“Deaf Wedding”: The Time in the Beliefs and Ritual Practices of the Female Folk Healers / Wizards
“Deaf Wedding”: The Time in the Beliefs and Ritual Practices of the Female Folk Healers / Wizards

Summary/Abstract: The subject of interest of the present article is time in the traditional Balkan cultures, with special emphasis on Macedonian female folk healers i.e. the time when they perform their ritual practices. The ritual practices of treatment, whether it is about collective curing practices, when the entire rural community is threatened, mostly due to an epidemic, or it is an individual in question, usually is performed at night, or in the so-called "deaf time", or "no time”, “dead hours" – that is, the time around midnight or the twilight after the setting of the sun; at moonlight (under the influence of the lunar phases); before sunrise, etc., which can be related to the liminal periods during this period of a day and night. On the basis of symbolic and semantic analysis, the present article tries to make a link between the symbolic representations of the time with the day and the night, further to those of the Sun and the Moon, which are connected with the interpretation of the this-worldly and the otherworldly.

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