Charms and Incantational Magic of the Northern Russians (In Records of the Early Twenty-first Century)

Abstract

The folklore tradition found in the village of Loima and other
settlements belonging to the Loima rural administration of the Priluzskii
region of the Komi Republic took shape in an environment that was in
close contact with the Komi population. This factor promoted the
maintenance of traditional Russian forms of folk culture. Researchers
have observed that the inherited folklore of such traditions as Loima’s
preserve genres and elements of folk belief from their historical
motherland. These elements are manifest in ritual folklore, in tales, and
in mythological personages, among other folklore forms. The object of
the present study is incantation-conjuration texts as they were recorded in
the early twenty-first century (2004, 2006). These texts include charms
(zagovory i prigovory), incantations (zaklinaniia), well-wishing
(blagopozhelaniia), and ritual dialogues that accompany healing, life-
cycle, calendrical, animal-husbandry, and other rituals.