Category: Book

The Coprnice

There has locally been much interest in the story about the Coprnice from Croatia and Slovenia. What are they? Where are they from? What do they believe? If you are talking about Upper Zagreb that is one thing, if you are talking about Village Witchcraft that is another thing entirely. The issues about studying these things is that in order to observe family traditions you either need to be in that family or you will get a different version of the stories and myths. This area has one of the very richest traditions of Witchcraft in a traditional sense.

One of my good friends who sat behind me in school every time we had a class together for 15 years in Arcadia California was Croatian and she taught me their stories when her parents and grandparents would let her tell me one. We even sat together in the bleachers on the very last day of High School graduation —I miss her. I don’t know why the Coprnice story comes up where I live now so much but here is a simple link for you:

Coprnice – the Dark Side of Zagreb

The dark side of Zagreb’s history – the story of witches

www.lovezagreb.hr

Please remember that there is a difference between: Rural Village Witchcraft, Shamanism and Animism, Paganism, “the Copernican traditions” and “The Upper Town Coprnice”. It is also good to know that the King’s magic is different and often employs what is today called performance art which is recognized academically as cultic theater and drama. The finer distinction becomes whether what is performed incorporates what is called “refugee theater” or if it includes political meaning. The religious leaders in ancient and sometimes modern times were also tribal (clan) leaders and some of them were Kings and Queens. Many would follow what they believed and when they “converted” to something else the religion would change. This does not automatically mean that they were the best at performing the rites but ceremonially they were the heads of both their religions and their states. If you are trying to figure out what your people believed in years ago and today there are many fine resources such as these:

Styrian Witches in European Perspective: Ethnographic Fieldwork (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic)

Styrian Witches in European Perspective: Ethnographic Fieldwork (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic) [Mirjam Mencej] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The book provides a comprehensive exploration of witchcraft beliefs and practices in the rural region of Eastern …

Styrian Witches in European Perspective: Ethnographic Fieldwork

By Mirjam Mencej

Google Books Description:
The book provides a comprehensive exploration of witchcraft beliefs and practices in the rural region of Eastern Slovenia. Based on field research conducted at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it examines witchcraft in the region from folkloristic, anthropological, as well as historical, perspectives. Witchcraft is presented as part of social reality, strongly related to misfortune and involved in social relationships. The reality of the ascribed bewitching deeds, psychological mechanisms that may help bewitchment to work, circumstances in which bewitchment narratives can be mobilised, reasons for a person to acquire a reputation of the witch in the entire community, and the role that unwitchers fulfilled in the community, are but a few of the many topics discussed. In addition, the intertwinement of social witchcraft with narratives of supernatural experiences, closely associated with supernatural beings of European folklore, forming part of the overall witchcraft discourse in the area, is explored.

When you read this please to bear in mind that in some Adriatic cultures the uses of Witchcraft psychosocially were also of a social justice or social empowerment nature. Westerners typically miss this point.

Featured image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Croatian_flag_at_the_Knin_Fortress_2015.jpg–

Rprpr [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

An old saying from when I was a child:
I Don’t Exist
You See
I Can’t See
You
In The Forest