Romanian Folk Magic: Bewitching Ideology
Daniel Bird
Potions swirling in cauldrons, midnight spells, curses and hidden covens: the
witch is a figure entrenched in our myth and memory. It is, however, a little-known
fact that today many witches still reign supreme over parts of modern Europe, holding seats of power in lavish abodes. These supernatural practitioners have
refused to be relegated to history and instead have transmogrified their talents to fit into a capitalist arena where magic flourishes and their arts embed them-
selves in an industry of their own. Associated most frequently in European memory with Satanic worship, witchcraft has held a curious grip on the human psyche. The archetype has surfaced worldwide in many cultural iterations, having even received a post-mortem resurgence
and transformation in Western pop-culture film and television. Witches in this
medium have been portrayed equally as relatable adolescents and as the more
traditionally horrifying hags of the thriller genre, showing the figure of the witch to be a durable and flexible one. Much the same can be said of witchcraft in the
country of Romania, where the practice and sociocultural perceptions of witchcraft have evolved, expired and been subsequently revived in the last century.
To properly articulate the historical trajectory of Romanian witchcraft, I begin by describing its birthplace in the agrarian countryside. I then examine the struggles of the practice under the Romanian Communist system which sought to oppress this tradition. The discussion delineates the resurgence of the trade after 1989, and the Golden Age of witchcraft in the new neoliberal setting. I further compare witchcraft to contemporary methods for ‘regaining’ spirituality and meaning, before posing a question about the essential function of witchcraft as a cultural practice—at what cost has this tradition has survived?
The Spiritual Centre
The origins of the Romanian witch are humble, deeply domestic and in certain ways meditative, revolving around a veneration of the home (gospodꢀria).
60
Issue 2
As articulated by anthropologist David Kideckal, ‘each of woman’s sundry labor responsibilities was tied via ritual’ to the feminine character of the peasant context, undertaken with the intent of ‘protecting household strength, vitality, productivity, and growth’.1 As a result, much of what constituted magic in the Romanian countryside was not overtly supernatural, but rather a cathartic extension of the maintenance of familial life. Domestic activities as such— sewing, making bread, knitting, washing and cleaning, for example—operated less as a necessity and more as a sacred procedure.2 Mundanities such as baking demanded ritual to yield the greatest results, such as the placing of coals on top of the oven while reciting ‘bread get up and grow large, like a young girl, just married’. Incantations ensured water buffalo ‘gave sweet milk
and plenty of it’, and onions and peppers were seeded using two fingers to
ensure their growth by two weeks’ time.3 These rituals existed alongside other more explicitly folkloric concerns, such as precautions to ‘ensure that newborn infants avoid becoming sprites and demons’. 4
Magical acts such as these are indeed also professional, and certain specialists in village communities offer their services to neighbours. One documentary,
conducted by Romanian ethnographer Radu Răutu, follows witch Ana Herbel as
she re-enacts a treatment on a client.5 As a physician might, Ana also listens to the complaints of her client, of unexplainable nausea, headaches and vertigo. This leads her to a diagnosis: her client has been bound.6 Being bound is the result of envy or jealousy exerted by another village-person. For relief one must
undergo an unbinding ritual.7 Among Ana’s components one finds coal, knives,
dried herbs and a raspberry cane, and for her operating theatre, the traditionally termed ‘good room’ adorned with ‘beautiful dowry carpets and embroidered
cloths, specific to the region’.8 Răutu also notices an abundance of religious sym-
bols, as ‘her tiny house is graced with extremely numerous and valuable Orthodox Christian icons’.9 All these things are believed to attribute positive and holy aids to the space and the procedures undertaken therein—it is a holy space as well as a pragmatic one, prepared for a knowledgeable practitioner: a comforting alternative to the uncertainties of medicine.
Herbel’s procedure is reminiscent of the uniform protocol of the everyday
medic. Using charcoal, she inscribes crucifixes on the client’s body and petitions
the powers of her holy objects and herbs.10 As the final part of the procedure, the bound individual must pass through a raspberry cane circle, evoking imagery of ‘the newborn [which] gives her the vitality of a new beginning, of a new life’.11
Răutu notices however that the re-enactment utilises incomplete components.
61
Romanian Folk Magic Daniel Bird
Herbel, as Răutu puts it, ‘does not want to disturb the balance of the world
through conjuring the full force of the ritual at a time when it is not actually needed’, bespeaking an underlying faith in the effects of her practice.12 For these practitioners and for their clients, the practice of witchcraft is believed to be real and effective, and reserved for experts.13 It is often not the first method approached by patients, though it is treated with the same authority. In the public eye, witchcraft treatment at times even supersedes the regenerative capacities of orthodox medicines, dealing with matters out of the reach of Western education.
Agrarian witchcraft was practiced primarily as an integrated aspect of domesticity in Romania, most often occupying a supportive role to the everyday toils of subsistence living. Indeed, Kideckal argues that the existence of certain witches ‘was enveloped and enlivened by the certainty of magic to overcome the uncertainty of life’ and that adherence to these traditions linked with labour ‘gave the household substance and integrity’.14 This has, of course, undergone some change with time into the contemporary period.
‘Romania lost’ in the Post-War Period
Contemporary Romanian society occupies a turbulent space in the larger European charter. The collapse of the communist system in the ex-Soviet state of 1989 demanded a wholesale reconstruction of the country’s political and ideo-
logical organisation.15 Life under the Ceaușescu Communist party was defined
by authoritarian control and censorship, along with the forced collectivisation of communities from agrarian to urban. Romanian academic Denis Deletant reveals how the Romanian state’s Secret Police ‘slowly but surely violated human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion’ among which practitioners of the occult were a choice target.16 Witches all across the countryside bore the encroachment of a state so detached and oblivious to their way of life as to render it unrecognisable.
Ceaușescu’s policy held a callous disregard for, and ignorance of, the concept of
the family and the home (gospodꢀria) which served as the spiritual foundation to the peasant identity. Property, livestock, produce and other belongings once deeply integral and impressionable to the spiritual cultivation of the matron were gradually alienated from their owners by the law of imposed collectivisation and liquidated into the larger system.17 The intensity of ritual was subsumed into
more formal ritual practice which likewise reconfigured the social structure of
agrarian villages as ‘with each socialist advance, the male-dominated Orthodox 62
Issue 2
Church seemed the spiritual center of the village community’, and the occult female tradition of witchcraft was ushered to the margins.18
Ceaușescu launched large-scale coordinated efforts to create ‘a patrimonial
state’, or the centralization of power via a cult of personality, inspired by 1970s Chinese and North Korean authoritarianism.19 Romanian ethnographers were at the forefront of the scheme to foster a ‘septic cultural space’, appropriate for the
reimagined national history that Ceaușescu had planned.20 Study of traditional
customs was undertaken only to analyse ‘the working class mentality[…] useful for the state to understand’.21 ‘Creation houses’ had been in operation since 1953 with the sole purpose of producing new folklore which the state hoped would supplement the traditional customs; traditions which would be increasingly banned and
delegitimised in the 1970s.22 Further, Ceaușescu introduced policies that made
certain research topics dealing with spirituality and religiosity illegal, as they were
thought to be in conflict with the ideological direction of the Party and with the
ethnic nationalism he envisioned for Romania. Beyond this, cultural institutions and output were dominated by productions waxing lyrical about the grandeur
of Ceaușescu, his family and fictionalised cultural narratives of the country.23 This
was an approach which developed into a ‘phantomatic distraction to the millions
of impoverished and hungry people’ populating Ceaușescu’s imagined utopia.24 Government policy was fiercely averse to the witchcraft tradition which it saw as
incompatible with its understanding of Romanian culture.
Romania Ensorcelled
The success of Ceaușescu’s campaign to demolish cultural mythologies was dubious. Ethnographers such as Radu Răutu, expressly compelled to frame their
work within the Communist ideology, found means by which to subtly resist the par-
adigm exerted upon them. The 50-minute film of Ana Herbel’s ritual of unbinding, released in 1971 at the height of Ceaușescu’s aggression towards witchcraft, had an
unexpected impact on Romanian society. The documentary was named A popular
medical practice as old as time: Unbinding.25 This was an apparent effort to exoti-
cise and so consign witchcraft to the distant past, even though these practices still
occurred in 20th century Romania. The film’s opening features a traditional song accompanying sweeping shots of a wheat field as the audience hears the words of
Herbel in voiceover. The shot was likely intent on illustrating the traditional countryside in an archaic light, an attempt to encourage current members of society to depart from the practice and subscribe to the narrative of cultural progression away
from superstition. Indeed, the film had the opposite effect in a number of ways.
63
Romanian Folk Magic Daniel Bird
Upon the release of Unbinding, Herbel ‘gained so much resonance in the village and in the region, that she became notorious as a fortune-teller and witch’ and therefore drew, with this newfound popularity, a number of rich women from the urban centre to petition her services.26 The production even attracted a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the witch’s home to seek
magical aid.27 It is believed that even Ceaușescu’s wife held an individual under
the pseudonym ‘Mother Caterpillar’ as her personal fortune-teller, revealing a tension between the desires of the Communist Party to both eliminate and
benefit from traditions of witchcraft.28
At this time, prominent politicians made use of the occult for their own individual and political ends, exploiting socially constructed superstition to attain power— despite the secular rhetoric of their policies.29 Thus, this was a period of cultural confusion where the ritual activities of peasants were limited, weakening the ties between household members and the familial unit.30 The ethno-nationalism
desired by Ceaușescu was thus contradictory: he sought to retain all the veneer
of the agrarian lifestyle but stripped of the folkloric foundations upon which it functioned. His vision was evidently ill-conceived, out of touch and ultimately incompatible with a public unprepared to relinquish its hold on a symbolic system
which gave significance and solidarity to an ‘alleged[…] retrograde peasantry’.31
Later released from the rigid Communist structure, Romania lay at the centre of what might be called a ‘cultural vacuum’ in which the topic of national iden-
tity was called into question and yearned for definition. For many Romanians
(along with Bulgaria and Hungary) the ideal cultural identity could be realised in ethno-nationalism which highlighted a cultural nostalgia for the pre-Communist era. In Romania, this denoted a reclamation of ‘the traditional rural life, of the village unaltered by the blow of modernity, of the peasant considered to be the bearer of the ethnic character’.32 Thus, it is possible to see a social disposition towards regaining that traditional identity embodied by village-scale sorcery. Romanian society was primed for the return of the occult.
However, in the wake of the routine organisation of labour under Communism, Romania was left in what amounted to the polar opposite model: a neoliberal free market economy which did not resemble the pre-communist image of the pastoral unit. The transition was conducted violently, with one thousand dead in the wake of December 1989’s revolution, and ongoing resistance to neocommunism for a half-decade after. The university-led ‘Golaniad’ protest in Bucharest demanded former communists to be forbidden from election in an
64
Issue 2
initiative to ‘liquidate Romania’s communist legacy’.33 Where communism was discarded for the new political age, the societal model of the village community was also consigned to history. The new economic atmosphere was ripe for businesses and trades, formerly inhibited by strict regulation, among which the peculiar industry of witchcraft would develop and thrive after years of systemic disruption.
The State of Romanian Witchcraft Under Capitalism
In the shift from the restrictive grip of Communist policy and the opening of the
floodgates to global consumerism, witches became imbued with new vigour.
Where tiny huts in the countryside were the norm, now witches lounged in man-
sions. They flourished in the new economic environment, particularly in treating
those ailments that seemed out of one’s control in the present era. As articulated by Bratara Buzea from Mogosaia on the outskirts of Bucharest: ‘I practice both white and black magic, like a good mill that grinds everything. I cure children’s diseases, I release men from love spells, I make and break marriages. That’s what I do because I’m a witch’.34
Though certainly borrowing from Christian symbology and lore (for example, the
use of the crucifix) Romanian witchcraft is less an extension of the faith and more
a synthesis of outsourced occult traditions with Christian elements.35 The art of spellcasting or witchcraft is neither located within nor typically acknowledged by the Orthodox faith, although ‘white’ magic is nonetheless closely associated with evocation of the powers of god. As told by the white witch Radhika, ‘only the white witches can use the cross in their work…everything we do we do with faith in God’.36 Bratara explains that in the new economic landscape, most spells are intended to hurt enemies; ‘black’ magic is more routinely requested, whereas in the past ‘it was rarer that people would ask us to harm someone’.37 Thus the individualistic social mode of capitalist Bucharest demands the magical sabotage of competitors and facilitates the envy which motivates it.
The million-dollar witchcraft business takes advantage of current facilities, for example the internet and telephone.38 Wider audiences are available (‘even from England they call me’, Bratara insists).39 Witches advertise a suite of services deal-
ing with problems from ‘impotence to epilepsy, from financial troubles to love
problems’.40 In the documentary Casting Curses one witch, Mihaela, is featured
brewing love potions with herbs gathered from a nearby field, while Bratara
accepts a client’s request to curse an enemy’s marriage using a spell of cat and dog faeces.41 42 In a society suddenly so economically cut-throat, the witches
65
Romanian Folk Magic Daniel Bird
acquired an ever-ready supply of patrons wishing to gain an upper hand on their rivals or pave their futures with good fortune in a newly liberated market, all with the aid of magic.
Political and Social Sway
While many Romanian witches procure power through their accrual of wealth,
their direct social and political influence on the country should not be under-
stated. So strong is Romanian public belief in the powers of witchcraft that witches possess dramatic powers of negative and positive sanctioning.43 Individual witches magically revenge slights—an event which occurs both on a personal and a coordinated scale.
In Romania, the magical capacity of the most powerful witches is attributed to their lineage, a complex system of marrying so as to strengthen the magical
bloodline. As opposed to the covens featured prevalently in Hollywood film,
witches in Bucharest organise themselves under a ‘Congress of Witches’ where ability is formally recognised with the award of magical diplomas.44 This body operates as a union for spellcasters, advocating for rights within the trade and rallying both mundanely and by way of curses for the protection of their economic freedom. In the streets and in the marketplace, witches like Mihaela are imbued with something of a celebrity status. Passers-by smile with recognition and talk with her jovially: ‘Mihaela! Will you have a photo with me?’.45 Whether out of veneration or fear, witches are by no means undersold by the everyday Romanian nor within the Romanian systems of trade and commerce.
In early attempts to implement taxation on the witch trade, legislation was hobbled by fears of hexing, one of many negative sanctions threatened by witches. Alin Popoviciu, MP of Romania’s Democratic Liberal Party recalls: ‘some of my colleagues had encounters with witches. They preferred not to pass this law, believing…that bad things would happen’.46 Bratara boasts, referring to her threats to magically paralyse Popoviciu: ‘I’m not scared of them. They’re scared of me’.47 Outraged at the proposed taxation, she asks: ‘did I learn my craft with help from the government? Was there a school to attend? A university degree in witchcraft? This is a gift that came from god and paying taxes serves no purpose’.48 Witch’s perspectives on taxation are not unanimous, however. Mihaela Minka argues that an income tax would legitimise the profession instead of denigrating it.49 Like any large collective opinions are many and varied, all of them holding sway.
66
Issue 2
The paradigm of superstition is deeply embedded in the political and cultural climate of Romania. Rollo Phillip, president of Romania’s television regulator recalled fears of witchcraft: ‘at a certain point when we were drafting this bill, some members of our Commission lost their nerve…they are superstitious as anyone else in this country’.50 The same supernatural pressures are exerted upon clients to similar ends. Mihaela reminded that ‘in the same way I can use my powers to do good, it’s also within my powers to harm. Nobody wants to take the risk of not paying me’.51 Though somewhat alienated from the role of the village wisewoman, witches in capitalist Bucharest exert the same, if not greater, control and authority over the behaviours of others than they once did. The change of setting systematised its economic reach and the proliferation of occult belief.
The Contradiction
The dynamic of witch and city is complicated. As witches endeavoured to amass their fortunes under a recently instated free market economy, by means of a discipline inherently entrenched in the rural past, questions concerning the survival of the tradition in its original form were inevitably raised. In fact, a ban on television advertising of witchcraft was one instrumental requisite for the induction of Romania into the EU. Witchcraft is consequently viewed by many as an inhibitor to national progress towards a perceived modernity with the European capitalist states.52
However, how much does the contemporary witchcraft of Bucharest resemble the witchcraft of old? If not entirely congruent with its philosophical roots in rural tradition, it certainly carries over variants of its procedures and intentions. As previously explored, the primary function of ritual for the peasant was to preserve the sanctity of the home and ensure the success of manners of subsistence: food, health, safety.53 In the post-communist context, where money and material commodities have occupied this same space, the personal energies of Bucharest’s witches instead turn to politics.54 Rather than utilising magic predominantly for security and survival, urban practitioners divert their occult attention to the defence of their commercial means of wealth accumulation and to minimising governmental intervention in this process. Though the rules have shifted, protection of family and household remain paramount. The transition into a new economic landscape has allowed the witch to ‘double down’ so-to-speak on her initiative to preserve kith and kin.
More than anything, Romanian witchcraft has been tied to the traditionalist ideology of ethno-nationalism, which was anti-communist and anti-capitalist in equal measure.55 Likewise, it was characterised by deep-seated resentment
