LL-L "Beliefs" 2007.04.28 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  28 April 2007 - Volume 04

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From: Jonny Meibohm <altkehdinger at freenet.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language maintenance" 2007.04.27 (08) [E]

 Beste Margaret,

Du schreyvst:

> The verb in standard English would be 'charm', I think, though there are
several regional dialects in
> which the verb 'hex' would also be okay.  Phrases would be 'she charmed
off/away the wart', or 'she can
> hex away warts', and sometimes 'she's a wart doctor' (an encoded way of
saying she's a witch/wise-woman).

Thanks!

On German TV we have a U.S. series called *Charmed*, dealing with some
witches and their power. Nice girls, them ;-)! Could be interesting to find
out if it derives from the French word *'charme' *or if it is connate with*
'shamanism'.*

Allerbest!

Jonny Meibohm

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From: "heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk" <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.04.27 (08) [E]

As a child in Sussex, plagued by warts on my two hands, I was advised by an
old countryman (really!) to rub them with a halfpenny. It had to be a
halfpenny, not any other coin.

I did it and then forgot all about it, until some months later when my
mother noticed that they had disappeared!. So she tried it on one on her
thumb which had been there for decades and it too disappeared within weeks!

I related this to someone with a scientific background many years later and
it was suggested that the copper content in the ha'penny might have been the
active ingredient!

It certainly doesn't work any more using a modern coin - apparently the
copper content nowadays is either non-existent or v v low.

On Anglesey in the village next to me was a 'wise woman' and people used to
travel for miles to have her 'charm their warts'.

Another old remedy was to catch a large slug and spear it on a blackthorn
thorn. As it died and shrivelled, so too  the warts!

Does anyone have any old rhymes for charming? I used to love the one against
worms in our AHD reader:

Gang uz, Nesso  mit niun nessinchilinon   etc
Heather

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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.04.26 (05) [E]

Dear All:

Subject: L-Lowlands History
If I may stick my oar in here, 'Wicca' & all it is associated with owes more
to A E Waite, Dion Fortune & Stella Matutiana (need I add Alistair Crawley)
than anything in what Ron has elegantly defined as volksglauben. Some of my
earliest reading included Frazer's 'Golden Bough' (my grandmother was an
anthropologist) & some of my later adolescent reading, which, unhappily I
had to collect myself at my own expence, included The Golden Dawn & Western
Mysticism.

Hear me: There is a chasm as wide as Worlds between the old stuff & the new
stuff, & the most significant differencence between the two is that the Old
stuff works. My satisfaction with Judaism is magnified by their
matter-of-fact acceptence of the phenomena. My mentor Gidon Yavin wandered a
bit in his youth too, & makes the point that Israel is enjoined only NOT to
Worship or venerate them as Powers, being created even as we are, & fellows
in our Creation. That we do not know enough about the World for this
knowledge to be part of our present scientific canon shows a shortcoming in
our understanding, not a break with science. The germ theory of disease was
once the same, & it took men like Pierre Curie to fix that. Gidon also adds,
by the way, that monotheism leads to the essence rather than to these
derivatives, which is what we aught to be about.

But THIS is the actual point of my letter. I go with Ron about the
perversion of the modern psyche, but truly, it goes back further than the
twentieth century. Voltaire had a couple of times to contend with it. Only
slightly more than diligent reading of the times makes it clear that the
horrors of witch-hunting in the European context were not a Medieval
phenomenon: Nor did the institution come out of the Dark Ages, raging &
burning. No. Witch-hunting & witchcraft are phenomena of the later
Rennaisance. Literati & clerics of the Middle-Ages had a hearty & healthy
cynicism of it. & peasants, as we know, only concerned themselves with
whether it worked or not, & if it did, they remembered it & preserved this
cunning.

Many modern 'discoveries' go back to traditional medicine, like salacylic
acid from green willow bark for headaches, foxglove for heart-pain, feverfew
for migraine, hemp for glaucoma, mutterkorn to hasten birth (or procure
abortion), buchu for prostate problems, chincona for malaria, the list is
huge if not endless. Some things had to wait for rediscovery by science,
like Alexander Fleming's penicillin, but when I got a veld-sore in my
childhood, an infected scratch, the remedy was a bread paultice, in which
penicillin was encouraged to grow on the wet bread & applied directly to the
sore. Jenner's was only a rediscovery of the fact that a cow-pox infection
protected the patient from subsequent small-pox. The more subtle
psychological thrust of folk-healing I will not go into now, but to shake my
head at the modern medical acceptence of placebos, without exploring the
phenomenon to better purpose.

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com >
Subject: Beliefs

Heather, we were taught to wait until full moon, cut a small piece off a
wart, bury it in a flower pot and then leave the pot on a window sill in
view of the moon.  Apparently, this was an adaptation from burying the
tissue in the ground.

Thanks for sharing your very interesting thoughts, Mark.  I go along with
you that the said "perversion" goes back to earlier times.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that in past times religions were
instituted, besides inherited.  The former has changed in a few countries
that have separation of religion and state, and even in many countries in
which they are not separated, individuals now have the freedom of spiritual
exploration and choice.  As for the latter, there appears to be a bit less
rigidity now also, as fewer parents demand that their adult children stay
with their religions.

In the past, if a king or whatever other type of ruler converted to a
religion there was no question that all commoners convert to it also.  At
least this was so in Europe and in the Middle East.  Since this was not a
matter of choice, and since other beliefs tended to be outlawed, the
previous beliefs went underground.  Most of the time they'd gradually fade
away, but not without having colored the new religion.  The heritage and
influences of Crypto-Pagans throughout Europe and of Crypto-Jews (marranos,
xuetes) and Crypto-Muslims (moriscos, mouriscos) of post-Inquisition Spain
and Portugal, for instance, probably reinforced the retention of
pre-Christian elements of belief and ritual.

Mark, I guess you'd agree that in various Jewish traditions there are what
appear to be pre-Judaic elements, usually shrugged off as superstition.  Off
the top of my head, I can think of the "evil eye," a tradition that appears
to cover most of Europe and the Middle East, Central Asia, up to Southern
Asia (and in later times migrated to Jewish, Christian and Muslim enclaves
elsewhere).

Hebrew: עין הרע `ayn hara`
Yiddish: עין הרע *aynore
*Ladino: עין הרע ainará
Arabic: عين حسد `ayin ħasad
Turkish: nazar, kem göz
Urdu: نظر)  براﺋﻰ) ((burā'i) nazar)
Hindi: बुरि नज़र (buri nazar)
Romany: jakhalo
Tamil: (மெய்கந்dஅர) ணஅவுரு ((meykandar) ṇāvuru)*
*Greek: μάτιασμα (mátiasma), βασκανία (baskanía)
Romanian: *deochi*
Italian: *malocchio*
Sicilian: *jettatura*, mal'uocchiu
Spanish: *mal de ojo*
Portuguese: *olho gordo,* *quebranto
*French: *mauvais œil
*Hungarian: *szemmel verés
*Finnish: paha silmä
German: *böser Blick
*Dutch: *boze oog
*Russian: сглаз (sglaz)
Sumerian: IG-HUL ("eye-evil")

Keyn aynore oyf aykh!

Reinhard/Ron
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