Verbal Magic In Contemporary Women’s Narratives About Nightmare Experiences In Estonia
Reet Hiiemäe
Incantatio An International Journal on Charms Charmers and Charming 2025 DOI: 10.7592/incantatio2024_12_hiiemae (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Contemporary Estonian folklore informants, with emphasis on women's perspectives |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Narrative Magic telescope Gender studies Psychoanalysis Literature Psychotherapist Astronomy |
| Key findings | Verbal magic against nightmare attacks remains relevant in modern Estonian folklore, with a more heterogeneous mix of traditional and new elements. |
Abstract
The focus of this article is on the contemporary use of verbal magic in situations interpreted in personal experience narratives as nightmare (old hag) attacks whereby the emphasis is on women’s perspective. First, the author gives a general overview of the outputs of protective verbal magic in contemporary Estonian material to situate more specific verbal magic used for warding off the supernatural attacker during the nightmare experiences. The author concludes that the topic of nightmare attacks as well as verbal magic against them is still relevant in modern folklore. Although elaborated long charms are rare, contemporary verbal magic against nightmare in general is even more heterogenous as in older tradition. Expectably, new international trends of verbal magic have influenced contemporary tradition but some key elements from older tradition are still present, combined with protective objects and rituals from older folklore as well as diverse new sources.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |