Incantation Practices of Belarusians: Characterisation in Search of a Research Paradigm

Valodzina, Tatsiana

doi:0137-4079

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Title: Incantation Practices of Belarusians: Characterisation in Search of a Research Paradigm

Abstract:

This article communicates experience characterising Belarusian verbal healing magic by describing my own scientific pursuits. The development of scientific thought, both mine personally and that of my colleagues, with regard to incantation practices in general, has echoed the path of Belarusian folkloristics. A retrospective look emphasising research stages and corresponding results demonstrates the difficult path of deliverance from previous ideological principles that the Belarusian humanitarian science has gone through. Interest in previously forbidden topics – folk religion, magic, eroticism and so on – increased drastically with the country’s independence in the early 1990s and the slackening of ideological control. Step by step, an understanding of the dialectic of traditional culture, its integration into the broader European context and close ties with book culture came about. It was not easy to overcome the gap between the pre-Christian and Christian features in the structure and semantics of incantation texts. Post-Christian or neo-pagan influences have barely affected Belarusian tradition, and the influence of Internet sources is becoming much stronger. Turning to the experience of Western colleagues has contributed to the complicated process of including Belarusian incantations in the sphere of folk Christianity as a cultural category in contrast to institutional church doctrine. The concept of vernacular religiosity shifts emphasis to the study of religion as a living practice.

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