CODES OF SLAV CULTURES
journal of slavic folkloristics and ethno-lingvistics

No. 1

PLANTS 

It is generally accepted that all old civilizations believed in the protective power of plants. This conviction is based on the mystical power of vegetation spirits and on the idea of bewitched plants as the residence of souls, demons and gods.

In Serbian tradition, as it is well known, the cult of trees and plants is respected. There are still beliefs that certain plants belong to a dead man's soul, other to good or evil demons, some other to gods, and that, therefore, they can be good protectors from evil.

The Serbs protected themselves against vampires by ritual acts, sacred objects, strong words, ritual presents and plants believed to have special powers over vampires. The hawthorn and garlic, thorn, juniper tree, wild teasel, cattail and madder are considered to be the strongest apothropaians. All these plants have antivampire power, this power being here hierarchically lined.

This article only gives a broader description of the position of plants in antivampire protection having in mind the context of the topic "The plants in folk culture". This article is reduced to a presentation of plants in antivampire protection, but includes three-level coding, in the context of the broader and more complex topic "Plants code in folklore". By restricting the semantic field of the notion of numen it comes to the notion of vegetation spirit, by segmentation of its semantic field to the notion of plant. The article also counts on the process of folklore coding, where folk beliefs in the protective power of certain plants are obtained as a message.

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