North Macedonia has an unusually detailed ethnographic record of folk belief: one volume of the Ethnological Atlas publishes birth-related field questionnaires from 219 settlements recorded between 1970 and 1985. Macedonian seasonal customs also include UNESCO-listed traditions with protective, wish-making and nature-related meanings, including Martinka practices and the Feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Štip.
The collection documents 50 Macedonian superstitions, magical beliefs, protective customs and omen-related practices supported by ethnographic, folklore and heritage sources. They are not beliefs shared by every Macedonian household. Some belong specifically to Tikveš, Štip, Ohrid, Prilep, Veles, Poreče or other local areas, while several survive today mainly as heritage customs rather than literal expectations of supernatural results.
Spring Threads, Wishes, and Protective Numbers
Wearing the Red-and-White Martinka
At the beginning of March, a red-and-white martinka may be made, exchanged and worn. The thread has traditionally carried a symbolic protective meaning during the passage from winter into spring, including protection from unpredictable early-spring weather.
Removing the Martinka at the First Sign of Spring
The thread is traditionally removed after encountering a seasonal sign such as the first blossoming tree, swallow or stork. The appearance of that sign marks the arrival of spring and the end of the period for which the thread was worn.
Greeting Forty People in Štip
During the Feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs on 22 March, tradition in Štip calls for participants climbing Isar hill to greet forty acquaintances. The repeated number forty connects the activity directly with the forty martyrs commemorated by the feast.
Gathering Forty Pebbles
People taking part in the Štip celebration traditionally collect forty small stones while making the ascent of Isar hill. The stones later become part of the wish-making sequence performed above the Bregalnica River.
Collecting Forty Flowers or Almond Twigs
Another part of the Štip custom is gathering forty flowers or twigs, especially from the almond trees growing around the hill. Like the forty greetings and forty stones, the count repeats the sacred number associated with the feast.
Making a Wish on Isar Hill
After reaching the top of Isar hill, participants traditionally make wishes. The act belongs to the local spring celebration rather than formal Christian doctrine and illustrates how religious commemoration and local wish-making practice have become intertwined in Štip.
Throwing Thirty-Nine Pebbles into the Bregalnica
Of the forty stones gathered during the climb, thirty-nine are traditionally thrown toward the Bregalnica River from the hill. The carefully preserved final stone gives the sequence an unfinished quality until the last part of the custom is performed at home.
Keeping the Fortieth Pebble Under the Pillow
The final pebble from the Holy Forty Martyrs celebration is not thrown away. Tradition calls for keeping it and placing it beneath the pillow before sleeping, extending the wish-making ritual from Isar hill into the household.
Hıdır and İlyas as Protectors of Earth and Water
Within Hıdrellez tradition, observed by participating communities in North Macedonia on 6 May, Hıdır and İlyas are understood as protectors associated with earth and water who may aid individuals, families and communities in need.
Hıdrellez Rites for Fertility and Prosperity
Hıdrellez includes nature-related ceremonies associated with hopes for household wellbeing, fertility and prosperity. Traditional meanings also extend to the protection and productivity of livestock and crops during the agricultural year.
Jeremiah Day and the Folk Protection From Snakes
Making Noise to Drive Reptiles Away
Around the feast of the Prophet Jeremiah, Macedonian regional traditions record people striking tongs against metal vessels or making similar loud noises around houses. The noise was symbolically intended to drive snakes, lizards and other unwanted creatures away.
Invoking Jeremiah Against Snakes
Protective formulas accompanying the noise-making often announce that Jeremiah is coming and tell snakes or other reptiles to flee. The saint becomes a powerful protective figure in the folk version of the feast, distinct from the formal religious commemoration.
Avoiding Sewing on Jeremiah Day
Some regional accounts record women avoiding sewing and patching during the feast. Such work was connected symbolically with the feared appearance of snakes, making temporary abstention from needlework part of the day’s protective behaviour.
Not Cutting Things During the Feast
Cutting could also fall under Jeremiah Day work taboos in local tradition. The restriction belonged to a larger group of actions intended to keep reptiles away rather than to an ordinary rule about the safe or practical use of cutting tools.
The Taboo on Measuring Length
In recorded Gevgelija-area tradition, measuring things on Jeremiah Day could be avoided because it was associated with encountering snakes repeatedly. The belief relies on symbolic resemblance between long measured objects and the elongated body of a snake.
Do Not Let a Cord Trail Behind You
A loose opanak fastening, stocking cord or similar trailing object could be viewed as an ominous resemblance to a snake. One regional version warned that allowing something to drag behind a person on the feast meant snakes might follow during the year.
Keeping Household Luck Inside
Some families avoided taking possessions out of the home on Jeremiah Day for fear that the household’s kasmet, or good fortune, might leave with them. Agricultural implements could be treated with particular caution in farming communities.
Making Crepni for Protection From Snakebite
Traditional accounts associate Jeremiah Day with the making of crepni, earthen baking vessels. Women who participated in making them were said in some local traditions to receive symbolic protection from snakebite during the coming year.
Calling Rain With Dodola Processions
Covering the Dodola Figure With Greenery
In rainmaking processions known by names including dodola, dudule, ojdodole, lijače and peperuda, the central participant could be covered heavily with leaves and branches, visually joining the human figure with vegetation.
Soaking the Dodola to Bring Rain
Householders poured water over the greenery-covered dodola. The action followed imitative magic: as the ritual figure became soaked, the fields and soil were expected symbolically to become soaked by the rain being requested.
Taking Rain Songs From House to House
Groups of girls traditionally moved through a village and stopped before individual homes to sing specialized rain songs. Householders participated by pouring water over the central figure, turning the whole settlement into part of the rain-calling rite.
Plants Given Rain-Bringing Qualities
Branches of shrubs, elder, vine, fern and other fresh or moisture-associated plants were used to dress the dodola. In the ritual interpretation recorded by folklorists, such greenery possessed magical qualities linking vegetation, moisture and hoped-for agricultural fertility.
Turning to Stir the Wind
The central figure could stamp, jump and turn while other participants sang. Folklore interpretation connects the spinning movement with a belief that ritual movement might imitate or produce wind capable of bringing rain clouds.
Rolling a Sieve During Rainmaking
Recorded Macedonian rain rites also include the rolling of a sieve alongside song and movement. The object formed part of the ceremonial actions intended to influence rainfall rather than an ordinary agricultural technique for predicting or producing weather.
Birth, the Evil Eye, and Early Childhood
Many birth-related practices survive in ethnographic records rather than modern maternity care. Ritual actions involving labour, newborns or the umbilical cord describe historical folk belief and should not be treated as medical instructions.
The Vulnerable Forty-Day Postpartum Period
Ethnographic records use terms such as leunka for a woman during the postpartum period, often extending to the fortieth day. Mother and newborn could be regarded as unusually vulnerable during this interval and therefore in need of additional ritual protection.
Separating Mother and Newborn From Visitors
Atlas records describe forms of temporary separation for a new mother and infant, including restricting who approached their space. In some field accounts windows or the room were also kept darkened, reflecting concern about exposure during the vulnerable postpartum period.
Protecting the New Mother From Urok
The Macedonian ethnographic questionnaire records measures intended to protect a recently delivered woman from urok, the evil eye. The exact protective practice varied locally, so there is no single object or formula that can accurately be presented as universal across Macedonia.
Water Through the Husband’s Right Shoe
Field material from Tikveš records a childbirth-related magical action in which water was passed through the husband’s right shoe and given to the woman in labour. The rite relied on symbolic transfer and belongs to historical folk practice, not obstetric medicine.
Passing Water Through a Sieve for Labour
Another Tikveš childbirth practice involved water poured through a sieve. The passage of water through many openings formed part of ritual magic intended to assist delivery, using an everyday household object in a symbolic rather than medical role.
Pouring Water Over the Labouring Woman’s Chest
Tikveš ethnography also records water being poured over the chest of a woman during labour as a magical action connected with easing the passage of birth. It should be understood as part of a former ritual system, not as evidence-based maternity treatment.
Passing an Egg Through the Shirt
One recorded Tikveš rite passed an egg through the labouring woman’s shirt. The object’s smooth, whole form operated symbolically within childbirth magic, expressing the hoped-for movement of the baby through birth rather than providing a physical medical effect.
Passing a Weaving Tube Through the Shirt
A weaving tube was another object passed through a woman’s clothing in Tikveš childbirth rites. As with the egg and flowing water, the action depended on symbolic analogy: successful passage of the object represented the desired successful passage of the child.
Symbolic Objects for Cutting the Umbilical Cord
Older Tikveš records mention stone, a sickle and sheep-shearing scissors in rituals surrounding the cutting of the umbilical cord. The chosen object could carry ideas about transferring desirable qualities. Modern cord care should instead follow trained medical guidance and hygienic practice.
Hair, Growth, and the First Haircut
The First Haircut as a Life-Cycle Threshold
The child’s first haircut was more than grooming in traditional Macedonian culture. Ethnographic records place it within ritual-magical and religious understandings of growth, with hair symbolizing renewal and the haircut marking entry into another stage of social life.
Choosing the Time of the First Haircut
The Ethnological Atlas records local attention to the weekday, time of day and the activity of the Moon or Sun when arranging a child’s first haircut. The preferred timing varied, so no single lucky lunar phase can accurately represent every Macedonian region.
Leaving a Daughter’s Hair Uncut After Earlier Child Loss
Atlas material records a sensitive historical belief in which some mothers whose previous children had not survived did not organize the first haircut of a later-born daughter. Her hair was allowed to keep growing instead. The practice expressed protective ritual thinking surrounding childhood survival.
Magic, Liminal Places, and Supernatural Beings
Night and Twilight as Supernatural Times
Macedonian folk tradition associated supernatural activity particularly with the night and with boundaries between night and day. Being in the wrong place during such transitional periods could be interpreted as exposing a person to encounters with dangerous non-human beings.
Village Edges, Forests, and Water as Liminal Places
The edge or exterior of a village, forests and places beside water appear repeatedly as supernatural boundaries in Macedonian traditional belief. These spaces stood between the controlled human settlement and territory imagined as belonging partly to other beings.
Samovili at the Boundaries of the Human World
Samovili belong to Macedonian supernatural tradition and are described in folk belief as beautiful female beings associated with liminal surroundings. Folklore warned that an ill-timed encounter in a forbidden place could bring punishment or misfortune.
Narechnitsi and Navi as Beings of Fate
Traditional Macedonian supernatural classifications include beings called narechnitsi and navi, linked in ethnographic discussion with fate and the dangerous supernatural sphere. Their meanings belong to older folk cosmology and should not be treated as literal predictions of a person’s future.
Misfortune Attributed to Spells
Historical Macedonian folk explanations could attribute unexplained illness, family conflict, failed harvests or other reversals to hostile magic. Such interpretations helped place unexpected events within a supernatural cause-and-effect system, but they do not provide evidence that another person actually caused the misfortune.
Milk and Grain Could Be Magically Taken
Agricultural folklore included fear that the productive quality of milk or grain could somehow be appropriated through magic. Because livestock and crops were vital household resources, poor yields could be interpreted through accusations of supernatural interference rather than only natural causes.
Animal Parts and Horseshoes as Healers’ Objects
Field research from Poreče records remembered folk-healing objects including deer horn, wolf claws, wolf teeth and horseshoes. Their presence reflected the idea that particular animals or durable objects carried qualities that could be drawn into protective or healing magic.
Learning a Charm Across Three Bridges
One recorded method for transmitting a healer’s secret knowledge required a younger woman to learn the charm from an older healer and repeat it silently at three bridges. Water and bridges carried symbolic meaning as boundaries between ordinary and supernatural space.
Dreams Could Call Someone to Become a Healer
Macedonian healer narratives sometimes describe dreams or visions in which saints or supernatural beings give a person a healing mission. Such experiences could become the traditional explanation for how an individual acquired special knowledge or authority within a community.
The Soul Traveling During Dreams
Some folk-healer narratives treat sleep, dreams or coma-like states as moments when the soul can temporarily visit the other world and return with knowledge. Death, by contrast, was understood as the departure from which the soul does not return.
The Hair-Thin Bridge to the Other World
Water could represent the division between the living and the dead, while a narrow bridge joined the two realms in Macedonian folk imagery. One traditional image describes the passage as being as thin as a hair, with safe crossing reserved for the righteous.
Crossroads as Places for Charms
Crossroads appear in Macedonian charm traditions as boundary spaces where supernatural beings were thought to gather. Folk healers could therefore perform or direct incantations there when symbolically sending illness away from inhabited human space.
Addressing the Moon in a Child-Healing Charm
A charm preserved in Macedonian folklore addresses the Moon while a sick child is held in the healer’s arms, asking it to return what it has taken. The practice belongs to magical folk medicine and is not evidence that lunar forces cause or cure childhood illness.
Unknown Graves as Magical Boundary Places
Ethnographic studies record unknown graves being treated as potent boundary sites in Macedonian charm traditions. Objects might be left or thrown there, or the anonymity of the buried person invoked in a magical formula intended to remove an affliction.
Why Macedonian Superstitions Change From One Region to Another
Locality matters throughout the surviving record. The Ethnological Atlas preserves material from hundreds of settlements, while focused studies document Tikveš, Poreče, Štip, Ohrid, Prilep, Veles, Gevgelija and other areas separately. Even the first haircut carried different regional names, including strig, strižba, striženje, potstrižuenje, pletivo and zemanje kosa.
This geographical detail explains why a belief recorded in one village should not automatically be described as something practised throughout North Macedonia. Rainmaking customs, childbirth magic, snake-protection rites and folk-healing techniques all developed local versions. The sources also span different periods, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century collected folklore to traditions that remain publicly celebrated today.
Where Ritual Ends and Superstition Begins
Martinka, Hıdrellez and the Holy Forty Martyrs celebration are forms of living cultural heritage, not simply collections of superstitions. Their inclusion here is limited to elements carrying a documented protective, fertility-related, wish-making or symbolic meaning. Religious observance itself is not being classified as superstition.
The same distinction applies to folk healing. Charms, magical childbirth actions and supernatural explanations for illness are valuable records of past and local understandings, but their documentation does not establish medical effectiveness. The World Health Organization advises that traditional health practices be approached with attention to scientific evidence, effectiveness and safety. Illness, pregnancy complications and childhood health problems require appropriate professional medical care rather than reliance on a ritual alone.
📚 Roots of Belief
- UNESCO — Cultural Practices Associated to the 1st of March — Documents the red-and-white Martinka tradition, its protective meaning and the seasonal signs used for removing the thread in North Macedonia and the other participating countries. (UNESCO maintains the international Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.)
- UNESCO — Feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Štip — Records the forty greetings, stones, flowers or twigs, wish-making, Bregalnica pebble ritual and final stone kept beneath the pillow. (UNESCO’s listing is based on a formal intangible-cultural-heritage nomination and community documentation.)
- UNESCO — Spring Celebration, Hıdrellez — Documents the 6 May celebration in North Macedonia and Türkiye, the traditional understanding of Hıdır and İlyas, and rites associated with wellbeing, fertility, crops and livestock. (UNESCO provides the official Representative List record.)
- Институт за етнологија и антропологија, УКИМ — Етнографски извори за Македонија, Прашање бр. 124: Раѓање, доење, прв заб — Publishes Ethnological Atlas field material on childbirth, postpartum customs, evil-eye protection, the umbilical cord and early childhood from 219 settlements recorded between 1970 and 1985. (Published by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.)
- Институт за етнологија и антропологија, УКИМ — Обреди на премин од животниот циклус на Македонците во Тиквеш — Provides ethnographic material on birth, marriage and death rites in Tikveš, including magical childbirth actions involving water, household objects and symbolic treatment of the umbilical cord. (A university ethnology monograph based heavily on field research conducted from 1996 to 2002.)
- Институт за етнологија и антропологија, УКИМ — Етнолошки атлас, Прашање бр. 125: Прво стрижење — Documents regional names, timing questions, lunar and solar considerations, hair symbolism and protective variations surrounding a child’s first haircut. (A publication of the university’s Ethnological Atlas research programme.)
- Катерина Петровска-Кузманова — Претставувачките аспекти во женските обредни поворки за измолување дожд — Examines Macedonian dodola rain processions, water pouring, greenery, village rounds, ritual movement and the magical interpretation of actions intended to call rain. (Published in Македонски фолклор by the Institute of Folklore “Marko Cepenkov”, UKIM.)
- Горан Василески — Народните обичаи за празникот „Св. пророк Еремија“ во селата од Прилепското Поле — Studies folk customs associated with the Prophet Jeremiah feast and the springtime complex of protective beliefs concerning snakes and other reptiles in the Prilep area. (Published by the Institute of Folklore “Marko Cepenkov”, UKIM.)
- Vesna Petreska — The Secret Knowledge of Folk Healers in Macedonian Traditional Culture — Documents liminal supernatural places, samovili, fate beings, spell beliefs, folk healers, bridges, crossroads, dreams, Moon charms, graves and magical interpretations of illness in Macedonian tradition. (A scholarly article by a researcher from the Institute of Folklore “Marko Cepenkov”, published in the peer-reviewed journal Folklorica.)
- World Health Organization — Traditional Medicine — Supports the distinction between documenting traditional health practices and establishing their safety or effectiveness, and explains the need for science-based evaluation of traditional medicine. (WHO is the United Nations specialized agency for international public health.)