WEATHER MAGIC AMONG THE SERBS: Part 2/3
The Dead, Swaddling Clothes, and Tricking the Calendar
Continuing our journey through the lore of Serbian magic. Weapons and food are merely the first layer. Deeper still lies an intimate bond with the ancestors and sacred time.
👻 The Call to the Drowned
In the Dragačevo region, people believed that storm clouds were driven by the *pogibalci*—those who died an unnatural death, such as the drowned and the hanged. They were said to herd celestial flocks. Because of this, women would step outside and cry out, addressing deceased villagers they had known by name: “O Radojko Zimonja! Turn back your bulls… Do not let them trample our grain!” Or they would summon Stojana, a drowned woman: “Turn back the herd, Stojana!”
👶 Magic of the Hearth: Weddings and Birth
Objects tied to liminal rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) possessed immense protective power:
🔸 Funerary: People would wave the chin-cloth once used to bind a corpse’s jaw, or a banner taken from a grave.
🔸 Bridal: Young brides brought out their wedding wreath and veil. Waving the wreath toward the sky, they would chant: “I was wed with this wreath (*venac*)… go, [hail], along the mountain crest (*venac*)!” This relies on a play on words: in Serbian, *venac* means both a wreath/crown and a mountain ridge.
🔸 Natal: A cradle containing an infant was set out in the yard. Swaddling clothes and binding bands were brandished against the sky. Incantations often invoked an impossible wonder: “A maiden of seven years gave birth… and covered the fields with her swaddling cloths.”
📅 Calendar Armor
The Serbs channeled the latent power of major feast days:
➤ Christmas: A fragment of the ritual Christmas bread (*česnica*), straw, and even hearth ashes from Christmas Eve were preserved throughout the year. They were brought outside and burned before an advancing cloud. In some villages, women hurled dough pellets made at Christmas high into the sky.
➤ St. George’s Day (*Đurđevdan*): Small crosses were fashioned from hazel wood and driven into fields and rooftops before sunrise. Hazel was considered a sacred tree immune to lightning strikes.
➤ Trinity Sunday: Special three-in-one candles were crafted, lit on the feast day, and then kept in reserve to ward off hailstorms.
➤ Easter: The first dyed egg (the *čuvarkuća*, or “house guardian”) was buried in the vineyard or held aloft to confront falling hail.
🤥 The Great Deception
A storm cloud could also simply be outsmarted. In Goračići, women would shout across the hills to their neighbors: “O, Stanija! What day was St. George’s Day?” Stanija was expected to lie: “Two days earlier!” It was believed this deliberate falsehood would disorient the cloud, causing it to lose its way and disperse.
ꏍꏍꏍꏍꏍꏍꏍ
👇 The Serbs used everything held sacred for protection—from bridal veils to Christmas breadcrumbs. Do you keep an heirloom at home from a major milestone (a wedding, an anniversary) not just as a keepsake, but as a kind of talisman, believing that the “power” of that day still lives within it?
For further reading: N. I. Tolstoy, *Essays on Slavic Paganism* (*Ocherki slavyanskogo yazychestva*).
#slavicmythology #slavicfolklore