healing rituals with water

HOLY WATERS: RELIGIOUS DEVOTION
AND HEALING PRACTICES IN A BALKAN
CONTEXT
In this article I discuss the veneration of waters and the related healing
practices in interdisciplinary context and in diachronic perspective in
Balkan milieu. I endeavor to delineate the main cultural models which
influence the pattern of contemporary religious culture in one of its
particular aspects: the healing practices with water. Those models are
the religious systems of Antiquity in their Greek-Roman and Thracian
variants; the culture of folklore; and Christian doctrine and practice.
For the purposes of analysis I draw on a broad range of diverse material:
published research, folklore texts, popular religious literature,
an ethnographic film, images, internet sources and personal fieldwork
including observations and interviews. In the final part I also consider
a particular case: the Church of the Annunciation of Mary of the Fish
in the small town of Asenovgrad in Southern Bulgaria. This case gives
me an interesting example of the interweaving of universal and local
in the devotion to a water source and in the ritual practices performed
there. It also gives me grounds to suggest the term crypto-cult to denote
a specific form of cultural interaction observed there. By outlining
and summarising the versatile expressions of water devotion and
healing rituals I point out some characteristic features and tendencies
of these phenomena and argue that despite their specifics, Antiquity
tradition, folklore and Christianity operate with similar attitudes and
patterns.