Last lecture Todays class

1
Last lecture Todays class

• Finish Sixth Sense
• Return of the dead
• Please note what kind of dead
• Any patterns?
• Week before Slavic beliefs about return of the
  dead
• Stages after death

• Slavic dead people continued
• Shadow body
• Communicated with the dead role of children,
  beggars
• Other supernatural beliefs curses, conjuring,
  vampires

2
Post-death stages

• Most important are 40 days and 1 year
• 40 days after 40 days, soul of the deceased
  arrives in tot svet during the 40 days soul is
  in transition
• 1 year body has decayed and person goes from
  being a specific deceased individual to being one
  of the ancestors
• Commemoration also a 3, 6, 9 days and ½ year
  still as individual

3
Deceased is laid out for at least one night in
the icon corner Deceased removed for burial feet
first
4
Soul sits on top of the icons in the icon
corner Can be seen as shadow in icon lamp light
5
(No Transcript)
6
Death to 40 days

• During this period not a question of return
  deceased has not left yet
• Water and a towel left for the deceased
• Shadow of deceased seen in icon corner based on
  shadow body ideas
• Shadow body a kind of homunculus

7
(No Transcript)
8
Dormition of the Virgin The little swaddled
figure is her soul
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
Shadow body and shamanism

• Shamanic journey is one of shadow body
• Body must be tied down so that it does not follow
  soul/shadow to other world
• Like in dream fear of sleep walkers
• Body integrity ideas (need for body integrity)
  may be tied to shadow body ideas
• Shamanism usually associated with peoples further
  east, but similarities here

13
Dead types

• Normal or quiet
• They hang around for the 40 days and are
  regularly seen, felt
• Can come back for one year if they need something
  
• After one year, dont come back much perhaps if
  you need them

• Unquiet these return and haunt the living,
  haunt spot where they died
• Husband can come back as incubus, esp. if wife
  cries too much

14
(No Transcript)
15
The one year after death period

• Dead can have needs scarf, warm hat, flat shoes
• Sometimes requests for cigarettes, booze,
  favorite book
• Sometimes dead return to help the living, meet
  their needs dead husband helps wife find
  documents
• How the dead make contact

16
Sending things to the dead

• Placed in coffin of the next deceased
• Place on grave, give to children yucky?
• Given to beggars
• The item, money
• Children and beggars are liminars body itself is
  EXTRA liminal magic of things in contact with it
• Water, strings used for good and bad

17
Prayer placed next to the deceased
18
Giving candy to the deceased which is then
collected and eaten by children Would you eat
dead candy? Halloween
19
After one year deadancestors Remembered at
annual holidays The dead get nice, new flowers
and food, booze also Basket in front
20
Tables for picnic with the dead
21
Conduits to the dead liminars

• Clergy you can request prayers at a monastery,
  nunnery, esp. for a suicide
• Children they are close to tot svet, like
  clergy, but in a different way
• Beggars not parts of regular society and
  liminal like children, clergy
• Beggars also asked to say prayers, esp. for
  unquiet dead
• Recall Rasputin as mendicant, the various sects

22
Other supernatural issues

• Telepathy
• Not that much concern in village setting
• Great deal of urban interest
• Soviet World War II experiments
• Curses
• Extensive belief, urban and rural
• Now curses attached to old wealth, hidden
  during Soviet era
• Wealth must be illegitimate

23
More issues

• Conjuring the dead a no-no like in Bennett
• If anything, conjuring so they will go away
• Felt presence of evil
• Issue of evil (or lack of idea of evil) among
  Slavs
• Recall omnipresence of evil eye but is it truly
  evil? Or is it more of an issue of harm?

24
Evil continued

• Ideas of Heaven and Hell not really present more
  a belief in the other world, tot svet
• Dead who return are not angry or vengeful
• Dont realize they are dead
• Have unfinished business unmarried
• Mother who dies in childbirth and returns to care
  for baby good or bad?

25
Vampire beliefs

• Western vampire vengeful, predatory
• Western ideas based on South Slavs, Romanians,
  not East Slavs or is it all Western?
• East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian) nothing to
  avenge
• Like born witch, male version 7th son, baby with
  caul
• Blood sucking like witches stealing milk
• Milk/blood connection
• Vampire baby
• Milk siblings