Abstract
The article is devoted to traditional building customs and rites of the Middle Dnipro region, in particular, choosing a place when building a new home. The article characterizes the traditions of spiritual culture of Ukrainians in the second half of the 20th century, which until recently attracted little attention of researchers. Construction rituals on the border of Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Poltava regions are being studied. The historiographical aspect of the problem was analyzed, the results of the author’s field research were used. Traditionally, the choice of a place, the sequence of which had a three-stage character, was of great importance in the preparation for the construction of housing. The article consistently reveals the content of each «step»: selection of a place that could meet the requirements for housing construction; testing the place using various signs; divination. Now the villages have a planned development, while earlier the place where to build was freely chosen. According to the materials of the archives or «memories of old people», we know that there were certain traditions of choosing a place. Ukrainians believed that a new place should be built in a place that is not only suitable for all economic requirements, but also energetically «clean» and happy. Failure to comply with the prohibitions leads to trouble in the new home. That is why, when choosing a place to build a house, they used not only experience, but also a whole system of omens, beliefs, customs, fortune-telling, taboos, etc. In the course of the research, we come to the conclusion that the recorded rites accompanying the construction completely fit into the all-Ukrainian scheme of traditional Ukrainian culture through the prism of field materials collected in the studied territories.
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