What did Slavic villagers do when they wanted protection, a good harvest, healing, luck, or some sign of what was still to come?

Slavic Ritual and Folk Magic turns from belief to practice. Kazimierz Moszyński records prayer, offerings, holy groves, communal rites, charms, protective magic, witchcraft, dreams, omens, and divination as they appeared across the Slavic world.

The material ranges from prayers spoken before ploughing and first-fruit offerings to charms against sickness, ritual purification, communal sacrifices, and rites meant to secure rain, healthy livestock, and a good harvest. Moszyński is especially interested in the point where religion and magic begin to overlap. Prayer asks for help, while magic attempts to bring about a result, but in village practice the two were often difficult to separate.

Later chapters cover magical practices based on touch, transfer, resemblance, spoken formulas, and forbidden words, along with rites for protection, prosperity, love, and harmful witchcraft. The final section turns to ecstasy and divination, including dreams, visions, casting lots, rods, sieves, beans, wax, molten metal, stars, fire, water, plants, animals, household objects, and chance encounters.

Moszyński drew on his own fieldwork in Poland and Polesie, together with ethnographic collections from Bulgaria, Ukraine Serbia, Russia, and other Slavic regions. He also compares this material with neighboring peoples where the Slavic record is incomplete.

Adapted and translated from Kultura Ludowa Słowian, this edition keeps Moszyński’s section references, source citations, regional distinctions, folk terminology, prayers, and charms.