THE HEALERS

   In the mind of the illiterate (primarily female) folk, a witch doctor, or an expert, means a person who knows something mysterious, inaccessible to ordinary people. Reasonable people tolerated quackery but with a touch of good-natured sarcasm. It seems they believed in it and did not believe in it simultaneously.
   The witch was more often feminine, but there were many male witches once in ancient times. A sorcerer means a mediator between people and the evil force, a person who uses the services of demons. According to a popular belief, the sorcerer or medicine-man cannot die without passing first their "knowledge" to another person. Literate or deeply religious people did not recognize quackery; the official church also struggled with this phenomenon. But as it is difficult to imagine a village or a parish without a holy fool, it couldn't exist without a healer! There was an aesthetic need for both a sorcerer and a fool filled with social and moral emptiness. In addition, quackery has often combined the absurdity of superstition with the authentic power of suggestion, autosuggestion and power of medicinal herbs.
    Witch doctors were engaged in amorous love spells and contra-spells searches for stolen cattle and treatment of animals (horse doctors often used voodoo herbs and methods).
 A granny-witch sincerely believed in her "know-how." But, along with this, if her visitor assumes in it too, then the power of suggestion really started to act: a man freed, for example, of toothache, or skin disease, or dislike of the marital bed, etc.
    Some quacks put spells at a distance, for example, at the request of an abandoned or rejected lover. Thus the more robust the object resisted, the harder it was alleged to pronounce spells. The witch had a lump in her throat, the words came out with difficulty, and she kept yawning.
 Quacks often led a poor and humble life. By this, perhaps, one could very well finish a short description of the principal types of professional skills. All the main occupations that have economic and aesthetic value in the life of a peasant are listed. But besides those top occupations, there were many subsidiaries or secondary kinds of trades and craftsmanship. And some of them depended on others; in other cases, they were related. The professional relationship is often carried out by one person.