about Witches & Bones-throwers

[Hugh Olmsted]

Vera--

For the moment, just about the origins of  vorozhit', vorog, vorozhba.

It's got nothing to do with konevorchanie, loshadesheptanie or with  
vorchanie voobshche.


It's a reflex of the normal East Slavic root vorog- 'evil, inimical/ 
enemy, bane, misfortune' which is also so familiarly represented in  
its South Slavic variant in the OCS/RCS borrowing in Russian vrag,  
and known throughout the Slavic world in its appropriate phonetic  
guises.  From Common Slavic *varg-/*vorg-.

Cf. Lithuanian vargti [circumflex accent on r]  'be impoverished',  
'be in torment',  Latv. vargt [long a] 'be ailing', 'pine away';  
Lith. vargas [circumfl. on r] 'misfortune, misery', Latv. vargs [long  
a] 'puny, sickly', Old Prussian wargs 'evil, malevolent'.  Other  
relatives are known in Germanic, Latin, and elsewhere.

Hugh Olmsted


On May 18, 2006, at 4:14 AM, atacama at global.co.za wrote:

> In  Baron v Ungern-Sternberg's (The Bloody Baron)
> biography during the Russian Civil War,
> we are now encountering that he consulted
> soothsayers, fortune-tellers, etc...regarding when
> time auger well for battles.
>
> Now a new lovely word I encounter is
> verb: <Vorozhit'>
> and consulting with <vorozhi>
> soothsayers, hexes, fortune-tellers, diviners, etc...
>
> What is the origin of the word?
> Could it be <vorchat'> ?
> something akin to (horse)-whispering ?
>
> any other good words for
> vorozhba, socery, witches, hex., dividers, whisperers,
> enchanteress, kalduns, whizzards and other good Russian
> pre-Christian stuff ?
>
> Another group (German-Russians)
> tells me that they play an ancient Russian Volga game
> throwing bones (not fortune-telling as in Africa),
> but a child's game with knuckles.
> It's called "Bannock", but bones in Russian are "Kosti".
> So, what is the name of the knuckle bone throwing game
> of children of old in Russia ?  Knuckles are "sustavy".
>
> Thanks....
>
> Vera Beljakova
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