Original scientific paper

Magic and Witchcraft Survivals in Croatian Traditional Beliefs and Practices with Laboring Woman

Lidija Bajuk orcid.org/0000-0003-4335-9390 ; Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Zagreb

Abstract

According to the definition of shamanism as a magical and religious phenomenon, in which shaman in certain procedures manipulates fire and weather conditions and establishes communication between this and that reality, the efforts of sorcerer/sorceress are in relation with the ecstasy, cure and healing. Taking as a starting point the study of the anthropologist Mirce Eliade (1907-1986) and Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), according to which the presence of a person who speaks to gods in childbirth guarantees cosmogonic and mythical history of the social community in which new life is born, the author tries to show that some Croatian traditional beliefs and practices, embedded in customary procedures of sorcerer, midwife and godmother with marriageable girl and laboring woman and newborn child and child up to his first age, are in connection with Preneolithic and Neolithic magical and religious understanding on the Croatian territory.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

107536

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/107536

Publication date:

15.9.2012.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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