Kaman: SMS8

STUDIA MYTHOLOGICA SLAVICA
| Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU

STUDIA MYTHOLOGICA SLAVICA 8, 2005

Erzsébet Kaman:

Folk Customs Accompanying the Celebrations of Mother Mary

Abstract

The annual celebrations of Mother Mary’s holidays in Russia do not consist only of church prayers on the days of Mother Mary’s Birth, Presentation in the Temple, Announciation, Mary With Her Cloak as Protectress, Assumption, and of honouring her miraculous icons, but also of numerous rituals and customs.

Much has been written about such celebrations by Russian ethnographers in 17th and 19th century. Researchers in the 20th century have been looking for the archaic basis of these celebrations, their nature and their linguistic connections. They tried to discover the structure of the folk culture and did not pay much attention to the nature of the celebrations practiced among the people. The author has found a new methodological approach for researching the characteristics of the celebration rituals in the works of V. Turner who tried to see man as a whole, not only as a rational being. In the works of S.S. Averincev the author detected specific emotions in the perception of holiness, as opposed to the »meek« and »terrifying« perception of holiness found in the Western civilization, or the »rational« one in the Byzantine world.

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