This book is dedicated to *oberegs*—magical means of protecting an individual and their world from danger. Drawing upon the pan-Slavic tradition, it presents—for the first time—a comprehensive model of the *obereg*, describing its semantics and the specific forms of its manifestation in ritual texts, actions, objects, and ceremonies; it also provides an analysis of the pragmatics of the verbal *obereg*. The monograph draws upon folkloric and ethnographic sources from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as contemporary field materials collected in Polesie, the Ukrainian Carpathians, and the Russian North. The book is intended for ethnolinguists, folklorists, and ethnographers, as well as for general readers interested in the study of traditional Slavic culture.