Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Love magic in Bosnia

 

Anthropologically analysed love magic surely belongs into the most widespread form of occult practice in the entire world since it is directly aimed at human lives and social circumstances. In Bosnia love magic was formed and maintained mostly as a female form of rebellion to bad social and patriarchal conditions, rigid social norms in which marriage was holly and divorce public shame and degradation of a female as a person. Such a mind-set was enforced by the generally accepted belief of a lower value of women compared to men. A woman not married was considered to be a second class citizen. Such unfavourable social pressure affected the emergence of various forms of witchcraft and divination with whose help, with frequent participation of their mothers, girls wanted to affect their marriage cycle in order to begin the part of life which is looked on favourably by their peers. Marriage, among other things, ensured women material safety and that was an additional reason for it to be realised as soon as possible.

In ethnological work from the mid-fifties of the previous century realised in the National Museum of BiH ethnologist Abdulah Škaljić mentions the confession of Ibrahim Klempić from Vlasenica:

-"As a young man I dated a girl, and since she only had her old mother in her family, I had a good relation with her mother, and I sometimes visited them. I noticed however that both the girl and mother used various forms of love magic in order to get me closer to the girl so that I couldn't live without her. That seemed wrong and inappropriate to me so after some time I decided to break up with her. But, when I would at instances secretly sneak under their window, I had the opportunity to hear and see how they performed their magical practice. Her mother would use a copper vessel full of water to extinguish a few embers taken from the fire and after that they would place that vessel under the chair on which I would sit during my visits. After the sun set the girl would go outside and gazing at the stars she would utter magical formulas in which she would mention my name and after that she would blow in the direction of my house."

A very good example of social reflections in the previous centuries are also Bosnian folk songs in which it is openly talked about love magic with the goal of winning over loved ones, like the songs about Mujo.

In the song, the girl is defending herself from the accusations that she created love spells with the following words:

I didn't, my dear, by my life,
I did dig out your footprint,
buried it under a yellow marigold.
Wither, my dear, while I don't come to you!


Particularly compelling seems the song, in which a maid makes spells for her landlady's husband to come to her:

A little dream had miss Alta
three nights without her master,
to her it seemed three years.
She calls for Kumra her slave:
let my little Bey come to me tonight!>.
Spell concocts her slave Kumra:
It gets dark to the Bey in Banja Luka,
in Banja Luka to Alta on his hand.


Love magic was often used for revenge or for gratification of passion and erotic desires. In the folk song the young czar, after the beautiful girl named Biser-Naza rejected and humiliated him, she used love talismans in order to make the girl come to him alone at night. The young czar wrote three talismans of which the first he threw into the fire, the second into the water and the third talisman into the wind. The magic is successful since at midnight under the influence of magical power Biser-Naza comes to his house door hysterically begging him to let her in. As the song mentions the czar opened the door for her only at dawn, made love to her and chased her away.