The Feast of Sânziene

Sânziene are female beings, mostly of the air, fascinating fairies, good but mysterious.

Whoever is pure, authentic, elevated, with a very good control of instinctual impulses can perform meditations and telepathic communions with Sânzienele.

The customs of sânziene night are specific to the whole country and are still respected.

Sânziene are plants with yellow-golden flowers and pleasantly smelling.

They grow through orchards, pastures, forest edges and glades. Accompanied by music and the lads’ giggles, the girls gather the “sânziene flowers” in bouquets and weave circular and cruciform wreaths or gather them in their florets. These wreaths and bouquets are brought to the village, where they are placed on the gates, doors, windows, on the barns, on the hives and even in the layers of vegetables, in the belief that they will protect the house and the household from the power of the evil forces (which are not sânzienele), while bringing good luck, health and abundance to people, animals and sowings (they will bloom like sânzienele).

At night, Sânzienele, these beautiful girls who live unknown in forests and plains catch themselves in the hora and share rich fruit with the fields. They sing beautifully and give special powers to flowers and weeds that become plants of cure for all diseases. Women are most likely to get pregnant, and birds of the sky and animals multiply.

All of the Sands are protecting the seeds from hail. In the country, this day is respected with holiness because, otherwise, fairies are made good with Pentecosts or Ieleles.

They say that women who don’t keep tradition have their mouths shut, but men are not exempt from terrible punishments either. If they lie, swear crookedly or harm their fellow human beings on this date, they may run out of bones or, as the case may be, blind. Sânziene are justice fairies, they defend the weak and humiliated in the face of those who mock them.

The people of the country think that, this night, the girls dance naked in the woods. The one who sees them remains mute forever or dambling. The Sanzienes are forbidden: washing, sewing or sweeping. Anyone who doesn’t comply with these “laws” is in danger of being struck.

Sânziene’s marriage is the happiest
The night of the Sands is a wonderful occasion for those who want to unite their destinies. Since dawn, young women have to wash their faces with dew, but especially be good. The secret to a happy marriage for the rest of your life is precisely the choice of this day for the wedding.

Good girls to marry pick breast flowers from the fields and then weave from them wreaths that they throw over the houses. If they hit or cling to the chimney, it’s a sign that the wedding is approaching.

“Go, Sun, come, Moon
Sânzienele improve,
To grow them flower – flower,
Yellow, smelly,
Girls to gather it,
To catch them in wreaths,
To put on the hat,
Flower for wedding,
Babele to utter them,
Until the fall let’s have a wedding.”

The next day, at dawn, the bands of sons cross the villages with the sânziene flowers in the hat, in a sign that they saw the wreaths of flowers on the chimneys at the houses of the girls who are interested in them. They sing, giggle and shout:

“Go, Moon, come, Sun,
That we’re shooting at the insane,
Unsuspecting crowns,
I lie under the chimneys tossed.”

The kindest and most beautiful girl is chosen Dragaica in a ceremony attended by the whole community. It is adorned with ears of wheat. The alai goes to people’s houses and every householder gets a straw of wheat. The villagers place these little talismans as high as possible, on the beam or in the saddle, hoping that the grain will rise there by the autumn.

On the night of Sanzian, women set off in the middle of the night to places known only to them to gather herbs of cure and delights.

Many of the flowers and herbs that are picked on this day, go to church, with the belief that they will be sanctified and through this they will be cleansed from the negative influences of Pentecost (a kind of evil fairies of the forests). Only then, they say, will they be good for the cure.

The Feast of Sânziene also has a funerary character. Also now are the Estates of Sânziene, from the cycle of the Summer Estates, when they give alms, for the souls of the missing, fruits and vegetables. Children are sprinkled with water to be protected from disease, and people suffering from rheumatism must enter the river to the waist in the morning and wait for sunrise.
They will look at the sun in the water, not in the sky, and only so, they say, they will be healed. The whole nature is involved in the feast of Sânziene, and the lark, which begins its singing at the spring equinox, ceases to sing after this date.

Tradition says that the vervain ghesed on the night of Sanzian has an effect in the charms of love. Also, sânziene flowers should not be plucked or broken, but cut from a single blow with the knife, during which special verses are spoken.