Ihmisruumiin substanssi suomalais-ugrilaisten kansojen taikuudessa Taikapsykologinen tutkimus

This volume offers a rare scholarly glimpse into the mysterious world of Finno‑Ugric folk magic, where everyday body substances become the raw material for enchantments. Drawing on manuscript archives, museum collections and field notes from the early twentieth century, the author organises a systematic catalogue of beliefs surrounding nails, hair, blood, sweat and other corporeal traces. The opening chapters reveal how simple practices—such as saving a clipping of a nail or timing a haircut—were treated as potent safeguards against illness or misfortune, reflecting a deep psychological relationship between the body and the unseen.

Each section reads like a compact ethnographic vignette, describing regional variations from Finnish forests to Karelian marshes and Baltic coastlines. By placing these customs in the broader context of communal imagination, the work shows how rituals encode both practical concerns and symbolic fears about life, death and the supernatural. Listeners will be drawn into a richly textured portrait of a culture that wove magic into the very fibers of everyday existence.