When we hear about wizards, shamans, oracles, diviners, fortune tellers, healers, esotericists and witches, it seems at first glance to be something supernatural and in any case anti-scientific. To believe or not to believe in the magic of words and rituals is up to everyone, however, mantras are also part of our ancestors’ traditions, cultural experience and intangible cultural heritage.
The Latvian folklore repository contains more than 56,000 sail word text items, and the collection consists mainly of the last century. Folklore materials sent in the 1920s and 1930s. The research of spells in Latvia has a long history, it started already in the 19th century, and its foundations were once laid by folklorist, young Latvian, publicist, poet and translator Fricis Brīvzemnieks, in the last century the work with the index of spells was continued by folklorist, philologist and writer Kārlis Straubergs. On the other hand, the monograph “Latviešu buramvārdi” was published very recently. Texts, Traditions, Contexts’. “Future Stop” is visited by its author, a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the Lithuanian University of Applied Sciences, who has been paying attention to sailing words for ten years – Dr. philol. Aigars Lielbardis. At the center of the research are Latvian charms, chanting and healing traditions, and the various contexts forming and influencing these texts and traditions. Charms are written and verbal formulas, sets of texts, which are attributed unusual, supernatural power to achieve a goal (heal, harm, pray, bind), influence natural and social phenomena, mutual relations, achieve a favorable result, etc. In Latvian traditions, witchcraft is mostly used for healing.
Another important field of research by Aigars Lielbāržs, which was once reflected in publications and documentaries as a result of scientific expeditions, is Latvian emigrant villages in Siberia and Belarus, the life stories of their inhabitants, the succession and preservation of language and traditional culture.
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