Before today Todays class

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Before today Todays class

• Bogatyrev and the principles of magic
• Rituals are magic acts
• Martin Prechtel on Mayan ideas of time and space
  unity of man and nature, similarity of
  indigenous cultures

• Prechtel/Bogatyrev comparison
• Repeated ideas in East Slavic rites sacrifice,
  return of the dead
• Spring rituals, secular and religious Easter

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Bogatyrev Prechtel

• Ritual has to be relevant here, now
• Transformation, yes pure survival, no
• What survival means

• Indigenous cultures, those close to soil, share
  ideas
• Mayans and Slavs could not influence each other

Reconciling the two views natural symbols The
human body Natural environment, soil, plants,
animals
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Elements in all East Slavic rites Sacrifice,
Communion with the dead

• Source of these elements
• Matriarchy beliefs and sacrifice to the
  Motherland?
• Ancestor cult and idea that soil transforms the
  body?
• Both are meaningful now (Soviet impetus to
  ancestor beliefs)

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Evidence of importance of sacrifice

• Didukh at Christmas
• Epiphany and water jumping
• Effigy at Ivan Kupalo, in granny video
• Winter people dressed up as death
• Not done Christmas plays
• Reversals women portray the clergy
• Mock funeral comic and erotic
• Other reversals plays about bandits

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Special role of fire and waterDeath in same

• Untimely death in general unquiet dead
• Fire and water problem of the body
• Need body to bury so that it can decay
• No body unquiet dead
• But fire helps the process of transforming flesh
  (Old Believer mass suicides)
• Water is the conduit to the other world dive
  into water end up in other world

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Russian holidays after Christmas

• Epiphany
• Sretenie Ground Hog Day
• Shrove/Maslenitsa bliny and other foods
• Soviet version welcome spring video
• Cookies
• Riddling
• Tug-of-war and other contests
• Role of children as liminars other liminars at
  holidays
• Do these people think their actions influence
  nature?

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Spring rites in a Ukrainian community in New
Jersey Note role of children
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Contests between virile young men make crops
grow? In a parking lot in NJ?
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Before Easter

• Great Lent
• Pussywillow/Palm Sunday
• Hitting people, esp. of opposite sex
• Thursday before Easter requisite cleaning,
  eggs, food
• Easter for the dead
• Friday ploshchanitsa representation of the
  dead
• Saturday blessing of the food and complete fast

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Displaying pussywillows after Sunday Other uses
of the blessed pussywillow
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To what extent is the fertility symbolism
conscious (motivated)? What do Americans think
of the Easter bunny?
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Cover of a Ukrainian American womens magazine,
Easter issue
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Nothing with blood may go inside the church Food
like sausage must be blessed outside
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