another story. Once, wanting to test the power of witchcraft, temporary clerk Biron asked the village witch to bewitch his boss to a courtyard girl.
Lukerya, hired as a clerk to conduct household affairs in the house, was far from beautiful, with pockmarks on her face, and besides, she did not shine with intelligence. This is the kind of girl Biron should have loved. The sorceress took the clerk's joke seriously and very soon Biron really felt a strange attraction to the ugly and stupid courtyard girl Lukerya.
However, the state investigation system that was in place at that time worked well. Detectives quickly found the culprit mysterious story. As a result, the joker-scribe was removed from office and sent to prison. And the authorities decided to execute the sorceress so that in the future she could no longer influence the lives of the powerful through demons.
The arsenal of various conspiracies of sorcerers and witches was once represented by hundreds of texts. Currently, some of them have been restored, some came along with works of folklore, and some were lost forever. In addition to the conspiracies themselves, witches also had medical recipes at their disposal to help people with various diseases, as well as entire ritual actions.
For example, in order to bring evil or death to an enemy, you need to take a gun and aim in the direction where the offender should be at that moment in time, and then pronounce the text of the conspiracy.
The sorcerer Yashka, well-known in Russia in the 18th century, said during interrogation that he sent evil to the enemy in this way: when he saw a person walking past whom he wished to kill, he lit a candle prepared in advance from special ingredients (wax, a lizard’s tail, a strand of the victim’s hair and earth from a trace bear).
Then he held the candle so that its flame seemed to burn the figure of the offender. If for some reason it was impossible to do this, then the sorcerer directed smoke from a lit candle at the person.
To heal the sick person, Yashka used another ritual. At night, when the emerging moon was visible in the sky, he poured water into a silver vessel. When the moon became full, the sorcerer caught its reflection in the vessel and drank all the water. It was believed that man absorbed lunar energy and therefore became strong.
Subsequently, already in the middle of the 20th century, it was possible to find out that this method of healing from an illness and gaining incredible strength was not invented by Russian healers. A similar ritual was performed in Ancient Babylon three thousand years ago.
However, those who claim that witchcraft was brought to medieval Rus' by foreigners are wrong. To refute such a hypothesis, one can only recall the text of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” in which the author talks about Prince Svyatoslav, who possessed witchcraft spells.
The sorcerer prince was able to move from Kyiv to Tmutarakan in just 24 hours. But the distance is considerable - 900 kilometers! It is unlikely that a mere mortal would ever be able to overcome such a path in one day.
The existence of sorcerers in Rus' is confirmed by other written monuments, primarily chronicles. It was they who told the descendants of the ancient Russians about several uprisings of pagan priests against the first Christians that took place in Novgorod, Kostroma and Vladimir.
There are known cases when sorcerers, wanting to win over as many people as possible to their side, raised the dead from the earth, and also treated the insane, that is, cast out demons, as they said at that time.
In addition, the legend of the battle between Polovtsian and Russian sorcerers still roams around Russia. They say that Polovtsian witches used the power of spells to make the dead rise. The latter rode on invisible horses for several days, instilling fear and horror in the hearts of the Russian people.
However, after the Polotsk sorcerers intervened in the matter, the Polovtsian witches had to retreat. Since then, they have never appeared on Russian soil again.
