Servage ritual “bread walking”: mythosemantics and cultural context

Abstract

The article presents unique archival materials providing evidence that everyday magic practices, eschatological narratives and beliefs were common inBelarusduring the Second World War. The scientific commentary on the facts registered by Soviet scholars in folklore­ethnographic expeditions of 1945–1946 confirms that during the war archaic rituals and folk orthodox beliefs were actualized in folk culture. It is proved that the ritual “bread walking” and the distribution of “holy letters” belong to the forms of ritualistic amulets. They occupy a peripheral position in the system of occasional rituals of Belarusians. Their ideological content determines the synthesis of folk religious ideologies with elements of contact, initial and apotropic magic. At the stock level, the amulets are implemented as transmission practices. In addition, the work defines mythosemantics, ritual context and intertextual relations of the “bread walking” ritual.