Paper short abstract

At dawn on Saint George’s Day in the Carpathian Basin, women’s rites for animal protection sacralized agrarian space. Through phenomenology and East-Central European ethnography, this study links embodied ritual ecologies to contemporary reflections on human–nature relations.

Paper long abstract

St George’s Day occupies a peculiar position within the Hungarian ritual year. It marks the beginning of the pastoral season, the renewal of vegetation, the first movement of livestock, and, at the same time, a period associated with an intensified presence of supernatural forces. Ethnographic accounts describe a remarkable concentration of practices concerned with the protection, acquisition, and circulation of fertility: dew gathering at dawn, the ritual use of plants, the safeguarding of livestock, and numerous actions directed against witches.

These customs not as isolated survivals but as elements of a ritual ecology. I examine the relationships that emerge among women, animals, plants, atmospheric phenomena, features in the production and protection of fertility. Particular attention is given to dew gathering, a practice situated at the intersection of bodily experience, seasonal transformation. As a transient phenomenon caused by convergence of moisture, atmosphere, and temperature, dew occupies a striking position between ecological process and ritual substance.

The figure of the witch provides a privileged entry point into this world. While folklore presents her as a threat to communal prosperity, she simultaneously appears as a figure endowed with exceptional access to the forces linking livestock, vegetation, weather, and well-being. Through her, the connections between humans and non-human agencies become especially visible.

I argue that these customs preserve traces of a worldview in which fertility was understood not as an endlessly expandable resource but as a finite and relational condition emerging from the balance between humans, animals, plants.