This paper intends to highlight the impact that the March Amulet from Transylvania has on people coming from the urban and the rural environments. The synchronic analysis emphasizes, on the one hand, the unity in diversity, and on the other hand, the uniqueness of the Transylvanian March Amulet. In the past, the March Amulet had the power of an amulet, but in the present, it is subjected to desacralization. The monochromatic, bicolor, three-color, and polychromatic March Amulet reveals its evolution in Transylvania – the ancestral March Amulet, the traditional March Amulet, and the contemporary March Amulet. Throughout time, the March Amulet was subjected to certain functional mutations, but it has succeeded in surviving. The braided string confers value. Throughout time, in Transylvania, a wide range of trinkets has been encountered: the March Amulet with a twinned string ending with elongated or rounded tassels (a white one and a red one); the March Amulet to which a silver, a golden or a copper coin, (according to the bearer’s status) or a cross is attached; the three-color March Amulet having the colors of the national flag (red, yellow, blue); the March Amulet with tinder flowers; the trinket to which different things are hung – the symbol which anticipates the coming of the spring (spring flowers, migrating birds); the luck (the chimney sweeper, the horseshoe, the trefoil with four leaves); love; health etc. The Transylvanian March Amulet fascinates everyone due to its shape and chromatism and seems to belong to a universe being under the control of the miraculous. Being transmitted from generation to generation, starting with our ancestors, we have the moral obligation of cherishing it; of revitalizing it; of confronting the present against the past, in order to take it to the future.

Keywords:

March amulet, Transylvania, unity, diversity

Pages:

68-82

Full text

in PDF

Type:

Research Paper

Fields:

Semiotics, Cultural Studies

Topic:

Types of Signs, Speech and Interactional Mechanisms in Communication

UDC:

81`22:398.332.1(498)

DOI:

10.5281/zenodo.4883706

Research Paper

Citations

© Alecu Russo State University of Balti, 38 Pushkin Street, 3100, Balti, Republic of Moldova. Webmaster: acosciug@yahoo.com