When fear „ties itself“ to death

 It was once believed that a person will fall ill if an animal jumps in front of him from a bush unexpectedly or if something else surprises him in a different manner. Repercussions of such a shock have an equally detrimental effect for both the psyche and body. Through some empirical, but also magical experiences, the Bosnian people have always believed that due to huge shock the human body literally shrinks, or better yet – contorts, which is also mentioned in other cultures where such unnatural deformities were cured with the help of massages whose main purpose was to relax the body and return it to its original form.

But, the effect of shock have a much more complex effect on the human body and mind, which is according to folk wisdom best manifested by the claim that due to sudden fear certain organs in the body can move, such as the heart or the gizzard. Both organs are prone to movement during such a sudden bodily convulsion, when a person literally loses its breath, which then further aggravates the patient’s condition. Based on such a belief in folk medicine certain magical rituals of rehabilitation were created, such as lead melting and "salivanje strune", which we will discuss later on.

Due to intensive stress i.e. great fear when a person experiences a rapid loss of fluid inside the mouth, saliva, and since the old days to the frightened a glass of water was offered to them so that “they can come to their senses”. Feeling of fear is such a strong emotion which immediately saps the body’s energy –hypoglycaemia- which is why it is necessary to react quickly in order to recover it. Based on this knowledge the regular practice among Bosnian folk is that to the frightened person a glass of sugar water was offered. It is a known fact that cold water can have a beneficial effect on the person in shock if the person is sprinkled with it or washes its face with it; since the cold itself leads to a short term and effective shock, but this time a positive one.

Drawing attention is practiced in other situations, for example, with the goal of calming down a crying child, which is usually caused by fear from someone or something, which was transferred from one generation to the other from the mother onto the daughter. Namely, our grandmothers would use the tip of their finger to pass over the child’s nose when he was crying in order to get his/her attention, additionally they would produce a high pitched tone which is reminiscent of sound that a mouse makes (ccccc...), they would do this by placing their lips together and drawing air through the opening of the lips, this would produce a sound similar to the sound of the letter C, this would draw attention and stop the most intensive urge for crying – getting hysterical. This would cause the child to calm down gradually*.

According to people, fear has such a destructive influence on humans that it can even cause death. Some stravarke in Bosnia claim: “that in certain situations fear can “get tied” to the patient’s death” – i.e. a person actually dies because of it, and such people can’t be helped. During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia, Dr. Leopold Gluck wrote about this (“Addition to the folk healing of Bosnia and Herzegovina”), where he mentions at the beginning of his study about folklore understanding of fear among the Bosnian people: “It is true that sudden mental shocks, which are usually marked by horror and fear, are the cause and the nerves get more or less disrupted by so called shock – overemphasized fear from which the nerves react aggressively in main human organs, especially the heart, when even death can occur”.




*Although the crying of a child in the first months, but also the first years of life, is not considered to be bad since it helps with the development of lungs, longer crying periods in men was not allowed because of the fear of hernia and hydrocele.

Curing and living with the energy that surrounds us

From its inception until today, man is advancing in all fields and that advancement is in full swing. An exception is made on the plane of the paranormal, i.e. beyond sensory perception, in which man is constantly regressing. Today this ability is possessed only by rare individuals, which can receive some information which didn’t come through one of their five senses. Gradually man lost touch with nature, almost by the same tempo by which he obtained new abilities and skills. Each step in advancement meant giving up one part of the connection with nature and its gradual quenching.

While man was in contact with nature, his soul and consciousness were open towards spiritual energies. During the period when naked and barefoot he wandered nature in search of food, information from higher dimensions were food was located were valuable to him, as well as information about shelter or danger. With the advancement of civilization, he neglected more and more the directions for a harmonized life which came to him from higher dimensions. In such a manner, man became insensitive to very subtle information, which she still receives through his aura, but which he no longer registers, with the exception of rare individuals.

Long time ago in prehistory humans possessed an ability of healing with their hands i.e. fingers and palms. They would hold their hand on the aching spot with the desire to help themselves and so they eased the pain, healed wounds and diseased. We need to emphasise, diseases in prehistoric men were rare. They were usually virus and bacterial infections or bodily injuries, as today in animals. Women gave birth easily, and when someone would get sick, he knew the cause of his disease. Since, man at the time, just like animals lived in harmony with nature. Though with the slow advent of medicine the ancient wisdom of healing was suppressed, it never completely disappeared and people never stopped practicing it. A good part of that knowledge is described by Hindu teaching about Mudra (mudra – in Sanskrit it literally translates as gift of happiness), but similar methods can be found in Buddhism and countries with a rich cultural tradition such as Japan, China, Tibet, Malaysia and Indonesia, in Egyptian culture but also in Bosnia.

Namely in Bosnian occult tradition it is claimed that there are two cardinal spots on every human being which represent a kind of portals through which energy flows and through which every human is connected to the spiritual world. We’re talking about the forehead, actually the middle of the forehead, and the belly button. Ever since our Illyrian forefathers there is a belief that every man in the depths of space possesses his own star i.e. habitat of the soul, to which he is connected through his forehead. While the forehead is connected to the spiritual world, the belly button connects us to the material world, since our inception in the mother’s womb, and has therefore an exceptional influence on our destiny. But, similarly as man is receiving and sending energy from himself, in whose transmission the hands have the largest role to play.