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My girlfriend's flatmate on the phone sounded scared - really scared. 'Am I cursed to die?' - beyond that she didn't make much sense, as I could see by the look on my girlfriends face. As she put down the phone, I knew our date for tonight was over. She had to go and help. What neither of us foresaw was that for the two of them the night would end with the burning of, among others, some house slippers and sweets.
I have written about before (link to the article on superstitions) how Ukraine is a country where superstitions are very much alive. Just whistle inside a building and you'll see what I mean. There are even new ones created, such as padlocks with the names of fiancées attached to the railings of a particular bridge for good luck.
All of this, however, had remained somewhat abstract to me up to this point. I had viewed them as conventions that people still observed, as something on a level with not shaking hands with somebody with a gloved hand. Violating them could be embarrassing or cause offenñe, that was all. They were certainly not a matter of life and death.
Except for, as it turns out, when they are. On this day the flatmate had been told by a neighbor woman that somebody had left a bag with some things for her. These were:
- some house slippers
- a nightgown
- a headscarf
- some earth
- church candles that had been previously lit
- some salt
- a bag of sweets
To me these things would have just appeared a puzzling collection and at worst left me wondering half the night how something like this could have ended here. In doing so I would have thought about the individual items, and hardly considered there to be any importance to them as a whole.
When done so in knowledge of Ukrainian tradition, it turns out to be a death curse. Not all Ukrainians still know this, but then my girlfriend's flatmate used to study Ukrainian customs and traditions - and to her it was a cause for real concern. She was not absolutely convinced that she was going to die - but then neither could she just shrug it off as a bad joke played on her.
Fortunately where there is a traditional curse there also seems to be a law that there has to be a traditional remedy. So after some deliberation, the magic items were collectively burned to traditional incantations, and on the next day she visited a churches, said her prayers and lit some candles. Curse lifted, case solved.
Except for the burning question of who put the curse on her? No definite answer here, just a strong suspicion that it was the neighbor woman who wanted to tell her not to answer the advances of her husband. Apparently Ukraine is a country where a mundane cat fight can still entail the use of magic.
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