Examples of curing fear

Fight against fear is not simple and often requires a lot of patience. This is best evidenced by stravarke whose work experience is full of various cases. Stravarka Emina Hadžihasanović told the following story to a journalist of a Sarajevo magazine:

-I was melting lead to a man, he was imprisoned by četniks (name for Serbian paramilitary army which committed the most war crimes in BiH), he was imprisoned in a concentration camp and was tortured, also a grenade exploded in his building. He was ready to die. He couldn’t walk normally any more. He wasn’t able to go alone anywhere, so he took his child with him everywhere he went. He couldn’t even go to the toilet without the child taking him there. He was a butcher by trade, a good man. He asked doctors for help but they couldn’t help him, his medical results were good but he couldn’t walk straight. I have molten 77 lead pieces for him and he recovered. He is now working in a butcher shop on Ilidža.

Obviously the issue of great fear in a man requires great effort, which is evidenced by another case from the practice of this stravarka:

-There was once a woman. And an ox wanted to kill her, but he didn’t. And due to such a shock she fell into a coma. From that day she always slept a little and fell into a coma a little. It happened that no matter where she was, she would feel a bit weak, she would then fall to the floor. She would fall unconscious. Here, there are 79 leads that I molten for her until now and now the condition has gotten better, she only feels like this maybe once a week. While I melt a couple more she will recover completely. There is only cure in melting lead. Doctors are oblivious. They’re looking – all is good, all is nice and a person cannot function normally. Fear resurrects in the body and all is negative. It strikes the legs and arms and the head, everywhere. You melt three lead pieces – and it feels as if you took it with your hand and threw it away, everything disappears. From the old days the lead melting ritual was practiced, it is a part of our Bosnian tradition for ages.




Illyrian inheritance

For the lead melting ritual, which is familiar in numerous Balkan countries, but also Middle East such as Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iranian anthropologists believe that it stems from the Illyrian warriors, which spread it across the Roman empire while serving its armies, to all corners that the powerful, ancient Empire covered. That is why the Turks, Arabs, Persians and the Jews took it over, which confirms that we are dealing with an effective and efficient ritual for annulling fear, spellbound eyes but also magic.

Curiosity which is among the folk usually connected with the gift of divination and lead melting is that both techniques are often a gift of supernatural forces to an individual. Namely, knowledge about lead melting, according to a stravarka, it often comes “in a dream”, i.e. the stravarka to be dreams it. One of such examples was the already mentioned Emina Hadžihasanović:

-I dreamt that I will die. And my house in the dream is placed on a high hill. I was looking for someone to say the prayer Yasin for me, and I couldn’t find anyone. I then placed a blanket next to this bed and I lay down to die. I started uttering Yasin and three mubina (chapters) of Yasin I finish, and I die. When I woke up in the morning, I remembered the dream and what had happened, I then went to an Imam on Vratnik to tell him what had transpired.

He said: It is good for you that you dreamt it if you are going to melt lead. I never did, I said, but I can start. From there I came here, there was a woman there – she went from one doctor to the other. She was struck by it, she couldn’t move. She said: I dreamt last night that you will melt lead for me. I smiled and said: I have never molten lead for anyone. She said that I shall to her, now. I said when this is the case then I shall. She entered the house through the stairs on her knees. She couldn’t bend her leg. There I took a spoon and I started melting lead. When I have finished melting lead for her for the third time, she suddenly rose up and started walking. She lived for another three-four years and died. And from that day on I melt lead.


Doctors cannot cure fear

Stravarka Hadžinca from Potur in Travnik is another one of the rare people which haven’t received much attention from internet portals and media in general. During an interview with a journalist, Hadžinica revealed some of the secrets of this ancient technique.

-This is no divination, it is useful, but there are people which think otherwise, and I wouldn’t like if you would reveal my identity. I wouldn’t like it because of my family either, you know how it is, she explained. She says that people come from all over the place, from central Bosnia, Zenica and even Sarajevo. Everyone comes with his own story and his own troubles. From workers, up to doctors, politicians and singers. It is a tradition to charge for lead melting. Someone gives some money, someone a present, but for everything to be complete, a reward must be given. That’s why lead cannot be molten by closer relatives which live in the same house. Although it is popular belief that this ancient exorcist skill is solely practiced by women, lead can be molten by men, but they say that it is not appropriate for a man to melt lead for a woman, because of the conservative society.

The ritual with lead without a doubt stems from shamanism which is based on animism. Probably because of its somewhat mysterious power of transformation, to change from solid into the liquid state and reverse, the lead spurred ancient Illyrian shamans to try and change the state of the diseased with the help of lead, through a magical ritual. Besides, stravarke, but also some Imam’s, which practice this method, agree that lead has a lethal power towards humans but also demons. Namely, as a rifle bullet can kill a man so too can lead in a shamanistic ritual kill i.e. more precisely trap energy of a spirit and so remove it from the diseased person.

In three consecutive lead melting rituals, the figure of lead does actually come out in a form similar to the thing that caused the fear.

-Women come to me and they don’t know that they’re afraid of their husband. I reveal this immediately and I tell her – you are afraid of your husband! Of course, sometimes I find a figurine which shows that the husband is afraid of his wife. To remove the fear it is important to find the cause.


She helps only to those that need such a help

When talking to other stravarke with which I had the opportunity and pleasure to talk to, I came across an identical opinion. Each of the categorically claim that everything that is shown in the lead can no longer hurt the diseased person.

-Lead melting will always help to the one who is a case for it, i.e. who is full of fear or some other negative energy, and if his problem cannot be solved by the ritual then he will have no use from it, said Mevlida O. from Velika Kladuša, one of the stravarka which inherited her knowledge from her mother in law.

-No one knows how old this custom is. I feel sad because it is dying out, there are no young women which would like to learn it, and there are few of them that could – says Hadžinica and she explains the stern predispositions: the one which is experienced in lead melting, gives to the student izun, i.e. permission. The woman needs to be pious, with a covered body and it would be good if she is educated, especially in an Islamic spirit. She doesn’t have to go to Hajj, but as Hadžinica says, it won’t hurt.

Continuing the discussion stravarka Hadžinica said that they brought her a singer which sang in a nearby restaurant.

-He says, I don’t know what is wrong with me, I just want to quarrel?! I thought tha someone must have frightened him. I melt lead for him, and each time a figure of a man shows. I ask – who scared you? He then told me everything, that he accepted a friend in his house so he can spend the night there, but in actuality the man was a crook and he wanted to rob him. The singer kept quiet about this event and kept the fear to himself, but when the problem escalated he came to seek help.

Bosnian ritual with four elements and a pentagram

Lead melting is an old ritual of neutralising negative energy known from Bosnia and Herzegovina all the way to Palestine. But, while in Turkey and throughout the Middle East the ritual was exclusively practiced to nullify spellbound eyes, or, in Romanian and Bulgaria for removing effects of fear, in Bosnia this ritual cures the consequences of spellbound eyes, fear, black magic, influence of demons, certain skin diseases and different blockages such as the inability for someone to get married or a pupil to achieve success in school. Also, only in Bosnia and Herzegovina stravarke and stravari know how to use this ritual to help people which are far away from them, without physical contact, even on another continent. That's why it is known that Bosnian stravari are the best ones in this area.

In support of all the above the claim that the lead melting ritual originated in Bosnia is very popular, namely the Ottomans spread it across the lands they conquered in their campaigns i.e. from the Balkans to Palestine and Syria. In support of the originality of the ritual the data that lead melting was familiar in Bosnia since the old days and that there is no data in any ethnographic chapter which would disprove these claims. According to individual anthropologists lead melting is an ancient ritual of the Illyrians which knew how to use metals and how to shape them but also to use them for purposes of magic.

 

As I have written before on the ritual practice this time I will pay more attention to the theory and detailed explanation of the magical background of this ritual. To begin with we should stress that the ritual of lead melting itself is actually a combination of four elements, since a human is also made out of them. Namely, the human body is divided in the following way; from the foot to the waist rules the element of earth, from the waist to the chest is the element water, around the lungs, rules the element of air, while the head belongs to the element of fire.

In what way are the 4 elements present in the ritual? In the bowl with water, in which you melt lead, you place a hollow rock which is considered to be hardened earth. It's function is that all negative energy passes through it and goes into the ground. The water in the bowl is the second element which is combined with the element of air i.e. the stravarka blows into the water while chanting various formulas. The lead is melted with fire, with which we come to the last of the four elements. Namely, lead melting is an ancient ritual which is used to bring all four elements inside a human into balance and harmony and in such a way it enables a normal flow of energy and healing.

Another symbol, which is very important in the ritual of lead melting is what I would call "unification of the elements" and that is the pentagram or star with five points, which represents the human. Each point represents a part of the body: head, arms and legs. According to the procedure after the ritual the diseased washes his face with water which was used for lead melting and chanting of prayers and in such a way as to follow the pentagram; first wash the face, then the right arm and left leg and then the left arm and right leg. In such a manner one symbolically forms a star since according to ancient Bosnian tradition, successors of Illyrian cults, each man has his own star in the sky with which he is connected over his forehead, i.e. the place between the eyebrows. For that reason the stravar or stravarka every time after the last lead pouring dips his/her fingers into the bowl with the water and passes the fingers over the forehead of the diseased. With that ritual she "cleans" the star of that man or better yet neutralises all blockages which disrupted the connection of the man and his star.

 

Power of words

 

Uttering prayers above the surface of the water which is located in the bowl is an imitation of the mythological creation of the world which was, according to Bosnian mythology, created by a supernatural being (God) or more of them (gods) uttering a magical formula i.e. basma above the sea and then blew into the water out of which then came life. Still today there is a belief, that there is a secret and universal basma, the one that created life, the one which if found out by humans and uttered, would allow him to become the master of the entire planet earth. Bosnian stravarke believe that earth "stands" or exists on the power of the basma and the surface of the earth, on which people walk and from which they get food, rests on the strength of the prayer Ihlas from the Qur'an.

In magical practice prayer Ihlas is often combined with a basma in order to produce a magical effect. It is always repeated in the beginning three, five or seven times and then the basma  is repeated three times. With that, through the ritual, one connects into a whole things which are theoretically inconceivable - basma as a pagan element with Islam i.e. prayer Ihlas whose content is the most important message of monotheism - There is only one God. Symbiosis of magic and religion doesn't stop there instead it culminates in the formula which is called "Backwards Ihlas", whose content has a few versions of the text, but every one of them starts with the identical words of the basma: "ćuhum ćuti, lehum leti." and ends with the first words of the prayer Ihlas: "kulhuvelahu". Power of this basma is extremely large which confirms folk belief according to which all those that know the text of this basma can rule over the forces of magic and can cast spells.

 

Lead, herbs, water

 

It is interesting to mention that there are a few versions of this ritual only in Bosnia, which are absolutely unknown in other countries where the practice of lead melting is present. Namely, besides the use of lead the ritual is performed with certain herbs such as stravna herb (glechoma hederecea) or kukurijeka (Helleborus niger L.var.macranthus Freyn). From the root of kukurijeka one would boil a tea and in it lead would be poured. After that the diseased would drink the tea.

The second way is even more interesting. The ritual is performed with the help of hot water which is poured from the vessel into a saucer, then the vessel is turned upside down and placed in the middle of the saucer with the water and one would utter prayers over it. When, because of the heat, the vacuum sucks the air from the upturned vessel, the water would also be sucked into the vessel. After that has occurred the vessel is raised and the diseased washes his face with the water and drinks some of it.