Mythical Worldview Research Articles

REFLECTION OF MYTHICAL PLOTS IN CHILDREN'S GAME FOLKLORE

It is known that the conscious beginning of the cultural life of any nation is rooted in a myth. From a historical point of view, myth is the first spiritual and cultural form of human consciousness and retains its leadership character to this day. The golden core of every culture is a value system fueled by a mythical worldview. In other words, a myth is a complex worldview closely related to the laws of formation of each culture. The myth depicts the inner spiritual movement of the conscious life of mankind and its relationship with the surrounding nature and the social environment. The myth is reflected in culture as a whole as a model of the world in human consciousness. Mythical narratives arise from the purpose of depicting the world, which raises various questions in people's minds, as compensation for the need to create a complete model by improving unfinished parts of the world that have not yet been "realized" by mythical consciousness. For example, he explains countless questions in his own way, for example, how heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, humanity and animals, and other natural phenomena appeared, thereby creating a mythical model of the world in human consciousness. The article shows that such a representation of real life is the main form of mythical consciousness. In addition, game elements in any myth are analyzed and described. The purpose and objective of the article are to distinguish mythical plots in children's game folklore and emphasise game elements. It is determined that the meaningful and structural commonality of the game with the myth is clearly visible, primarily in children's play.

Angels Raising Souls to Heaven: Images of Entering Life after Death during the Christianisation of Livonia and Prussia

With the Christianisation of the Lithuanians in the Middle Ages, fundamental changes brought new Christian images of the Otherworld and entry to it. The image of souls being raised to heaven by angels is one of the images that emerged in the wake of changes in burial rituals. Based on Medieval historical sources, the article examines the image of the angel ascending to heaven that emerged in Balt and Finno-Ugric countries during their Christianisation. It explains how it is related to the Christian image of the Otherworld, and how it changed the pre-Christian Balt and Finno-Ugric mythical perception of the world beyond. It also explores the question of whether, in the Balt and Finno-Ugric mythical world-view, there may have been companions that conducted the soul in the Otherworld (psychopomps), which are seen as angels in Christianity. The research shows that in the earliest written sources describing ancient Balt and Finno-Ugric burials, there is no mention of spirits or deities acting as psychopomps, or of deities in charge of the deceased. The article argues that converts may have learned about angels raising souls to heaven because burial rituals and the concept of life after death changed in the course of Christianisation in Livonia and Prussia.

Myths, Science, and Literature – Different Fields, the Same Essence

Abstract The present study aims at analysing the relationship and establishing the similarities between ancient Eastern myths, literature, and today’s leading scientific views such as quantum physics. In ancient times, the mythic worldview was the only one being widely accepted, a dominancy that lasted up into, roughly put, the mid-nineteenth century, when most sciences as known today started to flourish and overtook the place of mythology, invalidating it. Nowadays, however, ancient myths and modern sciences have begun getting closer to each other and, at a deep insight, one may discover that they reveal the same truth. Thus, the paper shall discuss and compare ancient Buddhist texts with leading quantum theories and literary works by Béla Hamvas and Sándor Weöres that facilitate the comprehension of the essence.1

Drzewa w ludowym obrazie świata. Przyczynek do badań nad wierzeniami ludowymi o drzewach, ich stosowaniu w magii i lecznictwie

Trees in the folk image of the world. Contribution to the study of folk beliefs about trees, their use in magic and healing The subject of the article are folk beliefs concerning trees and their use in magic and medicine. The source basis for the presented descriptions, analyzes and interpretations are materials obtained during ethnographic field research in the Kielce region, which I conducted in 2010–2021, and published works. In the article I present cultural images of selected trees functioning in the minds of the inhabitants of Kielce villages. The analysis of the acquired ethnographic materials made it possible to find out how people think about trees as important elements of the cultural landscape, how they perceive them, what beliefs they connect with, and in the treatment of what ailments they use them. The phenomenon of a tree in folk culture results both from the mythical worldview, i.e. specific attitudes of rural residents towards natural phenomena, as well as from the specific features that trees have. The most important aspect determining the place of trees in the folk image of the world is their personification, ascribing to them the mediating features of the cosmic tree and the tree of life. Hence their significant position in the mental picture of the world and rich symbolism manifested in magical and religious rituals, vegetation rituals and healing practices with the participation of trees.

Intimidating, Cruel and Violent Motives of the Traditional Lithuanian Lullabies

Lithuanian folk lullabies, as well as lullabies in general, are commonly regarded as a folksong type intended to soothe babies and small children. However, the lullabies’ lyrics occasionally contain intimidating, cruel and violent motives that create a kind of semantic field which might cause anxiety and tension for the children rather than calming them down. The article focuses on precisely such lullabies. It consists of three parts analyzing different texts of the Lithuanian lullabies. In the first part, the author presents texts by which the children are threatened, intimidated, or which mention some dangerous mythical creatures and animals. In the second part, lullabies containing elaborate cruel and violent motives are discussed. In the third part, lullabies conveying a depreciatory attitude towards the child are presented. They reveal the indifference of the adults to the child. In this part, lullabies in which the child is symbolically brought to death are discussed as well.
 As revealed by the study, the purpose of the intimidating lullabies is scaring and didactics, while the frightening motives convey the traditional Lithuanian mythical worldview. The occurring violent motives reflect already existing cultural plots. Violent motives in the lullabies are transferred to the animal world using a form of humor. The lullabies can also perform a protective function: either by calling the child “useless” or “about to die”, or by driving away the creatures that could harm it.

The Old English Lexis of the Religious Sphere as a Reflection of the Mythical World-View

The article is a study of the ways the mythical concepts of the English mythological conceptual world-view are reflected in the Old English lexis. To explain this, we combine all the concepts under analysis into conceptual segments according to their dominant conceptual features. In the article, we specifically dwell on the conceptual segment of the RELIGIOUS SPHERE, which integrates three sub-segments, GOD (god), DEVIL (deofol), and RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL NOTIONS.

Znaczenie słowa w magicznych rytuałach wicca

The article aims to analyse the language of magic used during the Modern Wiccan ritual. The author claims that the contemporary practitioners of magic within social and religiousmovements prove that functioning of the mythical worldview in the post-industrial society is possible. It opens the opportunity for considering the essence of the word’s magic in a completely new dimension: it is about the exploration of the living phenomenon present in Polish culture for over twenty years. The theoretical context of this study relies on the most important anthropological concepts regarding the magical word (for example Malinowski, Buchowski, Engelking). The interpretation of the spells, prayers and invocations is possiblethanks to the author’s field studies. Moreover, observations, interviews and analyses of the existing sources enables presenting the characteristics of the wide cultural phenomenon such as Wicca. The list of the interviews can be found at the end of the article.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL WORKS

The article discusses that Mirkarim Osim provided the unity of form and content in the creation of historical work by finding a harmony between the composition of images, the composition of the narrator's speech, the composition of the plot. The similarity of the mythical worldview with the folklore narrative style of Mark Twain's historical novel can be traced in the story, but in terms of the narrative and the novel genre, some differences can be distinguished as both works have their own artistic and aesthetic concept.

Representations of totems and the image of the blue wolf in folklore

The most important totem common to all Turkic peoples is the Blue Wolf (Kоk bori). The Turkic people, including the Kazakhs, consider themselves to have emerged from wolves, and highly value the wolf for its difference from other animals. The wolf is a freedom-loving, proud, vindictive, strong animal, and the Turki attributed these qualities to themselves, thereby emphasizing the resemblance to a wolf. In the genealogical mythology of the Turkic peoples, a blue wolf or a blue wolf female is depicted as saving people from the enemy's environment, starting campaigns and feeding helpless babies. In the totemic, mythical worldview ofthe people, the Blue Wolf has become a holy animal. The article discusses from a scientific point of view the evolution of the image of the Blue Wolf (Kоk bori) in totem performances and folklore of the Kazakh people.

The Manifestations of Fate in Medieval Germanic Poetry and Lithuanian Folk Songs

Reflections of mythical worldview are embedded in traditional oral poetry, viz. Old Icelandic collection of poems Poetic Edda, Old English poem Beowulf, and Lithuanian folk songs. Archaic motifs and archetypal imagery are conveyed by means of poetic grammar (alliteration, kennings, epithets, etc.). Through interpretation, the hidden (symbolic) meaning of the poetic grammar is unveiled, and the connection between the two worlds, the sacred (the divine) and the profane (the human) (Eliade 1959), is exposed. To advance the analysis of poetic narrative, the methodology employed in the paper combines comparative Indo-European poetics (Watkins 1995) and oral-formulaic theory (Kiparsky 1976; Foley 1996). The paper focuses on the poetic narrative’s motifs that encode the archetypal image of the goddess(es) of fate in the Germanic and Baltic traditions. Selected passages from Old Icelandic, Old English, and Lithuanian poetic texts reveal the motif of fate in the following contexts: the establishment of the laws governing human life, the courtship and wedding narrative, the inescapable decrees of misery and death, the warrior’s fame and fate, and the connection between the goddess of fate and the cuckoo bird (in the Lithuanian tradition). The poetic grammar and poetic formulas, in particular, reveal the prototypical characteristics of the supernatural beings who rule fate – Norns, Wyrd, and Laima – and present them as an integral part of the Indo-European mythological system.

Eastern Cherokee Creation and Subsistence Narratives: A Cherokee and Religious Interpretation

Eastern Cherokees' mythic and legendary worldview, as refracted through sacred myth narratives, forms a living tradition which grounds their identity. In particular, the central sacred stories of their world—the Creation Myth, Kanati the Hunter, Selu the Corn Goddess, and Stone Coat—embody spiritual meanings, purposes, and values which actually orient the Eastern Cherokee lifeway. These spiritual peoples' traditional religious experience and expressions cannot be reduced to economic, social, psychological, or political structures. This essay explores this Eastern Cherokee mythic epistemology. One author is a historian of religions and attorney for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; the other author is a linguist and an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who reads, writes, and speaks the Cherokee language.

『김현감호(金現感虎)』 설화의 전승과 신라인의 세계관

Examined in this article is the ｢Kim Hyeon Gamho(金現感虎)｣ tale from Samguk Yusa, in order to determine how it was formed, transmitted and ultimately represented the people’s view of the world in the Shilla period. This tale is inserted not only in Samguk Yusa but in other texts like Daedong Unbu Gunok and Donggyeong Jabgi as well, and it should also be noted that Daedong Unbu Gunok listed Su’i-jeon as its source. A comparative analysis of various versions (from various texts) of this tale –as well as other tales that had circulated in other areas too- revealed that the versions inserted in Samguk Yusa and Su’i-jeon were from the same source, and the one in Samguk Yusa was the one that was the closest to the original source material. Several aspects of that version, such as the central theme of ‘circling the pagoda,’ or the idea of governmental seats offered as a reward, and Confucian notions such as ‘righteousness(義),’ all suggest that the tale itself was formed around the end of the 8SUPth/SUP century.BR Which can be sensed from this tale is not only a mythic world view which took the form of a love story between a human male and a tiger with a female form, but also a Buddhist world perception hinted by concepts like ‘circling the pagoda’ or ‘constructing a Buddhist monastery.’ This shows us that at the end of the 8SUPth/SUP century, when this tale was probably formed, the Shilla people was in possession of both of these different world views. Of course we tend to recognize its Buddhist elements more usually, but that’s just because Ilyeon, the compiler of Samguk Yusa, provided a commentary in which he emphasized the Buddha’s role in the connection made between Kim Hyeon and the femaleshaped tiger. In the end, this tale tells us that a particular form of human nature (性: in this case, love between a human and a tiger), and the mysterious hand of a godly power(聖), were no conflicting concepts or notions to the Shilla people.

Mythical Images of the Solar Carriage and Ship: the Heavenly Body in the Course of an Astronomical Day

The article focuses on the mythical image of the Sun, one of the most important heavenly bodies that people used to observe since times immemorial. The author uses various sources of the Baltic religion and mythology, Lithuanian and Latvian folklore and linguistic data. Her aim is revealing the meaning of the mythical image of the Sun as reflected by the traditional verbal heritage, and analyzing its origins. The investigation is confined, however, to the aspects of the solar image symbolizing the course of Sun’s movement during an astronomical day. Special attention is given to the solar carriage and ship, which are particularly deeply rooted in the Baltic past and in the ancient European spiritual culture.Veneration of the Sun was rather prominent in the eastern and western Baltic territories. Although data related to the Sun’s divine character are rather scant and obscure in the sources of the Baltic religion and mythology, the outstanding role of this heavenly body in the Baltic mythical worldview is unmistakable. The common definition of the Sun is mother (Lithuanian motinėlė, Latvian māmuliņa) in the Lithuanian and Latvian folklore, particularly the folksongs that frequently mention the heavenly bodies. Such characterization also reflects status of the Sun in the ancient hierarchy of the mythical values, testifying to the vernacular concept of this luminary, characterized by employing a familiar notion from the social sphere. This leads the author to conclude that the Sun was regarded as the most important luminary in the Baltic mythical worldview, as well as a significant dominant of cosmos that enveloped humans and was perceived by them. This universal image is characterized by global dissemination; fragments of its shape and manifestations in mythology, folklore, rituals and beliefs are preserved by the Balts as well.Various aspects of the Sun in the Baltic mythology can be discussed, including manifestations of this heavenly body in an astronomical cycle. Lithuanians and Latvians, just like the ancient Indians, Greeks and Germans, used to describe the Sun’s “travelling” and movement in relation to the Earth in the course of day and night by employing typical personifications of the Sun as riding in a carriage or sailing by a ship, as trundling out onto the sky in the morning and submersing into the watery depths in the evening. The rhythmic cycle of these travels encompasses our daily activities; it is the daily rhythm and cycle of our life endowed with mythical symbolism.

The Mental Image of the Mountain Ash (Sorbus L.) in the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language

The article focuses on more than 200 illustrative sentences containing the word šermukšnis [‘mountain ash’], picked out from the twenty volumes of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” (Lietuvių kalbos žodynas – LKŽe). The aim of the author is describing the semantic image of the mountain ash as shaped in the dictionary, also establishing the peculiarities of this plant that emerge as the most important ones in its hypertext. While analyzing the accumulated materials using the interpretative, comparative and descriptive methods, the author of the article depicts the visual features and places of growing typical to the mountain ash, discusses the qualities and possible uses of its wood, elucidates its nutritional, medicinal and mythical characteristics. She also briefly outlines the way of presenting the mountain ash in Lithuanian folksongs and various divinations. The analysis of the illustrative samples given in the dictionary that contain the lexeme šermukšnis [‘mountain ash’] enables composing the general image of this plant. Namely, the mountain ash emerges as a slender, upright tree with pinnate, lobate leaves and white (in folksongs – red) blossoms, bearing red unsavoury fruit that can be pressed for juice or boiled for syrup, fermented for mead or wine, dried to store for the winter, fed to the pigs or eaten by birds. The quantity of its blossoms and fruit serve as a sign indicating the future weather or the expected harvest. This tree usually grows in the forest or on its outskirts, at the edge of the meadow, by the road, at the basis of the hill or on its slope, or close to the people’s homes. It is bound to dwarf other trees and exhaust the soil. Its bark, blossoms and fruit are allegedly medicinal (used to cure colds, ailments of liver, kidneys, stomach, etc.). The wood of the mountain ash is good for carving. In the context of the mythic worldview, the mountain ash emerges as an especially significant plant, praised by the Lithuanians for its medicinal qualities and honored for its special magical powers. The folklore and illustrations from the dictionary likewise testify to the peculiar effect of the mountain ash on the mythical beings: it protects people and human homes from witches, sorcerers, devils, pucks, fairies and their offspring, and other evil spirits. Devil is especially scared of its stick. The mountain ash also protects the livestock (including cows, horses and sheep) from various spells. Mythical powers of this tree are obvious in its ability to turn humans into werewolves and vice versa. Therefore, the mountain ash is clearly present in human life from birth to death.

Mythical Notion of Mushrooms in Lithuanian Culture

According to the founders of ethnomycology Valentina and Gordon Wasson, it is possible to discern the mycophobic and mycophilic countries. Lithuania belongs to the mycophilic ones along with Russia, which these researchers have investigated (see Wasson and Wasson 1957: 4). In these countries, mushrooms and mushroom picking are important both economically and culturally.The article focuses on the mythical notion of mushrooms in Lithuanian culture and employs the mythical explanations of the origins of mushrooms, the perception of mushrooms as mythical beings, the mythical level and the ritual aspects of the mushroom picking to elucidate it.It is possible to discern two main reasons for mythologizing of mushrooms. First, they are important practically, therefore can acquire cultural meanings. Second, mushrooms are peculiar organisms, occupying the intermediate spot between plants and animals, and therefore characterized by certain mysteriousness.There are two mythical explanations for the origins of mushrooms. According to the first one, mushrooms are chthonic organisms, embodying fertility of the earth (mushrooms as flowers of the earth) and close to the Lithuanian devil and his mythical associates: fairies, sprites. By employing also the dream-readings and other connections of the devil with death and hidden treasures, or money, it is possible to discern several mythical complexes comprising associations between mushrooms and the devil as mythical being in the Lithuanian worldview, namely, mushrooms – earth – the devil; mushrooms – death – the devil; mushrooms – money – the devil. The second mythical explanation of the mushrooms’ origins appears in the etiological legends depicting mushrooms as the God’s gift to the poor people that emerged from the grain or bread spit out by the God or St Peter. This parallel between mushrooms and bread is important to the mythical thinking as well as to the use of mushrooms for nutrition.It is possible to identify mushrooms with mythical beings and people. This aspect is clearly visible in the Lithuanian riddles, according to which mushrooms have human body parts (feet, head), items of dress (hat, pants), or human denominations (uncle, girl). Besides, just like humans or animals, mushrooms allegedly suffer from the evil eye. According to the popular belief, well known across the whole of Lithuania, the sighted mushroom stops growing. The segregation of mushrooms into male and female genders is also important. This is especially vivid in the Lithuanian folksongs depicting war or wedding of the mushrooms.There are beliefs of the mushrooms behaving as agile, sensitive beings or as peculiar forest spirits. They can hear the approaching mushroom pickers and hide from them. According to some Lithuanian legends and the comparative Slavic material, it is possible to assume that boletus (Boletus edulis) – considered the “proper” mushroom in the southeastern Lithuania – could personify the guardian spirit of the forest – the master of the forest. The mushroom picking also has connections with the mythical notion of mushrooms. This activity depends on the mythical principle of the mushroom fortune as the most important one.The mushroom fortune manifests in successful picking, or mushrooms are the embodiment of success. This principle defines the amount of mushrooms that one is able to pick in the forest and the number and kind of mushrooms belonging to each individual picker. The mushroom fortune also involves having and carefully hiding one’s own picking places. The pickers may transfer the knowledge of these places to somebody else only as an inheritance. Mushroom picking may involve certain ritual practices: uttering of special prayers or performing peculiar magic actions aimed at securing the successful picking (throwing of shoes at the leaving mushroom picker, spitting on the first spotted mushroom, and occasional cases of offering). The mythical notion of mushrooms is rather similar in the mycophilic cultures. Numerous mushroom-related Lithuanian legends and beliefs have parallels in the neighboring Slavic countries (Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine). In turn, the ethnographic data from these countries fills in some blank spots in the mythical notion of mushrooms in the Lithuanian culture. In Lithuania, the mushroom picking is not only a means of enriching the food provisions or securing some income. This is a meaningful phenomenon accompanied by ritual and magical actions and representing the traditional Lithuanian mythical worldview.

Reflection of the Mythic Worldview in the Old English Lexis Denoting the Sacred

Reflection of the Mythic Worldview in the Old English Lexis Denoting the Sacred

Scaring of Children in the Traditional Lithuanian Worldview

By scaring, the author means short phrases uttered by the grown-ups in order to encourage acceptable behavior of kids, e.g. ‘If you walk by the rye field, rusalka will come out and take you away’ (LII ES 508/77 p. 153). This phenomenon of Lithuanian folklore, pedagogics and culture in general has hitherto attracted not enough scholarly attention; therefore, this article aims at elucidating its most important features and forms of expression.It is not entirely clear, to what folklore genre these forms of scaring should belong. They are close to folk beliefs in terms of their typical structure and manifestations of mythical worldview. However, the scaring presents reaction to certain situations and circumstances, thus being similar to situational sayings. Quite frequently, such occurrences stem from a broader social and mythological background, therefore being capable of evolving into folk legends or ritual-like imitation practices.The scaring of children functions on a twofold basis. Since scaring describes the surroundings and the applicable rules of behavior, it embodies the sensual experience. Children can experience some scary subjects directly (seeing them), while perceiving others through their mythical dwelling places (darkness, reflection in the well, the wavy rye, etc.) or sounds. The diminished possibilities of sensual experience and the obscurity determine the mythical code present in the scaring of children. The opposition between one’s own vs. foreign also plays an important role here: the foreign things tend to be more mythologized and frightening. The relation to reality makes scaring effective here and now, while mythical level encourages children’s imagination and curiosity, making the scaring remarks very catchy.The scaring very much depends on the situation and changes easily; therefore, classifying these instances according to a single criterion is difficult. This article lists four ways of classifying the scaring of children: according to form (the way of presenting the scary things to kids), to the scary subject (what the kids are intimidated with), to the space (how scary things are located in the living surroundings), and to the purpose (what scaring is meant to achieve). Formally, children can be scared with songs (phrases inserted into the lyrics of lullabies), rhymed situational phrases or simple verbal warnings. According to the subject, the material falls into four groups: scaring with no subject (threatening children with physical destruction or some unpleasant physical consequences); threatening with really existing, although mythologized persons (foreigners, beggars, wizards); threatening with mythologized animals; and threatening with mythical beings. According to space, there are also four groups of scaring instances, i.e. those associated with home, yard, close extraneous space, and distant extraneous space. Such scaring reflects psychophysical development of children and their range of spatial movement. The purpose of scaring may include appropriate everyday behavior of children or their ritually meaningful conduct. In the first case, children have to behave appropriately in terms of physiology or social meaning. Besides, by use of such scaring children are kept away from dangerous places (like wells, water pools, forests) or places important to the social welfare are safeguarded from them (including orchids, gardens, crops). The ritually meaningful scaring depends either on the stage of the child’s development or on the festive periods that require certain norms of behavior.The scaring of children constituted an inherent part of the Lithuanian peasant life in the second half of the 19th – the first half of the 20th century. Its prime purpose was forming appropriate social behavior of children. The secondary, although no less important, function was shaping their practical knowledge and mythical worldview. The patterns of scaring altered along with the child’s development, adjusting to the circumstances and the child’s physiologic capacities, yet in turn stimulating the psychophysical development of children as well.

Islands as Symbolic Centres of the Early Medieval Settlement Patterns in Middle Pomerania (Northern Poland)<br>Wyspy jako symboliczne centra wczesnośredniowiecznych mikroregionów osadniczych Pomorza środkowego</br>

Islands have played a significant role in the region of Pomerania. Isolated from the rest of the landscape, islands appealed to the human psyche in a highly distinct way. Because of their geographic isolation, they allowed their inhabitants to develop relations of a transcendental character. According to scholars of religion, when people searched for a place of settlement, they looked, above all, for a specific, unique area. In a symbolic sense, such an area was regarded as a pivot around which social life would revolve. Those parts of land that were surrounded by water were associated with the mythic Primeval Land: the first land emerging from the Primeval Ocean and perceived as the centre of the world, axis mundi. Empirical material obtained in the course of archaeological research allows one to impute and follow such dynamics in traditional communities. By analysing selected sites, this paper explores the complex worldviews of pagan Pomeranians from the early Middle Ages. Material evidence of sacred space organization and relics of ritual activities visible in archaeological sites suggests that isolated parts of land, in the form of islands, were a key component in the creation of the religious and mythical worldview of the pre-Christian inhabitants of early medieval Pomerania.

Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird by Armand Garnet Ruffo

Reviewed by: Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird by Armand Garnet Ruffo Albert Braz Armand Garnet Ruffo, Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2014. 320 pp. $32.95. Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that the growing presence of indigenous people in Canadian cultural and academic life would not only add new perspectives to scholarly discourse but also challenge the very notion of what constitutes scholarship. This is certainly the case with Armand Garnet Ruffo’s Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird, a learned biography that does not include a single citation and tests the distinction between the factual and the fictive and the empirical and the mythical. An Anishnaabe from the northern Ontario town of Chapleau, Ruffo is a poet-academic who has made a reputation for himself primarily with biographical long poems about figures like the conservationist and nature writer Grey Owl, the Apache political leader Geronimo, and now the iconic Anishnaabe painter Morrisseau. His best known book is arguably Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney, in which Ruffo documents the relationship between the Englishman who pretended to be indigenous and his own family, the Espaniels. In terms of form, though, Grey Owl is a traditional text that borrows heavily from published biographies of the subject. However, this is not what Ruffo does in Norval Morrisseau, which is not only (mostly) in prose but also eschews empirically-based Western research methods in favour of an “Anishinaabe epistemology” (3) that embodies other ways of knowing. Ruffo makes his perspective explicit from the outset. He explains that the impetus for his study of Morrisseau was the 2005 invitation that he received from the art curator Greg Hill to produce a text for the catalogue of the National Gallery of Canada’s retrospective Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist. Since at the time Ruffo knew little about “the acclaimed Ojibway painter,” he pondered the offer and “waited. Waited for something to tell me either to take on the project or let it go” (1). That all changed one fateful night. While in bed, through “a combination of dreaming and remembering,” he thought he heard voices, voices that “had come from [End Page 241] the old flat-roof house of my childhood in the north. Perhaps from my mother and the neighbours who had dropped by for a visit, a chat, a drink” (1, 2). Upon reflecting on what he believed the voices had imparted to him, Ruffo deduced that Morrisseau’s “experiences, while extraordinary in their own right because of his unique gifts, were fundamentally connected to something larger than himself. I realized that Morrisseau’s life was representative of the profound upheaval that had taken place in the lives of Native people across the country” (2). Consequently, the significance of the painter’s achievement could only be captured from an Anishinaabe “mythic worldview” (5), which is what Ruffo proceeded to do. In his book, Ruffo traces the life and career of Norval Morrisseau, Copper Thunderbird (circa 1932 to 2007), from his birth in an isolated Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario, through his emergence as the founder of the Woodlands School of art, to his apotheosis as one of Canada’s most celebrated artists. Since Morrisseau had no formal training in art, many critics have been perplexed by his achievement. Ruffo, however, has a culturally-informed explanation: Morrisseau is a shaman-artist. In fact, he is not only a shaman-artist but comes from a long line of shaman-artists. As Ruffo has the painter explain to a client, “ ‘All the pictures that you bought from me are taken from the dreams of my grandfather.’ ” Or as Ruffo elaborates, “Whatever good fortune [Morrisseau] has he credits to his grandfather, Potan, the man who raised him in a world of manitous and demigods” (64). Ruffo goes so far as to state that by the time Morrisseau has his major success in the early 1960s, he “firmly believes that he is a born artist and cannot learn his kind of painting from anyone—as the sacred drum arises from the earth, his paintings arise from the old stories, and he is merely the instrument of their creation...

Between the Lord and the Jew: Some Remarks on the Identity Structure of Belarusian kolkhozniks in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty first Centuries

Following an ethnographic field study, the author presents her findings on the cognitive collective identity of Belarusian kolkhozniks. Their self-definition as a group is based on the semiotic oppositions: peasant–‘lord’, peasant–Jew, and Christian–Jew, and it testifies to a longevity, or longue durée, of pre-modern mechanisms of conceptualising the social reality. The contemporary kolkhoznik defines himself as a simple (uneducated) but assiduous man, as opposed to his lord; in contrast to Jews, the kolkhozniks cultivate the land (as farmers) and are baptised. The post-serfdom identity of the ‘Christian kolkhozniks of-this-place’ is immersed in a mythical worldview and indifferent to any modern ideological and/or political projects.