Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises
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Description
Contents
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Language
English
ISBN
951-746-366-9
Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface and acknowledgments
Notes on translation and referencing of texts
Introduction
Background of this study
Source materials and themes
Syncretism in Orthodox Karelian folk religion
Comparing different modes of ritual activity
Structure, agency and voice
Remarks on the demarcation of the research focus
Folk religion and the sacred
The concept of the sacred
The nature of ritual
Folk religion – some defining characteristics
Folk religion in Orthodox Karelia
Prior research and historical overview
Reciprocity and exchange in Orthodox Karelian folk religion
Pre-Christian beliefs: other worlds and väki-force
Sacred agents
Pilgrimage and monasteries
Types of ritual examined in this study
The problem of folk religion’s fuzzy taxonomies
Two ritual complexes: sacred boundaries and sacred centers
I. SACRED BOUNDARIES – NATURE SPIRITS, SAINTS AND THE DEAD IN THE MAINTENANCE OF CULTURAL ORDER
Boundaries against disorder
Illness: disorder in the human body
Nenä illness and proškenja rites
Moral orientations and the tietäjä’s authority: aggressive versus conciliatory healing rites
Divination: the role of the ritual specialist in the production of knowledge
Proškenja rituals and the ‘open’ body
Falling down and “standing up straight”
The role of ‘thinking’ in nenä infection
Farm versus forest: disorder in the resource zone shared by humans and the forest
Cattle and the forest spirit
Offerings to saints in the village chapel
Summer: a time of temporary truce with the forest
Christianized nature spirits and forest saints in boundary maintenance
The complex society of the “other side”: forest as mirror for the human community
The poor and the dead: communal cohesion and disorder in the margins
Incorporating the dead into the community of the living
Memorial rites and the maintenance of socio-economic equilibrium
The nature/culture dichotomy in communal self-definition
II. SACRED CENTERS – CULTURAL IDEALS AND PILGRIMAGE TO MONASTERIES
The pilgrimage vow and sacred ideals
A cult of traces
Magnificent wealth versus ascetic poverty
III. THE DUAL SACRED – COMPARING THE TWO SACRED COMPLEXES
Competition, renunciation and territoriality: two complexes, different ethics
Icons, illness and healing
Sacred agents and access to strategic information
Sacred time, place, and bodily movement
Conclusion: the sacred divided
Appendix 1: Calendar of most common praasniekka festivals in traditional Orthodox Karelia
Appendix 2: Map of Historical Comprising Orthodox Karelia 200
Notes
Abbreviations for archival source materials
Literature cited
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