ZÂNE ÎN CREDINŢELE POPULARE ALE ROMÂNILOR DIN HOMOLJE. (Raeto-Romance)

The culture of the Romanians living in Homolje and, more widely in Timoc, is the most archaic aspect of spirituality, not only within the Balkan Peninsula but across our continent. One of the numerous valuable objects of our people's ethnological treasure is the mythology and ancient customs, which date from a long time before Christianity, but which have survived until the present, until the beginning of the 21th century, in the villages that settled in the heart of the mountains of Homolje. Researching the Romanian traditional culture in northeastern Serbia, we find a unique tendency of this population towards characters of mystical property, which, in their system of popular religion, have the role of the mediator between the villagers as a religious community and a sacred world, a world of fairies, divine and mythical beings and ancestral souls. Trance is a specific state of consciousness in women, who people refer to as "muieri care cad" [women that fall] and "vrjătuori" [witches]. It is the product of the visit, that is, the obsession by mythical female beings, for which people have a euphemistic name, namely THEM. The central theme of this paper are mythical beings THEM, as a cause of exaltation, while the phenomenon of the trance in "falling" women is only one part related to it, necessary in the attempt to complete the mosaic, which will help us to at least clarify the religious rituals and beliefs of the Romanians in Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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