Predator Of Souls. Alessandro Norsa

passage reports meticulously the meal of this horrendous creature. They say - writes the Latin author - “that with their beaks they tear open the entrails of suckling babies and that they fill their throats drinking the blood”. These descriptions in the sphere of the ancient world of witches, cruel blood-thirsty beings, find corresponding elements in narratives kept in the popular tales handed down right up until our days. Alberto Borghini, for example, in his Semiosi in folklore 2, reports two accounts in which some witches suck the blood of young victims: the first collection in the Garfagnana valley in Tuscany in Italy, the second in the Piedmont region of Monferrato-Langhe [in central Italy]. The analogies and reports of winged, blood-sucking beings are so persistent as to constitute, according to the scholar, a real “identity of a narrative type”. Over and above these examples, in general terms, the people identify witches with those persons that went beyond conventional behaviour. There could be considered as witches even those people who had had problems, or because they were present at the moment of some misfortune. Moreover, the character of the persons or some physical deformity could be indicative: a surly and withdrawn temperament or a woman with a bent back offered further indications. In any case, they were considered to be marginalised people or otherwise outside the social group or poor beggars. Sometimes it was the territory that was considered inhabited by witches, or it was considered that they lived in remote areas or, again, that they lived in ugly, small and dirty or isolated houses. Also, some specific illnesses, like for example epilepsy, denounced them as belonging without doubt to accursed women. In some communities, the negative powers were handed down from generation to generation. It was considered that these persons could do evil or bring misfortune: meeting them meant having adverse consequences in life, regarding the people or the outcome of the agricultural season. The general idea was that because of meeting them something bad would certainly happen and that nothing could be done to change the course of events. The witches were, therefore, hated and respected at the same time and, anyway, you tried to keep as far away from them as possible. Among the behaviour arousing suspicion was moving house often. Some situations of living independently, like being an orphan or being raised by prostitutes, could arouse strong suspicions. Moreover, suicide or premature death constituted implicit admission of being one of the terrible witches. The lowest common denominator of the examples given up until now leads to the anomaly, the physical difference compared with so-called normality. In the case of the unfortunate meeting with one of these terrifying crones, the appropriate exorcism was resorted to, sharing with others the fear that the witch could cast some kind of spell. Women who were identified as witches lived a wretched life because they were unpopular and avoided by everyone. They answered to the need of the community to identify a scapegoat, in order to project all their personal and social tensions. There were some cases, then, in which those persons that were identified with the pejorative name of witches were not only humiliated, persecuted or beaten, but even killed. In Romania, as in the rest of Europe, the scourge of religious persecution was put down: records of trials of witches that were held in the period between 1463 and 1777 report faithfully, sometimes even with too much precision (not to say with a bit of complacency), the account of the confessions and the executions. In this country, they were accused of blasphemy, holding black masses, cannibalism, criminal rituals (above all, infanticide). The persecution occurred particularly in Transylvania, which in the Middle Ages was Hungarian territory. The inquests that they had in this region were numerous over the centuries and there were repeated convictions with brutal cruelty. In 1686, for example, the wife of the prince of Transylvania, Michael Apasi, I went mad and the witches were blamed; a vast inquest was conducted, following which the flames of the burnings at the stake flared almost everywhere in this region. Even after the end of the legal persecutions, the firm beliefs on witchcraft remain deep-rooted. In Transylvania, they believe that leading the nocturnal flight over the rocky mountains was the mythical Meneges: the noisy mythological figure capable of carrying out extraordinary magical deeds. Still in the last century there were cases in which they believed that nocturnal witches’ Sabbaths were held; their inhabitants abandoned them and they remained empty; many places where it was considered that the witches’ Sabbaths were held had a very bad reputation. Another Romanian belief concerning the male Strigoi, was that they had a nocturnal existence that began at midnight and lasted until the first cock-crow. During sleep, their souls came out of their mouths and, in the form of human shadows, the Strigoi went around the villages or the farms of their parents, their neighbours and fellow countrymen doing every reprehensible thing that came into their mind: they dried up the orchards, they took out the nutrients from the wheat and the milk and poisoned the springs. They became invisible and in this way, without anyone being able to identify them, they could call out to people by name, frighten them, disfigure travellers and knock over the objects in the courtyard and in the houses they entered. At the third crow of the cock, however, the spirit of the Strigoi had to return to its body. It was said that they had such a deep sleep that on reawakening they did not remember any more what they had done during the night. Only if courageous men had had the strength to tackle them and slash them with a particular sign on the face would their true identity have been discovered. These legends are born from the most ancient fears present in man, like, for example, for the beings that populated the night from the moment of dusk falling. The thing, that man has always thought was absolutely his deepest anxiety, is the darkness without any precise form, witches are in that regard both the impersonal representation of this anguish but also, through a physical form, the attempt to diminish the horrific emotional charge. Witches, in fact, dressed in black, or transformed into black cats, can be confused with the darkness of the night to carry out evil deeds. When in a village there lacks concrete proof to recognise the culprits, like in the case of identifying a witch, proof can be found in disabled people who, transformed into black or invisible animals, are held culpable of every kind of malice. In Romania, they said moreover that when men go out at midnight, behind their houses or to the crossroads, they made three somersaults and transformed themselves even into wild beast-men, horse-men, wolf-men or wild boar-men. Thus transformed, they wandered around the village, along the roads between the villages, on the hills, along the riverbanks and between the meadows of the forest, carrying out cruelties. At times they road on magic sticks, brooms or pâserâ maiastrâ (magic birds) to circle the world far and wide and to make their enemies, or those suspected of being so, ugly. This aspect of the flight of the witch is a rather complex mythological element that is found in many traditions, not only European, therefore a wider description of it will be given later in this book. Every year the Strigoi men meet for three nights in a sort of Walpurgis Night festival on the feast of Saint Theodore, Saint George and Saint Andrew. On Saint Theodore, the Strigoi men transform themselves into the horses of Saint Theodore, kinds of centaurs which went around to punish the girls and women who did not respect their festival. In thinking about the origins, so that good luck is preserved, it is necessary to observe both the obligations and the prohibitions. The legends characterised by the prohibitions, or rather, the “do-nots”, underline the rules that must not be infringed in absolutely any way, because, on non-compliance with the rules, there will ensue an inevitable and terrible punishment. They recounted a time in Romania when, on the anniversary of Saint George (23rd April), the Strigoi