Last lecture Todays class

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Last lecture Todays class

• Witches and animism
• Witches and importance of food
• Stories about witches, 19th century and modern
• Different type of witch Baba Iaga lt Mokosh

• Bit more on witchcraft beliefs
• Baba Iaga
• Ancestors and the practice of red death
• Intro. to Turner boundaries, boundary crossing
• Point of crossing limens ritual

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Review babka-type witches

• See self as healers and part of mainstream
• But consider charm content evocation of saints
  and also spirits
• Use of icon and also iron, wax, mirrors

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Real therapeutic value of babky

• Medicinal knowledge, some now lost
• Herbs
• Massage and how to do
• Folk chiropractic Peters back adjustment
• Dads PhD
• Folk herbal and mineral/poultice treatments
• Adjusting therapy to the patient art of
  medicine
• Standardizing acupuncture

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Psychological component

• Needed everywhere how being taken seriously can
  aid healing
• Relaxes, helps muster body resources
• US version price seriousness
• Problem of overmedication
• Psychological element in society predisposed to
  pollution beliefs
• Fear of OWN transgression made someone jealous
  and that person cast evil eye
• Cooked cherries cooked marriage
• Babka cure provides element of control

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Babka cures/accusations against babky

• They parallel one another all are things that
  go wrong INTERNALLY spoiled or rotten on the
  inside
• Fear sickness
• Evil eye
• This is NOT a physical injury, though there are
  specialized babky who do boneset (kostoprav)
• Focus again on society type - not a matter of
  chronology old religion
• With certain society, place spirits, witchcraft
  beliefs will (always) exist

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Also did food unit

• Witchcraft affects food
• The illness is porcha, like spoiled food
• Counteraction against witchcraft through food

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Witches and pre-Christian belief

• Learned witches may be a remnant of serious
  religious practice
• There is a formal process to their becoming
  witches
• Religious terminology, esp. for sorcerers, seems
  to have ancient, shamanic roots koldun
  sorcerer, volkhv
• Serious witch with mythological stature is Baba
  Iaga of fairytales another goddess
• Nasty and old contrast to young and nice
  rusalka
• Volkhvy are her priests?

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Baba Iaga, the folktale witch She too is remnant
of religion
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Baba Iaga lt Mokosh?

• Doll Story
• Underground journey to realm of witch
• Witch controls the cycle of the sun
• She is associated with crops, food, linen
• She can be enormous fills up whole house
• House itself can MOVE, hide opening
• Encounter with her is like initiation

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Girl driven from home Incestuous marriage Sees
horseman of morning
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The fiery horseman of noon
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Compare to Archangel Michael
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The horseman of night
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• Baba Iaga again
• Please note her masculine features
• She is associated with plants, herbs, food

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• Baba Iaga is not only mistress of motion she
  flies in a mortar and controls the horsemen.
• She also has a house that can move, conceal its
  door.
• It is on chicken legs part of women and birds
  imagery?

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Baba Iaga who fills house like Mokosh who fills
temple?
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Males and the ancestor cult

• Place spirits are male, often confused with
  ancestor cult
• Pre-Christian background of cult
• Veletskaias article on Old Believer stolpniki
• The practice of standing at ones post
• Orthodox prohibition of suicide
• Is being a stolpnik suicide?

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Veletskaias thesis red death

• In the past, practice of killing elders
• 2 types of death normal and red
• Normal die of old age
• Red not bloody, but good elder chooses hour of
  death
• Elder killed by son

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Red death

• Elder killed at tree
• Left to die, like stolpnik
• Hit on head with a club
• Smothered with red pillow
• Elder left to die in a hut in the forest
  minimal food, exposure to cold
• Elder tossed into ravine thrown into the belly
  of the earth

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Normal death Red death

• Normal dead die of old age
• Once they are dead, they stay that way, do not
  come back to the living

• Special elders are killed
• Can journey BACK to the land of the living
• Offer info about the future, bring info from the
  other world esp. about weather, crops
• Carry prayers of the living to the spirits

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Red death remnants

• Prayers to elders are source of cult
• Stories about the end of the practice of red
  death note emphasis on crops
• Belief in two types of dead which is INVERSE of
  red death beliefs
• Inversion means what was good gt bad

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Red death Belief now

• 2 types of death
• Natural death is neutral
• Violent death is good red death
• Those who die violently come back
• They help the living, esp. with crops
• They help living eat

• 2 types of death
• Natural death is neutral
• Violent death is bad
• Those who die violently come back
• They haunt the living
• They eat the living

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Go back to space

• Space seen as alive, living entity with which you
  can interact
• Personification or animistic view
• I-Thou relationship rather than I-it
• American animism interacting with objects as if
  they were alive

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Creation of a space unit

• Space is continuous
• Construction of unit implies boundaries to
  delineate unit
• Russian, Ukrainian boundaries different from West
  

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A fence can run along the edge of village
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Cemetery is fenced off from village
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Each family plot fenced off from next
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The gateway special role of the opening in the
boundary

• The power of the border concentrated in the door
  or gate
• Albemarle county gateways, non-existent fence
• Door orientation in different cultures, behavior
  at door