BIRTH RITE - Childbirth Amulets (original) (raw)
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Protecting Mother and Child at Birth – Amulets and Prayers in Franconian Genizot
PREGNANCIES, CHILDBIRTHS, AND RELIGIONS Rituals, Normative Perspectives, and Individual Appropriations. A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Perspective from Antiquity to the Present - Sacra publica et privata 10 ed. by Giulia Pedrucci, 2020
This article discusses one of the birth rituals of a Jewish child, which was common in Jewish communities from the 10th century CE onwards in a variety of forms. The ritual involves making an amulet with different textual elements, which is purported to protect both mother and child. The amulet is a reaction to birth as a hazardous time for mother and child, being based among other things on the idea that the female demoness Lilith attacks at night, insinuating herself through the cracks and apertures of the house into the birthing room to inflict harm on the mother, and to suck the child’s blood and kill it. This article focuses on childbirth amulets from the 17th‒19th centuries CE found in genizot (sing. genizah, Hebrew for “ritual repositories for no longer usable writings”) in Franconia, Germany. The aim is to examine and compare the design of the printed and handwritten children’s amulets and the significance of their design for the ritual. They are investigated as to how the ritual was actually performed and how the amulets were designed. The observation on the basis of fragments from the Franconian genizot is then compared to Jewish and Christian sources.
Incantation and equipment for facilitating childbirth)
Zidan, B., 2014
This research is entitled ‘Incantation and equipment for facilitating childbirth in Islamic epoch’. It illuminates the care and charge given to childbirth. This care appears in specifying incantations and exorcism to facilitate childbirth, using seats with special design, and designating special isolated place known as ‘Sandala’ for the confined woman and her new born baby to stay there for 40 days away from any germs; while both are of weak immune. This research depends on historical and descriptive methodology. It deals with one of the historical resources which are ‘Maqamat Al-Hariri’, especially the 39th ‘maqama’. This ‘maqama’ encloses an incantation for the fetus. Moreover; some monumental structures of both Mamluk and Ottoman epochs are mentioned here. These are the house of Amna bent Salem that encloses a collection of birth seats and stools, and the house of Zainab Khatoon that encloses a ‘Sandala’. This research is divided into; Keywords: Incantation, Throes, Maqama, Childbirth, Birth seat, Midwifery, Sandala
Birth Rites–Challenging Assumptions about Childbirth
In the online diary that tracks the journey of both artist and obstetrician (Birth Rites 2008), they both convey that the journey was one of self discovery and both refer to 'connection'. Suzanne relates to the experience as something that gave her a greater connection with her work and an enhanced emotional involvement.
Let us imagine the birth of a Jewish baby in a remote shtetl in Poland or Russia before the onslaught of modernity: a woman is in labor in her bedroom, sur rounded by a midwife and a few other women. No man is allowed in the room, not even the husband or a doctor. Fearful of the grave dangers of childbirth, shared by all people in the pre-modern world, the room is provided with protec tive amulets and other magical objects. The midwife or perhaps a member of the family slips a mysterious book under the pillow of the woman in labor. This book contains magical formulas against the murderous spirits and evil demons, such as Lilith, who threaten the newborn and his mother. Let us now shift our gaze to a similarly traditional Jewish household in an Is lamic town-be it Teheran, Baghdad, or Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan. The scene is the night before circumcision-believed to be the most dangerous night for the newborn and his mother, because this is the last opportunity for the demons to attack the male child before the protective ceremony of circumcision would take place. As a measure of protection, the chair of Elijah-a chair with magical func tions among the Jews of Islam-stands in the center of the room. The chair is ornamented with Torah finials, hamsas, healing plants, and holy books-includ ing at times the book of magic formulas. Inscribed metal and paper amulets in the room are based on the formulas in this book, Sefer Raziel ha-MaVakh (Book of Raziel the Angel). It is thus clear that, side by side with the normative and written system of the halakhah, Judaism developed what we may call "folk religion." Although com prehensive codes such as Joseph Karo's Shulhan Arukh (The Prepared Table; Venice, 1565) set out to cover every aspect of the life of the Jew, there was suffi cient room for unofficial, often unwritten, beliefs and practices. The reality of daily life, the deep religious beliefs of the common people, and close contacts with the host societies and their varied cultures gave rise to popular beliefs, pat terns of behavior, customs and practices, and the production of religious arti facts that could not be always accounted for in the "official" halakhic sources.
Religions, 2020
Birth is the beginning of a new life and therefore a unique life event. In this paper, I want to study birth as a fundamental human transition in relation to existential and spiritual questions. Birth takes place within a social and cultural context. A new member of society is entering the community, which also leads to feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty. Rituals are traditionally ways of giving structure to important life events, but in contemporary Western, secular contexts, traditional birth rituals have been decreasing. In this article, I will theoretically explore the meaning of birth from the perspectives of philosophy, religious and ritual studies. New ritual fields will serve as concrete examples. What kind of meanings and notions of spirituality can be discovered in emerging rituals, such as mother’s blessings or humanist naming ceremonies? Ritualizing pregnancy and birth in contemporary, secular society shows that the coming of a new life is related to embodied, social ...
The role of obstetrical rituals in the resolution of cultural anomaly
Social Science & Medicine, 1990
To a technological society like that of the United States, the natural process of childbirth presents special conceptual dilemmas, as it calls into perpetual question any boundaries American culture tries to delineate between itself and nature. The author builds on previous works in which she has argued that the American core value system centers around science and technology, the institutions through which these are disseminated into society, and the patriarchal system through which these institutions are managed. A constant reminder that babies come from women and nature, not from technology and culture, childbirth confronts American society with practical, procedural dilemmas: How to create a sense of cultural control over birth, a natural process resistant to such control? How to make birth, a powerfully female phenomenon, reinforce, instead of undermine, the patriarchal system upon which American society is still based? How to turn the natural and individual birth process into a cultural rite of passage which successfully inculcates the dominant core value system into the initiates? In the absence of universal baptism, how to enculturate a non-cultural baby?
God's Magical Womb: Pregnancy, Power, and the Feminized Divine in Jewish Ritual Texts
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2024
This article explores the ritual functions of medical and mythical embryologies in Jewish ritual texts from late antiquity to the present. Together these sources tell three stories that show the development of participatory models of ritual efficacy. The first is the integration of medical embryologies into Jewish ritual practice. The second is that of a growing collaboration between human and divine in reproduction, and in prayer, through shared experience, shared embodiment and affect, and mutual mimesis that together constitute a powerful methexis. These in turn grant increased access to power. The third story is the growing maternalization of the divine, which in turn amplifies human-divine collaboration and inter-embodied participation in pregnancy. Thus from the period of late antiquity to early modernity, we see the ritualization of embryologies, remythologized to articulate an emerging theology of divine maternity and of inter-embodied human-divine participation in reproduction.
Midwifery guardianship: reclaiming the sacred in birth
Birth territory and midwifery guardianship: theory for practice, education and research. Edinburgh: Books for Midwives, 2008
Across time and cultures, women's knowledge has included great wisdom about birth. That knowledge has been virtually lost in the Western world. In Western science only that which can be seen, weighed and counted is considered real. Any other sort of knowledge is discounted and excluded. Writing about the role of the midwife guardian, who creates and maintains spiritually and emotionally safe birth spaces, has felt like reclaiming something very valuable. This chapter gives words to the embodied wisdom of women and midwives ...