Читать книгу Predator Of Souls - Alessandro Norsa - Страница 5

This brief but rich - and interesting - work by Alessandro Norsa, which is about vampirism and what we can call its “surroundings”, also makes use of some interviews made by the Author himself in Romania.

For our part, we limit ourselves to emphasise certain points. The first, among those we wish to recall, regards the practice of covering up mirrors on the occasion of a death:

On the death of a family member the mirrors in the house are covered because otherwise the soul, being reflected, remains imprisoned between the walls of the house,

The old lady Florea tells us. Thus, in turn, the youngest Lena says:

(...) the mirrors and any other reflective surface are covered to avoid the spirit (i.e. of the dead person) remaining a prisoner in the house.

Beyond the euphemistic “explanation” (the soul of the dead would remain “imprisoned” inside the house), we are confronted - it seems to me fair to support) - by one of the practices of “expelling” the deceased from the domestic space.

And, naturally, we are confronted by the basic themes of the reflected image.

It is relevant, along an “analogous” line, what Lucia (about 50 years old), from the area of Braşov, refers to when she tells us inter alia:

At midnight... I don’t know at what time of the year... Perhaps when a person has died...’ I switched off the lights, looked in the mirror and saw the vampire in the mirror... Meaning that the dead person had not been happy in their life...

Therefore, cover the mirror when someone dies so that the dead person is not reflected... if they are reflected it would be a vampire...

And she added:

(...) The vampire would be the spirit of the dead person when he or she was not happy in their life... when a dead person is not happy it is very bad...

Previously she had said:

When someone dies, a husband, brother, sister, someone in the family... a baby... it is customary to cover the mirrors with a dark cloth and to light the candles.... you cover the mirrors because they say that it brings bad luck... if you don’t cover the mirrors, the dead person is reflected in the mirror - for three days the spirit remains in the house - it goes out and remains near the house for forty days and after forty days it disappears - it goes away into its own world...

It would seem to be understood that if you do not cover the mirrors the dead person who was not happy in life, being reflected, remains in the house as a vampire - as a vampire reflection - and “that is very bad”. The fear, essentially, is of the vampire-reflection - and that this vampire-reflection (“if it is reflected it would be the vampire”) remains in the house; etc. Hence the “necessity” - it is revealed - to cover the mirrors in an event of a death so that the spirit of the dead person does not remain “a prisoner in the house” (a “euphemistic image”). Coming back to Lena, the woman tells also of a girl who was transformed into a toad by the effect of a spell the girl requested from the witch herself. Here is what happened:

(...) my mother told me about an engagement opposed by the boy’s mother. The girl went to a witch who put a spell on her. Every night the girl changed into a toad to enter her fiancé’s house. The boy’s mother, often finding that big, croaking and squirming animal under her feet, wanted to kill it, and, one day, achieved her intention. In that moment, the boy died (...).

It is a matter here of a narrative outline - of an “eventuality” that one encounters frequently also in Italian folklore: a witch changes herself into an animal or an object, which it then hit, and the witch ends up, therefore, maimed in a “corresponding” part of her body. Just because it has to do with a transformation into a toad, I report that this attestation comes from Garfagnana (Cogna), in the province of Lucca [Central Italy]:

A young man from Villa Collemandina was returning home after having been at his fiancée’s. It was the middle of the night, and to see he had a torch made of straw. At a certain point, he stumbled on something soft; he stopped, and in the faint light of the flame saw a large toad; annoyed, he thrust the torch towards the poor animal and gave it a good scorching. The next day he met a friend, whose face was disfigured by a horrible wound. “What’s happened to you?” - he asked him - ”Ah!, after having ruined me in this way you also ask me what happened to me?!” - “But what are you saying?” Could it have been me that burned you?” - “Yes, it was really you, last night! That toad that you met, it was really me”.

Consider, moreover, as an example, the following tale, heard in Piedmont, relating to the connection between “brambles” and witch (masca):

There was between Castiglion Tinella and Valdivilla nearby on a bend a short-cut called “the goat’s short-cut”. And it was near this short-cut that everyone who passed by saw the masks. On this road, there were always some brambles which blocked the road. One day someone says: “I want to see properly”. Take this scythe and cut it down”. Having reached the place, he hits him and suddenly hears someone say: “Hit him again” But the man did not hit him a second time. At a later stage, they learned that there was someone with his arm torn off.

On the bramble hit by the scythe, it is obvious that the arm cut off by the masca “matches”. Another point that I intend to touch upon is that relating to “conviction that girls with blue eyes have the power to put the “evil eye” on someone, without - “sometimes” - “doing it on purpose” (and it’s still Lena talking). However, regardless of other types of “explanation”, I would not rule out the fact that also in this case we are faced with an emergence of the colour, light blue/blue/deep blue, inasmuch as the colour of the negative.

Dealing now with the account of Alessandro Norsa, the Author highlights how the negative beings assembled “circling around in the air” (p. ex 9) For my part, I would take this opportunity to underline how the “circle/curve/spiral” element may be considered as a characteristic of such a being (and we have seen how the “curve” intervenes in the Piedmont attestation (referred to above). As far as concerns - finally - the practice of placing a spindle on the tomb of the deceased (Norsa, p. ex 10), I would not be out of place in recalling the tale, which one comes across widely, at least in Italian folklore, relating to the woman who, for a bet, goes into the cemetery at night, carrying out the gesture, in fact, to place a fuse on the tomb.

For the rest, it would perhaps be right to assume that also on the basis of accounts relating to the “fuse bet” - so to speak - an analogous meaning: an analogous “basic value“ remains valid, at least at that time.

Alberto Borghini, 14.03.2015