Salijevanje Strahe: The Bosnian Lead-Pouring Initiation to Banish Fear, Break the Evil Eye and Lift Black Magic

Salijevanje Strahe is the Bosnian art of pouring out fear. Lead is melted over fire and poured into cold water to draw fear, and every harm bound up with it, out of a human being. For generations it was kept by the stravarke, Bosnia's healer-women. It breaks the evil eye, lifts black magic and drives out evil spirits, and the lead shows the very form of what it has caught.

This page confers the izun, the healer's permission, through a distance empowerment from Kandegh. It comes with the complete 66-page English manual: the full rite for adults and for children, the reading of the lead, the Measure of Fear, the special workings, and every prayer and formula with its pronunciation.

Benefits & Virtues

✦ Fear Poured Out. In this tradition fear (strah) is a living harm. It enters through shock, settles in soul and body, and carries off a person's strength. The rite catches it in the lead and breaks it in the passage from fire to water.

✦ The Evil Eye Broken. Uroci, the evil eyes, are among the rite's oldest targets. The manual includes a dedicated working for when the source of the harm is unknown.

✦ Black Magic Lifted, Demons Driven Out. The rite is used against spells, black magic, curses of lasting failure, and nagaza, the attack or possession by evil spirits met in unclean places. For the possessed, its effect builds from one working to the next.

✦ The Lead Reveals the Cause. Every pouring is also a diagnosis. The fire, the sound in the water and the forms in the bowl show whether the harm is fear, the evil eye, talismanic or blood magic, or a powerful enemy.

✦ The Healer's Permission. The stravarke hold that without izun there is neither work nor success. The empowerment confers it, so you practise because the permission has been received, not in the hope of earning it.

✦ Luck in Love Unlocked. A dedicated rite opens closed luck in love. The angel (melek) or the crown that forms in the lead is kept as a talisman.

✦ Healing for Others, Near or Far. The rite serves adults and children, and also those who cannot be present, through their name, photograph or garment. It works whether or not the one treated believes in it.

Most cleansing rites work blind. In Salijevanje Strahe the molten lead shows the shape of the harm — serpent, needle or horned beast — and then scatters it in the water.

Traditional Virtues of Salijevanje Strahe

Each stravaruša has her own view of how far the rite reaches, but most agree it helps with:

• black magic
• attacks and possession by demons
• fear
• the evil eye
• anxiety
• difficulty in breathing and pain in the chest
• unexplained pain
• pain in the arms and the legs
• sharp pain around the heart
• diseases of the skin
• lack of appetite
• impotence of psychic origin
• the sudden appearance of conflicts in a marriage

The rite is also used for:

• vilenine, the disorder of the mind the people call madness
• the stuttering of young children caused by fear
• failure to pass a school year or an examination
• a black spell cast for lasting failure in every area of life
• a young person who fails to marry
• illnesses caused by fear and by evil spirits, among them female infertility and the folk ailments smolanice, sapunice, lišajevi, čirevi, uroci, našice and krajčica

Its special workings address the arrows of the fairies, closed luck in love, the blocks placed upon a person's happiness, and the quarrels and discord sown by black magic. As prevention, the stravarke recommend the pouring of fear every three months, or at least once a year.

Tradition, Lineage & Symbolism

Lead-pouring is known from Palestine to Scandinavia. It is called kurşun dökme in Turkey, khfif in Morocco and sakbeh in the Levant. In the north it survives as New Year's molybdomancy, which only reads the future. In Bosnia it gathers every purpose at once: fear, the evil eye, spells, demons and blocked happiness. It is usually said to have come with the Ottomans, though some trace it further back, to the Illyrians.

Its spoken part is monotheistic. The Fatiha, Ihlas, Falak and Nas, the Yasin and the Rahman are murmured in Arabic, and Hazrat Fatima is called upon. Beside them stand the basme, the healers' own formulas, which count the harm down from nine to nothing.

The stravarka stands in the mythic place of the smith: to melt the metal and change its form is a victory over the evil it has caught. Her gift passed from hand to hand. An aged stravaruša would give her spoon, bowl and lead to her daughter-in-law with her blessing.

Reading the Lead

The reading is the diagnosis of the rite.

• A loud crackle as the metal strikes the water is a very good sign. Its silence means the fear has been held for more than six months.
• Lead that vanishes from the spoon is said to have been taken by an angel.
• A serpent marks black magic worked by a malicious person.
• Long needles betray the evil eye.
• A clotted mass, the trof, measures the weight of the fear.
• The heart, srce, shaped like a tear, is the form every stravarka waits for.

In one old account, a stravarka lifted the lead from her copper bowl and saw in it the goat that had wandered into the house the day a sick child was born.

You Will Receive

✦ Personal Distance Empowerment — the izun of Salijevanje Strahe, conferred by Kandegh and received once. You need only a glass of water, a few grains of natural salt and one perfumed oil.
✦ Complete English Practice Manual — 66 pages, illustrated
✦ The Rite for Adults — five stages, from the opening over the water to the pourings over head, chest and legs
✦ The Rite for Children in its two forms, and the Measure of Fear (krajčica)
✦ The Special Workings — against the evil eye, demonic attack and the arrows of the fairies; for closed luck in love; for one who is not present
✦ Reading the Lead — the signs in the fire, the sound in the water, the forms in the bowl
✦ The Prayers and Formulas — the four short suras in Arabic script with transliteration, the Invocation of Hazrat Fatima, the Formula of the Nine, the Formula of the Nine Fairies and the other basme, each with its voice and moment
✦ The Talismans, the Closing and the Cleansing — the closing of the rite, the care of the one treated, the practitioner's cleansing, and safety rules for working with molten lead
✦ Glossary and pronunciation guide for every Bosnian and Arabic term
✦ Translation of the manual into your language on request
✦ Guidance by message after purchase

After Purchase

You receive the manual. Read its foundations first, then receive the empowerment once through the protocol it gives, and turn to the practice. I remain available by message for your questions.

Enter the Rite

Salijevanje Strahe asks little of the hands: lead, fire, water and a bowl. It asks much of the one who holds them. If the stravarke's way of taking fear out of a human being calls to you, the permission is where it begins.

All virtues and benefits described on this page are the traditional spiritual teachings and purposes of the system as recorded in its corpus. Spiritual work is not a substitute for professional medical, legal or financial care, and no individual result is promised or guaranteed.