Tag Archives: spirits

Grogh – Armenian Pagan Spirit and Curse Word

Nationality: Armenian/Armerican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AD, is an undergraduate student at USC who grew up in Glendale, California. Her family immigrated to the United States from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Context:

The informant is my girlfriend and we share an apartment together. I asked her if she could share some Armenian folklore with me, and this is one of the pieces that she provided.

Performance:

AD: “There’s this thing in Armenian that it’s like a pretty common curse that people will say, like my mom says it a lot when she gets angry and stuff, uhm, or like… uhm like y’know something bad happens or whatever. It’s “grogh”, right? And there’s different ways to say it, there’s like “groghi tsotsu” or “groghu kez tani”. Uhm, so “grogh” means “writer”, so when you say that word you are refferring to an old pagan Armenian spirit, the Grogh, who was like a scribe that I think traditionally uh, had the names of people who would ever be born and who were going to die, like their lifespans in a book, so he was a symbol of death right? And he would take people when they died. He was basically an Armenian pagan form of the grim reaper. Uhm, so when people say “grogh” or “groghu kez tani”, that means “let the scribe take you” or “groghi tsotsu” that means “in the arms of the scribe”. So yeah.”

Informant’s Thoughts:

AD: “It’s strange. Like I guess, I dunno, it’s like a common word, it’s like the equivalent of being like “damn”, but it’s like so specific, and like it’s not like “grogh” is also not used in vernacular, it also just means “writer”, like it’s a common word, so it’s strange that it also is a curse.”

Thoughts:

I think that this word “grogh” is very similar to the English “damn” in many ways. It’s used in pretty much the same contexts, with the use of the word singularly being often an expression of frustration, or with more words being added to transform it into an insult such as “groghu kez tani” meaning “let the scribe take you” being very similar to the English “damn you to hell”. I think that the etymology of the word itself, originating as the name of a spirit or deity in Armenian paganism and over time becoming a word that simply means “writer” makes sense when compared with other examples of words with similar etymological origins, such as “atlas”, which now just refers to a map but once referred to the titan that held up the sky. 

Washing One’s Hands After a Funeral

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: Bethesda, MD
Performance Date: May 2, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main piece: There’s a tradition of washing your hands after a funeral so you don’t bring death into the house. If you’ve been near a dead body, you want to get the death off your hands. You don’t want to bring death into your house. Even after my dad’s funeral, friends of my mother, who had stayed back to help with the catering and the flowers, they put a pitcher outside. I was impressed by all that actually. It’s what you do. Some cemeteries have a water fountain. Outside Jewish funeral homes there’s a place to wash your hands. 

Background: My informant is a 51 year-old Jewish woman. The majority of the funerals she has attended have been in Jewish cemeteries with Jewish burial practices. She doesn’t remember where she learned the practice exactly, but she recalls vividly seeing the pitcher of water outside a Jewish funeral home at her aunt’s funeral when she was fourteen. The logic makes sense to her, and she has partaken in this ritual many times before. 

Context: I was talking to my informant about Jewish traditions, and this was the first one that occurred to her. 

Analysis: This practice makes a lot of sense. A funeral is a liminal space, as it is the final celebration of the life of someone who is now deceased. With that comes a lot of uncertainty, and fear that death can come for anyone else next. By washing your hands before entering a home, you don’t cross the doorway between a graveyard or a cemetery – a place of death, and your house – a place where you live/where life happens. This also promotes the idea that death can linger/cling to a live person, and having a ritualistic cleansing of death from your hands encourages a sense of protection, and that it won’t come for you next. 

Hold Your Breath For A Graveyard

Nationality: American
Residence: NJ
Primary Language: English

Text/Interview:

BR: “Every time you drive past a graveyard or pass through a cemetery you need to hold your breath! If not, evil spirits can enter your body!”

Context:

BR is unsure as to the first time he heard this particular piece of Folklore; however, he has been living by it his entire life. According to him, this is not something that he ever really believed. That being said, he has always held his breath anyway. BR claims that he knows the superstition isn’t true. His deductive sense of logic tells him that it isn’t real. Yet, he said that he never does superstitions based upon whether or not he deems them real. Instead, BR performs superstitions because he does not want to be on the other side of one that isn’t fake. In his own words, “I am not a superstitious man, but I need to cover all my bases just in case.”

My Interpretation:

I think this is a very valid superstition and I have heard variations on it during my life. However, what I think is most interesting about this superstition is the reason BR still performs it. I believe that the majority of people do not actually believe in superstitions. However, everyone does them anyway. I think this can be tied to our innate understanding that we do not know everything. BR knows that an evil spirit won’t enter his body if he breathes in a cemetery, but he holds his breath anyway. This shows that people are unwilling to dismiss the supernatural, even if their better judgment tells them they can.

Garlic Garlands

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 4/28/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

–Informant Info–

Nationality: American

Age: 23

Occupation: Student

Residence: New York City

Date of Performance/Collection: 4/28/2021

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): Korean

Background: MB has family in Filipino, Korea, Mexico, and US, and so he has heard cultural stories from many different parts of the world. Here he is explaining one belief that his Filipino grandfather told him. I contribute with a belief from my Indian culture.  MB – informant. SD – interviewer

Performance:

MB: My grandfather told me that if you keep a garland of garlic near your bed or somewhere where you spend a lot of time, it wards off witches and bad spirits. Does your family have a similar tradition?

SD: I know in Indian culture, it’s lemons and green chilis. Like when you do something big like open a new shop or get a new house, you tie a string that has one lemon and a few chilis strung through it on the front door of the establishment. This prevents evil from entering the home/shop. My family doesn’t do this but I have seen this in many places in India. 

MB: Yea. I know people like sages here so there are many things to ward off evil I guess. 

SD: Do you think the garlic garland has anything to do with vampires? (laughs)

MB:  (laughing) Maybe!  

Analysis:

Here we discuss the many different ways where people ward off evil spirits. The belief of evil spirits is present in almost all cultures and is probably tied to religious beliefs. It is often passed down through the generations, like in MB’s case. I have also noticed that the item that wards off the bad spirits is also a food item, which can be because it comes from nature and is available to everyone. In an institutional and religious context, spirits are warded off by holy water and other items that aren’t available everywhere, but from a folk belief standpoint, everyday items can be used by the masses to ward away evil spirits. 

Whistling and Spirits

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/22/2021
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Malay, Hokkein

Context

The following collection of this Singapore superstition came about during a routine phone call between me and my grandfather.

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Performance

The following is translated and transcribed from a story told by the interviewee.

“You cannot whistle at night because you will attract spirit into your home. My father used to tell me that a lot. I liked to whistle a lot and he would smack me on the lips. If we invite the spirits into our home bad things happen. Especially on days that he went to buy TOTO, if I whistled he would get extra angry. So you cannot whistle at night.”

TOTO (pronounced as toe-toe) refers to a form of gambling activity provided by the Singapore Lottery Pool. The lottery game is played by purchasing a card and picking six numbers, the closers the numbers match the winning set, the more money one wins.

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Analysis

This is a common superstition amongst the older generation in Singapore. To attract spirits in your home is a very bad thing. Spirits are known to be ghosts with the agenda to haunt people and bring about bad luck. I believe that this superstition comes from Singapore in the early 1900s where the poverty rate was high and security in homes was low. And whistling would attract attention and thus it was advised not to whistle in order to keep a low profile at night. And as time went on, this evolved into not whistling in order to keep spirits away. What I found interesting was that not whistling at night was especially important when my grandfather’s father bought a lottery ticket. Gambling was very common in Singapore, and there weren’t many ways to climb up the economic ladder when my grandfather was younger. And thus, many people would put hopes on gambling and lotteries as a means to earn wealth. It thus makes sense that with that much hope placed on these lottery tickets that a lot of superstition comes about.