This article summarizes the various healing-related activities used in the Latvian healing tradition. To explain these activities and describe their performers and specialization, folklore sources and linguistic materials were used.
The aim of this article is to demonstrate the diversity of folk healing activities and their names, while also clarifying their nature and use as much as possible. The linguistic and etymological analysis was used to investigate the healing activities and the names of their performers, but folklore examples were used for clarifying the meanings.
By studying the healing tradition, the names of medical practitioners were collected from various sources, adding up to over 60 labels. When compiling the report, the representatives of the healing activities were divided into conditional groups according to the type of their main medical activities. Thus, the following groups of healing activities were formed: healing activities using the body, actions with spoken word and blowing, ritual and magic activities, defense techniques and liberating rituals. In addition to the medicinal practitioners who were active in healing, there were also counselors who sought out the causes of diseases through various means and searched for their best remedies.
The survey in the article shows that the healing tradition uses diverse and specialized medical terms. However, as the examples show, most of them have used a combination of different practices. The name of the healer in question usually described the skills that were particularly developed and had been used most frequently.
During tradition bans, names of healers became more general, and tabooed names were used instead. The general term “healer” has only been naturalized into society after the restoration of national independence.
