Обредно лекуване с вода при бездетство у българите
Ritual Healing with Water for Childlessness of Bulgarians

Summary/Abstract: The main subject of research follows everyday and ritual traditional practices with water used by folk medicine to treat childlessness in rural areas. Chronological frameworks of the studied period cover the end of the 19th - the first half of the 20th century, a period which the scientific medicine is almost unknown for traditional Bulgarians. For that reason, the healing practices includes Christian and non-Christian beliefs and practices; irrational (magical) and rational (healing). According to the traditional way of thinking childless woman brings misfortune and danger to family, genus, even to the whole rural community. Therefore, the „ dangerous” force and nature of infertility implies its healing. The practices of ritual healing of childlessness with water rest on the idea that water has a purifying and fertile power, on symbolic level it is the amniotic fluid in the womb, it is a symbol of feminine origin and fertility. In the study healing practices with water against childlessness can be grouped in two categories: 1) Ritual folk medicine practices. Оn one hand, they contain the mythological thinking of the people, defining healing with water as contact healing magic, because magical practices have been done on the water under unusual circumstances. They are leading to water’s supernatural healing power. On the other hand, these are folk healing practices, related to the real rational experience of the human and his age-old knowledge of the health abilities of the water; 2) Ritual healing practices with water as part of the family and calendar ritual system. In the family rites they are expressed as preventive mandatory measures to prevent infertility in the family, and in the calendar rites – like a healing practices against childlessness, related to the belief in the healing capabilities of the water at certain calendar moments.

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