Mardi Gras and Book of spells
I'm back in New Jersey again, and intending to see some NY area folks this upcoming weekend please. I should go back to DC for more than two days though, so I can get some better visiting time in. I also need to come to Boston sometime soon. And back to Philly. Why is it that I have plenty of friends in all the major cities on the East Coast, but not where I actually live?
Oh right, because I live in New Jersey, that's why.
My friend Leah, who was my best friend in middle school, got engaged recently, so I had her come out with me for drinks yesternight. We wanted someplace that looked nice but was close by, so we went to the local Hilton bar. I totally forgot it was Mardi Gras until they started giving us masks and beads and I decorated Leah like a New Year tree. (It would have been a Christmas tree, but Leah's Jewish.) Also, a footless tattooed punk made us balloon animals. The clientele was kind of interesting: aforementioned footless tattooed punk balloon artist and his lovely equally tattooed girlfriend, a sweet young gay couple, an older lady with kitschy-trashy fashion taste, and then a bunch of businesspeople. Halfway through our conversation Leah demanded that I move back to DC so we could hang out more, and while I don't want to live in DC, I really do need to move to some sort of city, where I can have people. Although I do think it's interesting that I've been reconnecting with some DC-area people of late. Feeling nostalgic, I guess?
On a different subject entirely, I posted on another site about discovering that my grandmother has started buying traditional-type Russian shampoos made from black bread and honey. My mother used to wash my hair with black bread, bran and eggs when I was younger sometimes, but that was back when there weren't any really good toiletries in Russia. It amuses me that someone would go and market these now, not just because it's such a funny mixture of modernity and traditional revival, but because... the original folk recipes for these things are very simple. Shouldn't people who feel proudly nationalistic/traditional enough to want to use these products just mix up the recipe from scratch themselves? It seems to take all the "tradition" out of it to mass market it like this.
Nevertheless, I told my dad that one thing I liked about Russia was that various folk remedies, customs, and practices were still alive, even though they were antiquated. People didn't necessarily take them seriously, but they had access to them. When I was little, my grandmother and the grandmothers of my friends would show us how to read fortunes in candle wax, or tell us about superstitions and the healing properties of certain plants, or make folk recipes against colds and so on. Older friends would teach us how to make berry necklaces and flower garlands, and our mothers would tell us how people used to use beets and coal for makeup, and we'd try it out. And then when I would read folk stories or see paintings of traditional village scenes where, centuries past, other young girls did these things, I could feel a connection to them because there was a living thread there. It made the historical familiar. I don't see that happening much here.
Anyway, after I told my dad this, he told me that I should take a look at a book he had that collected the folk practices of "the Russian peoples" from the original Slavophile movement in the 1880s. The book itself was published in 1989, but it's a reprint so it keeps the old order spelling and typeface... which, lemme tell you, is a bit of a bother, even if I can read it... but it looks nice, I guess. (There was a government-decreed orthographic reform in 1917 that removed several letters from the alphabet and changed the official spelling of various words, so 19th c. Russian looks significantly more different from modern Russian than 19th c. English does from modern English.) At least they didn't try to do it in Old Church Slavonic or anything.
Even though this was not exactly what I meant, as this was a compilation done by a scholar rather than oral knowledge passed down organically, it is still a very interesting book. Of course it has the expected material on traditional dress, holiday observances, homestead rituals, medicines and so on, and ends with some folk poetry and songs, but a significant part of the book is basically composed of spells. Which is awesome.
Spells for war, love spells, healing spells, impotency spells (sadly just to take away, not to cause), spells against witches, spells for riches... I love the really specific ones best, such as "A Spell Against Pain In the Ear" or "A Spell to Ward Off Black Flies."
My one complaint? I am looking at the love spells and they are 90% for a man to win over a woman. (To win her over, to make her pine for him, to get a nonspecified woman, to cause lovesickness in a specific woman, etc etc). How unbalanced. Also, in the case of a specific woman, a lot of them have to do with enchanting a sweet and having her eat it. Gives an interesting spin to the custom of men wooing women with gifts of candy.
Oh right, because I live in New Jersey, that's why.
My friend Leah, who was my best friend in middle school, got engaged recently, so I had her come out with me for drinks yesternight. We wanted someplace that looked nice but was close by, so we went to the local Hilton bar. I totally forgot it was Mardi Gras until they started giving us masks and beads and I decorated Leah like a New Year tree. (It would have been a Christmas tree, but Leah's Jewish.) Also, a footless tattooed punk made us balloon animals. The clientele was kind of interesting: aforementioned footless tattooed punk balloon artist and his lovely equally tattooed girlfriend, a sweet young gay couple, an older lady with kitschy-trashy fashion taste, and then a bunch of businesspeople. Halfway through our conversation Leah demanded that I move back to DC so we could hang out more, and while I don't want to live in DC, I really do need to move to some sort of city, where I can have people. Although I do think it's interesting that I've been reconnecting with some DC-area people of late. Feeling nostalgic, I guess?
On a different subject entirely, I posted on another site about discovering that my grandmother has started buying traditional-type Russian shampoos made from black bread and honey. My mother used to wash my hair with black bread, bran and eggs when I was younger sometimes, but that was back when there weren't any really good toiletries in Russia. It amuses me that someone would go and market these now, not just because it's such a funny mixture of modernity and traditional revival, but because... the original folk recipes for these things are very simple. Shouldn't people who feel proudly nationalistic/traditional enough to want to use these products just mix up the recipe from scratch themselves? It seems to take all the "tradition" out of it to mass market it like this.
Nevertheless, I told my dad that one thing I liked about Russia was that various folk remedies, customs, and practices were still alive, even though they were antiquated. People didn't necessarily take them seriously, but they had access to them. When I was little, my grandmother and the grandmothers of my friends would show us how to read fortunes in candle wax, or tell us about superstitions and the healing properties of certain plants, or make folk recipes against colds and so on. Older friends would teach us how to make berry necklaces and flower garlands, and our mothers would tell us how people used to use beets and coal for makeup, and we'd try it out. And then when I would read folk stories or see paintings of traditional village scenes where, centuries past, other young girls did these things, I could feel a connection to them because there was a living thread there. It made the historical familiar. I don't see that happening much here.
Anyway, after I told my dad this, he told me that I should take a look at a book he had that collected the folk practices of "the Russian peoples" from the original Slavophile movement in the 1880s. The book itself was published in 1989, but it's a reprint so it keeps the old order spelling and typeface... which, lemme tell you, is a bit of a bother, even if I can read it... but it looks nice, I guess. (There was a government-decreed orthographic reform in 1917 that removed several letters from the alphabet and changed the official spelling of various words, so 19th c. Russian looks significantly more different from modern Russian than 19th c. English does from modern English.) At least they didn't try to do it in Old Church Slavonic or anything.
Even though this was not exactly what I meant, as this was a compilation done by a scholar rather than oral knowledge passed down organically, it is still a very interesting book. Of course it has the expected material on traditional dress, holiday observances, homestead rituals, medicines and so on, and ends with some folk poetry and songs, but a significant part of the book is basically composed of spells. Which is awesome.
Spells for war, love spells, healing spells, impotency spells (sadly just to take away, not to cause), spells against witches, spells for riches... I love the really specific ones best, such as "A Spell Against Pain In the Ear" or "A Spell to Ward Off Black Flies."
My one complaint? I am looking at the love spells and they are 90% for a man to win over a woman. (To win her over, to make her pine for him, to get a nonspecified woman, to cause lovesickness in a specific woman, etc etc). How unbalanced. Also, in the case of a specific woman, a lot of them have to do with enchanting a sweet and having her eat it. Gives an interesting spin to the custom of men wooing women with gifts of candy.