Magical Rituals Research Articles

Fantastic and Marvellous Reality; Witchcraft and Miscellaneous Events Le commerce des Allongés by Alain Mabanckou

The novel Le commerce des Allongés by Alain Mabanckou, launched at la rentrée littéraire in September 2022, is a fulfilment of the novelist’s desire to reconnect with the oral narratives of his childhood: by his own admission, Mabanckou draws on the répertoire by his mother bequeathed to him. The result is a singular work in which the fantastic is grafted onto news and gives way to the magic realism, while exploring workings of black magic rites. My purpose is to study the writer’s use of the supernatural and his manipulation of stereotypes, prejudices and commonplaces associated with Africa. The aim of Mabanckou’s work is to convey a strong, though biased, criticism of the powerful and influent African men who are stifling and corrupting their country’s society, and to plunge Western readers into a fearsome reality that is likely to amuse, shock and outrage them at the same time.

An amulet with snake skin from pereyaslavl ryazansky

In medieval worldview, leather objects were often regarded as attributes of magical rituals. The article presents the results of studying a unique leather artifact with organic filling discovered during excavations in the Kremlin of Pereyaslavl Ryazansky (modern Ryazan) at the Vvedensky excavation site. The find comes from the mid-15th century cultural layer. Examination of the contents of this leather bag revealed particles of a snake, which gives grounds for attributing the find as a medieval amulet. Despite church prohibitions, the tradition of wearing such talismans is well known from written and ethnographic sources and is observed among a number of peoples. This first leather talisman found among the archaeological material of Pereyaslavl Ryazansky confirms the fact that the snake cult, which had originated in the Palaeolithic, continued to play an important role in worldviews of later periods. The leather amulet with a particle of a water snake makes it possible to clarify certain aspects of Russian medieval beliefs.

Decoding the Orientalist Paradigm: A Critical Analysis of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire

In his book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin constructs a fantasyland of Westeros and Essos in which he employs a Eurocentric perspective through Orientalist tropes. This reveals a cultural, educational, and political dichotomy between his fictional Orient and Occident, depicting a more civilised and superior Westland and a more exotic and barbaric Eastland. Throughout the five books, Essos, which stands for Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, is always associated with barbaric and magical rituals, nakedness, slavery, savagery, and exotic and erotic elements, and is therefore depicted as a more dangerous landscape to live in. Westeros which represents Europe on the other hand, is portrayed as more civilised, educated, and chivalric, bestowed with every so-called superior European and Christian value. In this context, this study attempts to interrogate Edward Said’s post-colonial critique of Orientalism to elucidate the manifestations of the Eurocentric paradigm inherent in George R.R. Martin’s world-building techniques within his magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire, and to dissect the implications of the Orientalism within the broad spectrum of fantasy literature. To this end, through a close reading of the novels, this article will foreground the contrast between Westeros and Essos, highlighting the central position of Western societies and the otherisation of Eastern cultures by detailing the elements that perpetuate the superiority of the Occident and the inferiority of the Orient in Martin's fictional world.

ELEMENTS OF ANCIENT BELIEFS IN BASHKIR MATERNITY RITUALS

The article deals with some customs and rituals associated with childbirth. The relevance of the conducted research is conditioned by the growing interest in the role of ethno-cultural values in modern society and increasing attention to the previously underexplored phenomena of everyday life. The study of folk customs, rituals and representations related to childbirth will contribute to the understanding of the deep layers of Bashkir spiritual culture. Maternity rituals represent an important aspect of Bashkir cultural tradition. It encompasses prenatal, as well as birth and postnatal rituals, which to this day play an important role in the formation of family and social ties. The aim of the study is to identify elements of ancient beliefs in the Bashkirs' maternity rituals. An integrated approach, involving the analysis of ethnographic, historical, philosophical and folklore scientific works, was applied to achieve this goal. The research was based on a wide range of published and unpublished sources. The research revealed that the Bashkirs' maternity ritual is based on the ancient beliefs and ideas of the Bashkirs about man, nature and the world as a whole. It includes elements of animism, totemism, fetishism and magic. Important aspects of ritualism are connected with the protection of the child and the woman in labor, as well as with the first 40 days and the first year of the child's life. The elements of ancient beliefs revealed in the course of the research are manifested in the belief in the existence of spirits and souls, totem, in the ancestor worship, and are connected with beliefs in the protective properties of certain objects of the material world. The Bashkirs' maternity rituals include components of apotropaic, procreative and sympathetic magic. The study made it possible to study more deeply the mythology, ancient religious beliefs and traditional culture of the Bashkirs, to trace the evolution of the Bashkirs' maternity ritual and their transformation in modern conditions, to reveal the general regularities of the development of ritual culture, as well as the specific features characterizing particular nations. The preserved actions of magical rituals connected with childbirth refers to their stability and ability to adapt to new changing conditions of life.

Pop spiritualnost

Magical practices have undergone significant changes in the past decades, shifting towards accessibility and individuality. With the rise in popularity of individual, custom-designed magical rituals, popular culture has proven to be one of the important aspects associated with the new practice. Influential, reaching a wide audience, with a strong focus on immersive visual aspects, it is of no surprise that practitioners have started to include popcultural elements into their rituals. New schools of magic, such as the influential Chaos Magick, have proven to be a fertile ground for these innovative practices. This paper will focus on the mutual interaction between occult knowledge represented through visual means in popular culture and the magical practice of modern mages.

Horse skulls revisited. Analyses of selected deposits from the territory of Poland

The article presents results of the most recent study on three assemblages of horse skulls and bones presented in older publications as early medieval deposits. In the course of the project “Horse in Poland in the Times of the Early Piasts and Internal Fragmentation. AnInterdisciplinaryStudy”, they were subjected to multifaceted archaeozoological analyses as well as AMS carbon-14 dating. Owing to the findings of these analyses along with a critical culture-related assessment of the earlier interpretations, the custom of using horse skulls for magical rituals in the Late Medieval and in modern times. The custom from the pagan era was still practiced in folklore culture and its magical, non-Christian manifestations. The presented results show that dating animal deposits using the AMS carbon-14 method is necessary whenever they become an element of a qualitative-cultural interpretation. They are also an example of merging methods and findings from different specialties in interpreting zoological deposits resulting from human activity. Moreover, the considerations contained in this paper suggest also that there is a need for reinterpreting theses that have been long in use in the subject literature.

The Influence of Western Drama on Contemporary African Drama

African drama is generally believed to find its roots in the tradition and culture of the African society such as the celebration of the new yam festival (festivity) the display of masquerade, religious rituals, and the moonlight story (storytelling) therefore, African drama has been in existence before the emergence of the colonialism, African drama existed in form of action, through music and dance that was ritualized to express emotions such as terror, passion, and love. These actions were imitations of what the people wanted to happen so if they wanted to kill an enemy they would act out the process, religious and magical rituals were used and combined with dance and songs, with the emergence of Western drama which was brought through colonization, African drama became modernized to scripting of drama, use of language satirical plays, use of a curtain, theatre of the absurd, during colonialism, African drama such as the religious ritual was seen as a barbaric act by the colonial masters. The influence of this Western drama on African drama gave birth to what we call contemporary African drama. As we read the background and other parts of this paper we will understand the influence of Western drama on contemporary African drama.

The Role of Weather and the Natural-Climate Factor in the Daily Nomadic Life of the Kalmyks in the Context of Traditional Nature Utilization: Effective Frontier Practices

The article is devoted to the role of the climate factor and weather in the everyday nomadic life and history of the Kalmyks, closely linked with traditional nature management. Based on the study of published and archival materials from the State Archive of the Astrakhan Region, the State Archive of the Saratov Region, and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, the article examines the main features of the nature management system, the functioning and life of the Kalmyk nomadic society in new geographical conditions, and analyzes the processes of adaptation of nomads to the specific resources of an arid ecosystem. For the Kalmyks, who led a nomadic lifestyle in the past, nature was not only a habitat but also the basis of life. Moving in search of pastures for livestock, Kalmyk pastoralists learned to use natural resources rationally. The article shows how people tried to harness these resources through magical rites. The nomadic way of life, the economic structure, the natural landscape, and the life of the nomad cattle breeder – all predetermined the nature of magic as a whole. Special attention is paid to a system of prohibitions related to nature, land, and water. “Russia’s Steppe Frontier” is an invaluable resource for understanding the Kalmyks’ historical experience in the field of nature management.

Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic

The psychoactive plant Datura metel appears across a range of traditions in premodern South Asia preserved in texts. Among those traditions is the form of tantric Buddhism (Vajrayāna) located in the yoginī tantras. In Vajrayāna works, the plant is most prominently used in instructions for bringing about one or more of the magical acts (ṣaṭkarman). This paper explores the possibility that datura was consumed for its hallucination-inducing potential by considering how the plant was viewed and used in premodern South Asia through an ethnobotanical approach to relevant texts. I argue that the material potency of the plant as a dangerous poison, well established in Sanskrit medical literature from an early period, gave it a magical potency that made it a favored ingredient in several hostile magic rites (abhicāra) found in the yoginī tantras. I suggest that the line between material and magical is an inappropriate distinction to draw when examining these tantras, and that the most responsible way to approach the use of psychotropic plants in a premodern culture is by examining what actors from that culture said about the plant rather than relying on our existing knowledge of the effect of that plant.

Initiating a Fact: the Play of the Imagination as a Way of Being a Word

The article attempts to question and dispute the definition of the “artistic-documentary literature”. The difference between the fact as an inert historical unit and the fact in correlation-contact figurative entities has been revealed applying phenomenological and dialectical research methods and using method of analogy. The key findings of the study argue that a fact in the documentary text is unambiguous, the scope of information it carries is equal to its analog in an empirically representative space; it is one-dimensional, historically and spatially localized, complete and finite in terms of message. The artistic text is a hyper complex combination of various types of contacts, is a synthesis of the in-depth abstracted artistic thought-forms and absolutely concrete meaning of visible things. This is a magical ritual procedure. The article highlights two points: analysis and synthesis. The analysis is aimed at determination of the way the fact functions in the text. The task of synthesis is to trace/identify the scheme that corresponds to the content of the links between the fact and other characteristics of the work. The emphasis is laid on the mechanism of transforming the informative-semantic into the informative-aesthetic. The artistic text is considered as a multichannel system, where the fact is subjected to processing by compression (quintessential), quantization (energy impact), coding (image formation) and correlation. The novel "Leaves of the Earth" by V. Drozd is used to illustrate the theoretical assumptions. The study shows the movement of a historical fact in the direction of expanding its parameters due to the projection of it on the symbolic-mythological, theosophical, psychological plane and formation of new meanings. The key findings of the research prove that the definition of literary-documentary literature is unmotivated and contains features of aporia.

The Witch and the Devil in the Well: Women and Magic in Venetian Politics

Abstract: In early modern Venice, men and women regularly visited wells and remote islands to summon the Devil. This practice, rooted in traditions established in the Middle Ages, continued into the eighteenth century. One popular form of this tradition involved witches opening up a portal to Hell in the deserted wells of the city. Witnesses to these conjurations testified that they could smell sulfur, see hellfire and smoke, and hear the groaning of the damned when the witches performed their magical rites. The Devil himself appeared to talk to the witch who summoned him, usually to give her advice on elections to the Great Council or the location of hidden treasures. Using trials from the Venetian Inquisition, this essay examines women's involvement in the political life of the city, maintaining that through their expertise in magic and knowledge of rumor, they played a larger role in the early modern state and knew more of its secrets than we have credited them with having.

SAN BARBATO DI BENEVENTO, “L’APOSTOLO DEL SANNIO”, UCCISORE DI VIPERE D’ORO ED ESTIRPATORE DI ALBERI SACRI

St. Barbato of Benevento, “the Apostle of Sannio”, gol den snakes’ killer and holy trees eradicator. This contribution analyzes the events relating to the work of San Barbato di Benevento. Nicknamed “Apostle of Sannio”, he was the protagonist of the Christian conversion of the southern Italian city of which he became the first bishop. We move from the analysis of the Lombard pagan traditions permeated in the territory, from the sacred tree to the golden viper, from magical rituals to the tradition (even contemporary) of the Beneventan witches, to delve deeper and analyze the elements of Christian tradition in Sannio. Through the study of episcopal charters, hagiographic traditions and archival do cuments, the history of the diocese passes from the late ancient age to the medieval phase, reaching the modern age. The contribution ends with an ‘appendix’ on the Cathedral of Benevento, a place of worship whose foundation has been attributed to Barbato himself.

Changing Destinies by Fighting Against Bad Luck

"In the traditional Romanian village, misfortune (bad luck) was countered by the use of magic means. Those who took the lead in performing the magico-ritual act were women who possessed special powers that enabled them to identify, isolate and destroy evil and thus restore peace of mind and health to their clients by manipulating chance and changing their destinies. They were country women without special qualifications who healed a wide spectrum of ailments – themselves caused by ritual means – or made love charms. By contrast, the contemporary urban environment in Romania can show us modern witches who are widely advertised in the media, practise aggressive marketing, and are in most cases digitally literate (they make use of the Internet and digital applications to facilitate relations with clients); by employing sophisticated rituals and often also by drawing on black magic, they provide solutions to sickness, curses and being crossed in love, as also happens in traditional villages, but they are equally able to deal with unemployment, impotence, lack of money, hair loss, business failure and above the straying of unfaithful husbands, thus demonstrating that they are in tune with the times in which they live. Everything is possible, because people living in modern communities, despite the categorical appeal to reason, despite digitalisation, globalisation, bureaucratisation and the coming of the computer age, still feel the need to “explain the inexplicable,” in exactly the same way as peasants living in traditional villages do, and in addition feel the need for personal experiences, including of magic ritual and witchcraft. The coronavirus pandemic had the effect of strengthening this impression of a “magic mindset” and even of uninterrupted coexistence between the magic of the traditional village and modern urban life, influencing the relation between magic/religion and science – something seen at its clearest in the attitudes of large numbers of people towards the origin and treatment of the virus and above all the vaccines. "

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Technology and Magic in the Ghost Dance, Boxer Uprising, and Maji Maji Rebellion

AbstractThis article explores the widespread phenomenon of anti-colonial movements that relied on magical rituals for protection against European weapons. It examines both the beliefs of the magical practitioners themselves, and those of colonizing observers whose fascination with stories of “primitive magic” contributed to their contrasting self-representations as superior beings in possession of technological wonders. North America’s Ghost Dance movement, China’s Boxer Rebellion, and East Africa’s Maji Maji uprising took place on three different continents but occurred almost simultaneously. The cases come from a narrow period of time, roughly 1890 to 1910, during a peak of colonial violence all over the world.

The Power of Chaos

The Power of Chaos

Conjuring Up a King

Conjuring Up a King

The “Western” Folk Healer as a Symbolic Healer: A Case Study from a Magic Ritual in Northern Greece

ABSTRACT The article, based on the author’s doctoral research on the life and work of contemporary folk healers with shamanistic knowledge in North East Scotland, explores one key issue when it comes to healing traditions: What kind of healing do these individuals offer? In 1986, anthropologist James Dow, expanding on Daniel Moerman’s idea that all spiritual healers are in fact symbolic healers, suggested that these folk specialists use human communication, ritual, and culture-specific symbols as tools to heal others. Drawing from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork alongside one such spiritual healer, the article examines the healer’s symbolic healing approaches through the example of a spontaneous magic ritual he conducted in autumn 2015 in Greece. The article’s goal is to ethnographically demonstrate how the healer’s practices fit into Dow’s “symbolic healing” scheme as an integral component for the efficiency of his healing practices.

Susanne K. Langers “Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.” Eine späte Wiederentdeckung

Summary It is about 100 Years ago that the German-American philosopher Susanne K. Langer started a bold and courageous appearance on the stage of consciousness-research - until then exclusively dominated by male and paternalistic figures. This contribution is to highlight SK Langers work and impact on the theory of consciousness, especially on her final three volume publication: “Mind. An Essay on Human Feeling” (1967, 1972, 1982) which, until now, has not been translated into German. What stands out in Langer’s work is her intuitive closeness to many Gestalt-theorists and the overriding importance she attributes to symbolization in the specific make-up of the human mind. Her main focus is centered on presentative symbolics; meaning those early forms of human expression (prior or along the development of human language) in magic rituals, rhythm, music, painting and sculpturing, early collective work experience, formalized playing or funeral activities. Langers view on symbols goes far beyond the typical meaning of reference towards a much more sophisticated intertwinement of form, event and being in a matrix of “living tensions”. I would like to point out that her research is of important value to a revised thinking on mental health and mental crisis in reshaping the complex interaction between image, Gestalt and Symbol.

Damir Bartol Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo — House of Extreme Music Theatre: Performative Translation of Croatian Neo/Avant-garde

DB Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo — House of Extreme Music Theater work with material from the Croatian historical avant-garde scene in all their performances of exhausting, physical theater, which they approached through the Zagreb circle of zenithists, “through Kamov and Čerina as predecessors of the Futurists (but not the Marinettists), and their influence on the literary-revolutionary circle of rebellious youth. Some of them included August Cesarec, Đuka Cvijić, Zora Ruklić and members of their ‘Republic of Stenjevac’, members of the Zagreb group Zenit, the lyrics of a visionary film through the books of Ivan Martinac, concrete poetry by Josip Stošić and the silent art that we ‘shachtophonize’ for our parallel performance canon” (Vrvilo 2020). Their systematic work on the performance and reactualization of the neo/avant-garde can be defined, by using Roman Jakobson’s definition, by intersemiotic translations (cf. Munday, Ramos Pinto, Blakesley 2022: 9) into musical theater which, in their example, is based on manipulating sound objects/installations/sculptures with the cut-up technique of original texts into schachtophone scores (moving away from music notation to graphic notation) for schachtophone music, all through the vision of the performance of exhausting (physical) theater with Indoš’s constant dedication to Artaud’s theater of cruelty, the alchemical theater of pre-logic and pre-rationality, a theater that, as a magical ritual, can lead to the healing of society.

A Unique Assemblage of Late Islamic Magical Artifacts from Netafim 2: A Campsite on the Darb al-Hajj, Southern Israel

Abstract Many remains of the Muslim pilgrimage road from Cairo to Mecca, the Darb al-Hajj al-Maṣri are preserved in the Eilat region of southern Israel. These include sections of the road, camps, and other associated structures. Most of these remains date to the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. In one camp (Netafim 2), an assemblage of unusual objects was found, including fragmentary clay rattles, votive clay incense burners, anthropomorphic and perhaps zoomorphic clay figurines, a cluster of colored quartz pebbles, and some seashells. The fabric of the clay objects indicates that they originated in Egypt. Based on the nature of the assemblage and a literary survey, this study suggests that the discussed artifacts were related to popular magic. The magical rituals, whose nature is yet unclear, were likely carried out at the site by professional sorcerers, who offered their services to pilgrims making the hajj.