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Altskandinavische Opferrituale und das Problem der Quellen
No full textThe article discusses Old Norse sacrifical rituals and their practice in Scandinavia. The scarcity of research material in this special field raises methodological problems: how to interpret and understand rituals that are no longer practiced, which belonged to a culture long gone?The article analyses the three main source texts that contain coherent narratives of sacrificial narratives: Snorri's Heimskringla, the Eyrbyggjasaga and the Kjalnesingasaga. While these narratives cannot be regarded as precise depictions of how such rituals were performed in ancient times they should however not be entirely dismissed as literary fiction. In these narratives, traditional elements are intervowen with early Chrisitan influences and coloured by the cultural context in which they were created.
Images of the Mind and Images for the Eye. An Iconographical Approach to UFO-Mythology
No full textIn the study of contemporary new religions and popular religious or metaphysical notions, the iconographical sources are often sadly overlooked. In this article it is the intention to present an iconographical approach to one single, although significantly versatile, aspect of modern, non-traditional mythology, namely the notion of "flying saucers" or UFOs (i.e. Unidentified Flying Objects). The actual UFO-religions may be insignificant in terms of adherence, but the very concept of UFOs holds a strong position in contemporary metaphysics and spirituality, as we find it in the so called New Age movement and elsewhere. Starting with the very notion of strange circular phenomena in the sky, a vast and very differentiated mythology of "flying saucers" or UFOs has developed. As far as the iconographical presentations reflect the narrative structure(s) of the UFO myth, these pictures are integrated elements of the UFO story, and sometimes even agents of a further ufological development.
Is the shaman indeed risen in post-Soviet Siberia?
No full textIn his exhaustive study of ‘shamanism’ among the Altaic peoples in Southern Siberia, the renowned Soviet ethnographer Leonid P. Potapov contends that ‘under the present conditions there are no remnants or survivals of Shamanism as such left in Altai’. What remains are legends and reminiscences, but these can no longer be told by people with personal experiences of Altaic ‘shamans’ and their rituals. According to Potapov, modern socialist culture has changed the minds of the Altaic peoples to the degree that they are now a materialistically thinking people, and ‘shamanism’ has completely disappeared. In addition, he contends that there are no prospects of its return after the deathblow dealt by Soviet anti-religious repression in the 1930s ‘shamanic’ rituals were forbidden and ritual paraphernalia such as drums and costumes were expropriated by the authorities. Considering that Potapov in his study follows Altaic ‘shamanism’ through 1500 years, depicting it as a ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ which stayed more or less intact over the centuries, his statement seems more like a pious hope based on the Soviet vision of a society liberated from superstition, religion, and spiritual exploitation. Potapov himself delineates Altaic ‘shamanism’s’ development from a ‘state religion’to a ‘folk religion’. From this perspective it might seem remarkable that ‘shamanism’ should not have survived 70 years of atheist repression, missionary work and the Soviet transformation of society. Already by the time Potapov’s book was published, during the very last months of the existence of the Soviet Union, there had, in fact, appeared a number of persons claiming to be ‘shamans’, with an ancestry dating from the time of ‘shamans’ of the first half of the twentieth century. These individuals were also part of organisations and movements promoting the revival of ‘shamanism’ in the autonomous Altai Republic. In other parts of the former Soviet Union similar processes took place. Today, in post-Soviet Altai, as well as in many other parts of Siberia, shamanism exists in the same sense that there is Buddhism, Christianity and Islam in the region
Unity and diversity: intentional multidimensionality in Persian Sufi language and the method of decoding it
No full textJalal al-Din Rumi and Muhammad Hafez Shirazi are two of the great mystics, Sufis, writing in Persian in the 13th and 14th century. Their poetry is still an essential part of the Turkish and the Persian religious and cultural settings. The objectives of this article are to suggest a method for analyzing the poetry of Rumi and Hafez within the discipline of History of religions. The various combinations of symbols, symbolic clusters, together create a totality from which parts are taken and combined in various ways in the poems. Seldom all of them are there together, but reading some poems with various themes gives the whole combination of symbols, which has been used by the poet. It gives the picture of a Sufi setting, where the essential thing is the path to the unity with God. With it goes the Persian identity indicated in the garden of roses symbolizing paradise, kingship, justice, prosperity, the love of nature etc. Only in combination do these symbols point to the complex situation of the Persian Sufis
The Alevi and questions of identity, including violence and insider/outsider perspectives
No full textAlevilik is the second largest religious movement in Turkey after Sunnite Islam. The Alevi worship Ali and the twelve Imams of his family. Ali is more or less deified and therefore Alevis are considered as being ghulat (‘exaggerated’, ‘extremist’) and heterodox. The elevated Ali personifies an aspiration to justice and righteousness. He fought on the side of the weak and oppressed against those with power in society. Theologically, Ali is assumed to be blessed by the divine light and is therefore able to see into the mysterious spirituality of Islam. Many Alevis today however totally dissociate themselves from Shi’ism. Still, the degrading abel kızılbaş (‘red-head’) is associated with Ali and thus is something alleged to be anti-Osman, since Isma’il fought against the Osman Empire. The colour red represents the blood of Mohammed: he was wounded in battle and Ali saw the prophet’s blood flowing. As Ali grew older, he wanted to remind people of Mohammed’s struggle and therefore started wearing red headgear. Red thus became the colour of the Shi’ites and over time a symbol of Shi’ite martyrdom. Later red also gained political significance for the Alevis. The religious and the political are closely intertwined, but despite this, neither the Left nor Shi’ism does simply stand on one side and the Right/Sunni on the other – there are no such simple dichotomies in reality
Syncretism in Nordic folk medicine: critical periods during pregnancy
No full textThis article explores the traditions concerning the critical periods during pregnancy when the foetus is exposed to the risk of suffering serious injuries. There is a good deal of such traditions in more recent Nordic and European folklore. But these popular conceptions have merely been recorded without having ever been investigated as to their provenance. In studies of various details in recent Nordic tradition it is possible to establish a striking correspondence between, on the one hand, folk tradition and, on the other, learned publications and popular accounts in books on healing and midwifery. This actualizes an interest to investigate the beliefs about critical periods by a comparison with the theories of the learned tradition
The Saami shaman's drum and the star horizons
No full textThe aim of this contribution is to examine the possible influences of stellar constellations on the positioning of the drum figures on the drums used by the Saami people during the 17th and 18th centuries. Certain of the drum figures seem to have a similar position to corresponding figures on traditional star maps, both with respect to single star constellations and to some members of the Zodiac circle. The most general correspondences between star maps and the painted designs on drums depend on the existence of a cross for determining the four cardinal points in both cases. The star constellations compared here with the drum-figures are in fact peripheral Saami skies. It is hard to believe that they can have played any vital role in their capacity as star symbols within the frame of the Saamis' own astral cosmology. It is more probable that the earthly meanings of most of the figures were more important to the drummer
Mesopotamia: myth and reality
No full textWas there a myth relating to the state in ancient Mesopotamia? There were several complexes of such myth. An example of this is Hammurabi, the king of Babylonian dynasty who extended Babylon’s control throughout Mesopotamia. His most important reform was Marduk's rise to a position as the chief deity of the whole kingdom. Whether or not the Epic of Creation obtained its final literary form in the reign of Hammurabi is a question, which is not easily answered. There is sufficient evidence of the main features of Marduk's character before Hammurabi's reign, but quite another question is that of the literary process. In any case, Marduk's position as the chief deity of the realm coincided with Hammurabi's adopting the feudal system of administration. In the Ur III period, as we have seen, the early system still prevailed, and the earlier city states continued their existence, although as provinces of the unity. This system was continued in the period of the Isin and Larsa dynasties. In the reign of Shamshi-Adad of Asshur, at any rate, we meet with a typical feudal system, as is evident, for instance, from his correspondence with his son Yasmah-Adad, viceroy of Mari. This system implies that the king considered himself the possessor of the ground, particularly such as belonged to the temples, and its products as well
Fatalistic traits in Finnish proverbs
No full textIn this paper the author examines proverbs in Finnish language. For example, the verb luoda, which in modern Finnish has the basic meaning 'to create' with a strong Christian colouring, was obviously used earlier to express fatalistic ideas. Its primary meaning appears, for instance, in a laconic pro-verb from Perniö (in south-western Finland): Tam lua, literally "The oak creates", which is given the following explanation: It is the weather in January [tammikuu, month of oak] that in some way predetermines what the spring and the summer will be like