engleski

How to Die More Easily or Charm and Charm Devices on a Person's Deathbed

Many types of charms are very well researched by now: charms for good health, healing charms, love charms, charms to prevent somebody from falling in love, charms for increasing or preventing fertility, and so on. However, there existed certain charms and charm devices that ensured an easier or quicker death. This paper explores several examples of texts and devices designed to enable an easier death, such as The prayer of St. Martin used as a charm, as well as apotropaic devices using yarn, pumpkin or Prayer for the intercession of St. Nicholas the traveller. Also, the work poses the question whether it was death that caused so much angst in the traditional culture as to necessitate this kind of help. This could be inferred from various descriptions of attitude towards death and the preparation for it. Conversely, could it be that the primary reason for this way of assistance was empathy for the dying person who was in agony and could not "separate his soul from his body"? Or maybe the issue was angst which, in traditional culture, is a result of a state of existence between life and death, being neither here nor there, but at the same time, being both here and there.

Prayer; charm; charming; St. Martin; deathbed

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