Христос Васкрсе! The Lent season has finally concluded and we are steadily chipping away at what remains of Easter dinner. This is always a profound time of prayer, fasting, and spiritual obligations, with both Gregorian and Julian Holy Weeks, when they are separate as with this year, playing crucial roles in the honouring of numerous spirits, with some even receiving double the veneration (lucky them!).

One date which is a crucial center of attention is Lazareva Subota, also known as Lazarica or Vrbica in Serbia. A site of a number of remarkably preserved folk rituals for fertility, purification, and ushering in the resurrection of spring, this is a day of extreme importance for many South Slavic groups, falling on Lazarus Saturday while remaining its own distinct set of practices beyond the Eastern Orthodox celebration. Across the Serbian folk traditions I practice, and within the context of my initiation in bajanje, this is a day of deep significance for the protection of the home, renewal of household fertility, rainmaking, works of love magic, and protection, among many other applications unique to each lineage.

After my visit to the Church of Saint Lazarus in Larnaca, Cyprus, I became deeply fascinated with the plethora of St. Lazarus Day traditions practiced across Cyprus and Greece. While I usually at least gather wax, holy water, and incense ash from an Orthodox church on Lazarus Saturday, this time around I also tried my hand at baking lazarakia, little cinnamon and cardamom buns stuffed with raisins and walnuts to represent the arisen saint in his shroud. Friends well versed in the Greek folk magical context reminded me that it is traditional to bake one for each member of a household, and I took the liberty to create some for cherished mentors and my house spirits as well. After perfuming, honouring, and celebrating the saint in his resurrection, the remaining dough used for the lazarakia was kneaded together with a set of 41 beans used in divination, ritually prayed over and mourned, and then blessed with a litany of oral charms for resurrection and protection within the oven itself. This final dough then rose into a version of lazarakia that was hidden from all sight, shrouded in a white linen cloth I had touched to the “second tomb” of St. Lazarus in his church (where it is alleged he died for the second time in Larnaca, according to oral tradition), and consecrated as a kind of relic of his second triumph over death: that of his own saintly salvation.

This bread-effigy, complete with the beans that approved its promised formula, was then given full veneration across Holy Week, receiving special sacrifices on Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday, and Holy Pascha. Having been blessed in Church, perfumed and fumigated, anointed and kissed, it was enlivened with the reception of the Eucharist and merged with it into its heart. Then, across the beginning of Bright Week, it was divided up into squares of white and purple cloth and made into a sacred decoy, intended to absorb, “die”, become purified, and then resurrected with the grace of the Holy each lunar cycle.

In addition to key animal, mineral, and vegetal ingredients, as well as my newly-made Thursday Salt, these charm bundles were enlivened through a complex process that demanded absolute secrecy, included not being witnessed even by the eyes of the saints themselves. When they were worked indoors, they were enchanted outside the view of the icon corner, with any figures and statues nearby fully veiled. The divination that completed the process itself even had to be performed without light to witness it, and it even ruled out hinting to the oblique contents of the charms beyond the ritual bread-effigy and salt. When they were finished, their outer forms were bound tight with white hemp cord, howlite, and purple jasper.

Each decoy is meant to be bonded to its keeper to become a true ward. Once yours is with you, rub it across your entire body, especially over the eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, nipples, armpits, navel, and perineum, passing it over the genitals and anus. Cup it in your hands and breathe three breaths over it, whispering your full legal name and date of birth over to it and sealing the pact with spit. Once this is done, fumigate it with frankincense and keep it hidden in your home, whether in a box under your bed or hidden in a pouch at your bedside table or cabinet. Once a month, remove it, pass it over your body again, breathe your name and date of birth three times over it, seal it with spit, and fumigate it with frankincense once more. As soon as it is bonded with you, do what you can to ensure it is not seen by others outside of your immediate family. While being witnessed will not harm their enchantment, secrecy is a tool that they use as they dwell in the darkness of the consciousness of others, being an unknown variable in your protection. If you choose to travel with them, keep them inside another drawstring pouch or cloth covering so that they remain unseen. For an additional boost, you may choose to present yours to your primary spirit guardians and house spirit, so that they are aware of its role in your everyday protection.

Use to ward away curses, evil eye, envy, illness, and harm from spirits and the living alike. These charms are intelligent and vigilant, absorbing malefica throughout the lunar cycle and acting as if their true target—their keepers—have already “died” and therefore cannot be reached by ill fortune. The monthly fumigation “resurrects” them, with the negativity they have devoured having been fully digested anew, having become as fresh yeast for its triumph.

Only 12 are made available. All charms will be shipped within a week of purchase. Thank you so much for your patronage!