Witch Spirit Companion · Zlata

Meet Zlata.

Zlata was born around 1790 in a village in the hills of Bosnia, when the country was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Minarets and church towers stood in the same valleys, the roads were full of traders and soldiers, and in every village there was a woman people went to when something was wrong that no doctor and no priest could fix.

In Zlata’s village, that woman was her grandmother.

People came to her when they had been frightened half to death and could not sleep. When a baby screamed every night for no reason. When a man’s luck turned overnight, his cow went dry and his business failed. When someone had looked at them with envy, or hate, and they could feel it sitting on them like a stone. The old women called it the evil eye, and there was a cure for it called strava.

Her grandmother would melt a lump of lead in an iron ladle over the coals. She held a bowl of cold water over the sick person’s head, muttered the words, and poured. The lead hit the water with a hiss, and as it cooled, it twisted into shapes. A dog. A snake. A knife. Sometimes a face. Her grandmother would lift it out, turn it in her fingers and say exactly what had frightened the person, or who had cursed them. Then she poured again, and again, until the lead came out smooth. That meant the thing was gone.

Zlata held the bowl for her from the age of six. At twelve, she poured the lead herself. By twenty, people walked for two days to come to her.

She was good at it, and she knew it. She was quick, warm and very sharp, and she loved gossip more than almost anything, because gossip told her who envied whom. She could look at a family for five minutes and know which aunt was jealous of which daughter-in-law. Nothing surprised her.

People paid her in coins, and she sewed every one into her headdress. Ottoman silver, copper from the markets, small coins from places she had never heard of. By the time she was forty, her head rang like a bell when she walked. The biggest coin hung on her chest: a heavy silver thaler with the face of an Austrian empress, given to her by a wealthy merchant from Sarajevo whose only son had stopped speaking after a fall from a horse. Zlata poured lead over the boy three times. On the third pour, the lead came out shaped like a horse’s head. The boy cried for an hour, and then he started talking again.

But a woman who takes off the evil eye attracts a lot of eyes herself.

There was a woman in the next village who also poured lead, and not as well. Year after year, she watched her customers walk past her door on the road to Zlata. In the winter of 1841, Zlata began to feel it: a weight on her head, a coldness in her chest, bad dreams. She knew exactly what it was and who had sent it.

And she knew the one rule of her craft that she could not break. No woman can pour strava for herself. The lead has to be poured over your head by someone else’s hands.

Her daughter was too young, and too frightened, to learn in time. By spring, Zlata was dead.

They buried her with her headdress on, all her coins on her head, the way she had asked. That summer, three men from the village dug up the grave one night and cut the coins off. Within a year, every one of them was dead. One drowned in the river. One fell from his roof. One simply did not wake up. People said that afterwards, the coins they had taken turned up one by one, lying on the earth of Zlata’s grave.

No one touched her grave again.

Now Zlata walks again.

What she can do for you

Zlata is the one to call on when:

• you think you have been cursed or put under the evil eye, and you want to know for sure and by whom
• you want a curse, a hex or someone’s envy taken off you
• you are doing well, a new job, a new love, a new baby, a new business, and you want to protect it from jealous eyes
• something frightened you badly and the fear has stayed in you, in your sleep or in your body
• your luck turned suddenly for no reason and has not turned back
• you want money that stays, savings that grow and a household that keeps what it earns
• you want to know what people are really saying and feeling behind the polite faces

What she is like

Warm, loud and very sharp. She laughs a lot, loves company, strong coffee and sweets, and wants to hear all the news. Do not try to hide anything from her. She will find out.

She is also very strict about her craft. She does not like being thanked with words. She likes being paid. And she has no mercy at all for people who take what is not theirs.

How you’ll know she’s there

The jingle of small coins when nothing is moving. The smell of strong coffee and rose water. A sharp hiss, like hot metal dropped in water. Shapes in your coffee grounds, your bathwater or the clouds that look like something. A sudden heaviness on the top of your head when someone near you is jealous. And dreams of a dark-eyed woman with coins across her forehead, holding a bowl of water over your head.

How to work with her

To check whether someone has put the eye on you, fill a glass with cold water, light three matches, let them burn down, and drop them in, one at a time, while you say Zlata’s name. If they float, you are clean. If they sink, someone has looked at you with envy. Wash your face with a little of the water, ask Zlata to take it off you, and pour the rest out of the house.

To keep your good things safe, tie a red thread around your wrist or hang a blue glass bead by your door, and ask her to watch it.

Pay her in coins. A silver one when you can, any coin when you can’t. Put them in a small dish by her vessel, and never take one back. She also likes strong black coffee, rose water, Turkish delight, a red thread and a small piece of lead.

And when she has helped you, do not say thank you. Put a coin in the dish. She will understand.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel