Vlach Magic Women
[caption id=”attachment_7562" align=”alignleft” width=”288"]
credit: http://weheartit.com/entry/group/51429183[/caption]
Certain dark corners of the internet offer a multitude of “facts” about the mysterious customs of Serbia’s Vlach (“vläk”) people. A site called Mystic Files, for example, alongside articles like “Best Ways to Get Rid of an Evil Spirit” and “Possessed — Warning Signs of Demonic Possession,” explains that “Vlach magic, by its strength, is next to Voodoo.”
It goes on to attribute a number of ritual practices to Vlach witches, saying they bathe dead bodies, then use the water to make coffee, and make talismans from the hair of illegitimate children, whom they treat “like some kind of demigods.” It claims wives who wish to cheat on their husbands slip them water used to bathe a blind cat, thus making the husbands “blind” to their unfaithfulness.
Some practices are recounted in grammar more mysterious than the rituals themselves. Describing an oil drawn from sacrificed animals, the article says, “No one, of course, is not willingly drinking this oil. It is being put in the drunks drink secretly.”
As an English major, I find that pretty spooky.
In spite of some of the absurd folklore surrounding them, the Vlach people are a very real ethnic, cultural, and linguistic group. The Encyclopedia Brittanica says the term applies to “any of a group of Romance-language speakers who live south of the Danube.” The majority of Vlachs speak Aromanian, a language that has much in common with Romanian, but shows less influence from Slavic languages (like Serbian) and more traces of Greek. In Serbia, they inhabit mainly the Eastern part of the country. Serbian Vlachs are estimated to number about a quarter million.
In some ways, the mystery and sensationalism surrounding the Vlachs is unsurprising. A paper in Eastern European Countryside explains that the Vlachs are considered an “endogamous” population, “not blending with people of other nationality.” Since they are little understood, then, it is easy for them to be misunderstood. The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the very word “Vlach” derives from the Old High German “walh,” meaning “foreigner” (in England, the same word came to refer to the Welsh). The Vlachs, then, have historically been a marginalized group, living in isolation and remaining unfamiliar and strange to members of the majority.
The relative isolation of the Vlachs, however, has allowed them to preserve traditions from their distant, pre-Christian past. Most Vlachs, like the majority of Serbians, do follow the Orthodox Christian Church, but their Christian practices are combined with older, pagan rituals. Such a mixing of religions and cultures is known as syncretism, a practice perhaps better known from examples like Santería and Voodoo. Maybe Mystic Files was on to something.
As for the details of Vlach ritual practice, though, fairly little (trustworthy) information is available. Anthropologists have usually found them reluctant to demonstrate or even discuss their traditional, purportedly magical practices, since such practices are secrets guarded within the Vlach community or even within individual families, where they are predominantly passed down by females.
However, the little-known practices seem to have a powerful hold on the Serbian imagination. In a 2011 survey of residents of eastern Serbia’s Branicevo region, 93.4 percent of respondents had heard of Vlach magic, and a stunning 46.2 percent believed it was real.
Yet, while some fear Vlach magic, others seem to be exploiting it as a business opportunity. The website positiv-tours.com encourages travelers to “enjoy the magic Homolje paradise” in Kucevo, Serbia, with the tagline “Discover Truth / Bust a Myths / Meet Folklore” (the page seems to be a translation). The page explains how “Vlach witches removes curses and black magic, by its rituals they returning happiness, health and wealth.” It also lists the prices for day and weekend trips.
Ultimately, the concept of Vlach magic piques curiosity more than it gratifies it. As recently as early February, 2016, VICE Media released a twenty-minute film segment investigating Vlach magic practices, which they said have been associated with crime and even killings in the Serbian media. However, though they found some gregarious fortune tellers and some creepily carved gourds, they found no evidence to confirm or deny the more sensational claims about Vlach practices.
If the Vlachs have kept their secrets for so many centuries, maybe it was foolish to think we could uncover them now.
Sources:
