Last class Todays class

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Last class Todays class

• Three areas of culture and examples
• Traits of material culture, esp. house
• Openings
• Stove and icon corner
• Farmstead and layout thereof

• Spirits and more material culture traits through
  these
• Looking for belief and important features of same

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House spirit domovoi

• Male
• Can be married, have children
• Stories told week ago
• Older stories archives, published

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Poludnitsa Midday spirit More a being of time
than place Gives you sunstroke if you work at
midday, work too long
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Kikimora Not clear what she is related to
nightmare Oppresses like poludnitsa only at
night?
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Domovoi traits and stories

• Male spirit but likes female work
• Helps with weaving, embroidery, baby
• He is the inverse of human as above
• Food and drink he like black bread and milk
• Active at night
• Appearance naked and hairy
• Can foresee (and foretell) future
• Cries before death, esp. male, before misfortune

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Barn/yard spirit or dvorovoi

• Same as domovoi? Note functions that occur in
  farmstead rather than in house
• Bathroom
• Cellar
• Cooking
• Can also help with cattle, esp. if he likes
  color, if owner treats cattle well
• Can harm to punish or just because
• Rake and other accidents
• Scratches, injuries to animals

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Ovinnik the drying barn spirit
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Bannik the bathhouse spirit

• Recall location of bathhouse
• Bathhouse and strangers
• How traditional bathhouse (sauna) works
• Punishes for not bathing often enough
• For using 4th steam
• Bannik is intermediary between house/farm and
  outside (nature) spirits
• For being lazy and trying to wash in house

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Outside the farmstead

• Things get big and nasty
• Spirits of the forest, field, and bodies of water
  never help
• Plenty of harm to punish for bad behavior or
  just because you are in their space
• Vodianoi gets you for fishing out of season,
  taking too many fish
• Leshii for taking too much wood, too many
  berries, mushrooms, leads you astray, gets you
  lost in forest

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Forest spirit or leshii He likes babies and
steals them, replacing with own Likes pregnant
women
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A 19th century broadside version of the forest
spirit Please note his size
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Field spirit or polevoi Not that many stories
are told about him because he is on cultivated
land, not wild
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Water spirit or vodianoi He likes babies also
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Another broadside, this time of the
vodianoi Please note the size and the baby on
the left
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Fortune-telling with spirits

• Bathhouse and pregnancy predictions
• Barn and wedding predictions

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Arranging and explaining spirits

• They are keepers of order
• They personify a place
• Whatever that place is supposed to be for, they
  make sure you do it some reward, but mostly
  punishment
• Me and food for domovoi at Christmas
• Lazy man in stove

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American parallels urban legends

• You shouldnt eat fast food
• Kentucky fried rat
• Chicken nuggets
• McDonalds meat
• Other messages too corporate greed
• Candy and soda pop are bad for you
• You should buy American

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Gender in American material

• Women should not be too interested in their
  appearance getting a tan
• Getting diet pills on line (you should also not
  be too cheap)
• Other female victims Im leaving out the
  moral here you provide
• Tendon slasher
• Killer in back seat
• Mutilated roommate
• Bathroom, 4th floor Cabell

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Women and sex though men get it too

• Internet date
• Misbirths
• AIDS Mary
• Purloined kidney