Last class Todays lecture

1
Last class Todays lecture

• Documentary on Rasputin
• Before that intro. to sects
• Suffering, pain is a trait of minstrels
• Wandering is another trait
• Both NORMALLY undesirable

• Bit on Rasputin
• Survey results
• Iurodivyi review
• Sects Skoptsy and their traits
• Cloth, wealth
• Khlesty
• Ecstatic states

2
Begging survey

• Give money to ordinary person 6
• Fear this person 6
• Ordinary person with guitar 51
• Fear person with guitar 6
• Give to person with guitar downtown 42
• Fear above 2
• Give to dirty person on Corner 27
• Fear above person 12
• Give to dirty person with guitar 55
• Fear dirty person with guitar 8

3
Survey continued

• Fear dirty person with guitar more than tidy
  one more 46, less 17, same 36
• Fear dirty person with/without guitar
  more without 66, with 4, no difference 29
• Give money dirty person w handicap 50
• Fear dirty person/handicap 15
• Fear dirty person no handicap more 65

4
Survey continued

• Give money child comes up to car 65
• Person in wheelchair at light 47
• Dirty person at light 10
• Person at light does service 69
• Person at light plays instrument 52
• Give money to male or female F 74
• Elderly 17 middle-aged 4, child 74
• More inclined if others look 68

5
Review - Rasputin

• Not a member of a sect, not Iurodivyi
• Has vision (like Iuridivyi), wanders
• He is healer though accused otherwise
• Suffering and motion connected to minstrels

6
Motion death Russian bride

• Moves into husbands house he stays put
• Treated as if dead
• Deals with spirits like spirit of house
• Deals with boundary between this world and next
  birth and death
• Attending the dying
• Russian MDs

7
Iurodivye review Fools in Christ

• Not a sect individuals, but recognized category
• Idea of this world/other world inversion
• Holy Fools insult the tsar
• Who becomes? Wealthy person
• How? Vision, near-death experience
• Life of the Iurodivyi
• Powers of the Iurodivyi epistles (like
  Rasputin), power to cure

8
Source of powers

• Mortify flesh to gain power over flesh
• Analogy to hermit monks
• Denial of body and ALL its needs
• Power of display of suffering in art

9
Display of suffering in art

• Kafkas Hunger Artist, Penal Colony
• Performance art in store window
• Having self shot on stage, bleeding in public
• Comparison to Roman Coliseum

10
Which parts have power?

• Things WRITTEN
• Things IN CONTACT juices
• Parallel to things in contact with dead body
• Both are intermediary this world/other world

11
Old Believers the Stolpniki

• Old Believers not really a sect
• See selves as true believers, analogous to
  Orthodox/Catholic split
• Old Believers maintain older liturgical forms,
  older dress, hair
• More strict alcohol, smoking
• Also known for some strange practices that border
  on suicide

12
Stolpniki

• What they do a display of sorts
• Prohibition on suicide, on knowing future
• How they survive for years
• Veletskaia on Stolpniki as remnant of sacrifice
  of elders
• Pre-Christian practice survives in marginal group

13
Sacrifice of elders

• Contemporary stories
• Old practice reconstructed by Veletskaia
• This is violent death before ones time
• Leads to unquiet death
• Unquiet death seen as good in one religious
  context
• Reversal of value with new religion what most
  value labeled as evil, dangerous
• Old Believers modify practice to make acceptable

14
Skoptsy

• They are a sect for sure all traits
• Organized group that perpetuates self
• Condemned by main stream
• Very strict and pious like Old Believers
• And do something Old Believers dont
• Why castration?
• Not just a question of controlling sexual desire

15
Desire to control reproduction, Get rid of flesh

• Recall life as a cycle
• No reproduction breaks the cycle
• No babies soul cannot return
• Achieves permanent place in other world, realm of
  the spirits
• Zoroastrian dualism
• Other attempts to control flesh hermits,
  Iurodivye

16
Whats with the white cloth?

• Bread and cloth associated with flesh
• Both have a sacred quality used in ritual
• Bread is what flesh becomes
• Cloth is another layer upon flesh

17
Preparing the wedding bread
18
The bread is ready for baking
19
The finished product
20
The bread in front of the couple
21
Rituals of bread and cloth

• With the newborn
• Body of newborn seen as unformed can be molded
  like bread
• Can be rebaked
• Use of unspun flax to tie the umbilical cord

22
Cloth and the body

• Substitutes for body dead soldier
• Special towel interred
• Never displayed

23
(No Transcript)
24
Cloth blesses the marriage Bread is held above
their heads here, icons in previous picture
25
Note use of the covered hand Cloth protects
26
Standing on a ritual towel
27
Special towels ready for lowering the coffin
28
The bier on which the coffin was carried The
towels will be gifts for those who helped with
the funeral
29
The kerchief on the womans arm is a gift for
helping with the funeral
30
Cloth as an extension of the body

• Stenka Razin (Russian Robin Hood) stories
• He has magic abilities locks, motion, cloth
  he makes it bullet and sword proof
• Already told magic cloak
• If cloth is an extension of the body, Skoptsy
  white hanky body is pure