#mazzeri

MAZZERI E MURTULAGHJI: SCIAMANI NEL MEDITERRANEO

“These comparisons are valid, as far as they go, but they take too little into account, I think of the fundamental, distinguishing characteristic of the mazzeri: their submission to a supernatural power. The benandanti, though subject to occult influences, acted deliberately, to ensure the prosperity of their community…the mazzeri, on the contrary, do not act with good or evil intentions, or indeed with any intentions at all; they simply carry out orders. Unlike benandanti or shamans they take no part in the struggle between good and evil, but stand aloof from this cosmic war. … The mazzeri did not – do not – go out at night to fight witches and sorcerers, but people of their own kind; they were – they are – entirely free from any association with practitioners of the black arts. They fight only once a year, and their object was not – is not – to defend harvests [like the benandanti], but human lives. Their activities belong to a pre-agrarian epoch of society; they were, and are, essentially hunters, and no plant is mentioned in connection with them except the wild though edible asphodel. … Mazzeri are called to go hunting by an unknown unseen power. … the mazzeri can only transmit decrees of death.”