Italian Folk Magic Spell for Healing Feavers

To cure someone of persistent or intermittent fever, this charm was recited:
"Settimu di Maria, fammi passari lu friddu a mia!"
According to my information this charm was ideally recited by someone who was born prematurely, specifically a "seven months child."
As I do not read Italian, I contacted a practioner of Stregheria in Italy, Claudio Simeoni.
The spell is a Sicilian one and it sound probably (I'm Venetian, not Sicilian, so I'm not 100% sure): "Seventh of Mary, make the fever pass away (to me)!"
The Seventh is probably the person who recited the charm, a seven months child or the seventh son whose father was a seventh son, too. Mary is of course the mother of christ, and was often invoked for every kind of healing and graces.

In Sicilian vernacular:
Settimu=seventh
fammi passari= make ...pass away
lu friddu=the fever (I think)
a mia=to me

Claudio Simeoni


The presence of Maria, known as the Madonna, probably is an indication of a substitution for one of the Pagan Goddesses, possibly Diana, but it could have been any of them. It is interesting that Claudio Simeoni believed the charm could be successfully recited by either a seventh month child or the seventh son of a seventh son. C. J. S. Thompson, Magic and Healing 1989, wrote: "in Yorkshire and some parts of Wales, the seventh son of a seventh son was a born physician, having an intuitive knowledge of healing all disorders.

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