"From time immemorial, people are afraid of their fellows endowed with witchcraft … A sorcerer or sorcerer is the one who knows the cherished conspiracy words and who knows how to use them in practice," writes the famous Russian folklorist of the last century S. Maksimov.
His contemporary, another major Russian folklorist of the nineteenth century A. Afanasyev, gives the following commentary on the concept of "conspiracy word":
“The power of the conspiracy word is limitless. It controls the elements, causes thunder, storms, rains … it can create crops and barrenness, multiply wealth, breed flocks and exterminate them with a plague infection, give a person happiness, health, success in trades and expose him to diseases. It can drive away illnesses from a sick person and send them to a healthy person, kindle love in the heart of a girl and a young man or cool the ardor of mutual passion, awaken in judges and chiefs a sense of mercy, meekness or bitterness and anger, give weapons accuracy, heal wounds, stop blood … In short to say, this word can work wonders, subordinating to the will of the spellcaster the beneficial and harmful influences of the entire deified nature."
Doctor KS Uvarov from Rostov-na-Donu told in the summer of 1999 a story about how his own paternal grandmother “bewitched a snake”.
- I was then a young boy. Our family lived in a village in the Kalmyk steppes in southern Russia. The steppes were almost waterless. Their soil consisted almost entirely of salt marsh. A squally strong wind blows almost all the time. Vegetation is scarce. Well, snakes are found in those steppes in unprecedented quantities! In our village, each family, which lived extremely poorly, had a small subsidiary farm. Vegetable garden, chickens, rams.
For chickens there was always a separate paddock, where they huddled all summer long every year. This was done to protect against snakes living in the steppes. The paddock was surrounded by a dense, deeply buried fence of boards - no cracks.
And nevertheless, the snakes with persistent persistence broke holes under the fence and penetrated them into the corrals, where chickens grazed in our village. And there they pounced on the chickens, killed them, then devoured them. Snakes were especially fond of chickens. These snakes would be a real curse for all the inhabitants of the village, if not for my grandmother. She knew how to "conjure snakes."
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She cut a long and rather thick branch from the bush, more or less straight. I cleaned it of small twigs and leaves. Then she drove all the chickens into the chicken coop. She made a small circle on the ground inside the chicken pen with that long branch. And she stuck a branch strictly into the center of this circle. Then she went out of the pen, closed the gate behind her and called me to her if I was found somewhere nearby.
I saw it with my own eyes. And more than once! Grandmother moved a stool to the gate, I climbed on it and looked over the closed gate into the corral. Snakes began to crawl out of the holes to the surface of the earth. Lots of snakes. All of them, as if hypnotized, crawled towards a branch stuck in the ground in the center of a circle drawn by grandmother's hand. Snakes climbed up this branch, twisting in rings on it into large snake bunches.
When the branch turned out to be all entwined with a ball of snakes, my grandmother called my father. He entered the chicken pen with a dense bag in his hands. He put the bag on top of a branch with snakes, then turned it over with the stick pulled out of the ground, with the neck up and shook the whole ball of snakes from the stick into the bag. Father carried the sack somewhere to the backyard of the house and there he burned the snakes, doused them with kerosene, in a pit prepared in advance for such a thing …
And grandmother was drawing a new circle on the ground in the pen with her branch. After all, not all the snakes had time to crawl out of their holes, many of them still remained crawling somewhere underground. All of them together would still not fit on the stick that Grandma stuck into the center of the circle on the ground.
The grandmother again stuck the same branch into the center of the new circle. And new snakes soon clung to her in a stirring ball. Then my father reappeared with a bag in his hands. And so it was repeated several times in a row, until all the snakes that settled in their underground burrows under the chicken enclosure and, apparently, around it, were not overfished.
My grandmother was very famous in our village. As soon as spring came and it was time to drive the chickens and chickens to their pens, all the inhabitants of the village turned to my grandmother for help. And she didn't refuse anyone. So the chickens who lived in the village remained with all its residents safe and sound.
To all my questions about how she manages to "conjure the snakes", my grandmother answered with silence, frowning and pursing her lips angrily …
And this message was recorded in Siberia by a prominent contemporary folklorist V. Zinoviev, now deceased. The recording was made in 1969. A deep old man G. V. Peshkov from the city of Nerchinsk, Chita region, tells:
“It was during the Civil War. In one village I, a stranger, clung to a grandfather. And he commands me:
- You will go to the mowing with me to mow hay.
- Oh well. Let's go.
People in the villages still lived alone then. There were no collective farms yet. This old man had two horses. He brought me to one completely disastrous place. They had a big ravine there. Nobody went there. People were afraid. There were a lot of snakes there. And I didn't know about it then. Well, we've arrived. We stopped and let's mow. And they mowed down with their hands, with crooked braids-Lithuanians.
I began to mow, I looked, and there the snake was crawling. I see another snake crawling elsewhere. And in the other, too, there are snakes. Snakes everywhere! I was just horrified!
I tell my grandfather:
- How is it so? Some snakes all around. It's impossible to mow.
“Nothing,” he says back. “Just don’t touch them, don’t chop them. Where a scythe accidentally hits a snake, then a fool with it. Let it not go. Like this.
In the evening, my grandfather and I made a booth, had supper. Then I go to bed on the cart, and not in the booth. I'm afraid these snakes will eat me. They just crawl right around!
Grandfather says:
- Don't lie down, you fool, on the cart. None of them will touch you anyway.
Well, he persuaded me. I lay down next to him in the booth. I went to bed, but I can't sleep. I'm spinning … Suddenly I feel a snake crawled up to me and bit me on the leg. For the thumb. I jumped up and screamed like a dashing good.
And my grandfather says to me:
- Nothing, nothing! Calm down, calm down!
It was already dark, nothing was visible. I feel that my grandfather felt my bitten finger, traced it crosswise with his finger, wrinkled it.
- It's okay, - he says. - Consider it as if a mosquito bit you …
My leg stopped hurting, but I'm afraid to sleep. Almost did not fall asleep that night, waiting for the morning. I can not fall asleep. I'm afraid that's all.
The old man gets up in the morning and says:
- Light the fire.
And there, on the slope, a small shrub grew. Grandfather took a knife, went into this bush, cut off a thin aspen twig, but a long one. He sharpened the tip with a knife. And so he went out to where we had already mowed everything. First, he drew a circle on the ground with an aspen twig, and then stuck this twig into the middle of the circle.
I ask him:
- What are you doing, grandfather?
- Okay, - mutters, - wait. You will see for yourself what will happen.
And so I look, snakes are rolling from different directions, as if some kind of scattering. Everyone rolls towards this stick from all sides! Only the grass rustles! I was horrified to see this. I just don't remember how I got on the cart. With fear he climbed onto it. And my grandfather, I see, cut a twig, thin, thin. And he stands with this twig in his hands. Waiting. Well, and that snake that bit me and which, therefore, is guilty, is behind all the snakes. The last one crawled.
Grandfather commands her:
- Come, come. Are you afraid?
Then he did something incomprehensible. And all the snakes immediately scattered, crawled in different directions. And this one - the guilty one - remained. The grandfather went up to her and started to lash her with a twig. She, I see, is all twisting like a wheel, jumps up, and does not run away from his grandfather anywhere. He lashed it with a twig, lashed it.
“Well,” he says to me, “okay! Let's go now to drink tea.
We come to the fire to drink tea. And I look from a distance, that snake that was guilty, everything is spinning on the ground near a twig stuck by my grandfather. The grandfather soon took his twig again and went to the snake. And again let's whip it, whip it … Then he came back, we drank tea and went to mow again. Mowed before lunch. We come back, sat down to dinner, and she crawls near that twig stuck in the ground.
Here I was completely terrified! I think these snakes will eat me here anyway! And so I, without finishing my lunch to the end, fled from there.
Shouted to the old man:
- I'll go, grandfather! I won't mow here anymore!
So I ran away from him, from this old man. Here's a story."
In both examples of "snake spells" there are common features that are striking themselves. Both in the first and in the second case, the same type of witchcraft technology is used: a twig is cut from a bush, with which a "magic circle" is outlined on the ground, then the same twig is stuck into the center of the circle. In this case, no special "conspiracy words" are pronounced. And then something like a fairy tale happens.
Obeying the order, it is not clear how given by the sorcerer or the witch, the snakes begin to slide from all sides to the "magic circle" with a twig sticking out in its center.
Well, the story about the "guilty" snake that bit a man's leg and then personally came to accept a well-deserved flogging from the sorcerer-grandfather for what she had done, generally finds itself on the verge of almost complete fantasy. Here the fact is noted not of the interaction of the sorcerer with snakes in general, but of interaction with a very specific snake, which itself appears on the procedure of its punishment!
An interesting incidental detail, which, perhaps, not every reader has paid attention to. In the middle of the night, when the snake bit the man in the big toe, the sorcerer-grandfather felt the bitten finger, traced it crosswise with his own index finger, squeezed it and … And the man who had received the deliberately deadly snake bite recovered almost immediately.
Sorcerers and sorceresses can easily manipulate forces, about the nature of which we can only speculate!