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The magical healing and medical practices associated with birth and child-rearing discussed in the previous chapter were located specifically within the provenance of women. In prerevolutionary times women also predominated in other healing practices, such as bone-setting, bloodletting, toothache treatments, and herbal medicine. The different types of specialized practitioners used various means to facilitate healing, but all used magical rituals such as incantations. These znakharki or babki were older women, often widows, who sought a livelihood through their chosen profession. They consciously learned and passed on their skills, and although they did not earn much, they could subsist on the in-kind payments (food, materials) that people offered them for their services (Glickman 1991, 154–55, 157). In the Soviet period, authorities attempted to stop people from using the services of these babki, but the institution was not eradicated. AnothertypeofmagicinRussiawashistoricallyassociatednotonlywithwomenbutwith menaswell.ThisisthetypeofmagiccalledinRussianethnographicliteratureporcha(spoiling ) and noted in anthropological literature most often under the terms witchcraft and sorcery. Anthropologists working in areas such as Africa and New Guinea distinguish these twoconcepts(StewartandStrathern2004,6;Turner1967,119);however,inRussiathetwo terms are conflated (Ryan 1999, 69). In Russia both witches and sorcerers use supernatural power directly upon others to kill or harm them; it is often said that they do this to augment themselves or because they “need to.” They may also exercise their power indirectly, using spells, substances, or rites to inflict their harmful magic. Witches and sorcerers are said to fly or change the shape of their bodies. Whether the power is deemed voluntary or involuntary depends upon local tradition and/or the particular case. Because the English terms are equally applicable in the Russian case, we will use them interchangeably in this chapter. In Russian ethnographic and native sources from the seventeenth century to the present , the term most often used for a harmful magician is koldun (pl. kolduny); the feminine  Magic, Control, and Social Roles 221 is koldun’ia (pl. koldun’i). There is overlap between harmful and helpful magic: in reports some kolduny are depicted as selling professional services such as casting love spells, finding lost livestock, and reversing other spells (i.e., healing)—sometimes in these cases the practitioners are called znakhari or znakharki rather than kolduny. Others, suspected witches, are said to keep their harmful identity secret, and are feared (Ryan 1999, 78). Such a person may not know she is called a witch behind her back; or a suspected witch may draw upon his or her reputation and offer services. Reports on the predominant gender of witches diverge considerably; all seem to agree, however, that in Russia, as distinct from the West, both men and women were believed to perform harmful magic.1 Based upon cases brought to court in Russia in the sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, Valerie Kivelson argues that gender was not as important a factor as was social status: although 75 percent of the accused were men, it was their liminal status—as wanderers, foreigners, and defiant people—that was a more likely reason for their being suspected of sorcery (2003, 617–20). According to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources cited by Rose Glickman, there were more male than female professional sorcerers, while the suspected witches were split more or less evenly between men and women (1991, 151). According to records from Russia and Ukraine examined by Christine Worobec, during the period 1861–1917 over 70 percent of those charged with sorcery were women; women, too, were more likely to be the victims of witchcraft (1995, 168). Olga Khristoforova divides the tradition geographically: in the Russian North, males were said to be the main holders of sorcerers’ knowledge; while in the South, the ability was ascribed more often to women (2010, 125). William Ryan notes that Church sources tended to depict women as practitioners of magic due to the association of women with the devil in Christian writings and artifacts; the idea that it was generally females who were witches was probably also due to influences from Poland and Germany (1999, 79, 91). Ryan points out that one often sees in Russian culture a “confusion of witches as real-life practitioners in magic with malevolent female demons of mythology and folklore” such as Baba Yaga (79). In contemporary Russian culture, the discourse of witchcraft and sorcery has become feminized due to cultural and historical changes. It is likely that Western notions have to an extent influenced belief: our informants told stories about male and female sorcerers alike but mentioned more...

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