Malo Vento III is the third chapter of an ongoing exploration of illness in Italian magical traditions, particularly those of Lucania, historical region of Southern Italy. Illness was understood as being dominated by external forces (feeling bound), while healing was symbolized by untying bonds to free the body and mind. In Magic: A Theory from the South (1959), the ethnographer Ernesto De Martino describes a case of domination manifesting itself as physical binding, often self-imposed, leading to a trance-like state. The mind, indeed, indetifies the movements needed to undo the knots and achieve libe- ration. 





^{1. Ernesto, De Martino, Magic: A Theory from the South (HAU - Classics in Ethnographic Theory, 1959). Kindle edition, 66.}