Anima

In several villages of Walachia, and especially in those of Gorj and Olt counties, the First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner, which always falls on 24th February, is called Dragobete. In these regions, Dragobete is a beautiful celebration day for

excerpt In the end, after much talky talk, the priest managed to completely lay the guilt on Father Mitrofan from the monastery, who was now to be held accountable and punished. And since there was nothing there to eat, the priest's wife being sick, priest Bolindache

It seems almost provocative to launch such an issue on the local pleasures, pastimes and delights, while nowadays a troublesome Romania appears as plunged into unending economic and social difficulties, striving to cope with various shortcomings and weaknesses. However,

European travelers such as Antonio Maria del Chiaro were struck long time ago by the uncommon abundance of woolen carpets in each Romanian home, be it aristocratic, bourgeois or peasant. Carpets were laid mainly onto the walls of the rooms, but they also covered the beds,

excerpts The cosmic tree, whose root, trunk and branches uphold – by dividing yet uniting – the three cosmic levels, is the same as the funeral tree, because, to the folk mentality, the cosmic tree is the only passageway to the other realm that the soul of the dead

excerptsTHE WATER PIXY. Representations. The Water Pixy and the Human Head. The Water Pixy's Wraith. Stories. The Water Pixy in Other CulturesAccording to Romanian popular beliefs in Bucovina, the Water Pixy is a tall, heavily- built woman, some say as tall as a camel,

excerptsTHE LIFE OF MANDeath. The Signs of DeathDeath is no longer visible to people and dying men no longer are aware of their time like once; still, there exist certain premonitory signs that show one the moment has come to embark upon the journey with no return. Not everybody

The essential resemblance between the legend recorded by Bandinus in 1647 and the folk legends about the Flood, collected at two and a half centuries' distance (around 1900), is conspicuous. In all these variants (but especially in the one chronicled by Bandinus) some

To the achievement of literary impact, Argeş Monastery comes up with a simple and ingenious solution: the absolute contrast between the soft and caressed tenderness of form, on the one side, and the wild graveness of the underlying tragedy, on the other. In the style and

excerpts1. Participation and RepetitionPerhaps the most significant difference between modern man and archaic man consists in this: for archaic man, a thing or an act acquires significance only in as much as it participates in a prototype, or in as much as it reiterates

Healing plants grow under Christ's cross and out of the blood of our Saviour. People in Germany and Norway believe that the grass of Sânziene (Hypericum) grew roots from the Saviour's blood drops. Other legends tell that the same plant was born from the blood

excerptsTHE MAKING OF THE WORLDAbysmIn the beginning, before Old Adam and even before God, there was nothing in this world but pitch darkness. Nothing whatsoever, no Earth, no Sun, no Moon, nothing but a great stretch of water taking up the endless chasm. Wherever you turned